Chapter 166 - 112 Jade Steel

If you want to be your own boss, there are just too many things to worry about—if it’s not lacking this, then it’s missing that. Harano had paced around his desk at least a hundred times. If only he’d set up a small stone mill here earlier, he could’ve ground out half a bucket of soy milk by now. But after all this grinding, he still couldn’t recall any rich iron mines in Owari. After all, there just weren’t any, no matter how hard he wracked his brains—it’s not like he could conjure things from thin air. He pondered for a while and felt like he’d hit a dead end, so he switched angles—where did Owari’s armor and weapons come from, anyway? He’d honestly never thought about this before. And whenever he ran into "common sense" issues, asking Ah Man was definitely the way to go. So he sent someone to fetch her again, and as soon as she arrived, blurted out, "I forgot to ask you earlier—where does Owari’s ironware come from?" Ah Man blinked, totally unsure what he meant, and shot back, "Obviously the blacksmiths make it—what, do you think donkeys crap it out or something?" "I mean the raw material, like pig iron and all that." Ah Man truly lived up to her reputation as the resident encyclopedia. She got it right away, slapped her forehead, and said, "Oh, you mean iron stock! Here in Atsuta, we get it from North Land—places like Kaga Province produce it. The Shimazu folks on the other side get theirs from Shanyang Road and Shanyin Road, like Bizen Province, Beichu Country, Mizogaki Country, Chiyu Province, Iwami Province, Yinqi Kingdom—all those places put out iron." North Land, Shanyang Road, Shanyin Road... All these places are way too far from the East Sea Road. Not even close enough to rob if he wanted to! Harano latched onto one last shred of hope: "So Owari doesn’t have anywhere producing iron stock at all?" If there was one, that’d be his next target—or at least he could try to get a cut of the output. Ah Man popped his bubble straight away: "Owari just produces cloth, pottery, and rice, nothing else that’s really worth a damn. And iron stock, that sort of production isn’t something ordinary people can even pull off. Each family’s got its secret recipe—there’s no way iron can pop up just anywhere." Family secrets? Seriously, they’re that dramatic about it? Well, whatever. You need an iron mine before you even talk about smelting, and now he couldn’t even go rob one? "Alright, go get back to your work!" Harano, utterly disappointed, sighed. Since Ah Man was of no help, he just waved her away. Ah Man didn’t care; she couldn’t even be bothered to ask what he was up to. She never had a clue what Harano was thinking anyway, figured this was just one of his daily freakouts, mumbled something, and patted her own little butt as she headed back out. Harano kept grinding away in his office—another half a bucket of soy milk’s worth of thinking—but he was stubborn as ever, racking his brains over how to solve this problem. The raw material costs were just too high; if he wanted to produce armor and iron cannon, selling them would barely earn him labor fees. That was just a bad deal. Luckily, the gods favor the persistent. After a solid stretch of pondering and combing through memories, he finally stopped pacing and squeezed out another idea. So, Owari didn’t have any rich iron mines. But that didn’t mean there was no iron—it’s just harder to collect. But since he’s already hit rock bottom and seriously broke, hard to collect or not, he had to at least try. So...worst comes to worst, he could just try opening up an "iron field." Not sure how reliable that was, though. ...... The next day, Harano got up at the crack of dawn, knocked out his daily tasks, sorted out a few matters in Wanjin, and then took his "exploration team" out—time to go search for iron. Nothing fancy about this squad—just him, his bodyguard Qing, a few veteran Lang Faction folks from his household, and of course, Ah Man, who’d heard about his "iron hunt" and insisted on tagging along. Aside from that, they only packed some weapons, tools, and food. They didn’t even bring horses—since they’d be tracing the river upstream, with no roads in sight, horses would just be a burden. "Owari really has iron? How come nobody found it before? How’d you know about it?" Ah Man was full of questions, utterly confused about what Harano was up to, and kept chirping in his ear as they went. "I don’t know either—I’m just going to check it out!" Harano had no way of explaining that iron is actually the third most abundant element in Earth’s crust—if you don’t count oxygen, since in minerals, oxygen is considered an impurity, and everyone wishes it would just disappear. In theory, there should be iron everywhere, so he brushed her off with a reply and kept following the creek upstream. This creek was a tributary of the Bai Chuan, and most of Owari’s rivers all have their headwaters high in the mountains of Minoh Province. Bai Chuan was no exception. But see, Japan’s an island nation, with over 80% of the land being mountains, which meant nothing but hills and valleys. Bai Chuan twisted and turned because of that, zigzagging through most of Owari before ending up like a giant comb, splitting into tributaries that all flow south into the sea. Anyway, this little river started deep in the mountains, so it’s definitely passed through lots of hilly land. There should, in theory, be a certain amount of iron sand in there—the trick was just figuring out how to collect it all. This kind of primitive approach was what Harano ended up with in his stubbornness, digging through old memories and remembering a documentary he’d watched about "Tama steel." It was an NHK production, and NHK always went all in on documentaries—crowdfunded TV means not caring about the bottom line, so when they set money on fire, they really set it on fire, and their research was always first-rate. Anyway, in that "Tama steel" documentary, they made it clear that Tama steel’s raw material was—iron sand—red-eye iron sand and true-eye iron sand, washed straight out of the river. Of course, Japanese people love fancy names—no matter how weird the iron sand’s name sounded, at the end of the day it was just magnetite. The so-called "Tama steel" produced by smelting it was actually just a low-temperature steel that happened because their furnaces couldn’t get hot enough to fully melt the iron sand. Nothing magical. Of course, you can’t say that around sword enthusiasts. Look down on "Tama steel" even a little and they’ll break your head open and argue with you for three days straight. But anyway, "Tama steel" just came from smelted iron sand. There’s a whole lot of mystical "rituals" about the process, but Harano didn’t care. He just wanted the byproduct—pig iron, and lots of it. As for how to get hold of the iron sand, that documentary mentioned it too—digging out a river bay and opening an "iron field," so the river builds up iron sand all on its own over time. If this trick didn’t work, he’d really be out of luck; there were no iron mines nearby, so he’d be forced to buy expensive, unreliable iron stock at high prices. That military ambitions daydream? Just gone. All his ideas for assembling an army would have to take a big hit. Right now, he was full of uncertainty and couldn’t be bothered to humor Ah Man as she chattered away, so he stuck to following the river upstream. The river wasn’t wide, but since it flowed down from the hills to the sea, it ran pretty fast. By the time he’d walked out past his temporary territory, he finally saw where the river bent around a hill, slowed down, and spilled out into a muddy cove. He figured it was as good a spot as any to test his theory, and right away had everyone stop. He told the Lang Faction folks to pull out the bamboo baskets they brought for sifting dirt, using pretty much the same technique as gold panning—grab a handful of mud, shake it like mad in the current so the lighter sand and dirt gets washed away, and all that’s left at the end is the heavier stuff—gold in the case of gold panning. Of course, this time it’s iron sand, but the principle’s the same. If anything, just use a little less elbow grease. This kind of low-risk job, obviously, he was happy to do himself. He jumped right in, even if it wasn’t Meiyu Season yet—the river water was cold, but he didn’t care. He grabbed his own bamboo basket, shook for five or six minutes, then pawed through the leftovers. When he rubbed it in his palm, it felt cold and heavy—and turned out, it really was black iron sand! And there was way more than he’d expected; a single basket of mud gave him enough black iron sand to cover his whole palm—at least two taels. That didn’t seem right. Harano straightened up and looked around; everyone else had about the same amount in their baskets, too. He kind of spaced out for a second—this was almost too good to be true. Here he’d been worrying about not having any iron, yet digging around in the muck, he’d actually found some iron sand. Was the universe finally cutting him some slack? Just a regular guy trying his best for a year and still getting beaten down, and now he’d finally caught a break? Still, he had a solid education and didn’t buy into that supernatural stuff. His mind scattered for half a second then snapped back into focus. It didn’t take long to figure out the truth—it’s this damned place, Japan, that’s the weird one! Anyone who’s taken a geography class knows: Japan sits right on top of intersecting tectonic plates, with three earthquake belts and four volcanic belts. Tons of earthquakes and volcanoes means lots of magma coming up, full of iron-rich minerals. Then, with all the complicated geology, it gets dragged up to the surface, and after centuries of rivers washing and carrying it along, river iron sand content here is much higher than in other places around the world. Plus, this particular little river bay was already close to the estuary, and since the place had never caught anyone’s attention, who knows how many years the river mud had been washed, sorted, and accumulated here? That’s how so much heavy black iron sand ended up here. Harano thought it through and, being able to explain it from a scientific angle, quickly got his worldview back in order. He pinched the iron sand in his hand, estimating total yield. Meanwhile, Ah Man had been waiting for him to fail so she could act all smug, but to her surprise, after a bit of panning, there really was a little pile of iron sand. She couldn’t help blurting out, "So the river really does have this much iron sand? Is that how they get iron stock up in North Land, Shanyang, and Shanyin?" Now this was a real surprise—jackpot! Copper is money, iron is money too! Even if the quality’s low, casting iron coins still works—just what he needed to pay back the Lang Faction guys who’d earned merit, and clear his mountain of debts! "Not sure how they do it over there—maybe they’ve got some small iron mines. But for us, this is our only option." Harano wasn’t as fired up as she was; he drew his gaze back and answered evenly, his face barely showing any excitement anymore. He’d already done the math. He reckoned there wasn’t that much iron sand here—at best, even if they dug up the entire bay, he’d maybe get ten tons or so—rough estimate. Couldn’t be much more than that. And this was iron sand, not iron stock; after smelting, he’d be lucky to get 20% of that. He’d have to pray to the blast furnace gods. That still wasn’t enough—not for the long-term anyway. Compared to a real iron mine, this was nothing. But at least now he’d confirmed NHK wasn’t full of crap—Japanese rivers really could double as crummy little iron mines, which meant he could lay the foundations for an iron field. Some was better than none; at least it gave him a long-term, stable iron source. With those thoughts in mind, he turned to one of the Lang Faction guys and said, "Head back and get some men—bring thirty, with shovels and sacks. We’re digging up the river."