Chapter-20

# Chapter 20: "Breakthrough"

Soon after General Shi left, Cui Yingu entered Ouyang Shuo's office. She reported that she'd spoken to Master Li and asked him to start looking around the village for mining areas. Master Li had mentioned that they found an open iron ore field at the foot of the mountain in the southwest of the territory. It is not only large in area, but also has rich amounts of ore and should be very easy to collect. Some of the ore is directly exposed to the air, and can simply be lifted out of the ground to collect it. She'd also mentioned that today a new special talent had arrived today, an **experienced intermediate miner** called Yuan Shaoping. She'd recommended him to be put in charge of the operations for the new basic mining field which **Ouyang Shuo** accepted.

Once Cui Yingu had left the office, **Ouyang Shuo** left to see how Lu Guangzhi, the Carpenter, had been faring with the South-pointing Chariot development. When he arrived at the **Carpentry workshop**, **Master Lu** was seen working with two apprentices around a wooden carriage. **Ouyang Shuo** was surprised, the technology was not easy and he'd actually made the carriage to such an extent after only giving him the South-pointing Chariot Manual a few days ago, this was a difficult technology to get working correctly.

One of the apprentices looked up and noticed **Ouyang Shuo**, he quickly alerted his master who was working on the carriage. **Lu Guangzhi** apologized for making him wait. **Ouyang Shuo** enquired about the Chariot's progress, which Lu Guanhzhi reported that it had yet to be completed, as it was hard to grasp. **Ouyang Shuo** provided him with a bit of encouragement and proceeded to the Li Tiezhu's blacksmith shop next-door.

He hadn't paid much attention to the **Basic Blacksmith** as he was not able to create **weapons** or **armour** yet, at most, he could create **arrowheads**, and not even the more **complex broadheads**. Because **military goods** were not allowed to be sold in the Market, Lord players could only obtain weapons and equipment in three ways:

* System-provided Equipment: The system provided basic weapons and armour to troops when trained or upgraded, this was very basic equipment and couldn't compare to higher-quality equipment, they broke very easily.
* Smuggling: Players could also pay big businessmen within other cities a large fee to smuggle military goods out of another city and direct to your door, it was good equipment, but it came at a massive cost, at at least five to ten times the cost, in addition, it was also quite a difficult task for both parties.
* Industry: The last way was for **lord players** to **build their own military industry**. Once they had their own military industry, naturally they didn't need to be subjected to the whims of others. It was all on them how much they wanted and how much they would be able to produce. Although this approach looked good, it was the most difficult of the three tasks. This was due to them being prohibited items, any type of advanced weapon required the appropriate manual to build. For things like the famous Northern and Southern Mingguang armor, they would require the Mingguang Armor Manufacturing Technology Manual to make it.
	+ In general, these manuals were not available within the Basic Market, there was only one place to buy them, it meant upgrading to the Intermediate Market and the opening of the third platform - the limited time auction platform where the game would hold **limited-time auctions** at a regular basis. During those events, there would certainly be some rare items!

Ouyang Shuo's plan to start weapon workshops really required an Advanced Blacksmith to manage them, therefore, he didn't have many expectations of Basic Master Li. However, **Master Li** gave him a surprise by saying that he'd received a breakthrough in his bottleneck and was officially promoted to **Intermediate Blacksmith**. **Ouyang Shuo** gratefully congratulated the now **Intermediate Blacksmith Master Li** who could now start creating basic equipment (spears and swords) as well as arrowheads. After a brief accounting of Master Li's needs, Ouyang Shuo soon thereafter left the shop.

## CHARACTERS

* General Shi (Lieutenant, Shanhai Village Militia)
* Cui Yingu (Secretary, Material Reserves Division)
* Ouyang Shuo
* Master Li (Basic Blacksmith)
* Yuan Shaoping (Manager, Iron Ore Mine)
* Lu Guangzhi (Manager, Carpentry Workshop)
* Li Tiezhu (Basic Blacksmith)

## ITEMS

* South-pointing Chariot Technical Manual
* South-pointing Chariot
* Mingguang Armor Manufacturing Technology Manual
* Northern and Southern Mingguang Armor

1. ↑ This breakthrough was likely caused by Shanhai Village's golden Village Creation Token which increased the proficiency rate of skilled residents by 20% and increased the chance to break through promotional bottlenecks by 10%.