Roland sat at his desk and was wondering how to attack the royal palace, the floor-to-ceiling window behind him suddenly came from the touch of a knock.

Looking back, I saw the lightning lying on the window, a panic on her face, and Maisie crouched over her head and gimmicked the window.

As soon as the Nightinge opened the window, the little girl flew into Roland's arms.

“What’s wrong,” he said, “what happened?”

The black stone!“A huge snow mountain!”Maisie fell on the table and flapping her wings to report.

“Ah?”

"Not at all," said the lightning, "it is the devil, I see the devil!"

“What?”Roland looked serious, he touched each other's heads, let her calm down, "Don't panic, you say slowly."

After a while, the lightning rose from the prince's bosom, the bright short hair of gold appeared messy, and there were two circles of light red marks around the eye, apparently strung out by the windshield in the high-speed flight, "I intend to draw out the border line of the fascinated forest, and then marched west along the Red Water River, and then found a big mountain..."

After listening to her detailed description of what she had seen and heard, Roland couldn't help but stare at her eyes, the red mist on which the devil depended on was behind the snowy mountains, and it was only more than two hundred kilometers away from the west.

He looked at the Nightinginge, and the latter nodded, "I'll call the other sisters."

An emergency meeting was held at the castle office.

After Roland repeated the discovery of the lightning to the crowd, the group of witches who had experienced the night of the killing showed an uneasy look, especially the leaves, as the witch who killed the two devils with her own hands, could not help but cover her mouth and cry out.

"Your Highness, I propose to make further exploration of the red fog-covered land," the book first opened, "after all, the lightning only looked at a few eyes at a very long distance, and it is not certain that the devil must be under the red mist."In addition, even if this is confirmed, it will be necessary to detect whether they will reach the mainland of the Kingdom along the coastline by the mountains by the sea.”

“I agree with the book,” Wendy nodded, “and, though they are very powerful, it is better to be prepared to defend than to be captured.”

As the two oldest witches, the book and Wendy have always been the backbone of many sisters, and although others are still a little afraid, no one wants to sit still.

Roland also favors this response, see no objection, things are basically settled, the key is how to implement.

“Use a hot air balloon to detect it,” Anna proposed, “to cover the camouflage of the sky and fly over the sea under the cover of the clouds.”

"You can take Silverwith with you," said the Nightinge, "her ability to cope with this situation could not be more appropriate."

"Well," Roland nodded, "and besides... I'm going too."

“Your Highness!”At the same time, Wendy, the book and the Nightingers stopped at the same time, "You can't take this risk yourself!"

"It is not an adventure," waved Roland, "if they had the ability to leap over the sea or the mountains, they should have been all over the four kingdoms long ago."The reason why they are still gathered in the extremes of the world shows that the devil is not as terrible as he thought.”

There is another reason why he did not say that he was more experienced than anyone else in judging the development of an antagonistic civilization—and that it would be of great help to set the course of development and the strategy of attack in the future if he could see the devil and their cities with his own eyes.

“But...” Wendy hesitated.

"Don't worry, just look at it from a distance," laughed the prince. "If it were dangerous to even stay in a distant investigation, I wouldn't promise to let you go."

"All right, but you must take me," said the dissuasion, and the Nightingers' first turn.

Looking at the earnest look of the other side, Roland knew that he could not refuse her, and after thinking about it, he announced: "Then the people on this trip are Anna, Wendy, Soroia, Žilwei, Nightingers, Lightning and Maisie."

“A week after the departure, I’ll give each of you a revolver except the necessary food preparation.”Practice it well for a week so that even non-combat witches have the ability to fight back against any enemy.”

The speed of the hot air balloon is far less than that of lightning, and the distance of more than two hundred kilometers is afraid to fly all day, so we still need to stay in the field for one night to complete the investigation, considering this, dry food, tents and weapons are necessary.

“Yes, Your Highness,” the witches answered in unison.

After the people left, Roland took the time to check the black ore brought back by the lightning.

“You say this stone is everywhere on the edge of the forest?”

"Well," said the lightning, now calm again, sitting at the redwood table with his feet, his cheeks still a little red and unfazed, "and the closer to the foot of the mountain, the more the view from the air, the black stone covered the ground is about a dozen times larger than the border town."

Roland put it in his hand and took a slight jump in his heart.

In terms of weight, it is much lighter than ordinary stone and is unlikely to be a metal ore.The appearance is hard and light, can map the metallic luster, and exposed to the surface... it is difficult to be a coal mine.

Thinking of this, he hurriedly called Anna back.

Under the burning of the black fire, the stone soon became red and bright, and it looked like a lot of iron ore in a smelting furnace, but it did not dissolve.Even if the black fire is recovered, the orange light it emits has not weakened in the slightest, and the blue flame can be seen on the surface.

Roland confirmed his suspicion that this is indeed a piece of high-quality anthracite.

"It turns out that the coal mines look like this," said the lightning surprised, "I thought they were as fragile and fragile as wood carbon, and there was so much powder that a little touch would get the palms dirty."

“It was crushed and water-doped briquettes and briquettes,” Roland laughs, “and most coal mines are mined like stones, of course, the more high-quality raw coals, the harder they are, and in the end, like these stones, the surface can even reflect luster.”

This unexpected discovery made him happy.

Coal is not a rare thing in the gray castle, and there are coal mines in Longling and Yingguang City, mostly used for kiln and heating.But in fact, its use is very wide, before the popularity of the internal combustion engine, it is the burning coal propped up the steam power half of the sky.Coal coking can replace the charcoal metallurgical steelmaking, than the felling of trees to protect the environment, even after entering the electrical era, coal can also refine gas, hydrogen and asphalt, but also can be used to generate electricity, is a good and cheap excellent fuel.

Holding an open-pit coal mine is obviously much better than relying on imports.The only question is, how do you develop it?

Roland moved his eyes to the newly drawn map of the Lightning.

It seems imperative to build more inland steam cement ships.(Unfinished.