Denzel was not stupid. He immediately understood what Sir Clinton was trying to do.
As the farmer urged the cattle to pull the rope, the head of the Sphinx gradually rose. There was a tripod in front of it that was supported by sturdy oak.
The pulley at the top of the tripod was higher than the center of gravity of the Sphinx. As the rope pulled, it was equivalent to exerting an upward force on the statue.
With that, the bottom of the Sphinx rose and moved forward a distance of a palm's width with great difficulty. It pressed down on the iron ball that was laid down earlier.
The iron ball broke the stone bricks that were laid down below and almost sank into the gravel pit.
Then, the pulley on the tripod was lowered slightly so that the angle of the pulling force did not change. With that, the statue moved forward another half a step …
As the statue left the pit, it gradually pressed down on the iron balls. The pulling speed became faster and faster.
After passing through the iron balls, the statue took out the iron ball that was pressed into the gravel pit and placed it in front of it …
Before noon, the Sphinx moved seven to eight meters and leaped onto the stone path of Valleglia.
At that moment, Denzel finally saw the Dragon Queen.
She descended from the sky on a black dragon. Her appearance … She was wearing a helmet and iron armor, so he could not see her clearly.
What caught his attention was that the black dragon was carrying a bundle of … more than ten iron blowers.
As he was an Andal and his ancestral home was the Stormlands, Denzel became a small leader under Sir Clinton. He commanded the cattle to pull the statue.
With that, he could see the Dragon Queen up close.
Although Denzel did not know why she was wearing a helmet (of course, she was afraid of death and was afraid that someone in the crowd would shoot her with a crossbow), he could see through the gap in the helmet that she was a very beautiful lady. She had big, violet eyes, fair, lustrous skin, a delicate little chin, and silvery hair that reflected the sun's rays.
Without a doubt, she was a Targaryen. Everyone knew that Targaryens had purple eyes and silver hair. They were extraordinarily beautiful.
However, what caught Denzel's attention the most was not the queen's appearance, but … she actually knew magic!
Denzel saw with his own eyes that the Dragon Queen used flames to melt the dragon crystal (he heard from her) and some strange magic materials. She then branded some words (magic runes) that he could not understand on the cleaned Black Stone Path.
After that, he moved the Sphinx statue to the top of the scribbles. With the statue as the center, he built a two-story castle with windows the size of eight buckets.
The statue was placed in a castle made of red bricks and bluestone strips. Then, eight two-meter-tall castles were built along the windows of the castle.
Now he understood that the small castle was connected to the blower, which was actually a furnace.
A large amount of charcoal was loaded into eight stoves and lit at around two in the afternoon.
During this time, many caravans between Pentos and Norfoss passed by. They were very surprised and wanted to stop and watch, but all of them chose to leave after the black dragon roared, "Get lost or die!"
The fire burned, and the newly built furnace began to emit a hot, wet smell of lime.
The lime used to build the walls was dried by the fire, and there were even cracks in some places. Under normal circumstances, it should be slowly dried in the shade, but the high temperature would cause uneven heating, and the walls would crack.
However, the Dragon Queen only dug out a lump of lime to cover the crack and continued to burn it.
Denzel understood the Queen's thoughts. She only wanted to melt the iron statue this time, and did not really plan to build a steelmaking furnace on the main road.
"Why doesn't the Queen use the dragon to burn the Sphinx statue, just like how Black Death Belerion melted the iron sword to build the Iron Throne?" he could not help but ask his fellow countryman.
Yes, Sir Clinton also claimed to be from the Land of Storms, so he was somewhat close to him.
However, when Denzel asked him if he was from the Clinton family of Vulture's Nest Castle, he shook his head and did not say a word. At this moment, the Clinton of Vulture's Nest Castle was related to Jon Clinton, but they were not of the same bloodline.
"It's still being heated," the Dragon Queen glanced at him and said.
Oh Seven Gods, the Dragon Queen actually spoke to him!
Denzel was so excited that his black face flushed red. His head was boiling, his eyes were dizzy, and he was at a loss …
Fortunately, the Dragon Queen only said one sentence before she turned her head back and continued to stare at the huge, blazing furnace.
As carts of charcoal were transported over from the nearby manor, and as the people operating the blower changed batch after batch, the furnace began to emit waves of heat into the surroundings. Everyone began to retreat.
When the sky gradually turned a shade of yellow, the Dragon Queen chanted an incantation. The flames at the top of the furnace in the castle shrunk, and the surrounding temperature rapidly dropped.
However, the speed of adding charcoal did not slow down at all …
Denzel did not understand magic. Naturally, he did not know that after the temperature of the statue stopped rising, the Dragon Queen used her Fire Control Spell to transform the dissipating flames into the shape of a huge bell, enveloping the statue within.
As such, the steel statue's temperature continued to rise, and the outside world could not feel much heat.
Before the sky darkened, the Megalosaurus finally began to breathe fire. The black and green dragons seemed to be in a relay race. One after another, they continuously poured dragonflame into the furnace at the top of the castle.
The dragonflame and charcoal burned together for a full three hours. The vast, dark wilderness was gradually bathed in a dazzling starry sky.
During dinner, Denzel was given three sausages, two eggs, a loaf of bread, and a big bowl of beef, oatmeal, and carrot soup.
He ate happily, only to realize that the Dragon Queen and her two knights did not eat or drink.
At midnight, Denzel was lying on the stone path, dozing off. Suddenly, a sense of fear surged in his heart. It was as if a ferocious tiger had snuck up beside him and was about to bite his neck.
He woke up with a start. The sleeping people around him seemed to have felt the same way, and a series of shouts rang out.
With just a glance, Denzel could sense the source of the change: the black dragon!
During the day, he instinctively felt that he was as majestic and domineering as a god. At this moment, he seemed to have truly become a god.
His appearance did not change. He was still as ferocious and terrifying, but his entire body was emitting a holy aura that made people want to worship him.
No, something else had changed. Dragonflame!
The blood-red dragonflame had turned into an extremely bright glazed red.
If colors could have life, the glazed red would have come alive at this moment.
The green dragons retreated to the side. Only the black dragon continued to spit out dragonflame that resembled a glazed red water column.
Another quarter of an hour passed. * Boom! *
Very suddenly, the castle-sized brick furnace shook a few times, as if something inside had exploded. Almost at the same time, at the bottom of the Rohn River, a huge wave rose out of nowhere.
Before the two knights could ask in surprise, Denzel was stunned to see the Dragon Queen cursing in exasperation. "Goddamn Valleglia, if you want to show off, then show off until the end. Don't you feel ashamed to use a fake to fool the world for thousands of years?"
At this moment, the Dragon Queen did not know the true meaning of the steel statue, nor did she know what she had done. She also could not hear the resentful roars of beasts coming from the Rohn River dozens of kilometers away. Some ancient existence had broken free from the seal of Valleglia.
"Fake?" Her two knights' expressions changed abruptly.
"Steel skin, scrap iron core. The steel inside has long melted. When the fixed steel skin is broken, it will suddenly explode like a broken soup dumpling, and juice will splatter everywhere!"
The Dragon Queen sighed and stomped her iron boots on the stone path.
When the Dragon Queen smashed the brick that was in contact with the stone path, a thin layer of tiles near the edge of the stone path, bright red molten iron that radiated a white light immediately flowed out and flowed directly into the sand pit beside the stone path.
The stone path was a palm's height above the ground, and the sand pit that was dug in advance caught the flowing molten iron.
Well, the Dragon Queen had arranged for people to shovel away the top layer of soil and lay a thick layer of mold sand.
The molten iron sizzled in the sand pit.
Even though the sand pit had been baked for a period of time by the Dragon Queen's dragon flames, there was still a large amount of smoke rising from the ground around it.
The smell of burning filled the air, and the heat wave spread without restraint.
Everyone's faces were red and hot from the molten iron, but the Dragon Queen continued to sigh as if nothing had happened.
She muttered, "Too much, too much. With so much molten iron, how many tons of steel can there be left …"
The size and depth of the sand pit were calculated in advance.
A small pit was the size of a bucket, compacted with a standard mold and dried the water. It could hold about 500 pounds of iron (steel was also iron, and its density was exactly the same as iron).
Small pits were connected to small pits. The first small pit was filled, and the molten iron that flowed down would flow along the thumb-sized notch above the pit wall to the next small pit. The principle was the same as the ice cube box in the refrigerator.
Since it was molten iron that was flowing, the Dragon Queen personally jumped into the pit and blocked some of the drainage notch with ceramic stoppers.
Well, the small pit originally had four walls, and the overflowing molten iron could flow in all directions. Now, under the deliberate control of the Dragon Queen, the molten iron only flowed to the sides, leaving the position near the "faucet" for the steel.
Out of the reserved 20 * 20 pits, 250 of them were filled with ordinary molten iron, 71 of them were filled with steel, and 25 of them were empty.
In other words, the Sphinx statue was about 80 tons, of which 62.5 tons of ordinary steel and 18 tons of steel.
Ordinary steel was a mixture of grayish-white and grayish-black, while steel was a smoky black that reflected a strange luster.
The two could be clearly distinguished.
"It's not bad …"
Looking at the smoky black iron bucket that was pulled out by the hanging rope like a radish, the Dragon Queen finally smiled.
Well, when the Dragon Queen flew over from Slaver's Bay, she also brought 200 fine steel chains that were as thick as a thumb and as long as an arm.
A chain was placed in two adjacent pits on the left and right. When the molten iron solidified, it was equivalent to fixing a big iron ball at both ends of the chain.
A single iron ball weighed 500 kilograms, and only Blackie could carry it.
From midnight to the darkest three hours before dawn, Blackie carried 34 iron balls and left everyone's sight. When it returned, it was empty handed.
Needless to say, everyone knew that the steel was too heavy, and the Megalosaurus could not carry it all at once, so the Black Dragon hid it somewhere nearby.
Denzel's heart skipped a beat. To transport 34 iron balls in just three hours, it would take about five to six minutes for a round trip.
In other words, the steel was no more than three minutes of flying distance for the Black Dragon.
And the Black Dragon was carrying half a ton of iron ingots. Could it fly 400 kilometers in an hour?
Three minutes, no more than 20 kilometers!
This …
He did not know how much steel was worth in the market, but a dozen tons of steel could definitely be exchanged for a city!
It was truly priceless.
Denzel's eyes flashed, and then he saw that many people's eyes were flashing.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were clear. He quietly approached Clinton. "Sir, it's best if you let the Queen take the steel away as soon as possible."
"Mm." Clinton's expression was blank, and no one could guess what he was thinking.
Denzel sighed and did not say anything else.
But before dawn, his kindness was reciprocated.
Sure enough, the Dragon Queen kept her word. Every farmer received one or two gold coins (overtime pay for the night).
Denzel received 18 gold royals. They were not Gold Radiance coins, but Westeros gold royals that were worth three Gold Radiance coins!
Clinton gave him all the gold royals he had.
Only one was enough for him to pay off his loan to Illyrio, and he still had some left.
The remaining gold royals could buy a large manor with hundreds of acres of fertile land.
Denzel finally embarked on the path of glory of a certain male protagonist — a reversal of fortune.
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