Just when a group of Wanyan from the Kingdom of Jin deliberately and without regard for martial ethics, roped in Xixia, Mongolia, and traitors to form an anti-Song united front, and wanted to use the "power of numbers" to attack Zhao Kai.
Zhao Kai had already crossed the Yellow River and came to Gu Town, Wu'an County, Cizhou, Hebei Road, and Qicun Town, Xinde Prefecture.
Although Gu Town and Qicun Town are just towns, their prosperity is no less than that of ordinary county towns, and even exceeds that of many state and prefectural cities!
The reason why these two adjacent towns (although they belong to different state capitals, but are very close to each other) are so prosperous is that there are rich reserves of iron and coal buried underground in this area, and the quality is also high. .
From the Western Han Dynasty to New China, this area has been an important iron smelting town for two thousand years!
In the Song Dynasty, it was the second most important iron smelting town in the world after Xuzhou Liguojian... Now Liguojian has been flooded, and the accumulated water in the mine is difficult to drain unless Can invent the steam engine. Therefore, Guzhen and Qicun Town are now the first important iron smelting towns in the world.
The Song Dynasty is number one in the world, almost the number one in the world!
What is even more rare is that the iron ore produced in Guzhen and Qicun Town is magnetite. Magnetite has high iron content and few harmful elements such as phosphorus and sulfur, and many magnetites are also accompanied by beneficial elements such as titanium, vanadium, and chromium. If charcoal is used for smelting, high-quality pig iron can be easily produced. If the frying method, steel filling method or crucible method is used for further processing (there were basically no crucibles for steelmaking in the Song Dynasty, but crucibles were used in the refining process of gold, silver and copper), it should be possible to obtain cooked products with a quality close to that of steel. iron.
Now Zhao Kai's army has expanded to three to four hundred thousand people! The demand for weapons and armor has naturally increased!
If one person of 400,000 people is equipped with a good suit of armor, the required cold-forged good iron would be 30 to 40 million kilograms (calculated based on 70 to 100 kilograms of iron to make a suit of armor)! This amount will naturally be nothing in future generations, but only 15,000 to 20,000 tons.
But now it’s the Song Dynasty! Although some scholars in later generations estimated that the iron output of the Song Dynasty was as high as 150,000 tons! However, according to the data that Zhao Kai has, the amount of iron collected by the Song Dynasty court reached its peak during the Yuanfeng period, which was only more than 8 million kilograms.
Based on a tax rate of two out of ten, the annual output of iron is only 40 to 50 million jins, or more than 20,000 tons.
Of course, tax evasion must exist, and the actual output may reach 40,000 to 50,000 tons. But that was the data before the tragedy of Xuanhe. Now the Song Dynasty has lost Liguojian and Laiwujian, two important iron smelting towns in the Jingdong area. It is hard to say whether iron production can maintain half of what it was before the Xuanhe disaster... And of the remaining production capacity, Guzhen and Qicun Town account for most of it!
Therefore, Guzhen and Qicun Town are definitely areas that cannot be missed by Zhao Kai's regime!
In order to ensure the safety of Guzhen and Qicun Town, ten cities including Handan, Wu'an, Shahe, Xingtai, Yongnian, Guzhen, Qizhen (Qicun Town), Yaoshan, Renxian, Nanhe, Jize, Quzhou, Fuyang, etc. The three cities had already turned into large construction sites in full swing in the first month of the second year of Hongwu.
Zhao Kai spent his money this time - he took out all the "replacement wages" from the first year of Hongwu (3 million worth of silk, copper coins, and tea) that he had just received from Zhao Huan, and used them all for the letter. The thirteen-city fortification project in (Xinde Prefecture), Ci, Ming and other places, as well as the Tieshan expansion project in Guzhen and Qicun Town.
Among them, the "Thirteen Cities Construction" is a direct investment, employing 130,000 people from five state capitals, including Xinde, Cizhou, Mingzhou, Xiangzhou, and Weizhou, to carry out construction using sandbag fortification methods, striving to build the city in the shortest time. Within this time, all thirteen cities and the forts surrounding these cities were built into an impregnable form!
The investment in Tieshan in Guzhen and Qicun Town was made in the form of loans. Lending money to 36 smelting owners led by Zhang Guanghui and Chen Qian, two "loyal merchants", and letting them take charge of the iron ore and coal mines in Guzhen and Qicun Town respectively - because of the Jin soldiers going south, this area Most of the iron ore and coal mines in the country have stopped production, and most of the smelters and miners have fled. However, thanks to the efforts of Zhang Guanghui and Chen Qian, more than 30 smelter owners and more than 10,000 miners have been found.
Now the iron ore and coal mines in Guzhen and Qicun Town have resumed work, and carts of iron ore, coal, and wood have been pulled to Guzhen City and Qizhen City, which are surrounded by earth. The area of these two castles is quite large, and the city is divided into more than twenty "squares". Except for the "squares" occupied by the government and military barracks, the rest are iron squares. At the entrance of each ironworks, there are many strong workers from nearby villages, crowding around. When they see a large cart entering the ironworks, they rush forward. The ironworks man accompanying the train would yell: "Don't be crowded, don't be crowded... There is work to do! Thanks to the official family, there is endless work to carry the big bag!"
That's right. Zhao Kai has distributed tens of millions of packages to the working people in the past few months!
So much so that the hemp and straw used to weave large bags are in short supply... In Sichuan and Jinghu, areas where rice is abundant, local governments have begun to require farmers to turn in rice straw as labor tax.
In addition to these laborers carrying big bags, there are also many furnace builders who are busy building furnaces in various ironworks - they are building a local blast furnace, which will look like a bunker after it is built. There is also a giant blast box built next to the "bunker" to blow air into the furnace.
The pig iron produced in this local blast furnace is pig iron, which needs to be reprocessed by frying, steel filling, and crucible methods before it can be turned into wrought iron close to steel.
However, in order to save charcoal, the high-quality iron materials (pig iron made from charcoal) will not be processed in Guzhen and Qicun Town, but will be shipped directly to Luoyang. Mature iron is processed in Luoyang, where the charcoal supply is relatively loose, and finally forged into armor or weapons... And if the armor produced is to be sold to Zhao Kai, a set is required. Use the God's Arm Bow to test-shoot, and also randomly select a few sets, and the master of the iron workshop will put them on and try the God's Arm Bow himself!
As for the armor sold to the soldiers, Zhao Kai only gave 20 strings per set, and the rest was their own hard-earned money! Moreover, this armor is their private property and can be passed down to their descendants! Zhao Kai doesn't care how to test it...just don't kill anyone!
This is probably the difficulty of time travel for high school students... I know too little, and I can't even open Gold Finger properly, and I can't click on the technology tree of coke steelmaking - coke can be made, but Zhao Kai doesn't know that there is Reverberatory furnaces, and the refractory materials of the Song Dynasty were not up to standard, so the steel-making furnaces could not withstand the high temperature of the coke.
Although Zhao Kai, a "sophomore in high school", knows that graphite can withstand high temperatures, where can he find so much graphite? Today's graphite is still a paint used for painting, but it is very expensive! Using graphite clay to build several crucibles that can withstand one use is impossible to build a blast furnace.
In desperation, Zhao Kai had no choice but to "retreat" and used terrible quality control methods without respecting martial ethics. Moreover, regardless of the potential danger, he allowed the soldiers to hold the armor privately - if he did not allow private hold With armor, the generals of the Western Army and the Yingwu family would not use their private armor. And Zhao Kai did not have enough armor on hand, so the armor rate of his army was even lower... .
"Guan Jia, this is the shield made by the craftsmen according to your instructions, specially used for testing armor..."
Zhao Kai's palace in Gucheng Town was originally the mansion of a wealthy smelter owner. Where did this smelter owner go? No one lived in the mansion, so it was taken over by Zhang Guanghui, renovated and dedicated to Zhao Kai.
In the backyard of this house, a large wooden shield with a big hole dug in the middle has been set up. The size of this big hole is about the same as the front of a pair of heart armor. When a person puts on a heart-covering armor and stands behind a wooden frame, the part of the armor is exposed... And beside the wooden frame, two coffins are thoughtfully placed!
Zhao Kai stood there. The two female Banzhi beside him had loaded the wooden feather arrows on the two divine arm bows, while Zhang Guanghui and Chen Qian had each put on a suit of cold-forged heart-covering armor... Although This armor is good, but there are still layers of cold sweat on their foreheads!
Zhao Kai looked at the two of them and smiled: "Which one of you will come first?"
Zhang Guanghui and Chen Qian looked at each other and felt a little weak.
"You two don't want to give it a try? Do you want them to take your place?" Zhao Kai smiled and glanced at the thirty or so middle-aged men standing on both sides - all of them are wealthy smelters! And Zhang Guanghui and Chen Qian are the first of their line!
If the two of them no longer want to be the head of the industry and don't want the Royal Merchant License, they can find someone to replace them now.
"I'll come first!" The first person to come was Zhang Guanghui. He gritted his teeth and tried to pretend to be calm, and said with a smile, "So that the officials know that my armor is the hardest!"
"Okay!" Zhao Kai pointed at the wooden frame, "Please!"
Zhang Guanghui took a deep breath and walked towards the wooden pillar, but before he could stand up, Guo Tiannv had already walked in in a hurry, and came directly to Zhao Kai's side, whispering: " Official... Monk Ma is here!"
"Ma Zhi?" Zhao Kai frowned slightly, "What do you know?"
Guo Tiannu nodded and lowered her voice: "I brought you confidential military information... The Golden Thief will make a big move this autumn. It is said that he has united the Mengwu and the Western Thieves and is preparing to advance in five groups. They will attack Huaidong and Hebei respectively. , Hedong, Shaanxi, and Longyou! We are also preparing to support King Kang as the emperor, march to Huaidong, and go straight to the south of the Yangtze River!"
"What?" When Zhao Kai heard Guo Tiannu's words, he became angry - these Tatars don't have martial ethics! The Jurchens, Mongols, Dangxiang, and traitors all unite to bully me, the official family of the Song Dynasty. This is not good!
Humph, you don't have martial ethics first, don't blame me for not practicing martial ethics and using black technology!
Thinking of this, he took out a divine arm bow, shot an arrow at Zhang Guanghui who was already standing behind the deck, and shouted: "Hit!"
Then I heard Zhang Guanghui scream and fall down!
