No. 1 Iron Factory

  Liu Ziguang woke up to find himself in a large, rumbling vehicle. He was lying flat on his back, with wooden boards above and below him. The carriage seemed to be divided into many layers. When he moved his hands and feet, he found that his hands were still free, but his feet were locked by something - it felt like iron rings fixed to the carriage. The wooden board above him was very close to his face, making it impossible for him to lift his head to look around. He could only turn his head to see what was in front of and behind him.

  The carriage is framed, so he can see the outside. The big car is a black iron frame, one after another, with a huge header in front, an ugly black steel beast, high chimney emitting thick dark gray smoke and large white steam, running on the road base paved with gravel, two black iron rails extending to the distance. On both sides of the road are farmland and tall trees. When turning, you can see that the two carriages behind the header are stacked with neat and tidy charcoal, and a person's upper body is exposed on top of the carriage, wearing several rows of sparse embroidered iron pieces as a shoulder pad, with a concave and deformed bulletproof mirror hanging in the middle, and a long knife and whip hanging from his waist, looking like an escort.

  What kind of place is this, with such a strange train, even more crude and simple than the steam trains I took as a child. The scenery along the way is so unfamiliar, without telephone poles, cars or highways. Occasionally appearing villages are all thatched cottages with yellow mud walls, farmers in ancient costumes carrying hoes to greet the sunset on the ridge.

  What kind of place is this? Liu Ziguang was terrified in his heart, and the source of fear came from the unknown. Everything was not the familiar world he knew. He couldn't figure it out, and in the midst of hunger, fatigue, and tension, he fell asleep again.

  The train had been swaying back and forth for hours, the sky gradually darkening as a huge moon rose up in the distance. The train came to a stop, and Liu Ziguang rubbed his eyes, which were filled with sleep. He saw a group of people getting off from the front car, the same rough-looking men who had taken shelter in the broken house during the rainstorm. They busied themselves, some starting a fire to cook food, others using their knives to tap on the train's wheels, seemingly checking the axles. One of them walked over to Liu Ziguang's car and pulled out a sack from under the bottom board, pouring out a yellowish powder into a large bucket. He then picked up a dirty water bottle and poured some water into the bucket, but it was almost empty after just a few pours. The man grumbled something, lifted his clothes, and urinated into the bucket, stirring the mixture with a stick. Liu Ziguang watched in confusion as the man walked over to him, using a long-handled iron ladle to pour a dollop of yellowish paste onto each passenger's wooden board. "Not enough water today, so you're all getting off cheap," he said, clearly disgruntled. "You lucky dogs are getting such thick gruel." Liu Ziguang felt nauseous and wanted to vomit, but his stomach was empty except for acid.

  The person next to him had swallowed his share of dinner at an incredible speed, and was shocked to find that Liu Ziguang's share hadn't been touched. Without hesitation, he picked up Liu Ziguang's share and ate it too, and after finishing, he even stuck out his tongue to lick the remaining residue from the wooden board crevices clean. Liu Ziguang couldn't help but spit out the last bit of sour water.

  The knife-wielding men sat around the fire pit, roasting some unknown animal's meat on the blazing bonfire. The aroma of roasted meat wafted through the air, making Liu Ziguang's stomach growl with hunger. His stomach churned and protested, and just then, a foul-smelling liquid began to drip from the gap between the upper and lower compartments of the train car, splashing onto the passengers below. The putrid smell filled the carriage, suppressing his appetite in a most unpleasant way. Fortunately, the train car was an open structure with good ventilation; if it had been a closed compartment, the stench would have been suffocating.

  After three days of trekking, Liu Ziguang was so hungry that he had to accept the mixed noodles made with water. His whole body was covered in dust, feces, urine and blood, without a single clean spot. Just when he was about to reach his limit of endurance, they finally arrived at their destination.

  In the distance, a vast expanse of desolate land was dominated by a massive machine, with towering smokestacks, dense pipes, and thick black smoke and white steam swirling above the factory area. The surrounding small hills were barren and lifeless, and occasionally in the wilderness could be seen a few dead old trees. Alongside the railway, a small river flowed with red-colored water.

  The train stopped, the knife guest opened the foot chain, whipped and whipped the "passengers", and drove them off the bus. However, due to long-term inactivity, blood was not smooth, and most people could no longer get up. Liu Ziguang touched his numb legs and stumbled down from the train.

  As soon as Liu Ziguang stepped onto the ground, his legs softened and he fell to the ground. A whip suddenly swung over and hit him, making him cry out in pain. His back felt hot and warm blood flowed down. The knife-wielding customer yelled "Line up, enter the factory one by one!"

  The weary "travelers" slowly formed a disorderly queue, walking towards the factory gate in a messy manner. The majestic city wall stretched far away, with a wide moat outside, where the river water was still reddish-brown. A row of people wearing tattered clothes and looking pale knelt on the riverbank, each with a burly man holding a large knife behind them, wearing a black hood. As soon as the leading man shouted "kill", the knives flashed, and a row of fresh blood spurted out from their necks. More than a dozen good heads rolled around everywhere. Then, a team of people with pale faces came over, pushing small single-wheel carts, loading the corpses onto the carts in twos and threes, and hauling them away.

  People on the city wall moved a huge pulley, and the drawbridge slowly fell down. The traveler's team walked slowly into the gate under the siege of the knife guest. Liu Ziguang narrowed his eyes and looked up. Under the dazzling sunlight, there were warriors in full black iron armor on the top of the city, holding iron spears. Under the crenelation of the city wall, a row of iron cages was hung, inside which were several rotten and smelly heads! Further down, a huge iron plaque was hanging above the gate, with four black relief??book characters.

  Liguo Iron Works

  A whip cracked loudly, leaving a bloody gash on Liu Ziguang's back. He gritted his teeth and made no sound, but his back already had many crisscrossing scars from the long-term torture and heavy physical labor that had transformed this originally weak urban youth into an extremely resilient slave.

  "Don't be lazy," a burly, oily-looking guard shouted, cracking his whip as he yelled at the people working.

  This is a huge mining pit, different from iron ore and coal mines, most of which are on the surface of the plain, so the pit is not deep, belonging to the open-pit mine, there are also some vertical wells, horizontal wells, and shallow surface storage of minerals. Thousands of slaves with their upper body under the whip of the overseer, under the scorching sun, hardworking with iron axes, iron hammers, iron picks, and iron shovels excavating iron ore, putting the mined ore in bamboo baskets on their backs to the ore dressing plant for washing and selection.

  After washing with water, the dark red hematite was selected and the reddish muddy water flowed into the moat of the ironworks, dyeing the river water like a dumping ground for corpses after a massacre. Inside the ironworks surrounded by city walls, blast furnaces and chimneys stood in rows, with special rails leading to the mine, small steam trains spewing out steam carrying iron ore to be smelted in the factory.

  The massive blast furnace swallows countless ore, coke and limestone every day, emitting thick smoke from the chimney, flowing out dark red high-temperature molten iron from the iron outlet, and discharging waste slag from the slag outlet. The factory also has a coking workshop responsible for smelting coke and a casting and forging workshop that produces iron products, producing countless tools, agricultural implements and weapons every day, which are transported to various places by train.

  Trains, iron rails, towering city walls, blast furnaces filled with evil beauty, knights riding war horses, wearing helmets and armor holding long spears, with bows and arrows at their waists, and the fiery red sunset on the horizon, form a strange picture.

  Liu Ziguang's waist was bent under the heavy load of ore, sweat dripping down his dirty hair and into his eyes, the wound on his back burning with pain. He had been in this world for over a year now, every day forced to do such hard labor. The slaves who dug with him were mostly prisoners of war, but some, like him, were kidnapped vagrants. Unlike the workers at the ironworks, they had no freedom and no dignity. When slaves fought each other to death or were beaten to death by overseers, their bodies would be thrown into a deep natural cave nearby, without tombstones, wreaths, or even anyone remembering their names.

  Located in the territory of Xuzhou Prefecture, Huaihai Road, Ming Dynasty, the iron factory occupies a vast area of land and has private soldiers. In this era of war, it is a vassal state that cannot be underestimated.

  There were prisoners of war from various countries in the slave team, it was like a United Nations army. These prisoners of war were mostly brave and fierce fighters, often fighting over food and even killing each other. Liu Ziguang had to change in such an environment, he was no longer the gentle and kind person he used to be.