When Liu Ziguang woke up, he found that he was in a rumbling car. He could only lie flat on his back, with wooden boards underneath his body and wooden boards above him. It was as if the carriage was divided into many layers. He could still move his hands and feet.
His feet were locked by something, which felt like iron rings fixed to the carriage. The wooden board on the upper floor was very close to his face, so he couldn't look up. He could only turn his head to look at the situation in front and behind.
The carriages are frame-type, so he can see outside. The carts are made of black iron frames, one connected to the other. At the front is a huge front end, an ugly black steel beast, with a tall chimney.
Thick dark gray smoke and large clouds of white steam are driving on a gravel-paved roadbed, with two black railway tracks extending into the distance. There are farmland and big trees on both sides of the road. When turning, you can see the two sections behind the front of the car.
There were neat piles of clear charcoal on the carriage. The upper body of a man was exposed on the top of the carriage. Several rows of sparse embroidered iron pieces were strung into a waistcoat and worn on his body. There was also a concave and convex breast shield hanging in the middle, and hung around his waist.
Wearing a long knife and a leather whip, he looked like a escort.
What on earth is this place? This kind of weird train is even rougher and cruder than the steam train I rode on when I was a child. The scenery on the roadside is so unfamiliar. There are no telegraph poles, no cars, no roads, and the occasional villages are all
It is a shack with a thatched roof and yellow mud walls. Farmers in ancient costumes are walking on the streets with hoes on their shoulders and facing the sunset.
Where is this place? Liu Ziguang was very frightened. The fear came from the unknown. Everything was not the world he was familiar with. He was puzzled and fell asleep again amidst hunger, exhaustion and nervousness.
After bumping around in a daze for who knows how many hours, the sky gradually darkened, and a huge moon climbed up on the horizon. The train stopped. Liu Ziguang rubbed his eyes full of goo and saw a group of people walking on the boardwalk in front of him.
When we got off the train, we saw the group of tough swordsmen who were sheltering from the rain in the dilapidated house. The swordsmen were busy. Some made fires to cook, and some used knife handles to knock the wheels of the train one by one, seemingly checking the axles. Among them
A man walked to the carriage next to Liu Ziguang, dragged a sack from the bottom of the carriage, poured the yellow sand-like powder in the sack into a big bucket, then picked up a dirty kettle and poured it into the big bucket.
The man poured water into the bucket, and after a short time, the kettle was dry. The man grunted, pulled open the hem of his clothes, and peed in the bucket. He picked up a stick and started mixing it in the bucket. Liu Ziguang watched.
Inexplicably, the man came over with a bucket, and used a long-handled iron spoon to pour a lump of yellow paste on the wooden board next to each passenger's head. "There is not enough water today. It is cheap."
You guys are such idiots, how can you make such thick rice?" The man was obviously very aggrieved. Liu Ziguang was so disgusted that he wanted to vomit, but all he could spit out was sour water.
The person next to him had already devoured his portion of the dinner at an incredible speed. He was surprised to find that Liu Ziguang hadn't touched his portion yet, so he unceremoniously picked up Liu Ziguang's portion and ate it too.
He stuck out his tongue and licked all the residue in the gaps between the boards. It made Liu Ziguang spit out even the last bit of acidic water.
The swordsmen were sitting around the fire, and the meat of unknown animals was roasting on the blazing bonfire. There was a burst of meat smell, and the hooked Liu Ziguang was so greedy that his stomach was churning. The gluttons began to protest, and the upper-level people began to protest.
As if the compartment partition knew what his stomach was thinking, it began to drip stinky water from the gaps in the upper partition. The liquid mixed with feces and urine dropped drop by drop on the passengers on the lower deck, and an indescribable stench filled the air.
The carriage suppressed his appetite in a special way. Fortunately, the carriage was an open structure with ventilation on all sides. If it had been a stuffy tanker, it would have killed people.
After three days of trekking, Liu Ziguang was so hungry that he had to accept the food made of mixed noodles mixed with water. His whole body was covered with sand, feces, and blood, and there was no clean place left.
When he was about to reach the limit of his endurance, his destination arrived.
Looking from afar, the desolate land is filled with huge machines, towering chimneys, dense pipelines, thick black smoke and white steam lingering in the sky over the factory area. The surrounding hills are barren of grass, and occasionally there are still trees in the wilderness.
I saw some dead old trees, and a small river beside the railway line was actually flowing with red water.
The train stopped, and the swordsman took off the shackles, whipped the "passengers" and drove them off. However, due to long-term immobility and poor blood flow, most of them could no longer get up. Liu Ziguang touched the numb
Legs, staggering off the train.
As soon as he stepped on the ground, Liu Zi's bare feet went weak and he fell to the ground. Immediately, a whip was drawn from the air, making him scream. Hot liquid flowed down his back. The swordsman wielding the whip
He yelled, "Line up in a line and file into the factory!"
The tired "travelers" slowly formed a queue of unclear heights and walked toward the factory gate in a messy manner. The majestic city wall stretched for a long distance. Outside the city wall was a wide moat, and the river was still earthy red.
In the river, a row of people in ragged clothes and with withered faces were kneeling on the river bank. Behind each person was a burly man in a black hood holding a sharp sword. As the leading man said "cut", the sword flashed,
A line of blood rushed out of the neck, and more than a dozen big heads were everywhere. Then a group of people with the same withered faces came over pushing a small wheelbarrow, and loaded the body into the car in twos and threes and took it away.
The people on the city wall moved the huge winch, and the suspension bridge was slowly lowered. The group of tourists slowly walked into the city gate surrounded by swordsmen. Liu Ziguang squinted and looked up. Under the dazzling sunlight, the city was covered with black iron armor.
The warriors were holding iron spears. Under the crenellations of the city wall, there was a row of iron mesh cages hanging. Inside were many rotten and stinky human heads! Looking down, there was a huge iron plaque hanging above the city gate.
There are four large official script characters embossed in black on it.
"Liguo Iron Works"
"Snap!" A whip was whipped from far away, leaving a bloody mark on Liu Ziguang's exposed back. He gritted his teeth without making any sound. There were already many intricate whip marks on his back, a sign of long-term torture and heavy physical exertion.
Labor has turned this originally weak urban youth into a slave with extremely high tolerance.
"Don't be lazy," the guard, who was black and oily and had a muscular body, waved his whip and shouted at the people who were working.
This is a huge mine. Iron ore mines are different from coal mines. Most of them are on the surface of the plains, so the mine pits are not deep. They belong to the scope of open-pit mines. There are also some vertical shafts and horizontal shafts for mining ore stored on the shallow surface. Thousands of people**
Under the whip of the overseer, the upper-body slaves worked hard in the scorching sun with iron axes, hammers, iron awls, and iron picks to dig iron ore, and then put the mined ore in bamboo baskets and carried it to the ore dressing site for washing.
After washing, the dark red hematite ore was selected, and the red muddy water flowed into the moat of the iron factory, dyeing the river water like a corpse dump after a massacre. Surrounded by the city wall, the iron factory is lined with blast furnaces and chimneys.
There are special railway tracks leading to the mine, and small coal-burning locomotives spray steam to transport the iron ore to the factory for refining.
The huge blast furnace swallows countless ores, coke, and limestone every day, and discharges thick smoke and dust from the chimney. Dark red high-temperature molten iron flows from the taphole, and waste slag is discharged from the slag taphole. There is also a coking workshop responsible for making coking carbon.
There are casting and forging workshops that produce iron tools, and countless tools, farm implements, and weapons are produced every day and transported to various places by train.
Trains, railway tracks, towering city walls, iron-smelting furnaces full of evil beauty, knights riding war horses, wearing helmets and holding spears, with bows and arrows at their waists, and the fiery red sunset on the horizon, form a strange picture.
Liu Ziguang was bent over by the heavy ore basket. Sweat flowed down his dirty hair and dazzled his eyes. The wound on his back was burning with pain. It has been more than a year since he came to this world, and he had to engage in such heavy work every day.
They work as coolies. Almost all the slaves who mine together are prisoners of war, and there are also a small number of kidnapped refugees like him. Unlike workers in iron factories, slaves have no personal freedom and no dignity. Slaves fight to death or are beaten by overseers.
After he died, he was thrown into a deep natural cave nearby like a dead dog. There was no tombstone, no wreath, and no one even remembered his name.
The location was within Xuzhou Prefecture on Huaihai Road in the Ming Dynasty. The iron factory occupied a very large area and had private soldiers. In this war-torn era, it was like a prince, and its power could not be underestimated.
There were prisoners of war from all over the world in the slave team, which was simply a joint operation. Most of these prisoners of war were brave and fierce. They often fought for a mouthful of food, and even killed others. Liu Ziguang had to change under such an environment. Originally,
The gentle and kind-hearted man is no longer the original Liu Ziguang.