This kind of excited feeling lasted for a long time.
However, no matter how excited they were, they had to wait, unless they could endure the hardship of walking for more than a dozen hours in the icy world, enduring the cold that pierced their bones.
Having found a suitable place, there was no need to be in a rush, and no need to hurry out.
They rested at home for a full two days, thoroughly recovering their strength.
After resting a few days, Hua Chengtian couldn’t sit still anymore. Such a big valley left in neglect made him feel distressed just thinking about it. Since there wasn’t much to do at home, he planned to take more people to the valley to organize, and then camouflaging a bit.
Even though no one had been found, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Qinggu Mountain is so vast; who knows, there might be people on other mountains, and if someone else takes it, it would be crying without tears.
So after resting at home for a few days, thoroughly replenishing their strength, on the fourth day, they set out fully armed again with a hundred or so strong laborers, carrying enough supplies for ten to fifteen days.
This time, since they would be out a bit longer, Big Brother Hua stayed at home while Second Brother Hua and several cousins went with their father.
Big Brother Hua almost guarded the family cave daily, spending most of his time practicing martial arts besides reading, and spent the rest of the time with grandpa crafting and polishing parts for crossbows, preparing for future safety in the mountains.
Meanwhile, in the Big Cave, Hua Tie hadn’t been idle. He and several young men started a forge in the cave, revisiting the blacksmithing skills he learned in his youth.
As for where the iron came from? It was contributed by each household, unused farm tools with gaps.
The farming households are used to being thrifty. Even badly rusted tools with gaps were not easily discarded; they all brought them to the mountain.
Now, this was becoming useful.
After not touching a forge for many years, Wang Tie thought he had long forgotten the blacksmithing skills he learned when young. Unexpectedly, the memories became clear when he touched the forge and wielded the hammer, and the skills came back soon after getting used to it, repairing many farm tools in days.
Looking closely, the repaired farm tools didn’t show any signs of repair. Old Hua lamented that such good skills had been wasted by Wang Tie for so many years.
After half a month’s practice, Wang Tie’s confidence fully returned.
Confidence was back, but a skillful chef needs ingredients; Wang Tie couldn’t bear to melt the repaired farm tools back down to forge anew.
But without melting them down, there wasn’t enough iron to make the needed items.
Old Hua worried and sighed much over this.
Finally, Hua Jin solved it by taking out the dumbbells used for training in the space. Luckily, they hadn’t chosen steel ones when buying, ranging from light to heavy, more than ten of them, the heaviest being thirty kilograms. These were enough for Grandpa Wang Tie to experiment and make small crossbow parts.
Since acquiring iron, Big Brother Hua had another task—running to Master Wang Tie’s place to help forge crossbow parts, sometimes providing excellent suggestions to refine the parts.
With Big Brother Hua’s meticulous research, various parts were quickly made, including many arrowheads of different sizes and types. Eventually, they even began thinking about forging weapons, as the world was chaotic, and possessing weapons meant a longer survival.
But it still wasn’t enough. In the end, despite the reluctance, the repaired farm tools were melted down again to provide materials for Wang Tie and the others to research how to forge good weapons.
On this point, Hua Jin also contributed by finding weapon forging knowledge from books read in the space, copying it all down, and giving it to Big Brother, disregarding his meaningful look while practicing archery with visiting girlfriends each day.
Forging weapons isn’t that hard; the hard part is making good weapons; otherwise, they would break after a few uses.
To forge a good weapon, one must go through many procedures, with strict requirements on temperature and heat. Then there is forging, repeated forging, folding, forging, and furnace forging repeatedly.
After such repeated pounding and burning, a weapon begins to take shape. However, this is just the first step in the forging process. The heated weapon blank is fragile and must go through heat treatment (normalizing, tempering, annealing, quenching). After quenching, the blade becomes strong and resilient.
During this process, no step can go wrong; otherwise, it must be melted down again and reforged.
After successful quenching comes coating the blade for sharpening.
In simple terms, it is a local heat treatment process, where the knife body is covered with soil, leaving the blade exposed, then undergoing the quenching process.
Finally, there is grinding and blade sharpening, which is time and labor-intensive, requiring meticulousness and attention to detail, going through rough grinding, fine grinding, then precision grinding, polishing, before one can forge a qualified weapon.
All this made Hua Tie and Big Brother Hua feel a sense of enlightenment.
For this, Hua Jin contributed some unused iron items from the space, and even the collected large iron pots, which were eventually confiscated by the old lady Hua, as melting such good iron pots truly was a waste.
This made Hua Jin a bit regretful; if only they had bought more iron items rather than stainless steel ones when collecting in the past.
This was precisely the lament of lacking iron when it’s needed.
It’s uncertain if there could be a mine found in this large mountain; remind dad to pay attention to stone hills, especially those of different colors when he returns.
By the time Hua Chengtian returned with the group who labored half a month in the valley, Wang Tie had already made many crossbow parts, including hundreds of arrowheads, much to everyone’s delight, especially Hua Meng and others who had long coveted the crossbows.
When Hua Chengtian led the group out again, some individuals in the team held an additional weapon in hand.
This time, more people were taken along with more items. Anything temporarily unused at home was packed as much as possible so that more future transfers would be easier.
Because of carrying so many items, the mission this time was much heavier—not only clearing the valley but also making more preparations. The most urgent was crafting wooden doors for the caves in the valley to prevent animals from entering and ruining the items they brought.
In this way, another three months passed quickly. Like ants relocating a home, they moved items bit by bit into the valley; besides what was needed for current consumption, most things from each household in Hua Village had been moved into the valley; the rest awaited the warming weather for another transfer.
Today, more than half a year has passed since the extreme cold began. By normal seasons, it should be the blazing heat of summer now, but alas, the temperature hadn’t risen at all. The world was still an icy realm of white snow.
The only solace was the incredible adaptability of humans. As long as one is ruthless enough to themselves, they can always survive.
Even with frostbite growing on hands and feet everywhere, they still competed with animals for living space and food in the deep mountains.