Several eunuchs came in carrying baskets of salt.
Lao Zhu walked up to him, waved his hand quickly and said, "Open it."
Just as the eunuch opened the salt basket, Zhu Biao's voice came out.
"Father, what are you doing?"
Suddenly seeing Han Du standing aside, Zhu Biao asked in surprise: "Han Du? When did you return to Beijing?"
Han Du smiled awkwardly, not knowing how to answer.
When Lao Zhu saw this, he hummed and said, "I asked him to return to Beijing."
When Zhu Biao heard this, he immediately knew what was going on. After taking a deep look at Han Du, he didn't ask any more questions.
Lao Zhu also turned his attention to the salt. As the eunuch opened the salt basket, the snow-white to crystal clear salt was immediately revealed.
Lao Zhu was surprised for a moment and couldn't help but reach out and grab a handful. He opened his fingers slightly and the salt slipped from his fingers like water.
Fine and dry.
Lao Zhu gently licked the salt particles on his palm. It was full of salty taste and pure.
"Good salt, this salt is better than tribute." Lao Zhu came to a definite conclusion.
He glanced at Han Du in surprise, "Are these salts really made from sea water? Then why are the salts that people boiled with sea water in the past not as good as yours?"
"This was indeed exposed by Wei Chen from the sea water." Han Du replied seriously.
"I'm afraid it's not easy to produce such good salt, right?" Lao Zhu sighed. The better things in this world are, the rarer they are. This is the truth.
"Actually, it's not that complicated..." Han Du briefly explained to Lao Zhu what the solution separation and purification method is.
Lao Zhu seemed to understand, but as long as Han Du could use simple methods to get such good salt, he didn't bother to care about the rest.
"What about the yield of this salt?" Finally, Lao Zhu asked what he cared about most, which was the yield.
Han Du smiled awkwardly and did not answer immediately.
When Lao Zhu saw Han Du's expression, his heart suddenly skipped a beat.
"You don't want to tell me that there is a lot of salt, right?"
"Then it depends on the emperor's explicit instructions on what counts as too much and what counts as too little." Han Du replied seriously.
"One acre, just one acre of salt field, how often can we produce salt? How much can we produce at each time?" Even though Lao Zhu had a premonition in his heart, he couldn't help but ask.
Han Du thought for a moment, shook his head and said, "One acre? This humble minister really doesn't know that salt fields start from ten acres, and none is as small as one acre."
"Then ten acres. How much salt is needed to produce ten acres at a time? How much salt can be produced?" Lao Zhu asked eagerly.
Han Du counted with his fingers before replying: "With the current weather and the time it takes to clean up the salt fields, we can produce salt every seven or eight days. As for how many...ten acres , probably about a thousand catties.”
"How much?" Zhu Biao was so shocked that he started to murmur, and his voice was a bit weird.
Fortunately, Lao Zhu was mentally prepared, so he was able to withstand what Han Du said and did not show any abnormality. Lao Zhu looked at Han Du seriously and couldn't help but sigh, Han Du was really able to get any rare things out in piles.
The thing about fine steel is that it can only be made into steel after a hundred refinements. It takes a blacksmith several days to hammer out a small amount of fine steel. But Han Du was good at it and built a strange-looking furnace, which could produce tens of thousands of jins of fine steel in one furnace.
The same is true for today's refined salt. Why can salt solution become tribute salt? Just because its quality is good and its output is small. But now, alas...
Lao Zhu couldn't help but sigh.
Ten acres of salt fields produce thousands of kilograms of refined salt at a time. Then if we build 100,000 acres of salt fields, wouldn't it be enough to dry up the salt in one year, which would be enough for the people of Ming Dynasty to eat salt?
Zhu Biao also thought of this and quickly said to his father: "Father, since the salt fields in Handu produce so much salt, why not dig more salt fields and solve once and for all the problem of people in the Ming Dynasty having difficulty eating salt?"
"Salt fields naturally have to be dug," even Lao Zhu couldn't stand the temptation of salt fields.
The price of coarse salt on the market is 100 yuan per pound. As for refined salt like Han Do, the price per kilogram is at least 500 Wen. One thousand kilograms of refined salt is worth five hundred guan, and this is just one production of ten acres of salt fields.
Even if there are ten acres of fertile land planted with rice, it will only be able to harvest fifty dan in a year. Even at the current extremely high price of grain, it is only one load or two guan, which is only one hundred guan.
How can one hundred strings be compared with five hundred strings? What's more, this is just the Yantian's one-time income.
In such a salt field, there is salt everywhere in the sun. This is simply money in vain.
Even Lao Zhu was inevitably moved.
"But, not now." In the end, Lao Zhu resisted the temptation to get rich.
"Why is this?" Zhu Biao was very puzzled. He was obviously moved when he saw his father, but at the last moment, his father still rejected the proposal to continue digging the salt fields.
Lao Zhu glanced at Zhu Biao and said in a deep voice: "You haven't forgotten how the salt of the Ming Dynasty appeared, right? The production of more salt in the Ming Dynasty will naturally be beneficial to the people of the Ming Dynasty. But if this leads to border insecurity Stable, then do you think it will be harmful to Ming Dynasty or beneficial?"
After giving Zhu Biao a few words and seeing that he was silent, he stopped caring about him. Lao Zhu turned to Han Du and told him: "The salt produced in the salt fields must not be sold now. There is a lot of salt produced in the salt fields, so you have to keep an eye on it."
"Wei Chen understands." Han Du said immediately without any hesitation. But he was very satisfied in his heart. Since Lao Zhu said that he could not sell salt yet, it meant that even he was moved. So the salt produced in the salt fields will be allowed to be sold in the future. Isn’t it just a matter of Lao Zhu’s words?
Moreover, Han Du also understood that if one day the problem of food shortage at the border was solved. I'm afraid Lao Zhu will be the first to jump out and sell sea salt to all parts of the Ming Dynasty.
But in front of Ming Dynasty, there is no way. Ming Dynasty itself is severely short of food.
After settling the matter of Haiyan for the time being, Lao Zhu turned his attention to Han Du.
"Do you know why I am urgently calling you back to Beijing this time?"
"Back to the emperor, Wei Chen didn't know. Wei Chen set off immediately after receiving the order and got on the carriage until he got to the palace." Even if Han Du knew some reasons, he would categorically say that he didn't know, otherwise he was Tricked the eunuch and the old eunuch.
Leaking information about the emperor to oneself, to put it more seriously, is called spying on the palace. Since ancient times, too many people have died on this knife edge.
