Lingyun and Lingyi walked up the stairs to the tower. At the top, there was a large room with many tables laid around, they were the plans of the ores, some account books and more. Lingyun skimmed through them, not very interested in the content, since it was likely forged just to be an inconvenience.
He turned to Lingyi, who took a few of the books again and told him the truth from the secret language. The supervisor would always change, but the guards and refiners would basically remain, so they were the ones that managed the mines.
This is why they say a supervisors' job is truly the least, the focus is on refining.
Soon they finished and saw that the output throughout the years was increasing slightly, the latest record was 5years, which was that 620 kilograms were gathered. Based on the other records, he speculated that the ore should be around 590-610. The average of 600 and 100 extra ore is still fine.
When the ore drops below 600, it's likely that the requirement of ore delivered to the family would fall equally. But, this couldn't be done by their branch lineage, it had to be done by the main lineage, else there would be too much discussion and trouble.
They finished up quickly and Lingyun told Lingyi "You go and take care of the mines. Deliver all the mined ores directly to the earth fire room at the end of the week. You can directly use 30 kilograms, as for the rest, if you want, you can exchange them for contribution points too."
He had talked with his grandfather after all. The black iron is usually used by entry level refiners, it's fine if he directly exchanged for it and refined the weapons he wanted. As for refining ore into iron, this was the main part of the position and could be used to hone his own skills.
…
The day passed, Lingyun used the supervising tower as his own sleeping room, after all, he was simple and only required a bed to sleep on, there was no need for the fanciness of a yard or something like that. He only made sure the formation worked.
Early in the morning, he left the tower and walked to the earth fire room. The future refined ore would be sent regularly to the fire room, but currently there should still be a stock of what had to be refined.
As for why he changed the daily deliverance of ore to a weekly one… he wanted to regulate his own cultivation and refining better. He could basically refine all the ore in a day. According to his calculations, there would be 12kilograms of ore weekly. After a day of refining, go and cultivate for another day, then work for three days and rest for two days, before repeating the cycle.
The reason he needed to recover was simple – weapon refining was not only an art of spiritual power, but it also required a strong body. He exercised a simple body tempering art since he started cultivating, called the "Steel Skin Art", although it wasn't strong, it could still strengthen his body enough to fight against first-stage early-stage beasts with his bare hands, so he could also easily refine ore and weapons.
Once at the fire room, he saw that one was already closed. He looked at the sun to make sure, then smiled "Starting at six in the morning, I thought this was early, but it seems someone was even earlier than me. Well, a talented and diligent person, he's worth cultivating."
Then he entered his own room and saw that there was around fifteen kilograms, which should be the ore accumulated in the time between the supervisor change.
He first warmed up the cauldron he would use, then injected his spiritual power to activate the runes. Runes are the language with which one can communicate with the spiritual power, Divine Runes can even calculate with the laws.
There are different kinds of runes – Weapon Runes, Talisman Runes, Formation Runes, Natural Runes and Dharma Runes. The first three are the runes inscribed on weapons, talismans and formations.
Weapon runes are conversion runes that change the spiritual power of the wielder into the spiritual power that can support the runes best. Without runes, one is basically just moving around scrap metal.
Talisman runes are conservation runes that conserve spiritual power and the spells that are imprinted. Formation runes are runes that communicate with the natural power around the formation tools to gather spiritual power from the environment and strengthen the formation with the natural powers.
Natural runes are the runes formed on natural treasures, most commonly found in plants and ores, they have the effect of gathering spiritual power and creating a spiritual resource. Alchemists have to remove the former effect and strengthen the latter effect to form pills or elixirs.
Finally, Dharma runes are the runes cultivators come into contact when casting spells. Initially, they are reduced even further into chants and hand gestures, while later on, one forms the dharma runes with their own spiritual power and consciousness.
To refine ore into iron, one didn't need to do so much, the weapon runes in the cauldron could refine the ore's runes directly. Unlike the plant natural runes that needed heavy care and strict control, the ore runes could be transformed very easily.
Soon, the cauldron was heated and Lingyun connected to the seven runes. For every stage, the runes are basically 12, which is 1-12, 13-24, 25-36, 37-48, corresponding to early, middle, high and top. There is a special 49th rune for so-called Elite weapons, and 50th for Perfect weapons, but the latter two require special runes and extremely high knowledge of the field.
Fortunately, all runes follow the same number, so a general categorisation is possible.
Early and mid stage weapons refer to the first half of the cultivation realm, late and top to the second half, elite and perfect are basically used by elite disciples of the higher sects.
The seven runes of the cauldron included four basic ones: Gather Spirit, Stability, Earth Fire Heating, Fire Control, as well as three extra ones: Strong Fire, Closed Cauldron, Space Expansion. The four basic are easy to understand, just gathering spiritual power and then using the earth fire as a heat source and fire control to control it. Stability is a basic one to strengthen the cauldron.
Strong Fire is to enhance the strength of the fire with the gathered spiritual power, closed cauldron is to create an environment of extreme heat without losing any, while space expansion creates a bigger inner space. These three are to refine more ores quickly into iron.
Lingyun used object control, which is the wind element control art among the five element control art, to carry the ores into the cauldron. The maximum it could carry was ten kilograms, which was actually inefficient as it would take longer to heat all that stacked ore together.
The optimal range is 5-7 kilograms, Lingyun decided to go for 7,5 and refine in two batches.
Half the ores flew out of the iron container on the side outside the fire room, Lingyun closed the room with the formations and created a fire cave space with high temperature.