Chapter 211 It seems that an ancient secret has been discovered
Without any delay, the group did not even bother to collect the spoils in the city, and followed the assassin to the smelter further underground.
After arriving there, Ryan and the others were immediately stunned by the scene before them!
I originally thought that smelting plants in ancient history should be dilapidated scenes with earthen stoves, boilers, and anvils.
Unexpectedly, what I saw before me was a highly mechanized smelting plant.
Even... more than a modern steel mill.
What caught my eye was a variety of equipment that was no worse than that of a modern steel mill, including large steelmaking furnaces, refining furnaces, molten iron tanks, internal combustion boilers, fuel conveyor belts, etc. There were also complete ventilation ducts and smoke removal equipment. There were also some incomprehensible special reaction devices made of brass and rivets.
No one would have thought that the goblin civilization had already had such an advanced large-scale steel mill countless years ago. The sparks of ancient "alchemy" and "engineering" created such a smelting plant underground that is very characteristic of goblin civilization.
If the steel mill in the modern mechanical city is in dark punk style, then this is in alchemical magic style.
This goblin civilization has already made great progress in research on another branch of the technology tree.
…
Laymen like Ryan only look at the appearance.
Only professional mechanics can understand the internal structure and delicate operating principles of these devices.
Seeing this, old man Tust was shocked again.
"This... is incredible! These smelting equipment are still preserved so well. These designs... are simply too amazing!"
As he exclaimed in amazement, he carefully stroked the mechanical equipment with his hands, as if he was stroking the skin of a peerless beauty, with a burning look in his eyes.
Perhaps it was because his body hadn't expressed the emotion of "shock" in the past thirty years, and today it was released.
Goblins are small in stature, and their buildings are small.
But the scale of this smelter is surprisingly large.
Ryan walked into the factory intuitively, and it was like walking into a steel forest. He was like a rabbit passing by an elephant. The huge iron lumps all around made people feel awe from the bottom of their hearts. Awe for technology, awe for alchemy, and awe for a brilliant civilization.
Ryan couldn't understand engineering technology, but his eyes could see other things.
As soon as he glanced around, he saw mountains of "iron ingots" piled up on the open space of the smelter!
These black lumps of iron looked familiar, and Ryan was curious, so he took them in his hands and tried them.
It felt heavy in my hand, about 700-800 kilograms, but it was half the weight of steel of the same volume. It felt cold, exactly the same as the shield I had touched before!
Ryan was not sure, so he asked the professional beside him, "Grandpa Tust, this iron ingot... seems to be the material for forging a shield?"
When Tuster heard this, he also used his robotic arm to pick up a few pieces and took a look. He immediately confirmed: "This is the high-purity [Angela Black Iron]!"
"Really?!"
After hearing this, Ryan suddenly felt that the black iron ingots in front of him turned into a mountain of gold in the warehouse, and they were suddenly shining with golden light.
According to a rough estimate, there are thousands of cubic meters here!
It can be said that before this mine was discovered, even a little bit of iron slag dropped on the ground of the smelter would become a hot commodity on the black market.
No one expected that there would be such an exaggerated number of fine iron ingots!
For the mechanic, this goblin civilization is full of treasures , just like a hamster falling into a warehouse full of nuts, and everything it sees makes its eyes sparkle.
Tust was really surprised today. He said, "Just this pile of smelted products is enough for the construction of the first phase of our mechanical airship!"
After a pause, the old man looked at the end of the smelting plant again and said, "Let's go and have a look! There must be ore warehouses and forging plants ahead. Maybe there will be more surprises for us!"
…
Sure enough, there was another ore warehouse.
A lot of high-purity "Divine Blood Ore" has been piled up!
Then, in that forge, there were indeed a large number of large finished shields, as well as some metal objects such as armor, axes, scimitars, etc. These were all standard equipment made by the goblin engineers for their army!
Of course, the most important thing is not these finished and semi-finished products, but the advanced forging equipment in the "forge".
This even made Ryan feel like the semi-automatic mechanized assembly line in his previous life!
Furnace, mold, mechanical forging hammer, quenching...there are special mechanical equipment for the entire forging process.
This allows the goblins to mass-produce various standard equipment without much manpower.
"No wonder I always thought the marks left by the hammering on those shields were a little strange...it turns out they weren't forged by humans at all!"
Tust, the professional mechanic, was also shocked.
The forging machines of this era could not achieve high precision, and could only complete the initial melting and forging process at best. Equipment above the advanced level must have been hammered out manually, one hammer at a time.
Now, I didn't expect that a forging workshop countless years ago would have such advanced mechanical forging equipment. Moreover, the quality of the equipment forged by the machine is no worse than the "excellent grade" forged by hand!
The quality is the same, but the manpower and material resources consumed by the two are not at the same level at all.
Originally, the group wanted to go deeper, but they all stopped at the forging workshop without any prior agreement.
The equipment here really opened everyone's eyes.
Tust took a quick look at the forging equipment, which was still in good condition. He suggested, "I think we can move part of the forging factory in the Mechanical City to this mine. This will save us the trouble of transporting ore over long distances. Moreover, the equipment here looks very good, at least the boilers and other things should still be usable... The mine tunnels, exhaust systems, and cooling pools are all ready-made. This will save us a lot of effort compared to building a new large steel mill."
After hearing this, Ryan thought about it and agreed with the old man: "I think it's feasible. This mine is underground and will hardly be affected by monsters. Even if there is a zombie tide, the mine layer is several thousand meters underground, which has isolated most of the smell... This place can be built into our Black Dragon City's secret base."
Ryan and the professionals all said so, so Ymir naturally had no objection.
However, now is not the time to discuss this matter in detail.
Because... Captain Rhine and his men sent people again to urge them to go and see the "still usable" ancient machine!
…
Ryan and his companions walked through the forge, and then he saw another piece of black technology - an elevator!
Although it was very crude, it looked no different from the elevators on construction sites in Ryan's previous life.
This "Goblin Elevator" has an operating table. Ryan understood the words on it: "Up", "Down" and "Pause". It also seemed to have a special energy drive method to replace the power supply. But the device was broken, or it had no energy, anyway, it had completely lost its function.
Fortunately, the people who came down earlier had already figured out how to operate it manually and checked that the structure was stable and solid.
Then there was a series of clicks and clicks of the hand-cranked operation, and the cage of the elevator slowly descended.
The temperature around was getting lower and lower, as if it had come out of an ice storage, the cold penetrated into the bones.
Soon, the elevator descended to a depth of about one thousand meters and stopped.
This is an enclosed space with thick metal walls on all sides, like an enclosed laboratory.
As soon as I came in, a prompt sound came from the system.
[Warning! The absorption of 'Abyssal Demonic Energy' has exceeded the host's tolerance, please be careful...]
Ryan looked at the system panel in his mind and raised his eyebrows slightly.
Because, the data panel shows that the concentration of "Abyss Demonic Energy" in this laboratory has reached twenty times that of the ground!
Ryan has the [Thunder Totem], which automatically absorbs and converts Dou Qi at all times. Even though the demonic energy here is already so dense that it exceeds the limit of his body's tolerance, the increase in his Dou Qi here is seven or eight times that on the ground!
"A holy place for cultivation..."
His eyes lit up and he felt such emotion in his heart.
Such a dense environment would be " lethal . But for him who has the [Divine Healing Technique], it is completely tolerable!
Of course, this is not the most shocking thing about this laboratory.
The most shocking thing is the black crystal in front of you that almost blinds you!
As the magic light source came into view, the entire crystal clear black crystal gradually became larger and larger, reflecting the dazzling light.
Is this a crystal mine?
Obviously not!
Those crystals were brought here and cut into a specific diamond-shaped block. And if you look closely, you can see that those crystals are engraved with mysterious alchemical formations.
There seemed to be a few tricky skeleton monsters in the laboratory , but the people who came down first had already beaten them into skeletons.
Tust looked at the black crystals and then at the operating instrument, and immediately understood something. He said in surprise: "Those ancient goblins were actually making 'magic crystals'?!"
"Artificial magic crystal?"
Ryan was also shocked. The magic crystal was the same energy crystal inside a living corpse. Could that thing be artificially created?
He took a piece and held it in his hand. It was exactly the same magic crystal as the one used to kill the zombies outside.
However, the amount of "Abyss Demonic Energy" contained in these brick-sized magic crystals is a hundred times that of ordinary fifth-level magic crystals!
What is this thing for?
Practice?
Or maybe... energy?
Faintly, Ryan felt that he had guessed something.
…
Meanwhile, Tust had already walked over to look at the machine that was still operating and infusing the crystal with black energy.
The old man pondered for a while and said with emotion: "What a brilliant design... They actually converted the energy of the 'devil energy of the abyss' to provide real-time energy for the alchemy formation, allowing it to continue to operate until now..."
Ryan's eyes also followed the machine to look over. Apart from the glowing alchemical arrays that he couldn't understand, the overall structure of the instrument was not complicated.
A ten-meter-high cylindrical tank (probably made of brass alloy), a control machine with several buttons, then connected pipes, and finally a cabin for making "artificial magic crystals".
Suddenly, an idea flashed in my mind.
“Eh… that’s not right!”
After confirming that this was the "Demonic Energy of the Abyss", Ryan instantly thought of another very critical question.
"Didn't the 'Devil' of the Abyss' erupt after the Black Tide? The existence of this instrument shows that these goblins have already begun to use this gas countless years ago. What's the reason for this time difference?"
"Also... isn't it said that the 'Devil Qi of the Abyss' comes from hell? How come this thing can be connected through an iron pipe?"
Ryan was shocked and had a lot of questions in his mind.
He had previously witnessed with his own eyes the abyss demonic energy gushing out from the "Eye of Hell" in the Coleman Courtyard Tribe, and Marfa also said that it was a hole connecting to hell.
But what about now?
The strange big iron barrel was supported by a steel frame and was not in contact with the ground at all!
This means that the "evil energy of the abyss" here does not come from the ground at all, but from the jar!
…
At this moment, Ryan suddenly understood that the so-called "demon energy of the abyss" might have been misunderstood by them.
"What's in the jar? Is it an energy-generating device like a 'nuclear reactor'? Or is it really like a biogas digester, with fermented organic matter like poop?"
The first thing Ryan thought of was the "biogas digester".
The large amount of technology in front of us looks very high-end, but isn’t it just the design of a biogas digester?
A sealed jar was connected to an air pipe, which was then injected into the crystals engraved with magic patterns to produce a large number of "artificial magic crystals".
But now it has been confirmed that the "demon energy of the abyss" is not a gas from hell, but may be created by certain conditions.
Then, another problem arises.
Now the [Black Tide] has erupted in the entire area west of the Alcoron Mountains, and a large amount of "Abyss Demonic Energy" has gushed out from the ground, and continues to gush out continuously.
But it is obvious that there would not be such an iron barrel under such a vast land, or some kind of goblin black technology operating.
The most likely possibility is that the "thing" emitting the black gas is not a man-made device like a nuclear reactor that requires external intervention, but a natural substance that can continuously release the "demon energy of the abyss" by itself.
What on earth is in that iron barrel that could make it continue to spew out evil energy for countless years?
However, the black gas gushing out from under the "Eye of Hell" covered the entire wasteland. Was there a lot of that "substance" underground, or was it very large... so large that the entire wasteland was filled with that "substance"?
At this moment, Ryan suddenly realized that the contents of this iron can might be hiding a prehistoric secret.
This secret may explain the source of the fog in this icy wasteland...
