By linking my account to the check-in system, I became a leisurely traveler.

Chapter 274 A Plan Even More Insane Than Ozaki's Eight Items [Part Two]

When Li Younan's gaze fell on Liu Li's face, he immediately felt... the spring scenery was boundless.

Li Younan felt that he was a little bit vulgar.

Because of his accidental yogurt spray on Liu Li's face, his first reaction was not guilt, but rather being led to imagine even more outrageous scenarios, which was really not good.

When she looks at you, her mind is filled with trust; when you look at her, how can your mind be filled with love?
Li Younan used tissues to wipe the yogurt off Liu Li's face before hurriedly getting off the bus.

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

Because the knife had been heated red-hot in the charcoal fire.

It must be said that this young man is truly bold and capable.

Just like the dumpling said, when you're out in the game, what's the most important thing? Getting out there is the most important thing.

When it comes to getting a knife repaired, what's the most important thing? In this young man's opinion, getting the knife repaired is definitely the most important thing.

Who cares if it can be fixed or not? Let's give it a try. If we don't try, it definitely won't be fixed. If we try, it might not be fixed... but what if it works?
Clearly, this is the mindset of young people.

Their ability to move around was indeed astonishing; in such a short time, they managed to find quite a few tools in the town.

A hammer, a pair of fire tongs, a steel plate as an anvil, and a charcoal grill for barbecuing.

There was also a bucket of water next to it, probably for quenching.

However, in Li Younan's view, these so-called tools were naturally beyond redemption.

When Li Younan's enormous and undeniable Unimog stopped beside them, the young men unsurprisingly turned their gazes toward it, as the vehicle was simply too conspicuous.

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

"You can't do it that way."

"Huh? What?" Li Younan walked over slowly with his arms crossed, stroking his chin and looking into the charcoal stove. "It's not that a charcoal stove used for grilling can't be used to forge knives, but it definitely won't work like this. It has to be modified."

The young man was taken aback for a moment: "Huh? You know about knife forging?"

Li Younan didn't respond. Instead, he slowly walked to the stove, examined it carefully, and then shook his head: "Let me use the fire tongs."

Li Younan's aura made the young man subconsciously hand over the fire tongs.

Li Younan, holding the fire tongs, began to adjust the charcoal fire, explaining, "The charcoal fire needs to be modified to concentrate heat in a directional manner. This way, the charcoal is piled into a cone-shaped core that is tight inside and loose outside, using high-density charcoal blocks to concentrate heat, and the outer layer is insulated with crushed charcoal."

To be honest, a regular handmade barbecue grill would definitely fail if made by an average knife maker, because they wouldn't be able to control the temperature.

For Li Younan, controlling the temperature is also quite difficult, but after all, his forging skill has reached level two, and he also has the bonus of pottery firing skill. At this level, he can often control the temperature by relying on his intuitive judgment.

Theoretically speaking, after he made this directional heat-concentrating modification, the temperature of the barbecue charcoal could reach 900℃ in a localized area, which is exactly the austenitization range of high-strength stainless steel.

Li Younan used the tongs to hold the blade, sighed slightly, and said, "This knife was almost ruined. Let's see how much we can save... If we're lucky, we might get a better knife. If we're unlucky, well, we'll just have to buy a new one."

The young man was particularly surprised: "It's already useless?"

Li Younan nodded: "The most crucial aspect of forging knives is temperature control. Have you ever heard of a term called austenitization?"

The young man shook his head blankly.

"You dared to forge a sword without even knowing that?"

Li Younan said, "Heating a knife directly without experience will damage the internal structure and performance balance of the knife's steel."

"There are generally three situations here. One is that the temperature control is out of control, resulting in poor metallographic structure."

"Either the heating is insufficient, and the steel does not enter the austenitic state. If it is forged in this state, it is easy to chip and break. Or the heating is too high, exceeding 1000°C. At this time, the steel grains coarsely increase rapidly, the toughness decreases significantly, and what is more critical is that overheating will cause the stainless steel to lose its corrosion resistance."

"The problem with your knife right now is that only the notch is heated, which will cause a huge temperature difference between the inside and outside, front and back of the blade."

"You learned about thermal expansion and contraction in junior high school physics, right? This thermal expansion and contraction will create strong thermal stress on the knife. This stress will cause the knife to twist and deform directly, and it is a kind of deformation that cannot be corrected."

Upon hearing Li Younan's words, the young man was dumbfounded, and then hurriedly asked, "Then... then is there any way to save him?"

Li Younan sighed slightly and said, "The good thing is that the knife hasn't reached 800°C yet, so I'm reheating the blade now."

After saying this, Li Younan began to focus his attention on the charcoal stove. Just like the wonderful state he had entered when firing ceramics, he experienced the same flow state when forging knives. His entire attention was focused on the blade, and he repeatedly turned the blade with the help of the fire tongs.

To be honest, it's quite amazing that you can determine the temperature just by looking at the steel color.

There are no thermometers here, so we can only rely on our sense of touch.

At this moment, the young man's companion couldn't resist taking out his phone to film Li Younan forging the sword. After all, for a normal man, forging a sword is just too interesting.

"Brothers, Lianfeng's knife is broken, and we're repairing it. Does anyone know anything about knife forging and can tell me if we're doing it correctly?"

The bearded young man, known as Lian Feng, said irritably, "Stop arguing, don't disturb them."

At this moment, Lian Feng had already realized that Li Younan definitely had real skills. He looked at Li Younan's face with some curiosity, feeling that he had seen him somewhere before, but he couldn't remember exactly where.

At this moment, Li Younan had completely entered a very strange state. In order to make the temperature of the knife even, he kept adjusting the position of the heated part.

What's even more remarkable is that he constantly uses the slight shaking of the fire tongs to create a micro-temperature gradient inside the blade by utilizing the airflow fluctuations of the charcoal fire. This allows for the creation of stress-guiding channels for subsequent forging, a level of control that modern industrial equipment cannot replicate through the symbiosis of human and fire.

It is worth mentioning that for most swordsmiths, heating steel rashly will most likely weaken the steel itself.

However, for a legendary swordsmith like Li Younan, there is a certain probability that the potential properties of industrial steel can be activated.

This is because the core advantage of industrial steel is not its performance, but its basic uniformity.

Modern industry, through vacuum smelting and continuous casting and rolling, can achieve extremely high uniformity in the composition and grain size of high-strength stainless steel. This is an inherent foundation that cannot be replicated by hand. However, industrial forging is a standardized mass production process with fixed forging rhythms and cooling curves, which may not be able to fully adapt to the individual differences of a single piece of steel.

Modern industrial forging can rely on industrial power to use many outlandish materials, such as various alloys.

However, in terms of steel alone, compared to top masters like Li Younan, they have lost the ability to precisely control graded cooling.

This is also the only point where humans can compete with modern industry in knife forging.

For example, in the very popular "Forging Competition" program, one contestant increased the hardness of steel with an original hardness of HRC60 to HRC62, while also increasing its toughness by 20%.

Li Younan will only do better.

At this moment, the tools on site were what truly tested Li Younan's skill level, and they were hard to describe in a few words.

Too crude.

Although barbecue grills have the disadvantage of rapid heat dissipation, Li Younan came up with a way to turn this disadvantage into an advantage: by using the natural cooling of the air to expose the unrepaired parts outside the grill, creating a localized heating and heat preservation effect.

This segmented preheating method can greatly reduce the thermal stress on stainless steel.

Li Younan sensed a critical point; the temperature had reached a perfect threshold. He quickly and decisively pulled out the knife, placed the steel plate on top, and held out his hand: "Give me the hammer."

The next moment, the hammer began to strike.

Li Younan had a strange feeling that the hammer was not only a tool, but also a metal detector. When he struck it, the vibration frequency transmitted from the hammer handle allowed him to feel the direction of the cracks inside the blade.

He began to use a spiral-shaped technique, moving from the edge of the notch towards the center, using the elastic rebound of the steel plate to allow the stainless steel's strength to grow in the opposite direction.

Each strike precisely reconnects the broken metal flow lines, resulting in a higher grain density at the notch compared to the original blade.

This experience was quite magical; Li Younan could even judge whether the blade line was straight by the echo of the hammer blow.

When the echo gradually became uniform and finally had no deviation at all, Li Younan knew that it was successful, and he breathed a slight sigh of relief.

Lian Feng, who was standing nearby, quickly asked, "Is it ready? Shouldn't the next step be quenching?"

Li Younan glanced at the other party indifferently, but did not immediately begin quenching.

To be honest, the experts in knife forging competitions often use quenching oil for quenching, or machine oil if all else fails.

Water quenching is not easy to control.

Therefore, the next step is the most difficult step in the whole process.

Li Younan did not quench the blade directly. Instead, he placed the blade on a steel plate to conduct residual heat, then placed the back of his hand a few centimeters away from the blade, closed his eyes slightly, and patiently waited for the radiated heat to reach a critical point.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes, grabbed the knife with pliers, and immersed the blade in water. Steam rose, while the main body of the knife was still exposed to the air. He then quickly rotated the knife with the pliers, creating a vortex of water to cool the blade.

The young people present naturally couldn't understand this step, but a top-notch sword-forging master would be able to see the trick.

This step allows the blade edge to form an extremely fine martensitic structure, which is the effect that quenching aims to achieve, but at the same time, it does not cause the blade to cool down immediately. In this way, the toughness of the blade is greatly extended.

There are many ways to achieve a blade that is both hard and tough. Chinese methods such as folding forging and clay firing can achieve similar results, but to forge it directly using this method is... extremely exaggerated.

Since this is just a repair of a finished knife, the previous forging and shaping process was not used, so the time consumed was not much.

After quenching, the final step is finishing.

Li Younan asked, "Do you have a whetstone?"

A whetstone is essential; after all, even when forging or repairing this knife, you should still bring a whetstone.

Upon hearing Li Younan's words, the group, who were still immersed in the previous forging process, finally snapped out of their daze and took out a whetstone.

Li Younan began to carefully grind the blade, then mixed fine charcoal powder from the charcoal fire with water and applied it to the blade, gently tapping and polishing it with a hammer.

This step also allows the fine carbon powder to adsorb and remove the oxide scale.

After Li Younan's efforts, the blade finally achieved a matte, rust-resistant finish. The shape of the knife had changed compared to before, and it was no longer as wide.

Li Younan turned to Lian Feng and asked, "What did you cut the knife into that broke?"

Lian Feng paused for a moment: "Yes, chop cow bones."

"Are there any more beef bones?"

"Uh, what are you going to do?"

"bring here."

Lian Feng immediately sensed something was wrong: "It will cut it off again."

Li Younan smiled slightly and gently tapped the steel plate with the knife. The blade rang crisply like a bell, indicating that its toughness had met the required standard; while the edge was sharp as a whistle, without a doubt that the knife was now strong yet resilient, and its sound resonant yet firm. Li Younan said, "How will I know if it's been repaired if I don't try?"

While Lian Feng was still hesitating, his companions couldn't contain their curiosity any longer and quickly retrieved the beef bones they hadn't prepared earlier from the car.

"Try it now, I can't wait!"

"Yeah, anyway, it's Lian Feng's knife..."

Lian Feng: "Huh?"

Before Lian Feng could object, Li Younan slashed at the cow bone with his knife.

With a loud "bang," bone and flesh, along with other fragments, flew everywhere.

Li Younan mustered all his strength and chopped the cow bone in two.

Looking at the blade again, there were no chips or nicks; the blade was smooth and new.

This scene completely shocked Lian Feng, because it meant that after Li Younan's repair, the strength of the knife had been increased even more than before.
Li Younan blew on the blade, laughed, and returned the knife to Lian Feng.

Lian Feng finally came to his senses: "This...this..."

"Don't recklessly buy knives in the future. The waters here are too deep; you can't handle it."

"Uh, oh, okay."

At this moment, Li Younan had already stood up. This forging of the sword was just a temporary itch for him.

This is really great!

He hasn't used this skill yet.

This experience gave him even more confidence to forge those classic divine weapons for himself—the Peerless Sword, the Bloodthirsty Blade, the Heavenly Lock Moon Slayer…

cough cough.

Just as Li Younan was about to leave, Lian Feng asked, "By the way, brother, what's your name? I haven't asked yet."

"My name is Li Younan."

"Li Younan?" Lian Feng suddenly remembered something. "Didn't you ski in the Northeast before?"

Li Younan looked at Lian Feng with some confusion.

To be honest, it's not strange for others to recognize him outside, but people know him more because of his experience of living alone in the wilderness, or because of his identity as a traveler, and even his label of restoring cultural relics in the Forbidden City is often mentioned.

It's somewhat surprising that one person only remembered his skiing experience.

Li Younan nodded: "Yeah, I glided through."

Lian Feng's eyes lit up immediately: "I was wondering why you looked so familiar. Oh, it's that skiing video I saw before!"

Li Younan blinked but remained silent.

Lian Feng added, "We are colleagues."

Li Younan stroked his chin: "You're a blacksmith too?"

"Uh……"

Realizing that Li Younan was joking, he couldn't help but burst into laughter. After laughing, he introduced himself seriously, "My name is Lian Feng."

"Yes, I heard them talking about it just now."

"I...I'm actually a mountaineering and skiing enthusiast."

The young man's companion immediately grinned and said, "Lian Feng is being a bit modest. If he's just an enthusiast, then most people in this world don't even qualify as enthusiasts."

Another companion said, "Lian Feng has climbed mountains over 5000 meters high and skied down from them. This time, our goal is to get Lian Feng to climb Mount Everest and then ski down from it."

Upon hearing this, Li Younan also showed a hint of surprise.

In extreme sports, there is a challenge known as the Ozaki Eight Challenges, one of which is called Ice Freeze, which involves downhill skiing from the Alps.

Compared to the solidification of ice, skiing down Mount Everest is far more exaggerated and difficult than the so-called solidification of ice.

However, Lian Feng said, "We want to complete this challenge, not just for ourselves."

"Polish mountaineer Andrzej Baguil recently accomplished this feat."

“Back in 2018, he had already completed the entire ascent of K2 without supplemental oxygen. Not long ago, after he completed the ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, we thought, if foreigners can do it, we can do it too.”

"Although he was the first person to climb down Mount Everest without oxygen, he used two skis, while we plan to use a single ski this time, and we will also take a shorter time."

Hearing Lian Feng's words, Li Younan was also somewhat surprised.

He looked into Lian Feng's eyes; the young man's eyes held a very resolute light.

Lian Feng continued with a smile, "I said a few more words because I knew you ski. Now we're continuing our journey. If you have time to come to Everest Base Camp, you can come and witness this moment with us."

Li Younan couldn't help but ask, "What's the highest altitude you've ever reached when you went mountain climbing or skiing?"

"It is over 5200 meters."

Li Younan frowned: "You've only ever climbed mountains over 5200 meters, and this time you're going to choose the most difficult one, Mount Everest?"

"I just think that if foreigners can do it, then we can do it too."

Li Younan was at a loss for words. In his opinion, such a choice was somewhat reckless.

However, Lian Feng's companion seemed to have seen through Li Younan's thoughts and said, "Brother, I know what you're thinking, but it's not what you think. There are actually some special reasons for our plan this time..."

"Actually, it's because about six months ago, when we went abroad to climb a snow-capped mountain, we were looked down upon by a Polish team."

“At the time, we were the only team that completed the uphill run, which should have been a very happy thing, but we didn’t earn their respect.”

“During our argument, one sentence from the other side left a deep impression on us: Only one person in the world has completed the ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. This person will forever etch his name in the history of human mountaineering, and this person is a Polish, the pride of Poland.”

“If you can do that, perhaps I will consider apologizing to you Chinese people.”

Li Younan said with some helplessness, "To be fair, Andrzej Baguil is an admirable adventurer, mountaineer, and skier from any perspective."

"But to use someone else's honor as a pretext to look down on them is, frankly, somewhat ridiculous."

"There is absolutely no reason for that team to disrespect you. Is it just because Andrzej is from the same country that they are proud? You don't have to pay them any attention."

The group exchanged glances, and Lian Feng smiled and nodded, saying, "Brother, you're right. This team is bringing shame to a great mountaineer like Andrzej Baguil."

"However, we are looking at this issue from a different perspective."

He paused, then said seriously, "There is no professional team in China for this project. We are very likely the only Chinese team that can replicate Andrzej's feat in this project."

"We finally made up our minds not just because we were ridiculed by that Polish team, but because we believed... if we could do it, it would not only be a vivid testament to our own transcendence, but also a kind of self-transcendence of our national civilization, setting a benchmark for possibility."

Li Younan blinked.

Is it that high?

However, after a moment, he understood. After all, climbing Mount Everest is not something that ordinary people can do. And when you link this to your love for your country and nation, it is not an exaggeration to elevate it from a personal perspective.

But Li Younan thought it was a bit silly.

After all, China today is strong enough that it will not feel inferior simply because its football team can never be promoted out of Asia, nor will it feel superior to other nations just because one person can ski down Mount Everest.

But in any case, if they can really do it, it would indeed be something that makes the Chinese people proud.

Li Younan smiled and said, "If I have the opportunity, I will go and witness it."

After parting ways with Lian Feng and his team, Li Younan returned to his RV, feeling inexplicably melancholy.

This young man named Lian Feng always had a calm smile on his face, but he did things with an inexplicable tenacity.

He sighed slightly. Climbing Mount Everest and then skiing down from there is no easy feat.

They are not themselves.

Li Younan touched his chin. Unfortunately, he didn't bring his skis this time.

Li Younan planned to rest at the foot of the mountain for another night and cross the pass the next day.

After dinner, Liu Yu made a video call to Liu Li.

While the two were chatting, Li Younan sensibly shrank to the side and did not appear in the camera's view.

While Liu Li and Li Younan were chatting, Li Younan would also contact some old friends. In fact, he had always kept in touch with those friends.

The person who called today was Jing Chaoyi.

The young woman is planning to open a bed and breakfast by the sea. She has been talking about this for a long time, and now it's finally going to be on the agenda.

She chattered on and on, asking Li Younan a lot of questions about opening a bed and breakfast, and Li Younan gave her a lot of targeted advice.

Later in the conversation, Jing Chaoyi suddenly said, "Senior, when are you coming to the beach? I'll treat you. To be honest, senior, I've been missing you a bit."

Li Younan laughed heartily, then suddenly felt a bit of quiet; the chat on Liu Li's end seemed to have stopped.

He subconsciously turned his head and saw that Liu Li was standing next to him at some point.

The two looked at each other. Liu Li's eyelashes trembled slightly, and her big eyes looked somewhat innocent: "I, I'm going to take a shower."

"Uh...oh."

After the person left, the sound of running water from the showerhead came from the bathroom shortly afterward.

Liu Li let the water wet her hair, closed her eyes, and slightly raised her head, letting the warm water cover her body.

After letting the water wash over her for a while, she slowly opened her eyes, a hint of determination in them, as if she had made a major decision.

(End of this chapter)