Chapter 72

The reason for choosing this name wasn't because Tang En was a nationalist who wanted to plant the flag of a certain country all over Prandar...

It was purely out of laziness; since he was surnamed Tang, he decided to use this name.

Of course, if you want to interpret it that way, it's fine; after all, Tang En didn't think too much about it.

"Great Tang Chamber of Commerce? Good."

Fiona immediately wrote down the name. At this moment, Tang En suddenly said, "Right, in the future, all the products we produce must bear our mark."

Fiona was taken aback, "Mark?"

"Yes, just like master blacksmiths who engrave their names on the weapons they forge."

Tang En snapped his fingers, and a flame immediately appeared in the air. The flame quickly twisted and rotated, soon forming the image of a coiled golden dragon, which wrapped around the Chinese characters "Great Tang": "This logo will be our trademark from now on."

"What is this?"

Fiona couldn't recognize the animal formed by the flame or the two characters that looked like text, finding it a bit novel.

"You don't need to know what it is. In short, the logo of our Great Tang Chamber of Commerce will be this golden dragon."

"Trademark? What's that?"

Fiona was confused; she couldn't understand anything Tang En was saying.

Tang En suddenly realized that the concept of brand trademarks didn't exist in Prandar. Even the best products from masters were just at the stage of building a reputation.

So, Tang En simply explained the role of trademarks to Fiona.

"Fiona, if you were a warrior and needed to buy a weapon, and you had two options in front of you, both of the same quality, appearance, and price, but one was forged by Brian and the other by Edgar, which would you choose?"

"Of course, the one forged by Brian."

Fiona rolled her eyes; did he really need to ask? Dwarven craftsmanship was a guarantee of quality.

"Exactly, but if you didn't see the forging process, how would you tell which product was made by whom?"

"Well... usually, there would be a mark left by the blacksmith, right?"

"Exactly, that's the雏形 of a trademark."

Tang En nodded, "Taking it a step further, if this trademark is clearly marked on the product, and Brian's product is slightly more expensive than Edgar's, which would you choose?"

"If the price difference isn't too much, I would still choose the one forged by Brian..."

As soon as Fiona finished speaking, she immediately understood, "I get it! This is the significance of trademarks and brands!"

"Exactly. Trademarks are for identifying products, while brands are for adding value to the products."

Tang En clapped his hands, "What we need to do is to put our trademark on every product we produce, so everyone knows that these products are made by the Great Tang Chamber of Commerce, originating from Ellington. Our goal is to make the Great Tang Chamber of Commerce's trademark a recognized brand."

"In that case..."

Fiona's eyes sparkled; coming from a business family, she quickly thought of more benefits of trademarks: "Once the market recognizes our brand, our competitiveness will increase significantly. Not only that, but it will also prevent others from counterfeiting our products! And with a brand, our profits will be even higher!"

"Exactly, that's called an anti-counterfeiting trademark, which is more technologically advanced, but..."

Tang En chuckled, "It's not a problem for me; I'll take care of it."

"Great!"

Fiona became excited, as if she could already see a vast market beckoning to her.

"By the way, when I returned, I traveled with the Cross Rose Mercenary Group. They are currently stationed at the Oak Heart Inn and will stay for a day. Send someone to notify Old Tom and Aunt Fanny to take good care of the guests, making sure they feel at home."

Old Tom was the father of Danny's friend Tom. Since he couldn't read, his son was also named Tom, and everyone called him Old Tom.

"Mercenary group? Isn't it unnecessary for mercenaries...?"

"No, you've forgotten something."

Tang En shook his head, "For Ellington to increase its population, the only way is to build a reputation, so everyone knows that Ellington is a great place, where the people are warm and welcoming, the security is excellent, and the goods are of high quality and low price. Once everyone forms this impression, the population will naturally gather here."

Tang En said earnestly, "We need to treat the territory as a brand to manage; this is the path we should take."

"I understand!"

Fiona solemnly accepted Tang En's guidance. Despite his extravagant spending, Fiona had to admit that Tang En had an incredible talent in this area. The ideas he came up with were like divine inspiration, seemingly simple but with incredible potential for future development.

Fiona even thought that if Tang En said he was the son of the gods, she wouldn't be surprised.

After explaining these matters, Tang En's attention returned to the charcoal factory: "Is the charcoal factory operational now?"

"The first batch of charcoal has already been produced. With the help of the old charcoal workers, the slaves have already gotten the hang of it."

Tang En's spirits lifted, "Great, next, we can consider building a blast furnace!"

To smelt steel, besides blowing carbon, quicklime is also needed, which is made by burning limestone. Limestone is abundant in the Brussels iron mine, and he had already instructed Rogers to leave the limestone behind.

Rogers told Tang En that Rex and the others had even worried about how to deal with these stones, but he never thought Tang En would have them transported to Ellington.

Tang En didn't explain at the time, but now a large pile of limestone had been brought with the iron ore.

Burning quicklime also requires a production line, but Tang En wasn't clear on the specifics and didn't want to complicate things. Limestone decomposes into calcium oxide and carbon dioxide when heated to high temperatures, and calcium oxide is quicklime. Knowing this principle, he would use magic to solve the problem rather than overthink it.

The problem of quicklime was easy to solve, but the main issue troubling Tang En was the blast furnace.

In Tang En's memory, large factories used a type of blast furnace called a converter, but he had no idea what a converter was...

He vaguely knew a bit about blast furnaces.

But whether it was a converter or a blast furnace, the main technical challenges were temperature and slag removal, which weren't problems in Prandar.

Temperature? Tang En estimated that the temperature of his high-level fire magic could easily exceed 10,000 degrees... to smelt steel? Don't be ridiculous, the iron ore would probably vaporize.

The temperature for smelting steel could be easily solved with a fire magic array.

As for slag removal, arcane magic had a miraculous effect... it could clean the slag from the molten steel without affecting the steel itself.

Instead of worrying about this, he should worry about how to make ordinary workers complete these steps in the future.

Perhaps... he could recruit some mages to do this?

Tang En thought of this idea and then laughed, as mages in Prandar were generally quite proud and wouldn't do such work.

Unless...

Unless he trained some mages himself.

"...Lord? Lord!"

Fiona called out several times before Tang En came to his senses, "What is it?"

"Do you have anything else? If not, I need to get to work!"

"No, nothing..."

So, Tang En was kicked out of the study by Fiona.

"Really, with such a bad temper, who would want her in the future..."

Tang En complained subconsciously.

"Bang!"

Something inside the study seemed to hit the door, and Tang En immediately ran away.

"Blast furnace... hmm... blast furnace..."

Tang En thought hard but couldn't figure out the specific structure of a blast furnace. Finally, he decided to go find Brian.

"Remove impurities?"

Brian was taken aback by the question, "There's nothing special, just normal melting, casting, and cooling. When needed, it's melted and forged again."

"But that's not right..."

Tang En frowned, as the quality of dwarven products was generally better than those of human blacksmiths. Skill was one factor, but material was another, and skill alone couldn't completely solve material defects.

"Melting... casting... re-melting... wait!"

Tang En suddenly had an idea, "I remember you once criticized the dwarves living in human cities, saying their skills were getting worse?"

"That's true."

Brian looked puzzled; he had mentioned this casually when drunk, so why was it brought up now?

Tang En seemed to have hit on something important, "I remember that the underground of Forgehammer is a volcano, and your dwarves use the volcanic lava to continuously heat the furnace, and there are rune dwarves who use fire runes to gather fire elements, right?"

Brian's eyes widened, "Damn—how do you know this!?"

Brian had never told Tang En about the situation in Forgehammer, let alone the secret of the rune dwarves, which was a closely guarded secret of the dwarven nation!

Other races didn't even know about this!

Tang En wasn't surprised by Brian's reaction; in the eyes of the natives, dwarves were a purely warrior race, with only warriors, priests, and paladins of the Earth Goddess, and no other professions.

However, there were actually mages among the dwarves.

According to dwarven legends, these were the rune children blessed by the Earth Goddess, born with magic power, and thus called rune dwarves.

But that wasn't the most important thing.

The most important thing was the significant role of rune dwarves in the dwarven race—while not all rune dwarves were master craftsmen, all master craftsmen were rune dwarves! ===PS: Please vote, vote, vote~~~~

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