Let Lu Hai find someone to teach Li Yan and Li Xin to learn mathematics, and the construction of Chihai finally ushered in a staged victory!
That is, the stepwise salt-drying salt fields are being continuously constructed inside the Red Sea. It took more than a month from the initial establishment of the salt fields to now that salt is finally produced.
The scale of the salt field is larger than what Li Ke had just planned! The main reason is that the number of the list of Tuyuhun nobles given by Murong Shun is actually quite large. Naturally, it is impossible to reduce the number of people with so many people.
When Li Jing and the others knew that this thing was to prepare for the future garrison, they naturally made it as large as possible while being busy.
Li Ke followed Lu Hai, and behind him were Li Daozong, Su Dingfang, Niu Jinda, Pei Xingjian, Li Min, Li Yan, and Li Xin. It can be said that all the senior personnel of Xizhou Protectorate are here.
When they followed the salt path accumulated in the middle, entered the interior, and saw the piles of snow-white salt mountains in the distance, Li Daozong and the others were dumbfounded!
The difficulty of the salt-drying method is not high, but what is lacking in ancient times is a modern theoretical system, and Li Ke has a complete step-by-step and theoretical system in his hands, so producing salt is inevitable! The only biggest difference with modern salt is that modern refined salt is marketed after removing impurities and adding iodine or not.
But Li Ke never thought about the ancient work of removing impurities. Chemistry was still in its infancy, and it was impossible to remove impurities, so he chose Chaka Salt Lake because the salt here was of extremely high quality. After a simple Filtration and other processes remove visible impurities, and the salt is ground into fine white salt before it can be sold on the market.
The closer they came, the more shocked Li Daozhong and others were. When had they ever seen such snow-white salt piled up in mountains? What's this? This is gold!
And they had long been surrounded by soldiers. Except for the prisoners of the working Tyuhunyuan nobles, the rest were the elite troops of the Tang Dynasty. Others were strictly prohibited from approaching the Red Sea.
The master craftsman responsible for building the salt fields is called Jiang Feng. He is about forty years old this year. He has hundreds of apprentices behind him, and these apprentices also need to work. However, they do not need to do hard work, they only need to be responsible for the process, record relevant data, etc.
"Jiang Feng will report."
"Your Highness, the total amount of salt we have produced for this batch is 2232 stones. According to our current statistics of the process, it takes about 5 days to produce such a batch of salt! However, when it enters autumn or even winter, the salt production time will definitely It will gradually decrease. We are not sure yet whether salt can be produced in winter and need to be tested this winter." Jiang Feng immediately gave an accurate number.
Li Ke did some mental calculations and quickly came up with a figure, which was about 133 tons of salt.
Li Ke leaned over and picked up a pinch of salt and threw it into his mouth. He tasted it carefully. There was no other mixed taste, only a simple salty taste. You must know that almost all salt in the Tang Dynasty has a certain bitterness. Even the salt eaten by the royal family has a very weak bitterness and cannot be tasted after cooking, but it is still there.
But these salts don't.
"Everyone, this is why I chose to build the city here and am sure to station 50,000 elite soldiers! I don't need to tell you the cost of these salts. You know it yourself. The main cost of transporting them to various parts of the Tang Dynasty is the transportation fee. , but really, because it costs us a fortune to transport enough food here.”
"Then when the transportation team returns, the cost of transporting salt will be greatly reduced!"
"About 30% of the profits from the salt fields here will be spent on transporting food here, which is the money spent on hiring old and retired soldiers, and the remaining 30% will be left in the Xizhou Protectorate. It will become the military salary for all Tang soldiers here, as well as other subsequent benefits."
"I have other uses for the remaining 40%."
"Your Highness, with these salts, I can guarantee that the entire Tuyuhun will be as solid as gold." Li Daozong said excitedly.
"Well, I believe that since the salt is now produced, our next plan can begin. Since everyone is here today, let me talk about the next plan." Li Ke said with a smile.
Everyone immediately began to listen attentively. Li Yan and Li Xin took out a notebook and pencil from somewhere and were ready to record it. The same was true for Pei Xingjian next to them. The pencil was naturally given to them by Li Ke. Anyway, they were working. There are a lot of consumables in the building. If only a few people use it, it will be enough for them to die.
Not to mention Jiang Feng, Yuelai Trading Company has an unwritten rule that everyone around Li Ke must always have paper and pen ready to record what Li Ke said.
Because what His Highness said may be good words of wisdom that will be beneficial to the entire Yuelai Trading Company. But what Jiang Feng used was not a pencil, but a charcoal pencil, which was the prototype of a pencil.
"The first step is to conduct household statistics on the herdsmen in the entire Xizhou, and send these herdsmen we currently trust to help spread the word to all the places where herdsmen may exist in the entire Xizhou. The Yongye horses will be distributed, and in addition, a large-scale military horse farm will be established to join forces with the Shandan military horse farm in the Qilian Mountains to jointly cultivate the war horse system of the Tang Dynasty."
"In addition, as I said before, each soldier writes a letter home. They have families who are willing to move here. We pay for them to follow the caravan to migrate to Xizhou and plant in the Huangshui Valley, and some of them are willing to farm. Herders can also become agricultural households.”
"The fields here will be allocated fifty acres of Yongye field to each person, and I will ask them to forcefully plant cauliflower (later rapeseed) for the remaining fifty acres for oil extraction." Li Ke added, " The reason why cauliflower is grown is that in addition to extracting oil, cauliflower can also fertilize the fields.”
"If you continue to rotate crops, the fertility of the land will not decrease. The reason for oil extraction is because with the popularity of iron tools in the Tang Dynasty, more and more people will be able to afford iron pots, and the stir-fry dishes I developed will definitely become popular throughout the country. Tang, just the restaurants and restaurants all over Tang Dynasty can consume the rapeseed oil squeezed from the cauliflower we grow."
"These are profits, which can increase the income of ordinary people in Xizhou! In addition, I will send people to continuously explore and select sites along the official road from here to Chang'an."
"Then, service areas will be established next to all the inns on the official roads."
"Your Highness, what is the service area?" Li Daozong was a little confused.
"The service area, as the name suggests, is for the caravans on the official road. From now on, the number of caravans from Xizhou going to Chang'an of the Tang Dynasty will be very large. In addition to those traveling by the Yellow River waterway, there will also be a large number of people traveling by land. caravan."
"As for the main official roads on land, service areas are established at certain distances. The service areas can accommodate nearby refugees or some homeless people. In the early stage, they will be provided by the families of local soldiers or retired soldiers. Come take charge and let them sell tea and meals inside, so that the food pressure brought by the caravan's advance can be transferred to the service area."
"After the construction of the entire official service area is completed, a caravan from Chang'an to Xizhou will not even need to carry food if the time is arranged well. In this way, their caravan can carry more commodities and materials." Li Ke explained road.
Li Daozong and others looked at Li Ke with bright eyes. His Highness was too far-sighted... Obviously His Highness had already thought about this clearly. This means that His Highness was feeding... not just Xizhou, but the large amount of products produced by Xizhou. Salt, as well as grain, cloth and other logistical materials that needed to be transported to Xizhou, gradually attracted all the local soldiers along the official road to make money.
This means that all soldiers in the world will receive adequate income protection, especially those who have been injured and returned home.
However, Li Ke still had something to say. As the construction of service areas moves from Chang'an to Xizhou, someone will definitely learn from it later, or it will be gradually established by Yuelai Trading Company. Then these service areas will eventually form a complete one, spreading all over Datang. regional information transmission channel.
Everyone in the service area may be the one who delivers the information, and it will not be limited to the current Yuelai Trading Company. And there is another invisible benefit, which is to allow currency to circulate completely and gradually replace silk and other currency substitutes.
But there is a prerequisite for this, that is, the Tang Dynasty must have enough copper coins. The wealthy families have buried a lot of copper coins. One mall received a lot of coins from previous dynasties among its members.
