Looking at the item the Western mare had suddenly tossed into his hand, Chuck immediately burst out laughing.
He pinched the small metal toy—pointed at the tip, rounded in the middle, and flared with a plug at the base—still carrying the warmth of her body, and waved it before Julia's provocative, shimmering eyes.
"I should remind you, the size of this thing is quite different from mine. Are you sure about this?"
"Of course I know that..."
To Chuck's surprise, the Western mare made an even more seductive expression, biting her lower lip as she replied in a soft, syrupy voice.
"That's exactly why it'll feel so good~"
Hiss...
This little slut of a mare.
Hearing this, Chuck couldn't help but suck in a breath of cold air, delivering a heavy slap to her rounded, pert buttocks, which earned him a joyous, wanton moan.
He then spent the rest of the afternoon arranging the work schedule and checking the progress of the farm and ranch with Julia and Janet, bringing the second family meeting to a successful close.
Time passed, and the progress of the blueprint upgrades continued to advance in an orderly fashion.
Around four o'clock in the afternoon, Chuck added the final firebrick to the furnace, and the progress bar for the Advanced Furnace finally hit 100%.
Accompanied by a familiar flash of light, the original furnace grew taller and wider, the combustion chamber below became more spacious, several copper pipes passed through the body to form exhaust and air supply ducts, and the inner walls of the chimney were now lined with high-temperature resistant firebricks.
[Furnace — Upgrade Complete! New upgrade blueprint added!]
[Blueprint Name: Forge. Type: Rank 7 Upgrade Blueprint.] [Description: Based on the Advanced Furnace, adds a core bellows to further increase the maximum forging temperature; includes a quartz crucible to refine alloy materials and support continuous melting operations. Maximum temperature can reach 1800°C, with a 40% increase in heat utilization, significantly raising heating speed and reducing fuel consumption.] [Upgrade Materials: Iron Pipes x10, Stone Bricks x50, Concrete x20, Bellows x1, Quartz Crucible x1]
The Advanced Furnace was finished, and the next step was the Forge...
The blueprint rank was actually higher than the Rank 6 Stone Tile House, and aside from the stone bricks, all the materials were things Chuck hadn't unlocked yet.
Looking at the newly unlocked Forge upgrade blueprint, Chuck couldn't help but let out a long, contemplative sigh.
He wondered just how far this thing could be upgraded before reaching its limit.
But at least for now, he probably wouldn't need to consider the next upgrade for quite a while; he'd set it aside for the time being.
Closing the blueprint interface, Chuck turned his attention to the completed Advanced Furnace.
A spark of excitement he couldn't suppress flickered in his eyes.
He was finally about to enter the Iron Age!
The first step, just like last time, was to craft the essential tool for mass-upgrading gear and mining ore—the Iron Pickaxe!
He took the twenty-kilogram chunk of hematite from his storage space and placed it into the furnace; according to the synthesis prompts, the iron content was over 40%, which should be enough to make at least two pickheads.
However, as Chuck added fuel and started the fire to raise the temperature as usual, the moment the internal heat exceeded the level used for smelting bronze...
[Notice: Current temperature has reached the maximum combustion limit for this fuel type. To further increase the temperature, higher-efficiency fuel is required. Perhaps try carbonizing the wood.]
"...What the fuck?"
Seeing the sudden notification, Chuck's brow furrowed instantly, but then he nodded thoughtfully.
It made sense; now that he had reached the stage of smelting iron, ordinary wood wouldn't cut it. Normally, one would use coal, oil, or even electricity, but Chuck's technology level and resource exploration hadn't reached those heights yet, so charcoal was indeed his only option.
Instead of trying to raise the temperature further, he lowered it slightly and selected some high-quality hardwood to place into the furnace.
[Detected item placed in 'Advanced Furnace' — Redwood Logs x10] [Can be processed into: Charcoal x20. Furnace temperature has reached processing standard. Estimated time: 2 hours. Start crafting?]
This wasn't Chuck's first time making charcoal; he had made it once before for materials when upgrading the kiln, but according to his memory, the processing time back then was a full 6 hours. This time, it had been cut by two-thirds.
He pressed the start button, and the light orb drifted into the glowing furnace as the countdown began.
Using those two hours, Chuck ran down to the shore, filled a pot with seawater, and carried it back to the combustion chamber of the furnace.
After the family meeting, Chuck had asked Momo to explain her method of evaporating seawater.
As she had said, it was simple enough—just filling coconut shells with seawater and leaving them on the beach; after a couple of sunny days, she'd harvest the dried crude salt. It was usually just something she did while picking wild fruit or gathering wood, but over time, she had managed to fill more than half a small clay jar.
Now that Chuck was aware of this task, he couldn't leave it to Momo anymore, and as the little one said, consuming unrefined crude salt was still harmful to the body.
Chuck's job was to see if he could use his workbench "cheat" to refine the salt from seawater into something approaching modern standards, then mass-produce and store it.
He could use the heat from the furnace right now to try extracting salt from the seawater.
Chuck hadn't filled the pot to the brim; it was about ten liters total, or ten kilograms.
Under the radiating heat of the furnace, it took about ten minutes for the water to reach a rolling boil, releasing a salty, fishy aroma.
Chuck was sweating profusely, adding wood to the furnace while stirring the water in the clay pot with a long stick, occasionally rotating the water vat and turning to take a bowl of fresh water from Elena or Julia to gulp down.
As the seawater in the pot gradually evaporated during the boiling process, the water level dropped lower and lower, and the color became increasingly turbid.
When the water level had dropped to less than one-fifth of the original amount, off-white crystals finally began to precipitate out of the concentrated, roiling brine.
The color of these crystals was indeed similar to the crude salt in the jar Elena used.
Chuck continued stirring until the moisture had almost completely evaporated, leaving only a slightly viscous white paste and a small amount of yellowish, thick liquid. He frowned, sensing the yellow liquid was full of impurities, and without hesitation, he poured it out of the pot.
Then, using a wooden stick, he transferred the precipitated white pasty salt into a clay bowl and continued to heat it until it was dry.
Before long, Chuck finally had a small bowl of dry, solid crude salt.
He used the stick to break up the hot salt in the bowl and gave it a rough estimate; out of nearly 10 liters of seawater, the final amount of crude salt was probably less than three hundred grams—about the size of half a bag of table salt sold in supermarkets.
However, the efficiency of boiling it directly was much faster than natural evaporation, and the resulting salt looked significantly whiter than the crude salt Momo had collected.
Chuck used his pinky to pick up a tiny grain of salt and put it in his mouth.
He raised an eyebrow.
Sure enough, besides the saltiness, there was a distinctly bitter and astringent aftertaste.
But he had tasted Momo's salt not long ago, and that bitterness had been even more pronounced.
While the efficiency was different, there was no fundamental difference between natural and heat evaporation, so the difference in the results likely came from the yellow liquid he had just poured away.
A smirk touched Chuck's lips as he felt a sense of relief.
Refusing to let that residue dry out and instead decisively discarding it had been the right choice.
He stood up and placed the bowl of boiled crude salt into the workbench, and the synthesis prompt appeared.
[Detected item placed in Workbench: Crude Sea Salt] [Synthesis Prompt: Crude salt obtained through boiling is not recommended for direct consumption; further refining is required.]
Uh...
That's it?
Looking at the prompt, Chuck couldn't help but frown.
It didn't give a recipe or trigger a building blueprint; just a short sentence saying it needed further refining.
Fine then.
If the prompt says refine, he'll refine.
Chuck asked Elena to bring him another bowl of fresh water, but this time he only took one sip, pouring the rest into the bowl of crude salt and stirring it with the stick.
Soon, the newly evaporated salt was completely dissolved in the fresh water.
He heated it by the furnace once more until it reached a rolling boil and white crystals began to precipitate again; Chuck could see with his naked eye that the color of the crystals was noticeably purer.
As the liquid in the bowl concentrated again, what remained was a slightly clearer, yet still turbid liquid.
Chuck poured it away again and evaporated the remaining solids to dryness; the amount of salt left was slightly less than before.
But as expected, the color had become even whiter.
Chuck tasted it, and the bitterness had faded significantly.
[Synthesis Prompt: Crude salt obtained through boiling has had impurities effectively filtered, but it still does not meet food-grade standards. Further refining is suggested.]
Seeing this, Chuck finally understood.
So that was how it worked...
Each addition of water, evaporation, and removal of residue was a process of purging impurities from the salt; repeating it would naturally leave fewer and fewer impurities behind.
So what would happen once it reached the workbench's "standard"?
With a faint premonition, Chuck didn't waste time, added some wood to the furnace, and saw that the charcoal processing still had about half an hour left. Since he had nothing else to do, he decided to go all the way, adding fresh water to dissolve the salt and boiling it again.
Finally, after three consecutive boiling cycles, the resulting 200 grams of sea salt were as white as snow.
He took a tiny taste, and the bitterness had almost entirely vanished.
And just as Chuck expected, the moment the sea salt was in his hands, a series of light screens suddenly appeared.
[Detected: Host has gained preliminary mastery of Crude Salt Refining.]
[New Process Recipe unlocked!]
[Synthesis Prompt: Place seawater and a heating container into the Workbench, using any heat source for evaporation. You may choose between Crude Salt, Semi-Refined Salt, or Refined Salt as the final product. Different products require different extraction times.]
Finally done!
Seeing the workbench unlock the process recipe, Chuck finally pumped his fist in excitement.
After all, mastering the technique was just the means; the ultimate goal was to find a way to mass-produce refined salt using the workbench.
Chuck ran to the beach again, filled a jar with seawater, returned to the furnace, and tried placing it in the workbench.
Sure enough, the synthesis button lit up.
[Detected items placed in Workbench: Seawater (2 Liters), Heating Container. Nearby heat source detected.] [Can perform boiling extraction. Options: Crude Salt (30 mins), Semi-Refined Salt (1 hour), Refined Salt (1 hour 30 mins). Occupies 1 queue slot. Please select target.]
Chuck nodded with satisfaction but didn't immediately start the synthesis.
The 200 grams of refined salt he had on hand was enough to last a long time; he could boil more whenever he needed.
The salt issue was now resolved—it was easy and satisfying. After all, on a deserted island, the raw materials for salt were practically infinite.
Coincidentally, just as Chuck put away the pots and jars and handed the refined salt to Elena—receiving a look of shock and adoration from her—he returned to the Advanced Furnace just as the charcoal synthesis finished.
He tossed the finished charcoal into the combustion chamber below, and finally, his hard work paid off; the furnace temperature surged past the previous record for bronze.
It continued to climb steadily.
When the furnace temperature displayed on the workbench broke 1300°C and reached the recommended smelting temperature, Chuck took out the long-awaited iron ore and placed it into the workbench along with the pickhead mold and the seawater for cooling.
[Detected items placed in Workbench: Hematite (20kg), Pickhead Mold, Coolant. Nearby high-temperature melting facility detected.] [Melting and crafting can proceed!]
[Cast Iron Pickhead: Requires Hematite (10kg). Crafting time: 1.5 hours. Start crafting?]
Exactly enough to make two.
It was another one of those coincidences that made his spine feel a bit chilly.
But Chuck was already used to it; the excitement of finally entering the Iron Age was enough to drown out the eeriness, and he pressed the synthesis button without hesitation.