"Worms growing out of the body?"
After hearing Fu Zhu's suggestion, Oleg couldn't help but shudder. Even though he had seen all sorts of turbulent situations, he had never heard of a mining method that relied on worms growing out of one's body. But this also intensely piqued Oleg's curiosity.
Seeing Oleg seemed interested in this method, Fu Zhu decided to satisfy his curiosity, and simultaneously, satisfy his own desire to explain things.
"I can craft a type of potion called a Silverfish Potion. The effect is just as I described: after you drink this potion, if you take damage, numerous Silverfish will burst out from your body. These Silverfish will gnaw away at all the surrounding stone but will leave all the minerals behind. Put that way, you should be able to understand, right?
Unfortunately, I lack some of the tools and materials needed to make this potion."
If Oleg could find him a Brewing Stand, Fu Zhu wouldn't mind brewing some Silverfish Potions for him. After all, the various potions a Brewing Stand could make were extremely useful to him.
Besides drinking them himself, potions could also be thrown at enemies to inflict negative buffs, and even combined with arrows to create Tipped Arrows with various special effects.
Unfortunately, Fu Zhu hadn't yet found any item that could be converted into Blaze Rods, making potion brewing just empty talk for now.
Oleg, meanwhile, imagined the scene of dozens of Silverfish bursting out of his own body, couldn't help but shiver again, and decisively extinguished the thought of buying Silverfish Potions from Fu Zhu for mining.
Seeing Oleg seemed uninterested in the Silverfish Potion, Fu Zhu shrugged and stopped talking about it. He casually placed a Crafting Table on the spot and proceeded to craft a Blast Furnace right there to smelt iron ingots.
Although iron ingots were far inferior to diamonds for tools, weapons, and armor, their usefulness couldn't be compared to the disgrace of the metal ingot family—copper ingots.
While smelting the iron ingots, Fu Zhu didn't forget to hold the Godfall Sword in his off-hand. Smelting iron ingots produced a small amount of experience; although not much, every little bit counted, allowing him to repair the Godfall Sword faster.
Oleg stood aside, watching Fu Zhu periodically pull iron ingots out of that small Blast Furnace, his expression growing somewhat astonished.
Although the Blast Furnace before Fu Zhu had a peculiar shape, from the perspective of smelting minerals, its one-cubic-meter size was truly a bit too small. Yet, its efficiency was far faster than the large furnaces in their Underworld!
If their Underworld's large furnaces were bicycles, then the Blast Furnace Fu Zhu had set up was at least a car!
Moreover, the iron ingots in Fu Zhu's hand were snow-white, clearly indicating extremely high purity!
"Mr. Fu Zhu, could I possibly take a look at the iron ingot in your hand?"
"Iron ingot? Here."
Fu Zhu casually tossed an iron ingot directly to Oleg. Oleg subconsciously reached out to catch it, but the moment the ingot landed in his hand, its terrifying weight instantly dragged his palm towards the ground.
Startled, Oleg hastily withdrew his hand. Despite this, the momentum of the falling ingot still caused him to stumble and fall.
"You aren't trying to scam me, are you?"
Seeing Oleg suddenly fall to the ground, Fu Zhu's expression was first surprised, then gradually became somewhat unfriendly.
"Not at all!"
Oleg gritted his teeth and climbed up from the ground, his right palm bent unnaturally. Just that brief contact had directly dislocated his wrist. He looked again at the iron ingot on the ground, his expression turning puzzled.
He could physically feel that the ingot was incredibly heavy, yet why did it make absolutely no sound when it landed on the stone floor, like a feather drifting down?
What puzzled Oleg even more was, why did such a small ingot, barely the size of his palm, give him the feeling of holding a small mountain?
"Mr. Fu Zhu, why is this iron ingot of yours so heavy?"
"Heavy?"
Fu Zhu reached down and picked the iron ingot up from the ground. Honestly, he didn't feel it was heavy at all, even felt it was feather-light. Why would Oleg think it was heavy?
But the scene just now made Fu Zhu feel Oleg wasn't lying. Otherwise, his acting skills must be simply too superb, completely deceiving him.
Excluding the possibility that Oleg was lying, then it could only be that the rules of MC and the rules of this world were merging or conflicting.
In MC, Steve could lift any item with his hands; no matter how heavy something was, Steve couldn't feel the weight. Fu Zhu, having inherited Steve's characteristics, was the same.
However, in the real world, a one-cubic-meter block of iron weighed at least 7.85 tons. And Fu Zhu only needed nine iron ingots to craft an iron block, meaning the single iron ingot Fu Zhu had tossed to Oleg weighed at least 870 kilograms.
No wonder Oleg's hand was instantly dislocated. If his reaction had been half a beat slower, his hand might have turned into a pile of mush.
Oleg looked at the iron ingot that had dislocated his wrist, now held effortlessly in Fu Zhu's hand, and swallowed hard in astonishment.
"Mr. Fu Zhu, is this really an iron ingot?"
Such a small piece of iron possessing such terrifying weight—this mass and density were already beyond what iron should have!
"It's iron, just processed with different techniques than yours."
"Techniques..."
Oleg suddenly remembered another, even more terrifying thing. The pickaxe Fu Zhu used earlier to mine iron ore seemed to be made of iron too?
"Mr. Fu Zhu, were you using an iron pickaxe earlier? Could it be that the material used to make that kind of iron pickaxe is this very type of iron ingot?!"
"Yeah."
Fu Zhu frowned slightly at Oleg, not quite understanding. "If an iron pickaxe isn't made from iron ingots, can it still be called an iron pickaxe?"
"That's true... Then, an iron ingot of this quality must surely be able to make many iron pickaxes, right?"
"How is that possible? Uncle, you're quite the joker. How could such a small iron ingot be enough? It takes three iron ingots to make one iron pickaxe."
"Thr-three pieces?!"
Oleg was so shocked his eyes almost popped out of their sockets. He tremblingly raised his left hand, his fingers shaking slightly as they touched each other, calculating something.
"Based on the feeling just now, one piece must weigh at least several hundred kilograms. Three pieces... that's at least starting in tons! Mr. Fu Zhu, you usually mine by swinging a pickaxe weighing one or two tons?!"
"You could say that, yes. Is something wrong?"
"No..."
Oleg suddenly felt a sense of resignation. Originally, he had been somewhat envious of Fu Zhu's mining efficiency, wondering if they could somehow import this technology.
But now it seemed, the core component enabling such fast mining had to be Fu Zhu himself!