"In the future, Jinshui Village will produce more steel knives. By next year, there will be people pushing carts selling them. The price won't be high, and you can buy them then."
Ma Lin hopes these people can help in finding iron.
"With iron, we can make these steel knives, as well as other good things."
Think about it—Ma Lin has traveled so many places without finding any metal mines; his luck is really quite terrible.
'Big Tree' remarked that Ma Lin's luck will always be bad, and he might never find metal mines even until he's old and dying.
Ma Lin doesn't want things to develop like this at all.
The people of the Wild Dog Tribe showed Ma Lin quite a few stones, and Ma Lin spent an entire morning inspecting them.
Not one piece contained metal.
Ma Lin described to them what gold, silver, copper, iron, and tin look like, asking if they had ever seen them.
These primitive people were baffled and all said they had never seen them.
