Huo Tieli, a craftsman from Guanzhong, has been working with fire and iron all his life. He just wants to guard his ancestral blacksmith shop and make some good plows for his neighbors. During a refugee rebellion, he was imprisoned for forging self-defense iron weapons for hungry people. When he returned from prison, he found that someone had been eyeing the secret map of the iron mine that had been passed down from generation to generation in the Huo family. The border troops wanted iron knives, the powerful men wanted to make money from the mines, and the mine supervisors wanted rewards for their merits. The three forces surrounded him like iron pincers. Huo Tieliang had no military power or backing, only an ancestral hammer and a pair of hands blackened by charcoal fire. He went back and forth between the anvil and the oxen, breaking through the situation with the wisdom of a craftsman, and establishing himself with the heart of the people - since the world is as solid as hard soil, then he uses an iron plow to plow it open inch by inch.
