Twenty miles southeast of Kaiyuan City, at the junction with Tieling, there is a stretch of low hills, which the locals call Songshan Fort.
To the south of Songshan Fort, there is Yingchengzi Mountain. The sandy soil is barren and covered with thorns. On the slopes between the mountains and hills, there are some wild grasses such as Kusana and Shatawang growing. It can be said that the grass is scattered and inaccessible. Occasionally, a few lost shepherd boys would wander into this place by mistake. The cattle and sheep would become poisoned and go crazy after eating wild hemp, and they would run away wildly. The shepherd boys would run after the cows' buttocks. As time went by, even the shepherd boys stopped coming here.
However, one day in mid-June of the forty-seventh year of Wanli, an unkempt gentleman came from Kaiyuan City. This old man brought a large group of refugees to Yingchengzi Mountain.
The master stood on the top of the mountain, held up the compass and gave some instructions, and the Qianbianhao people settled down in Yingchengzi Mountain.
In the next ten days or so, this group of suspicious people started digging rocks, cutting down trees, digging soil, and setting fires to cook in the mountains every day. They made people and gods everywhere angry and turned this paradise land into a paradise. It became a Shura field.
If an insider hadn't explained that this gentleman was the chief onmyoji under Liu Zongbing's command, and he usually did the business of fortune telling and geomantic omen, this time he came to Songshan Fort to visit Liu Zongbing's tomb. The people nearby must have thought that this gentleman was out of his mind and had too much money to spend, so he led a group of refugees to mess around in the wilderness.
"Look, everyone, come closer and look at this soil layer. The color is different from the surroundings. It is reddish brown. Look, there are granite and green rocks exposed here. Look, my compass (compass) is unstable. , turned north for two moments, I guess there must be iron ore under the soil. It is said in "Guan Zi·Di Shu" that there is ocher on the mountain and iron below it..."
Xu Xiake put away his ancestral bronze seven-star compass, turned around and took out a thick ancient book from his backpack. When he read it, he found that this ancient book was the Chronicle of Kaiyuan Prefecture during the Jiajing Period.
Around him, miners were standing, like a colony of foraging ants, whispering and looking at the brown land pointed out by Mr. Xu.
These people held pickaxes and shovels in their hands, and some burly miners, holding spears and bows, stood on guard high on the hills.
A tall and thin young man handed over a coconut ladle filled with water. Xu Xiake didn't even look at it. He took it and drank it, wiped his beard and said to the young man:
"Sanguang, the state records say that there are no mines in Kaiyuan. It only took us a month to discover copper mines and sulfur mines in the east and south of the city. They are of excellent quality. With the iron mine discovered today, Mr. Liu has three mines." Big mine. It is better to have no books than to believe in books. This state chronicle from the Jiajing period should also be replaced. Sanguang, in the future you have to go out more and travel around. You must visit everything on the spot to find out the truth."
After listening to Xu Xiake's great talk, Li Sanguang couldn't help but said:
"Master, Kaiyuan is about to be surrounded by Tatars. There are tens of thousands of Tatars. Where can the little ones go? When will Mr. Liu send troops? You can't rely on miners and slaves to fight every day. The day before yesterday at the copper mine Two more miners died, and it is said that they were caused by Ba Yala from Xianglan Banner."
After hearing this, Xu Xiake put the book back in his backpack, looked up into the distance, where the miners were digging, turned to look at Li Sanguang, and said seriously:
"Sanguang, Jiannu is not a man of three heads and six arms. I am afraid that he will do something serious and kill him on sight. When I was traveling in eastern Guangdong, I met a group of bandits with firecrackers. Three of them beat one of me, but I drove him away. In the forty-second year of Wanli, I met a human bear in Shennongjia. I happened to be hungry, so I punched and kicked..."
As a senior outdoor adventurer, Xu Xiake is full of energy and strong on his feet. He also has a Qiao Yiqi style in chatting. Once he opens his mouth, he will talk like a river and will not stop talking until he convinces the other person.
This man who stood at the top of the food chain finally finished talking about his experience of eating bears in Shennongjia. He looked up at his deputy and saw that Li Sanguang still had a worried look on his face and continued:
"Master Liu's soldiers are too few. Now they are not even enough to defend the city. They have to guard against the slaves burning the fields every day. How can they care about the mines? The miners are strong, much stronger than I was back then. I can fight Dead Man Bear, you are a young man, you are so tall, what are you afraid of?"
After Xu Xiake said this, he headed towards the miners.
Li Sanguang was originally an Orion from Liaodong. His hometown was in Qinghe. After the Battle of Saarhu, he was separated from his family and later followed General Liu to Kaiyuan.
Because he was familiar with the mountains and forests and was an honest man, Liu Zhaosun arranged for Li Sanguang to be with Xu Xiake as his deputy and part-time protector of Mr. Xu.
Hearing that Mr. Xu was so brave, Li Sanguang couldn't say anything more and followed him with a shovel.
Ever since Liu Zhaosun talked about mining that day, Xu Xiake immediately went out of the city for on-the-spot investigation the next day. In just a few days, he traveled all over the mountains around Kaiyuan. Five days later, Mr. Xu, who looked like a beggar, finally returned to the city and told Liu Zhaosun He has found three veins.
"Great, with the mine, my flintlock gun and red cannon will be stable. Mr. Xu hasn't eaten yet, come on, I'll give you a chicken drumstick!"
Liu Zhaosun quickly recruited the refugees and asked them to bring their equipment and follow Xu Xiake out of the city to mine.
These refugees are all old people who have followed Liu Zhaosun from Hunjiang. The Hunjiang calls the souls. They have long regarded Mr. Liu as a god, and these fanatics do not want the monthly salary given to them. They are just digging like crazy, hoping to dig out the money as soon as possible. The ore was used to make guns and cannons for Mr. Liu.
Also working hard is Xu Xiake. Xu Xiake runs in the wild all year round, eats and sleeps in the open air, wears the stars and the moon, and is particularly able to endure hardships. He was only in his early thirties, but he looked like a little old man with a gray and unkempt beard. So much so that the miners regarded Mr. Xu as an old tracker, thinking that he was brought back from Tianjin by General Liu and promoted because of his hard work in pulling trackers.
In fact, Mr. Xu used to be a dandy even worse than Qiao Yiqi.
For more than a month, the dark-skinned miner leader led his miners around Kaiyuan in search of minerals.
As more and more miners joined, Xu Xiake's mining of mineral deposits in Kaiyuan reached a point of frenzy.
The endless Songliao Plain was dug into a pockmarked face of ravines, and the Songshanbao hills surrounded by green trees turned into bare barren mountains.
Jianu will soon threaten Kaiyuan again. At present, the workshop is short of copper and iron materials, and the workshop is facing shutdown. These loyal miners have exploded their small universe for the sake of Liu Zhaosun's path.
Every time they discovered a mineral vein, they would swarm over it like vultures discovering a corpse. Then, with amazing physical strength and willpower, they would wield their pickaxes and mine wildly in the mine tunnels day and night.
Even the most dangerous landslide and water seepage during mining cannot stop the miners' enthusiasm for mining.
By the end of June, oxen and horse-drawn carriages loaded with iron ore and copper ore started from various mines and were continuously transported into Kaiyuan City.
The transported ore is rough-processed in the workshop and then sent to the workshop to become the raw material for firearms and handed over to the Leijiangtou and Yanjiangtou for beating and tempering.
All the ores pulled back will eventually be turned into guns and artillery, and they will play a great role in changing history in the decisive battle of Kaiyuan.
It is said that in the past few days, the workshop has developed a flintlock gun that can be used for actual combat. It is astonishingly powerful, and the craftsmen are making final adjustments. Not surprisingly, large-scale production will begin soon.
Xu Xiake's enthusiasm for exploring nature is far beyond the reach of others. Many years later, when he recalls the years of mining in Kaiyuan, he will always say that it was the best and most unforgettable memory in his life.
However, good times are always short-lived.
When the total number of miners under Xu Xiake reached 1,000, it finally attracted the attention of Houjin.
It may be that a certain general stationed in Tieling reported the news to Jierhalang, or it may be that the Jinshao detective changed his thinking after thinking about it.
In short, Xianglan Banner gave up destroying crops in Kaiyuan. It is said that destroying farmland is really not worth the loss, and Hou Jin Sentinel needs to deal with the wolf soldiers and white pole soldiers lurking on the roadside.
It is extremely stupid to exchange the life of a white-armored soldier for Liu Zhaosun's one or two acres of food.
Therefore, Hou Jin turned his attack target to Liu Zhaosun's mine.
Perhaps out of the need for ecological protection, the leader of the Xianglan Banner, Jierhalang, sent a large number of soldiers to try to stop Xu Xiake and others from illegally mining and crazy mining, determined to teach these ignorant and fearless Han people a lesson.
At the end of May, a Niulu Zhenyi armor suddenly attacked a copper mine thirty miles east of Kaiyuan City.
This raid was informed by the Intelligence Department in advance, and five hundred miners were well prepared and ambush around the mine with heavy knives and sticks, waiting for Jiannu to enter the ambush circle.
As a result, the sneak attack designed by Jierhalang personally turned into an arduous breakout battle for the Niulu warriors.
After the Jin soldiers failed to steal the chicken, they lost all the rice. After leaving dozens of corpses, they fled in panic.
After this incident, Liu Zhaosun strengthened the protection of the mine and sent more cavalry to patrol the surrounding areas.
However, the mine is too far away from Kaiyuan City, and the nearest one is more than ten miles away. Moreover, the positions are all scattered. With the current three hundred cavalry, there is no way to protect it unless Kaiyuan City is abandoned and the infantry is transferred.
In this case, the only option is to organize the miners and issue them with weapons such as spears, heavy knives, and sticks, so that they can protect themselves.
However, this is certainly not a long-term solution. When the miners face a sneak attack by the slaves, they have to pay a higher price to repel them.
Although the miners are strong, they are not professional soldiers after all. They have suffered a lot in the battle with the Jurchen hunters and are in urgent need of help.
The slaves in the city were incessantly killed, the trade routes became blocked, and the training progress of new recruits was slow. All the problems broke out together, and Liu Zhaosun felt very anxious.
With the help of Liu Qing'er, Liu Zhaosun decided to grasp the key points of the problem:
Expand the cavalry team.
In a battle on a plain terrain like Kaiyuan, if we lose the advantage of cavalry, our side will suffer a great loss, unable to attack or defend.
If an army is weak in strength and is at a disadvantage in terms of sentinels and surprise attacks, it will eventually be forced to death by the enemy bit by bit.
The Mongols would not sell horses to Kaiyuan, let alone Liao Town.
So, hopefully there is only one.
Liu Zhaosun continued to send people to inquire, looking for the Ye He cavalry that had disappeared for many days.
After stumbling all the way to this point, he hoped that he would have better luck this time.
Doing good deeds without asking for reward.
Liu Zhaosun's good luck will come soon.
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