Golden Dragon Tang Wulin 1

Chapter 13 - Thousand Refined Tungsten Hammer

“Wulin’s here!” A youngster in his twenties, with a tall and sturdy build, called out to Tang Wulin in greeting.

“Brother Long.” Tang Wulin asked with a smile, “What task has teacher assigned to me today?”

Brother Long grinned, “There’s quite a lot for you to do. Just go into the room and take a look for yourself. Speaking of which, I’m really envious of you. You’re so young, yet your workload is already more than mine!” Blacksmithing was an industrious profession. Naturally, the more work one did, the more one’s income would be.

With a chuckle, Tang Wulin asked, “If I’m comparable to you, then how come Teacher still hasn’t let me forge large components?”

Brother Long answered, “That’s so you can have a stronger foundation. Fine then, hurry up and go! Otherwise you won’t be able to finish today’s work in the two hours you have.”

Mang Tian’s workshop had just three members, Mang Tian, Brother Long, and Tang Wulin. Originally, Brother Long was Mang Tian’s sole disciple, but with Tang Wulin’s arrival, he had gained a second disciple. Starting from his second visit to the workshop three years before, Tang Wulin had begun calling Mang Tian ‘Teacher’.

Mang Tian was an extremely strict teacher. He had high demands of his disciples, but he also taught them earnestly. Tang Wulin would often find himself thinking that he learned more things here at the workshop than at the academy.

Everyone had a workshop to work in. Mang Tian brought some forged machine components from outside before distributing them. He gave the simple ones to Brother Long and Tang Wulin, while he personally oversaw the forging of the complex ones.

Every week they would each have one day of specialized training when Mang Tian would instruct them personally. For the rest of the week, they only had to finish the tasks that Mang Tian gave them. The more they worked, the better their craftsmanship and the more money they earned.

Tang Wulin entered his own forging room. It was very different from the dirty and disordered reception room outside. In contrast, he had kept his room extremely neat and tidy.

There were already some raw materials lying on the forging bench, as well as a blueprint by  its side.

When he had first come here, Mang Tian had made him pound iron for three months in order to teach him the proper force transmission and mitigation techniques. Each day he had to strike the iron for two hours. Those two hours were always an abyss of suffering for him.

Due to his constant practice, Tang Wulin had grown even stronger than before. Originally, he had used a small iron hammer, but the necessary hammer was gradually replaced by larger and larger ones. After three months of practice, he was allowed to do some simple metal extraction work. One year later, he began making the simplest of components.

It wasn’t until half a year before that he had been promoted from forging small components to medium sized components. Mang Tian even began comparing him and Brother Long more and more strictly. However, Tang Wulin’s temperament had a special sort of perseverance. In the three years he had been working there, not once had he complained about his hardships.

After seriously looking over the blueprint, he understood what today’s task was. He had to make ten machine armored ankle-joints. They were spherical in shape so if the work was done with a mold, it would only have to be pressed twice in order to be finished. However, when it came to forging it, the demands were much higher.

Blacksmithing was divided into many ranks. Generally speaking, there was the Hundred Refined. Hundred Refined was when a component was refined a hundred times throughout. Even higher than that was Thousand Refined.