Warlord: King of All Clans

With the foundation of taking a bath, the negotiations were indeed much easier, and both of them stopped pretending to be polite or hiding their intentions.

Since both sides have the need for peace talks, peace talks are not a problem. The only thing left is the distribution of benefits.

After lowering the price of the fuel stone to one hundred silver coins per cart, Leo frowned and reluctantly agreed to the deal.

His original bottom line was 99 yuan for free shipping, but considering the other party's backward productivity and high transportation costs, he had to relax the requirements in the end.

Seeing Leo nod, Arina Mishe finally breathed a sigh of relief. Having a deal was equivalent to peace talks. It was impossible to trade and be hostile at the same time.

One hundred silver coins for a cart of firestones. Although it was far below his expectations, it was still profitable. He would consider it as the price for peace talks.

After both parties accepted the price, Leo said a number: "One hundred silver coins is a bit expensive, and Riverbend can't afford too much, so let's sign the contract for less. If you are willing to lower the price, I will consider the second batch."

"For the first batch, let's send 3,000 vehicles to test the waters."

"Three thousand cars?? To test the waters?"

When Arina Mishe heard Leo say this number casually, she couldn't believe her ears.

She tried to control her expression. "Three thousand carts, do you know what you are talking about? Three thousand carts of firestone can be used to smelt iron. It can smelt seven hundred Tars of iron ingots, which can be made into scimitars. Every man, woman, and child in the Tarhan tribe can get one!"

"Even if we build iron horse armor, we can arm an entire legion!"

Leo frowned when he heard this, realizing the problem, "You're talking so much because your firestone mine's output is not enough, right?"

Arina Mishe was instantly speechless. In business, no one would complain about the size of a customer's order. She was so excited, but subconsciously, it was because the output of her own fuel rock mine was not enough.

The Talhan family's fuel stone mine produces less than 3,000 trucks a year.

There are no equipment in the mines in the west. The ore is all knocked down bit by bit by the miners with small iron pickaxes, and then carried down the mountain in baskets on their backs.

Moreover, once the mine is flooded, the workload immediately doubles. Although shallow mines can still be mined by pumping out water, deeper mines have to be abandoned.

In the western border, the Tarkhand tribe was not the only one that had combustible rocks, but only the Tarkhand tribe could mine them in large quantities because they had open-pit coal mountains.

Whenever a coal mine is thirty to fifty meters underground, the cost of mining fuel rock is much higher than importing high-quality charcoal.

Besides, the Tarhan tribe itself also needs to consume fuel stone. Even if they continue to invest manpower and material resources to increase production, it is impossible to sell all of it to Hewan.

After being hit by Leo's words, Ajina Mishe was speechless and just stared at Leo, trying to figure out whether he was teasing her or really needed so many fire stones.

Leo muttered, "Three thousand carts is a lot? Seven hundred tar iron ingots, even if they were made into rails, wouldn't be enough to build a railway from the river bend to the river mouth."

The water-pumping steam engine at the river bend has been put into use, and the next step is the train steam engine, but this requires the cooperation of rails.

Conventional transportation can be met by horse-drawn carriages, but long-distance transportation of large quantities of materials can only rely on ships and railroads.

However, Hewan currently has no coal mines to support it, its steel production capacity cannot be increased, and it is impossible to build railway tracks.

Three thousand cartloads of fuel rock, or three thousand tons of coal, sounds like a lot, but in fact it is only what a small village blast furnace consumes in a year and can only produce a few hundred tons of pig iron.

But in this world, it is the total production capacity of an earldom in one year.

Considering that light rail consumes 100 tons of steel per kilometer, this production capacity is not enough to build 10 kilometers of railway.

"It seems I need to take you to see the mining industry in the river bend." Leo thought for a moment, "Have a good rest. Tomorrow I will take you to see the mine in the river bend. Maybe you will have new ideas."

After a while of negotiations, they continued with entertainment, including taking a bath, eating and drinking.

With the existence of elves, Riverbend still has many new games.

For example, Leo and the Rose Knights are responsible for throwing food, while Freya brings the snail elves, turtle elves and a group of puppy-headed people to catch it with their mouths.

Ostara really wanted to join the game, especially Freya's side, but before she could finish, the game was stopped by Olivia on the grounds that it was somewhat disrespectful to the dog.

Many of the remaining games were also discontinued after a short period of popularity due to reasons such as "indecent", "inappropriate", "too childish", etc.

Arina Mishe, who didn't know much about the imperial bathing culture, also participated in it seriously. For example, when Olivia was giving Leo a massage, she also helped.

But after pressing for a long time, she found that a group of women were staring at her.

After asking, I found out that there is no tradition of giving massages to the opposite sex in the North, unless it is for flirting.

After staying in the hot spring villa for one night, Leo took Arina Mishe to visit the pyrite mine next door early the next morning.

Although this is the property of the Petukhov family, it has a strong river bay style.

They each rode a docile horse and followed the gravel road to the pyrite mine. Arina Mishe was once again shocked by the scene before her.

This pyrite mine was completely different from the mines she had seen in the west.

There were wooden scaffoldings set up everywhere, straight tracks on the ground, and a long row of hydraulic forging hammers next to the stream.

Under the action of flowing water, the cast iron forging hammer weighing hundreds of pounds automatically strikes the ground up and down.

Miners pushed carts loaded with ore out of the mine, along straight tracks to the edge of the valley, and then dumped them into the crushing trough under the hydraulic forging hammer.

There are not many miners, and most of them are kobolds. Those human miners hardly have to do heavy work. They are mainly responsible for maintaining order and the operation of equipment.

Under Arina Mishe's personal witness, it took less than two hours for a truckload of pyrite to be transformed from rough ore to crushed and screened concentrate and finally to be stored in the warehouse.

This involved several processes, but the manpower consumed was only five human supervisors and more than twenty kobold miners.

In the Western Border Mine, it would take at least fifty miners a whole day to process a truckload of ore.

And there was more than one mine car, there were seven or eight going back and forth in an endless stream.

Arina Mishe also wanted to ride her horse closer to the mine to see how many miners were needed to dig out such a cart of ore.

"Wait!" Leo stretched out his hand to stop her, "Just stand here and watch."

After waiting for ten minutes, people in the mining area began to shout and wave flags, and the surrounding miners evacuated the mine.

After waiting for another ten minutes, the miners gathered in the open space counted the number of people and waved the flag again, and then they saw several kobolds fleeing frantically from the mine.

After a while, there was a loud bang, and the echo echoed among the mountains.

A corner of the mine collapsed, revealing a new mineral layer.

The Kobold Demoman roaming nearby dodged the rubble, danced around, and barked excitedly.

The fuse technology of River Bend has long been mature, enough for them to ignite at a long distance, but the Kobold Demolition Man is still accustomed to following tradition.

The closer you are to the explosion point, the more the God of Gunpowder will favor you!

After visiting the pyrite mine, Arina Mishe kept her head down and remained silent on the way back.

Hewan has high-quality armor, sharp guns and cannons, and the combat effectiveness of the soldiers is enough to make one against ten.

With developed technology and advanced equipment, the productivity of the people in the territory can be ten times that of others.

In terms of extraordinary combat power, all the extraordinary knights in the entire river bay have not even taken action, but a pet bear can make their entire legion run around in circles.

How can we fight this?

The territory of Tarhanbek is ten times larger than that of Hewan, and its population is ten times larger than that of Hewan. This is the source of Arina Mishe's confidence.

But looking back along the way, Arina Mishe didn't think that her family had any advantages over Hewan.