Chapter 567 - 271: A Plan Even Crazier Than Ozaki’s Eight Steps [Double-Length]

When Li Younan’s gaze fell on Liu Li’s face, he instantly felt...springs of infinite beauty.

Li Younan felt a tad sleazy.

Because he accidentally sprayed yogurt on Liu Li’s face, and his first reaction wasn’t guilt, but rather being seduced by the scene to imagine even more outrageous scenarios, which was really not good.

When she looks at you, her mind is full of trust, how can yours be filled with love and lust when you look at her?

Li Younan took out a tissue to help Liu Li wipe the yogurt off her face and then hurriedly got out of the car.

By the time Li Younan got out of the car, it was already too late.

Because the knife was already in the charcoal fire, glowing red-hot.

There’s no denying, this young man was bold and quite handy.

Just like Dumpling said, when you’re out in the world, what’s most important? Being out here is the most important.

Repairing a knife, what’s most important? For this young man, it’s definitely about trying.

No matter if it works or not, at least give it a try. Not trying means it won’t get fixed; trying might still fail... but what if?

Clearly, this was the young man’s mindset.

And their ability to act was indeed astounding; in such a short time, they managed to find quite a few tools in the small town.

A hammer, a pair of tongs, a steel plate as an anvil, and a barbecue charcoal stove.

There was also a barrel of water nearby, probably for quenching.

However, these so-called tools, in Li Younan’s view, were naturally hard to describe.

When Li Younan’s enormous, unignorable Unimog parked beside them, the young men unsurprisingly all directed their gazes over, given that the vehicle was just too conspicuous.

Li Younan got out of the car, and the bearded young man immediately recognized him: "Hey, aren’t you the guy from the silver shop?"

"What you’re doing won’t work."

"Huh? What?" Li Younan crossed his arms over his chest, strolled over slowly, and touched his chin, peering into the charcoal stove, "It’s not that barbecue stoves can’t be used for sword forging, but the way you’re doing it definitely won’t work; it needs to be modified."

The young man was taken aback: "Huh? Do you know about sword forging?"

Li Younan didn’t respond, instead walked slowly to the stove, observed carefully, then shook his head: "Hand me the tongs."

Seeing Li Younan’s presence, the young man instinctively handed over the tongs.

Li Younan took the tongs and began adjusting the charcoal repeatedly, explaining, "The charcoal needs to be modified for directional heat concentration, form the carbon into a tight inner, loose outer cone-shaped core, using high-density carbon blocks for heat concentration, with loose charcoal for insulation."

Honestly, for a regular barbecue grill used by an average swordsmith, it’s bound to fail because they can’t control the temperature.

For Li Younan, temperature control also poses a difficulty, but after all, his swordsmithing skill had reached level two, coupled with additional skills in pottery, such a level allows him to use intuition to judge temperature in many situations.

Theoretically speaking, his modification for directional heat concentration can allow the barbecue charcoal to reach local temperatures of 900℃, which is exactly the austenitizing range for high-strength stainless steel.

Li Younan sighed lightly, holding the blade with the tongs: "This knife was almost ruined, let’s see how much can be salvaged... if luck is good, maybe we’ll get an even better knife, if luck is worse, well, you might as well buy a new one."

The young man was particularly surprised: "It’s already ruined?"

Li Younan nodded: "The core of sword forging is temperature control, have you heard of the term austenitizing?"

The young man shook his head dumbfoundedly.

"You dare to forge swords without knowing this?"

Li Younan said, "Heating blades without experience will destroy the internal structure and performance balance of the steel."

"There are generally three situations here, one is uncontrolled temperature, producing inferior metal structure."

"Either insufficient heating, the steel hasn’t reached the austenitizing state, and if you forge now, it’s likely to crack or shatter, or excessive heating, exceeding 1000℃, causes the steel grains to enlarge rapidly, drastically reducing toughness, and more seriously, excessive heat can eliminate the corrosion resistance of stainless steel."

"And the problem your knife faces now is that only a local gap was heated, causing a huge temperature difference front to back, inside and out of the blade."

"Remember the thermal expansion and contraction from middle school physics? This creates intense thermal stress on the blade, causing permanent deformation that’s impossible to correct."

After hearing Li Younan’s words, the young man was dumbfounded, then quickly asked: "Is there any way to save it?"

Li Younan sighed lightly: "Fortunately, your whole knife hasn’t reached 800℃ yet, so I’m now reheating the blade."

After saying this, Li Younan focused diligently on the charcoal stove, just like the state he entered when he was firing ceramics before, experiencing the same kind of flow when sword forging, putting all his attention on the knife, using the tongs to flip the blade repeatedly.

Honestly, it’s quite fascinating, being able to judge temperature just by the color of the steel.

There’s no thermometer here, so one has to rely on such intuition.

At this point, the young man’s companions couldn’t resist taking out their phones to film Li Younan’s sword forging, because, for a normal male, sword forging is just too interesting.