The sky is overcast, the clouds are thick, the green fields are verdant, but in the middle of it is the rubble and ruins, the traces of scorch are everywhere, and from time to time you can see the poor people who are unkempt and dirty, dragging their families, although it is late May, but it gives people the feeling of a desolate winter.

"The big official, the villain has already investigated clearly, the outsider surnamed Li is indeed willing to sell his own iron factory, and the price villain has already been negotiated, it depends on the meaning of the big official!"

Dong Pingxing rushed in the door, his round face was full of joy, and the clothes on his body were already soaked.

There are exiles in the city, refugees are all over the mountains, and the Tao is dying in the wilderness, waiting to be fed, I don't know if these officials of the Great Song Dynasty have taken the life and death of the people to heart.

Wang Song's eyes withdrew from the miserable scenes under the mountain, sat down at the rough wooden square table, and nodded slightly.

"Brother Dong, well done. You can do this yourself, and try to keep all the blacksmiths as much as possible, it will be of great use to us in the future!"

The walls of the room are bleak, the soil is rammed, the rough wooden tables and chairs, the furniture is pitiful, the doors and windows are dilapidated, and the ground is also pitted.

Deng Shixiong on the side came up, his face was embarrassed. Since returning from Killing Bear Ridge, he has assumed the position of "logistics manager".

"Big official, there are so many injured brothers on the mountain, and there is not much food in the cottage, this day is not easy!"

Everyone went down the mountain to join the army, and the families who stayed on the mountain only had a small amount of food to maintain. Now that six or seven hundred strong men have been added out of thin air, it is no wonder that there is a shortage of food.

"Don't forget what our brothers did in the first place!"

Zhang Hengwei rolled his eyes and said coldly.

"The government is cowardly, corrupt and incompetent, displacing the people. Let's go down to the surrounding states and counties to borrow grain, and don't let go of any rich gentry with a bad reputation. As long as we have silver, even if the food is really short, we can buy it separately!"

Since the withdrawal of troops from Xiongling that day, Wang Song did not return to Zhang Hao's army, but led people into the Taihang Mountains to rest and accumulate strength.

He wrote a letter to his family and asked Zhai Liang to bring back to show his peace. In the final analysis, he didn't know what he was going to do when he went back, how to face this mother, but he was much more with these rough men.

Speaking of which, since he came to this plane, he has missed the woman in black more in his heart.

At this time, he was really worried about his personal fate.

When he killed Xiongling, he told the rebels that he would take care of everyone, and if he was left alone, he really couldn't afford to lose this person.

The key is to be reborn once, strong and strong, and the past is unbearable, so that he will always be haunted. If you don't do something, you are really a tyrannical thing, and you are ashamed of God.

The Jurchen army went south, and the mountains were full of refugees, and if they wanted to recruit troops and horses, as long as they had a bite to eat, how easy it was!

When he went out, there were 1,500 people, and less than half of them came back, and the bravery of the Jurchen cavalry shocked him.

The imperial court can't be counted on, this is proven by history, otherwise the Northern Song Dynasty would not have been destroyed. He didn't want his rebels to be used as cannon fodder. He wants to take these people, recruit troops, and strengthen himself, instead of being short-lived and not helping the great cause of Jin.

Gather the anti-Jin forces everywhere, coerce and lure the rich gentry and giants in Hebei, especially in Handan, forcibly seize and rob, help the righteous army to be in trouble for a while, strengthen themselves, try every means to compete with the Jin people, and relieve the people and the Song Dynasty from hanging upside down.

Maybe the means are a little inferior, but it is the best choice in desperation, and everything is also dictated by public will.

In the land of two rivers, the people are fierce, the people are loyal and brave, and the wind of martial arts is strong, and it is not difficult to recruit soldiers and expand the team.

Historically, since the Jin people invaded the Song Dynasty in the south, the anti-Jin uprisings in the two rivers emerged in endlessly, if it were not for the mediocrity of the Song Dynasty, the death of scholars, the incompetence of Du Chong, and the division of the northern and southern people of Qin Hui, how could the Jin people control the Central Plains and the two rivers.

Deng Shixiong shook his head and said: "Zhang Heng, there is nothing to be done about it. However, if anyone dares to spoil women, kill people and set fires, the military orders of the great officials will not spare him!"

If you don't know how expensive firewood and rice are, you don't know how expensive they are If it had been in the past, Deng Shixiong would have already blackened his face and reprimanded Zhang Heng and Dong Ping. Now there is no grain in the rice warehouse, and the standard has been lowered.

In the world, black and white, it's so easy. In troubled times, as long as you do things in moderation and don't bury your conscience, you are already a sincere gentleman.

"Not bad!"

Wang Song nodded and said: "As long as you don't hurt the people and do things in moderation, you can do things yourself!"

Now the place where they stay is called Qingya Village, which used to be one of Dong Ping's strongholds when he was proud of the rivers and lakes. Qingyazhai is located at the eastern foot of Taihang Mountain, at the junction of Hebei, Shanxi and Henan provinces, but it belongs to Wu'an County, Cizhou, West Road, Hebei Province.

Due to the invasion of the Jurchen army, Hebei and Shanxi bore the brunt of the invasion, public order was corrupted, bandits were numerous, a large number of wealthy gentry fled south with their families, and some local ancestral industries began to be sold cheaply.

Dong Ping used to be entrenched in this area, and he was very familiar with the people and landforms here, and a wealthy family in Lijiazhuang, Wu'an County, was about to sell their iron factory, and Dong Ping took the opportunity to start.

Wu'an County and Handan County are adjacent to each other, and are very rich in coal and iron resources. More than 2,000 years ago, during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Han Dynasty, Wu'an was one of the iron smelting centers in China. Handan has two prerequisites for the development of a large-scale iron-smelting industry: ore resources for iron-making and charcoal, and Wu'an has both.

Wu'an iron ore mine is mostly open-pit iron ore. At that time, the fuel required for iron smelting was wood or charcoal, which must have also been taken from the foothills of the Taihang Mountains. According to the "Wu'an County Chronicle": Cai Xianting, a native of Wu'an, the assassin of Jizhou in the early Song Dynasty, and his grandfather Cai Juan once served as the third envoy of Wu'an Yuancheng. It can be seen that in the Song Dynasty, the ironmaking process of Wu'an was already very developed.

The pyrite resources on the Taihang Mountains can extract sulfur, and Jinzhou, Hedong, has always been the source of sulfur. The production of gunpowder is a very convenient factor.

After all, there are very few lucky things like the last Jiaocheng. Now the Song people in Hedong and Hebei are fleeing south in large numbers, where are these things!

For Wang Song, who is familiar with explosives, there are only six or seven hundred people, and if he wants to have an advantage in the battle with Fanzi, he must have more advanced firearms as support.

Gunpowder is one of the four great inventions of China, which was invented in the early 7th century AD, used in the military in the 10th century, and was not replaced by smokeless gunpowder until the second half of the 19th century.

In 1825, the British chemist Chevrey came up with the best gunpowder formula, and the British formulated gunpowder for guns and cannons according to this formula, and these two gunpowder formulas were also set as standard gunpowder formulas by European countries.

The gunpowder formula of Zeng Gongliang's "Wujing General Essentials" in the Song Dynasty was: "Jinzhou sulfur 14 taels, wohuang (sulfur) 7 taels, flame nitrate 2 and a half catties, Ma Ru 1 tael, dry paint 1 tael, arsenic 1 tael, fixed powder 1 tael, bamboo ru 1 tael, Huang Dan 1 tael, yellow wax 1 tael, net oil 1 point, tung oil 1 tael, pine resin 14 taels, concentrated oil 1 point", there are all kinds of additives in it, can only burn instead of exploding, can not launch projectiles, can not explode, can only be used for combustion or arson.

As a man who has been immersed in it, Wang Song is naturally familiar with its formula. But. Although he can't make firearms such as grenades, he can use the original recipe to prepare gunpowder and make the most primitive firearms for use.

As long as it could explode, even the simplest grenade, he was confident that he could make it.

Compared with the Song Dynasty's earth-shattering thunder and thistle-terrestris balls, grenades can explode, while objects such as sky-shaking thunder can only burn.

The charcoal used to make gunpowder can be made in an iron factory or in the mountains, and the sulfur can be fired directly next to the mine, while Jinju and Jieju in Hedong are both fire and nitrate production areas, which can be purified by the soil method, and the operation process is very simple.

On the rugged mountain road, the vehicles were difficult to travel, and a load of nitrate was carried up the mountain by the bare-chested people, who were sweating profusely and their faces were dark, but they were carrying heavy loads and moving forward without a word of complaint.

Wang Song's compassion suddenly came to life, and the sentence "two temples and ten fingers black" immediately came to mind.

According to the news that Dong Ping came back from inquiring, the land of Hebei tended to be calm, but the east of the river was still full of wars, and it seemed that the imperial court was determined to recapture Taiyuan.

It's just that the two armies are fighting, the Jin people are tyrannical, the soldiers and bandits are rampant, and the life of the people in Hedong is not easy.

If it weren't for such a dire situation, these people would not have braved the threat of soldiers and bandits on the road to carry this nitrate up the mountain.

"This big brother, what is the situation outside, is there anyone in charge of affairs in the government, is there enough food to eat?"

Wang Song's compassion came spontaneously, he stopped a porter and asked.

"The big officials, Fanzi and the officials and the army are fighting outside Taiyuan City, no one knows what the situation is, but in the opinion of the villain, those officials and soldiers can't play a role."

The porter was in his thirties, slightly hunchbacked, his face was thin and dark, his cheekbones were protruding, his chest was already wet, and the sweat on his forehead was also falling.

"Winter has come, and most of the villagers have fled. The imperial army went north, and the government came to arrest Ding, who was in charge of the people's lives and deaths, and the villains were all fugitives. If the villain is arrested, the whole family will only be starved to death!"

Wang Song nodded, turned around and said, "Brother Deng, when settling the salary, each porter will add more ...... Thirty dollars, don't treat them badly. ”

The porter was overjoyed, nodded and said, "Thank you, big official!"

Deng Shixiong shook his head and agreed. There was a burst of cheers among the crowd of porters on the mountain road.

"Great official, with your kindness, the silver in the treasury is more than half!"

Deng Shixiong shook his head and smiled bitterly, Wang Song looked at the bottom of the mountain, and said in a deep voice: "How difficult the people's livelihood is, there is no need to worry about the matter of silver, I have my own measure."

Sitting on the mountain and eating empty is not a long-term solution. Silver money is the foundation of all government affairs, for public and private, he also has to speed up and make a few windfalls.

On the mountain road, Zhang Heng ran up panting with people, and when he arrived at Wang Song, he shouted loudly: "Big official, it's amazing!" The brother who inquired about the news came back and said that the emperor had returned to Beijing!"

Wang Song was shocked. This Tokyo city is getting more and more lively!

In May of the first year of Jingkang, Zhao Huan, the son of heaven of the Great Song Dynasty, ordered Li Gang, an important minister, to welcome Emperor Zhao Ji of Taishang Daojun back to Beijing. When Taiyuan was in a hurry, the ministers wanted to cut the three towns, but Li Gang blocked it, and Li Gang used Li Gang to plant the master as the two rivers to proclaim and appease and rush to help Taiyuan.