Denzel was no fool. With just one glance, he understood exactly what Sir Clinton intended to do.
As the farmers drove the cattle and pulled on the ropes, the head of the Sphinx statue gradually lifted, because in front of it stood a sturdy oak tripod.
The pulley at the top of the tripod was higher than the statue's center of gravity, and with the pull of the rope, it exerted an upward-slanting force on the Sphinx.
In this way, the statue raised its base, shifting forward with great difficulty by the width of a palm, pressing directly onto the iron balls laid out beforehand.
The iron balls crushed the stone tiles beneath them, almost sinking into a pit of rubble.
Then, by slightly lowering the pulley on the tripod without changing the angle of force, the statue was able to move forward another half-step.
As the statue emerged from the pit and gradually pressed onto a bed of iron balls, the pulling speed grew faster and faster.
Each time it passed over a row of iron balls, the workers would retrieve those that sank into the pit and place them ahead of the statue again.
By noon, the Sphinx statue had moved seven or eight meters and climbed onto the Valyrian stone road.
At that moment, Denzel finally saw the Dragon Queen.
She descended from the sky astride her black dragon. With her face hidden beneath a helmet and her body clad in armor, her appearance could not be seen clearly.
What caught everyone's attention was that the black dragon carried a bundle of more than a dozen iron bellows.
Because he was of Andal blood and his family hailed from Storm's End, Denzel had become a minor leader under Sir Clinton, responsible for directing the cattle to drag the statue.
This gave him the chance to see the Dragon Queen up close.
Although he did not know why she always wore her helmet (obviously to avoid death, fearing a crossbow bolt from the crowd), Denzel still managed to glimpse through the narrow slits of her visor. He saw that she was an exceedingly beautiful woman, with vivid violet eyes, fair and radiant skin, a delicate chin, and silver hair that gleamed in the sunlight.
There was no doubt about it—she was a Targaryen. Everyone knew that Targaryens were famed for their violet eyes, silver hair, and beauty beyond that of ordinary mortals.
Yet what amazed Denzel most was not her looks, but the fact that she truly wielded magic!
He watched with his own eyes as the Dragon Queen used fire to melt dragonglass (at least that was what she called it) along with other strange magical materials, inscribing symbols he could not read—magical runes—onto the cleared blackstone road.
Afterward, she had the Sphinx statue moved atop the markings, and around it, she constructed a two-story castle with eight barrel-sized windows.
Made of red brick and blue stone, the castle enclosed the statue. Around its windows, eight smaller towers, each two meters tall, were built.
Then Denzel understood. The smaller towers connected to the bellows, forming a massive furnace.
The eight furnaces were filled with charcoal and lit around two in the afternoon.
Many merchant caravans traveling between Pentos and Norvos passed by during this time. They were curious and tried to linger and watch, but the black dragon silenced them with a thunderous roar: "Leave, or die." Unsurprisingly, they all chose to leave.
As the flames roared, the newly built furnace exuded a hot, damp smell of lime.
The lime in the bricks dried too quickly under the fire, and cracks appeared in some places. Normally, the mortar should have been left to cure slowly, but the high heat caused uneven drying, splitting the walls.
The Dragon Queen merely scooped some lime plaster to patch over the cracks and continued the burning.
Denzel understood her intent. She wasn't truly building a permanent steel furnace on the road—she only wanted to melt down the iron statue.
"Why doesn't the Queen simply have her dragon burn the Sphinx statue, the way Balerion the Black Dread melted the swords to forge the Iron Throne?" he could not help but whisper to his fellow countryman, the knight.
Sir Clinton, who also claimed to hail from the Stormlands, was friendly toward him.
Yet when Denzel asked if he belonged to the Eyrie's House Clinton, the knight only shook his head in silence. At this time, the Eyrie's Clintons were distantly related to Jon Clinton but not of the same direct line.
"Still heating," the Dragon Queen interjected, glancing at him.
By the Seven! The Dragon Queen had spoken to him!!
Denzel's dark face flushed red, his head burned hot, his vision swam, and he stood there utterly flustered.
Fortunately, she turned back after saying just that, continuing to watch the blazing furnace.
As carts of charcoal were hauled in from nearby manors and groups of laborers rotated at the bellows, the furnace began to release waves of heat like a surging tide, forcing everyone back.
When the sky grew yellow with dusk, the Dragon Queen chanted an incantation. The flames at the top of the furnace shrank downward, and the surrounding heat rapidly diminished.
Yet the rate at which charcoal was added did not decrease.
Denzel, ignorant of magic, did not realize that once the statue's temperature plateaued, the Dragon Queen had used fire-control sorcery to gather the escaping flames and reshape them into the form of a massive inward-facing bell, sealing the statue inside it.
Thus, the temperature of the Valyrian steel statue continued to rise, while those outside felt less heat.
Before night fully fell, the dragons finally began to breathe fire. The black dragon and the green dragon took turns like runners in a relay race, one blast after another, pouring torrents of dragonflame into the furnace.
The dragonfire joined the charcoal blaze, and for three whole hours, the open darkened plain was bathed in the glow of countless brilliant stars above.
At supper, Denzel received three sausages, two eggs, a loaf of bread, and a large bowl of beef, oat, and carrot soup.
He ate with great satisfaction, yet noticed that the Dragon Queen and her two knights did not partake of any food.
At midnight, Denzel was dozing on the stone road when suddenly a wave of dread crashed over him. It felt as though a tiger had crept beside him, jaws gaping wide to sink into his throat.
He jolted awake, and the slumbering crowd stirred too, cries of alarm rising around him.
With a single glance, Denzel found the source of the disturbance: the black dragon!
By day it had seemed majestic and godlike. But now, it truly felt divine.
Its form remained unchanged, still fierce and terrifying, yet it radiated an aura of sanctity that compelled reverence.
No—something else had changed. The dragonflame!
The bright blood-red fire had turned into an extraordinarily vivid glaze-red.
If color itself could be alive, then in that moment, the glaze-red flame had come alive.
The green dragon withdrew, leaving only the black dragon, spewing streams of glaze-red fire like a pillar of molten glass.
A quarter of an hour later—boom!
Suddenly, the massive, castle-like brick-and-stone furnace shook a few times, as if something inside had exploded. Almost at the same moment, somewhere at the bottom of the Rhoyne River, towering waves surged out of nowhere.
Before the two knights could voice their astonishment, Denzel was already staring in shock as the Dragon Queen flew into a rage, cursing furiously:"Damn Valyrians! If you want to put on airs, then at least commit to it! Passing off a fake to fool the world for thousands of years—don't you feel ashamed?"
At that moment, the Dragon Queen had no idea of the true significance of the Valyrian steel statue. She didn't know what she had just done, nor could she hear the vengeful "moo—gaah—" roars echoing from the Rhoyne River dozens of kilometers away. Some ancient beings had broken free from the Valyrians' seal.
"Fake?" Her two knights' faces suddenly changed.
"Valyrian steel shell, worthless iron core. The steel inside has already melted. Once the fixed shell breaks, it bursts open like a soup dumpling, splattering everywhere!"
The Dragon Queen sighed heavily, her iron boots stomping loudly against the stone passage.
When she smashed open the brick that connected the furnace to the passage—a thin tile layer near the edge—glowing molten iron, blazing white with heat, immediately flowed out into the sand pit prepared beside the stone passage.
The passage stood a hand's breadth above the ground, and the pre-dug pit was perfectly placed to catch the molten stream.
Earlier, the Dragon Queen had ordered the top layer of soil to be cleared away and replaced with a thick bed of molding sand.
The molten iron hissed and crackled as it hit the pit.
Even though the Dragon Queen had already baked the sand with dragonfire beforehand, thick smoke still rose in waves from the surrounding earth.
The stench of burning spread in every direction, and scorching heat radiated outward without restraint.
The molten iron lit up everyone's faces in fiery red, but while the others sweated, the Dragon Queen simply sighed as if nothing were amiss.
Muttering to herself, she said, "Too much… far too much. With so much molten iron, how much Valyrian steel can possibly be left?"
The size and depth of the pit had been carefully calculated in advance.
A small pit was about the size of a bucket, pressed firm with standard molds and baked dry. Each could hold about five hundred jin of molten iron. (Valyrian steel is also iron, with the same density as common iron.)
One pit connected to another. Once the first was full, the excess would flow through thumb-thick channels into the next—much like an ice cube tray.
Since it was molten iron this time, the Dragon Queen herself jumped into the pit and used ceramic plugs to block off some of the channels.
Originally, each pit had four outlets, allowing the molten iron to flow in all directions. But under her deliberate control, the flow was guided to only two sides, reserving the "faucet position" for Valyrian steel.
Of the 400 pits arranged in a 20-by-20 grid, 250 were filled with common iron, 71 were filled with Valyrian steel, and 25 remained empty.
In other words, the Sphinx statue weighed about 80 tons—62.5 tons of common steel, and around 18 tons of Valyrian steel.
The common steel was mottled gray and black, while Valyrian steel was smoke-black with a strange, shimmering luster.
The difference was obvious.
"Not bad at all."
Looking at the smoke-black ingots being pulled up like carrots by the lifting ropes, the Dragon Queen finally smiled.
When she had flown from Slaver's Bay, she had brought two hundred fine steel chains, each as thick as a thumb and as long as an arm.
She placed one chain across two adjacent pits. Once the molten iron solidified, each chain bound a massive iron ball at either end.
One such chain-ball weighed a thousand jin, and only Drogon could lift it.
From midnight until the darkest hours before dawn, Drogon carried away 34 chain-balls in succession, disappearing from sight and returning empty-clawed each time.
There was no need to say it aloud. Everyone knew Valyrian steel was too heavy to move all at once. The black dragon had hidden it somewhere nearby.
Denzel's heart stirred. Thirty-four trips in just three hours, each round trip taking about five to six minutes.
Which meant the Valyrian steel was stored no farther than a three-minute flight for the dragon.
And if a dragon carrying half a ton of steel could fly 400 kilometers in an hour… then three minutes meant no more than twenty kilometers!
This…He didn't know the exact market price of Valyrian steel, but tens of tons of it could easily be worth an entire city.It was truly priceless.
Denzel's eyes flickered, and he noticed many others' eyes flickering as well.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were calm and clear. He quietly approached Clinton."Ser, you'd best advise Her Majesty to remove the Valyrian steel as soon as possible."
"Mm." Clinton's face was expressionless, betraying no hint of thought.
Denzel sighed, saying no more.
But before dawn, his small kindness was repaid.
The Dragon Queen truly kept her word. Every farmer received one or two gold coins as overtime pay.
And Denzel was given 18 golden dragons—not mere gold honors, but Westerosi golden dragons, each worth three gold honors.
Clinton had given him all of his.
Just a single coin was enough to pay off his debt to Illyrio, with plenty left over.
The rest was enough to buy a grand estate with several hundred acres of fertile farmland.
Denzel had finally stepped onto the path of a protagonist's glory—the son-in-law rising to greatness.
(End of Chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09