Zhang Sihai set off with a few people.
Yun Chao was not worried about their safety at all.
If this kid couldn't even do this little thing well, he wouldn't be Zhang Sihai.
If he is not good at fighting, he will do some unscrupulous and crooked things. This guy is smarter than anyone else.
If we look at future generations, this guy will be a sales figure.
"Master Hu, is that hydraulic sledgehammer easy to use? Is it easy to cause problems?"
Master Hu was the first blacksmith Yunchao hired from Sanshui Town. His skills were average and not as good as Tang Long's.
After Tang Long arrived, Yun Chao put Tang Long in charge of research and Hu Tiejiang in charge of some low-tech tasks.
Tiejiang Hu was very excited: "It's very useful, but it's not good for making things that are too fine. The best thing to use is to make armor leaves, which are much faster than a person hammering them..."
The iron smelting technology of the Dawu Dynasty was relatively backward. Folk blacksmiths generally slowly forged red-hot pig iron into steel through repeated forging.
This is a decarbonization process.
During the repeated hammering process, the impurities in the pig iron are discharged and part of the carbon element is oxidized.
When the carbon content in iron falls below 2%, pig iron becomes steel.
This is the legendary Hundred Steelmaking.
However, using this method to make steel is not only slow in efficiency, but even the quality cannot be guaranteed.
If the blacksmith's skills are not good, the steel produced will be either hard or soft, and the specifications will be difficult to unify.
Therefore, it takes a long time to make a pair of armor, especially fish scale armor. A skilled blacksmith may not be able to complete it in a month or two.
Fish scale armor is an armor made of pieces of iron. It is named because it looks like fish scales.
There is also armor made of one iron ring connected to another, called chain mail.
Compared with fish scale armor, chain armor is lighter in weight and more flexible, but its production is more cumbersome, has higher technical requirements, and has slightly weaker defense.
Yun Chao doesn't plan to make chain armor, except for leather armor, which is fish scale armor.
Nowadays, hydraulic drive has replaced manual forging, which not only greatly improves the efficiency, but also enhances the quality of the finished product.
"Master Hu, this time I got a hundred pairs of armors from Dongping Mansion, which is enough for the time being. Let's not make armor leaves yet, let's make a batch of knife sticks."
The knife stick is a large wooden stick with a sharp knife attached to the front end.
This weapon can both hit hard and stab, making it a powerful weapon against armored soldiers and cavalry.
Yun Chao is worried that he will face off against officers and soldiers in the future, so he must prepare in advance to nip it in the bud.
Yun Chao briefly drew a picture of a knife-clipping stick, and Tiejiang Hu understood at a glance that this thing had no technical content.
After explaining to the blacksmith, Yun Chao asked a few carpenters to see if there was anything that needed to be improved on the waterwheel.
If you can, seize the time to build a batch. There are not too many of these things. They are growing in Wolong Valley.
In the past, Yun Chao lived in Wolong Village, and the only area that could be developed was a small area around Wolong Village.
Now Yun Chao's sphere of influence has expanded to Sanshui Town and Woniu Town, and the places that can be used have increased countless times.
Not to mention too many, Wolong Valley alone is more than ten miles long from Wolong Village to Sanshui Town.
During this period of time, Yun Chao has been letting people open up wasteland on both sides of Wolong Valley. If they were all opened up, ten thousand acres would not be able to be conquered.
Yunchao plans to build several more dams along Wolong Valley to take advantage of the water flow gap and increase hydraulic potential energy.
Just thinking about the scene of two rows of large waterwheels running simultaneously on both sides of Wolong Valley for more than ten miles is exciting.
What's more, Sanshui Town has more than one Wolong Valley, as well as Xiaosha River and Qingshui River.
If these three rivers are properly utilized, the entire fields in Sanshui Town will become irrigated lands.
With enough water for irrigation, much wasteland can be developed.
In addition, Yunchao made a large number of farm tools and purchased cattle. With the increase in productivity, not to mention feeding tens of thousands of people in Sanshui Town, even a few more Sanshui Towns might be OK.
"Uncle Jia, have you calculated how much wasteland we have opened up now?"
Jia Mancang's father took out a small notebook: "Brother Chao, as of the day before yesterday, 4,700 acres of wasteland on both sides of Wolong Valley have been reclaimed. In addition to the nearly 2,000 acres of cultivated land in Wolong Village, we can now cultivate it. Our fields already have nearly 7,000 acres!"
Jia Zhengjing was very excited. Nearly 7,000 acres of water were irrigated, and he never dared to dream about it!
There are only a thousand people in Wolong Village, and each person has an average of six or seven acres. Even if you don't do anything, just farming, you no longer have to worry about going hungry!
Of course, this is an ideal situation. First, there should be no natural or man-made disasters, and second, these fields must be evenly distributed.
Equal distribution is impossible, these fields now belong to Yunchao.
But it doesn't matter. Jia Zhengzheng never thought about grabbing the fields from Yun Chao. He wanted to rent Yun Chao's fields, that is, to be a tenant of Yun Chao.
Tenants sound mean, but they are not.
Tenants rent land from landlords, just like urbanites renting houses and opening shops. It is a dual choice.
Whether to rent a field or not is entirely up to one's own free will.
If it doesn’t feel right anymore, you don’t have to rent it next year.
The same is true for landlords. If they think that any tenant is too lazy and the crops he grows are not good enough, he can no longer rent to him next year.
There is no phenomenon of landlords forcing tenants to rent.
Except, of course, the landowning bully.
If a person is bad to a certain extent, it's hard to say that he can do all kinds of bad things.
Take the former Maemura Masarai Chih-cheng of Wolong Village as an example. Through loan sharking, many tenants were unable to repay the money, so they were tied to their own land and farmed for generations to pay off their debts.
If Yun Chao hadn't killed Lai Zhicheng, most people in Wolong Village would have continued to be exploited by him.
The same land is rented, but the land rent is different, and the quality of life of the tenants is also very different.
Lai Zhicheng collected 50% of the land rent, and did not pay taxes. At most, he would lend some grain to the tenants when they could not pay taxes.
In fact, the grain lent to them was the land tax that Lai Zhicheng should have paid.
In this way, the land taxes that were supposed to be paid by the landlords were passed on to the tenants.
As a result, the tenants are getting poorer and poorer. The poorer they get, the more they borrow, and the more they borrow, the less they can afford to repay. They can only be sucked by the Lai family for generations!
It's better now. Brother Chao has become a big landowner and has canceled the previous IOUs from the Lai family. Everyone is finally free and no longer has to be exploited by the Lai family!
"Brother Chao, I wonder if you plan to plant these fields yourself or rent them out?"
Jia Zhengjing had his own little idea. It would be fine if Yun Chao hired long-term workers. If he planned to rent out the land, he would like to choose a good piece of land first.
Yun Chao did not blame Jia Zhengjing. He was not selfish at all. As long as he was neither greedy nor evil and could benefit himself within the principles, it was not a sin.
"Uncle Jia, I want to ask your opinion. Do you think it's better to farm those fields yourself or rent them out?"
Jia Zhengjing: "..."
