No matter how embarrassed the twenty-four guards were, at the insistence of Xiao Ming and Xiao Yue, everyone had to open their voices and sing for a while.

Leaned back and closed Xiao Yiran with a smile. It's not because the voice of the twenty-four guards is ugly, it's mainly everyone's expressions. There are those who are embarrassed, those who are shy, those who are embarrassed, and of course those who don't care about it, such as Wei Zhou, such as Wei Wu, such as Xuan Liang. In short, this night of August 15 is more lively than last year's Chinese New Year's Eve.

Compared with the embarrassment of the twenty-four guards, in spring, summer, autumn and winter, the singing voices of the eight maids of Meilan Zhuju are much more pleasant to the ear. After all, most of them teach in schools, and they often have to sing some nursery rhymes to the children, or sing some songs that they learned from Xiao Yiran and seem to understand whether they understand or not.

After the eight maids left with the three children, Xiao Yiran suddenly wanted to let the twenty-four guards accompany him for the night.

"Would you like to stay together and have a full moon together?"

Naturally, no one would object to the emperor's suggestion. Seeing that the emperor did not signal them to untie their clothes, everyone sat or stood in a regular manner, some accompanied the emperor to talk, and some gathered together to whisper. When its hot scene landed in Xiao Yiran's eyes, he still felt very gratified. After years of cultivation, they began to have real feelings for each other, and they were no longer the first ones, just the carnal attraction of men and women.

Xiao Yiran saw through the window that the bright moon in the sky was already in the west, and knew that the time was not early, so he couldn't help but ask half-jokingly:

"Twenty-four of you are here tonight, how do you want to serve me?"

Twenty-four people look at me for a while, and I see that you don't know how to answer the emperor's question. After being silent for a moment, Li Yu said with some confidence:

"Emperor, twenty-four of us can just form a Five Elements Bagua Array, and there are just two people in each position."

"Oh? So what do you mean? ”

"Why don't we also set up a gossip array, let the imperial palace dispatch, and we will also perform tonight?"

Xiao Yiran's eyes lit up instantly, and Li Yu's construction made her heart beat suddenly. Xiao Yiran has never tried such a **** scene, and he usually doesn't even think about it.

"What do you think of Li Yu's construction?"

"One qiē obeys the emperor's dispatch."

Twenty-four Wei's answer made Xiao Yiran's heart beat more violently, and a touch of bright color had already flown on his face. This feeling made Xiao Yiran feel as if he had returned to the feeling of the first night of himself and Xuan Liang in the tulou.

It's just that Xiao Yiran is still a little uneasy in his heart, this is not two, three, four, but a full twenty-four people. If they were all as fierce as ever, how could they stand it?

Xu saw what the emperor was thinking, and Li Yu whispered to the emperor and the guards:

"The emperor alone wants to cater to our twenty-four people, all of us must be as gentle as possible, not reckless, and let the emperor get the greatest pleasure is what we should do."

Xiao Yiran also knew his status in the hearts of the guards, and knew that they would not spoil him. So after motioning to the guards around him to untie his loose clothes, he lazily and shyly fell on the bed. The guards also stood in good positions in pairs according to the position of the Five Elements Bagua Formation. There is no need for Xiao Yiran to dispatch, every time the two of them take the initiative to come to the center bed, they try to serve the supreme emperor in their hearts as gently as possible.

After the initial embarrassment, Xiao Yiran, who gradually got used to it, put on various postures and tried his best to cooperate with the guards' tart. And the twenty-four guards are all just a taste, and no one will fight the emperor as much as in the past. Even so, a whole night passed after a round of rounds. Xiao Yiran, who was able to reach the peak every time, finally fell asleep groggily with the secretions of twenty-four guards all over his body, and this sleep was a whole day. It wasn't until the next morning that I woke up quietly, and I felt a hot feeling coming from my lower body.

"Isn't that ridiculous?"

Xiao Yiran, who woke up, asked himself secretly. Two days later, Xiao Yiran, who had recovered, suddenly moved Youxing. Although it was already late autumn and the weather was a little cool, Xiao Yiran had been busy with various things in the clan all along, especially after discovering the large ethnic groups in the north, either training troops, developing new weapons, and thinking about new coping strategies, and almost never had the opportunity to go to the fields to enjoy the gorgeous autumn scenes in the north.

Just with Xuan Yi and the guard platoon, Xiao Yiran did not take a chariot this time, but rode a war horse, and the group drove out of the Wangshan station, lingering among the mountains and forests in the southwest of Wangshan. Look at the late autumn scenery where the mountains are red and the forests are dyed.

The mountains to the southwest of the Wangshan station are not steep, although they are continuous. Xiao Yiran and his entourage wandered in the mountains and forests for a morning, and at ten o'clock came to a wide valley to rest, hoping to have lunch here before returning to the station. While waiting for the guard platoon to prepare lunch, Xiao Yiran and Xuan Yi came to a stream in the valley and washed their hands with a clear stream, Xiao Yiran's eyes were attracted by a black stone-like thing in the stream. When Xiao Yiran reached out and grabbed it in front of him and watched it carefully, he couldn't help but exclaim:

"Coal, it's coal!"

Not only was Xuan Yi beside him taken aback, but even the guards who were standing far behind him were also frightened by the emperor's sudden shout. Hurriedly ran over, thinking that the emperor was in some danger, and when he came closer, he saw that the emperor was surprised by the black stone in his hand. One of the guards said:

"Is this the first time the emperor has seen the black stone?"

"Blackstone? Have you seen it before? ”

"Yes, when I came in just now, I saw a lot of them in the forest at the foot of the mountain."

"Where? Take me to see it. ”

Under the leadership of the guard, Xiao Yiran quickly came to the forest at the foot of the mountain that the guard said, and looked at the scene in front of him, which immediately made Xiao Yiran stunned in place. The coal he was looking for was so close at hand, and it was only less than thirty miles away from the Wangshan station.

Xiao Yiran knew that this could not be blamed on the clansmen for not reporting, mainly because Xiao Yiran did not expect that there was coal here, and he had never depicted the appearance of coal to anyone. In her memories before her rebirth, coal was only stored in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River, especially in the upper reaches of the Yellow River. Originally, I wanted to deal with the affairs between the large ethnic groups in the north in the future, and then send people out to look for it, but I didn't want to, but I accidentally ran into it, and it seems that it is still an open-pit coal mine.

Xiao Yiran, who was overjoyed, immediately ordered the guards around him to dig with the copper sword in his hand to try, and sure enough, after digging only a layer of soil more than 20 centimeters on the surface of the pit, there were all black coal seams below.

"Don't have lunch here, get back to the station right away."

Even Xuan Yi didn't know why Xiao Yiran was so interested in these black stone-like things, but he didn't ask, and the two of them, surrounded by guards, rode their horses and galloped towards the way they came. In less than half an hour, they returned to the station. Xiao Yiran didn't care about eating, and immediately came to Liang Mu:

"Liang Mu, I found coal, coal can replace charcoal, and the temperature is much higher than charcoal after it is burned."

"Emperor, is there really such a thing?"

"Of course, with coal, not only can copper be refined in large quantities, but also iron ore can be refined in the first place, and molten iron can be refined. Iron is much harder and sharper than copper. ”

"Xiaoju, pass Li Yu over."

After Li Yu came, Xiao Yiran asked the guards to take Liang Mu and Li Yu back to the place where the coal was found, carefully explore, and think about how to dig and how to transport it. What Siu had to consider was how to burn the coal he found into coke.

Xiao Yiran only knew that the way of burning charcoal was similar to that of charcoal, but he didn't know how much fire to use, how high the temperature, and so on. I had to explore again and again as I did when I first burned charcoal.

After explaining his thoughts in detail to Liang Mu and Li Yu, who came back from the investigation, he asked them to dig coal. At the same time, there was an order for Xuan Yi to organize a team to dig coal, and try to dig as much coal as possible, not only to burn coke, but also to use coal for heating, but it is much easier than burning wood. As for the stove for burning coal for heating or cooking, Xiao Yiran sketched a schematic diagram and handed it to Liang Mu, asking him to arrange a pottery factory, fire it uniformly, and then send it to the clansmen for use.

As a large amount of coal was dug up, each family was given what they needed to survive the winter. Xiao Yiran also taught the guards around him, asking them to go to each house to demonstrate how to use wood to ignite coal, and how to install a flue for pottery stoves, so that the soot would come out and not poison the people in the house.

These are relatively smooth to do, but it is a hundred times more difficult to burn coke. It's even harder than burning charcoal. Either all the coal in the furnace is burned to ash, or the temperature is not enough, and the coal only turns into coke on the outside, and the inside is still black coal.

After more than two months of trial and error, it was not until they entered the wax moon that they fired a furnace of qualified coke. Xiao Yiran has also been paying attention to the whole process. When Liangmu replaces charcoal with fired coke to refine copper ore, the high temperature and burning resistance of coke make it much easier to refine copper ore. Not only is the labor intensity reduced, but the refining time is also shortened by nearly half.

Seeing such a surprising change, Liangmu burned coke more vigorously. After another two months, by the beginning of February, the heat of coke firing had been completely mastered, and a large amount of copper ore accumulated in a furnace was immediately refined into yellow and clear copper nuggets.

When Liang Mu tried to refine the iron ore he dug up, Xiao Yiran kept watch in front of the furnace. When the first molten iron flowed out of the dry pot, Xiao Yiran looked at the dark red molten iron and was pleasantly surprised. Iron, it's a metal that won't appear until more than 3,000 years later. With steel, dragons can not only make their weapons more powerful, but more importantly, tools made of hard and sharp iron are much easier and more durable than bronze weapons. The productivity of the dragon clan will also be greatly improved.