The ritual in the stone room, interweaving physical heat with cold visions, was branded deeply into Euron Greyjoy's perception.
The inhuman heat within Red Priestess Gwendolyn, the fanatical mantra "Burn them all" roaring in his mind, and the bone-chilling cold from the endless White Walkers beyond the Wall formed a strange and powerful tension, haunting him, almost dragging him into a delirious realm of pure light and shadow, fire and ice.
However, Euron was ultimately Euron. At dawn, while Gwendolyn still whispered unintelligible fire prayers in the slumber of fatigue and sacrifice, Euron had already risen.
He glanced at the pale body that had been scorching hot, then resolutely pushed open the stone room door, shutting the ambiguous scent of incense and lust behind him, and stepped back into the cold, rough, yet incredibly real world of Iron Smoke Isle.
Outside, deafening hammering, roaring bellows, and booming furnaces instantly wrapped him. The choking smell of sulfur and coal dust felt far more grounding than the priestess's exotic fragrance. Here there were no illusory prophecies, only hard reality needing conquest.
He had conquered salt; now he would conquer iron!
Marwyn Stephens and Atticus Whitney were already waiting outside, faces wearing the anxiety and expectation peculiar to craftsmen.
"My Lord." Both bowed.
"Show me," Euron's voice was hoarse but clear, unquestionable, "from start to finish, every link. Don't miss any detail."
Thus, a long and extremely meticulous inspection began. Euron Greyjoy, the future ruler of Iron Smoke Isle, like the harshest foreman, immersed himself in the entire process of iron and fire's birth.
They first came to the simple pier at the island's edge. Here, iron ore from various Iron Islands pits arrived in deep-draft barges, packed in rough hemp sacks or rattan baskets. Workers chanted low, powerful calls, shirtless muscles knotting, sweat carving ravines on soot-covered skin. They shouldered these extremely heavy packs with thick wooden poles, stepping on creaking, worrying planks, transporting them step by step to the designated storage area, each step leaving deep pits in the mud.
"This road," Euron's voice cut through the noise, unquestionable, "is the first shackle hindering efficiency. From the pier to the furnace, all passages must be tamped with gravel and paved flat. Don't stint on these few days of labor. A solid, flat road is a lifeline that will save us a hundred times the effort later."
Then, his gaze fell on the porters with nearly bent backs. "Stop this futile self-consumption!" he ordered. "Human strength should be used where it's worth more. Gather all carpenters on the island, stop secondary work immediately, and rush-produce wheelbarrows according to my requirements." He picked up a piece of charcoal and quickly sketched a clear diagram of a balanced wheel and cargo bucket on a discarded wooden board. This simple design was a cognitive subversion for everyone present. "One person pushing this can easily transport the weight of three shoulder-carrying men. Freed hands can operate more important machinery!"
Marwyn Stephens and Atticus Whitney nodded in agreement.
"My Lord, look," Atticus picked up a piece of ore, breaking it open with force to reveal a structure with dull metallic luster inside, "This is our biggest problem. Too many impurities, especially these yellow sulfides and grey gangue... they seriously affect the purity and fluidity of molten iron."
"I know, but understand this: don't complain about unchangeable facts, just as we cannot change the inherent quality of Iron Islands ore!" Euron picked up a piece, weighing it, carefully observing its quality. Atticus nodded hurriedly, somewhat guilty: "I understand, My Lord..."
Next, the ore was transported to the deafening crushing yard. Robust laborers, shirtless as if repeating some ancient ritual, wielded huge iron hammers to smash large ore chunks into fist-sized pieces. Stone chips flew, impact sounds were ear-piercing, sweat and debris flying together—the most primitive, labor-intensive, and inefficient display of strength.
"This crushing is meaningless! Low efficiency, wasted manpower, crude results. What we need is pulverization, thorough separation!" Euron used charcoal again, drawing a more complex sketch: a huge circular stone base with a deep groove, atop which sat an equally huge, heavy cylindrical stone roller with a central axle. "Look clearly! This is a Grinding Mill." He explained, voice like a prophet imparting secret rites. "Use animal or water power to pull this roller, making it circulate along the stone groove. Pour ore into it, and it will be continuously ground until it becomes uniform powder! This is the way to conquer stone!"
Crushed ore was then sent into simple roasting kilns. Marwyn explained: "We roast them with slow fire to drive off some sulfur and other volatile impurities. But it consumes time and charcoal." The kiln mouth emitted strong, sour smoke. Roasted ore was sent to the core area—the towering furnace workshop.
Huge stone-built furnace bodies stood like silent giants. Blowers (driven by water or manpower) roared continuously, forcing air into the furnace bottom. Ore, charcoal (occasionally attempting expensive coke), and limestone flux were constantly added from the top.
"Temperature must be high enough," Atticus pointed to the scorching flames from the furnace mouth, "to reduce iron from ore and melt it into liquid iron. But our furnace temperature... is erratic, and impurities are too many, forming viscous slag that often clogs the taphole."
Euron observed closely, heat waves hitting his face. He narrowed his eyes, watching crimson molten iron rolling in the hearth and the glassy dark slag constantly skimmed off from the top.
"Our furnace fire is merely burning, not smelting!" Euron pointed out the key. "Wind power is weak, delivery method foolish; seven out of ten parts of heat are lost! We must build deeper hearths with more reasonable internal structures, making heat flow spiral up with nowhere to escape! Bellows efficiency must increase tenfold—improve bellows, make heat-resistant clay tuyeres, even use the island's eternal wind to drive larger blowing devices! Temperature!" He emphasized, "I want absolute high heat enough to make stones cry and impurities float by themselves!"
Regarding impurity removal, his method surpassed simple limestone addition. "Pre-treatment!" Euron introduced a brand new concept. "Before ore enters the furnace, use grinding mills and sieves of different meshes to separate them by size and specific gravity as much as possible, discarding large amounts of waste rock in advance. During smelting, treat slag like an enemy—skim it continuously and ruthlessly! Every skimming is a sacrifice to steel purity!"
Smelted pig iron (sometimes semi-molten spongy bloom iron) was clamped out by huge tongs and sent to the forging area. Heat here was oppressive, sparks splashing. Strong shirtless blacksmiths, muscles knotting, wielded heavy hammers, repeatedly forging red-hot iron blocks to rhythmic chants.
"Tempered a thousand times, My Lord!" Marwyn's voice almost had to shout over the clanging. "Only this way can most impurities be beaten out, making iron tougher and harder!" Every hammer blow accompanied flying sparks and iron deformation.
Forged iron bars or rough billets were sent to nearby sheds. Here, more skilled smiths processed them further—heating, shaping, quenching, grinding. The clinking sounds became more rhythmic. Gradually, outlines of sword blanks, axes, and spearheads began to appear. During quenching, red-hot iron plunged into cold water troughs with ear-piercing hisses, large clouds of white steam rising.
Finally, grinding and sharpening. Metal rubbing stone emitted sharp noise; sparks sprayed in fans. Rough ironware gradually became sharp, glinting cold light.
"Forging isn't blind venting," Euron's voice was like the most precise hammer blow, "but absolute control over temperature and time! Force must be applied when metal is in the most docile 'heat window'! Too high destroys, too low cracks!" He even proposed a more shocking concept: "Quenching is not the end, but the start of another strengthening! Different iron ores need different cooling speeds—some need rapid cooling for extreme hardness, some slow cooling for flexibility! You need to experiment, record, compare, and find the most suitable 'spectrum' for every kind of steel!"
Euron walked silently, looking, listening. From pier to furnace, from forging area to grinding bench. His eyes were like the most precise scale, measuring the efficiency and defects of every process. He saw workers' fatigue, material inferiority, technical limitations, and the rough, powerful strength contained within.
Marwyn Stephens and Atticus Whitney also gained a completely new understanding of Euron. Upon hearing the young lord would visit Iron Smoke Isle personally, they had pre-set scenes in their minds: just a noble scion's whimsical inspection, frowning and covering ears in deafening workshops, fanning air disgustedly in pervading coal dust, perhaps asking a few pretentious superficial questions, then quickly losing interest amidst their cautious answers, leaving a few hollow encouragements or reprimands before rushing back to Pyke's comfortable castle.
They never imagined facing the scene before them.
Euron Greyjoy didn't cover his ears; he even listened intently to the unique rhythm of each bellows. He didn't detest coal dust; instead, he reached out to touch freshly solidified slag, grinding it carefully to distinguish. His questions were never superficial; each precisely poked at the most painful, thorny difficulties in the iron smelting process.
More incredibly, he didn't just ask questions. He gave answers.
Those answers—wheelbarrows, grinding mills, improved blowing methods, strict demands on temperature precision, systematic concepts of impurity removal—like lightning in the night, instantly split the walls of thinking they had followed for years. These insights didn't come from any craftsman tomes or heritage they knew; they were unique, efficient, even carrying a near-cold elegance, pointing straight to the core of efficiency and quality.
Marwyn, the strong man used to speaking with muscles and hammers, realized for the first time that conquering stubborn stone didn't rely solely on infinite brute force but also on wisely designed machinery.
Atticus, the craftsman good at thinking but suffering from realistic limitations, felt as if a whole new, systematic metallurgical philosophy unfolded slowly before him. Many predicaments he intuitively felt but couldn't summarize or solve were pointed out by this young lord in one word, with clear solution paths proposed.
Their eyes looking at Euron changed completely. Initial respect was awe for status; subsequent surprise was unexpectedness at attitude; and now, a genuine shock and admiration originating from the technical level was quietly growing.
Euron stated firmly: "I believe we will definitely smelt Greyjoy Steel comparable to Valyrian Steel!"