Chapter 806 --806

Chapter 806: Chapter-806

Heena didn’t just barge in and slam her demands on the table. She stood patiently just outside the intense heat radius of the furnace, waiting for the blacksmith to finish her hammer strike.

As the massive woman lowered her hammer with a heavy grunt, Heena offered a polite, respectful bow of her head.

"Good morning, Master Smith," Heena greeted, her raspy voice projecting easily over the crackle of the furnace. "The heat of your forge burns clean, and the sparks are bright. You must be using premium mountain coal."

The blacksmith wiped the heavy sweat from her brow with a dirty rag, stepping back from the anvil. She squinted, taking in the tall, pale woman wrapped in a dark cloak. Hesitation and a deep layer of suspicion instantly crossed the blacksmith’s soot-stained face. People who spoke politely and looked like fallen nobility rarely ventured into the lower artisan alleys unless they were lost, or looking to swindle someone.

"We use what we can afford to keep the fires hot, My Lady," the blacksmith replied cautiously, crossing her massive, scarred arms. "What brings someone like you to a soot-stained alley? Need a carriage wheel fixed? Or a decorative hairpin?"

"Neither," Heena replied, stepping up to the wooden workbench beside the anvil. She unrolled a meticulously drawn parchment. "I need doors. Six of them."

The blacksmith leaned over the drawings, her cautious expression morphing into genuine, professional surprise. Heena hadn’t just drawn crude rectangles; she had sketched a highly detailed, proportional architectural schematic for six distinct doors, complete with heavy hinge placements and internal deadbolt slots.

"These are... incredibly precise," the blacksmith muttered, tracing the mechanisms with a thick, calloused finger. "I have never seen schematics drawn like this. I can forge them, yes. But they will be heavy."

"That is exactly what I want," Heena stated, her tone turning entirely serious. "But these aren’t standard wooden doors with iron bands. I need them cast and forged in solid, reinforced iron. The main entrance double-door must be the heaviest—at least eighty to ninety kilograms of solid metal. The other five can be slightly lighter, but they must be completely impenetrable."

The blacksmith and her daughters froze, staring at Heena as if she had just grown a second head.

"Eighty to ninety kilograms?" the blacksmith repeated, her hesitation returning in full force. She looked at Heena’s simple, dust-covered clothes, clearly doubting this woman had the funds for such an absurd, military-grade request. "My Lady, do you have any idea how much raw ore and coal it takes to smelt a slab of iron that thick? For that sheer weight alone... that will cost you nine taels of silver."

Nine taels?! the System shrieked digitally in Heena’s mind. Host, that is outright robbery! That could buy a mansion in the outer rings!

Heena didn’t blink. She knew the true cost of manual labor, the agonizing process of smelting slag, and the physical toll of hammering raw iron without a modern hydraulic press. Nine taels was a fortune, but it was a fair price for absolute security against a siege.

"I accept the price," Heena said smoothly. "How fast can you have them installed?"

The blacksmith looked at her daughters, silently calculating their stamina and the forge’s capacity. She turned back to Heena, her expression grim. "Even with the silver guaranteed, metal takes time. In two weeks, working day and night, we can only forge three of them for you. We can finish the main eighty-kilogram heavy door, and two of the inner room doors. The rest will have to wait."

Heena frowned slightly. "I am opening a business soon. I need the security now. Can you pull double shifts? Hire extra hands from the neighboring forges? I will pay a rush fee if you can finish all six in two weeks."

The blacksmith shook her head, offering a firm, uncompromising refusal. "Not possible, My Lady. We don’t have a magical furnace. To smelt, fold, and pound ninety kilograms of iron without it snapping under its own weight takes precise timing and slow cooling. Metal does not rush, no matter how much silver you throw at it. Three doors in two weeks. That is our absolute limit."

Heena studied the woman’s stubborn, professional pride and nodded. She respected a contractor who wouldn’t compromise the structural integrity of their work just for a quick bribe.

"Fine. Three doors in two weeks," Heena agreed. She reached into her sleeve, pulled out three heavy silver ingots, and dropped them directly onto the anvil with a resounding clack.

"Three taels now," Heena stated, her pitch-black eyes locking onto the blacksmith’s. "Four taels when the first three doors are ready to hang. The remaining two when you personally install the final batch on my hinges."

The entire family stared at the silver. In the lower districts, absolutely no one casually produced raw silver that quickly without weeks of bitter haggling.

The blacksmith’s eyes went wide, suddenly connecting the dots between the staggering wealth, the dark cloak, and the terrifying rumors currently flying around the East Market. "Wait... you are the disgraced Lu family—"

Before the blacksmith could finish the fatal sentence, her husband suddenly stepped up behind her. He smoothly clamped a soot-stained hand over his wife’s mouth, cutting off the insult entirely.

"We will begin the forging immediately, My Lady," the husband said, offering Heena a polite, deeply apologetic smile over his wife’s shoulder. "We will not let you down."

Heena offered a faint, approving smile at the older man’s quick social reflexes. "Thank you. But before you stoke the fires... I actually have a few more things I need made."

The blacksmith peeled her husband’s hand away, looking bewildered. "More?"

Heena grabbed a spare piece of charcoal from the workbench and flipped her parchment over. With swift, practiced strokes, she began sketching modern organizational furniture that simply did not exist in this matriarchal dimension.

"I need iron shelves for my shop, but forged much lighter than the doors," Heena explained, drawing a tiered wire rack. "And an iron almirah. A secure, locking wardrobe cabinet."

"An iron almirah?" the eldest daughter gasped. Everyone made wardrobes out of cedar or elm; forging an entire cabinet out of metal was an absurdly expensive, unheard-of luxury.

Heena ignored their shock, rapidly sketching out three to four smaller, highly functional stands: a ventilated wire rack for fresh vegetables, a multi-tiered organizer for the storefront, and a slotted dish-drying rack for the kitchen.

The blacksmith studied the revolutionary designs, completely mesmerized by the sheer utility of them. "The smaller stands and organizers... my daughters can forge those in a few days. But the almirah is complex. That will take at least an extra week."

"That is fine," Heena nodded.

"These designs are brilliant," the blacksmith admitted, tapping the drawing of the dish rack with a heavy finger. "Can we keep this parchment? We could use these exact patterns in our own home."

"You can," Heena agreed, "but I strongly advise you not to mass-produce and sell them to the public just yet."

"Why not?"

"Because raw iron corrodes," Heena explained, her modern medical knowledge bleeding through. She couldn’t exactly lecture ancient blacksmiths on the microscopic bacteria that caused tetanus, but she could enforce basic safety.