Qin Chuan stayed in Montenegro for three days, figuring out how to fire cement with Yan Sanqi in the cement factory during the day, and lived in the iron yard at night.

Yan Sanqi and all the craftsmen didn't understand what the cement Qin Chuan was talking about, in their opinion, putting a pile of mud into the furnace to calcin, either green bricks or ceramics, no one had ever heard of the mud that could be burned to build a house.

If you don't believe it, they still honestly and conscientiously follow Qin Chuan's requirements to make the furnace and stone mill.

Then a pile of limestone was mined on the spot, and furnace ash, cinder, iron slag, etc. were transported from the minerals, plus clay and gypsum, all of which were ground into powder, and eight different proportions of mud were prepared, and the furnace could be opened after the kiln was dried.

There are many gypsum mines in the Luliang Mountains, and there are people in Jingle and Lanxian who mine gypsum, but the scale is very small, because the gypsum in this era is only used for cooking tofu and medicine, and the demand is very small.

Jiaocheng, Fenyang and Lingshi in the south of Luliang Mountain have barely large-scale gypsum mines, especially the scale of Fenyang and Lingshi, and there are several large households specializing in quarrying gypsum to sell.

After Qin Chuan copied more than a dozen large households, he also copied out more than 1,000 catties of cooked gypsum, and almost every household of these large households made their own tofu, and some were more or less prepared.

These plaster gypsum is only enough for the early exploration stage, Qinchuan sent people to Jiaocheng, Fenyang and Lingshi, first buy a few thousand catties to use, and at the same time let the gypsum miners in Jingle and Lanxian expand the mine and increase production, and they will definitely be self-sufficient in the future.

In addition to the cement plant, Qin Chuan also spent a lot of time discussing the smelting technology of the iron yard with Yan Sanqi.

Both Dajian furnaces were equipped with a hot blast stove, which was blown hot air through a large bellows, and wrought iron pipes that injected kerosene and pulverized coal to increase the furnace temperature.

There is also a secondary refining furnace built next to it, that is, the semi-enclosed crucible that was explored when making the cannon before, and the molten iron will flow into the crucible of the refining furnace from the Dajian furnace, and the refining furnace should also use coke and hot air pulverized coal to maintain a very high furnace temperature, so that the molten iron can remain liquid, and the limestone slag will be put into the slag to remove impurities.

One of the two furnaces is used to smelt pig iron, while the other is used to smelt wrought iron directly, by controlling the carbon content of the molten iron.

Because some iron tools need to be cast with pig iron with a lower melting point, and iron tools such as weapons and agricultural tools must be forged with wrought iron, so raw and wrought iron must be smelted.

The raw wrought iron smelted by the secondary refining furnace has few impurities, and the quality has been greatly improved, which has completely surpassed the Guangzhou Iron and Fujian Iron in the south, and is even very close to the high-carbon steel and low-carbon steel of later generations.

Today, the Black Mountain Mine can produce 3,000 catties of iron and 2,000 catties of wrought iron every day, and more than 300,000 catties of raw wrought iron have been piled up in the warehouse, and there are more than 100,000 catties of Hongqishan Mine, with a total inventory of nearly 500,000 catties.

The price of pig iron produced in the north is about one and a half cents per catty, wrought iron is less than three points, Guangzhou iron and Fujian iron in the south are about three or four percent more expensive, Qinchuan iron is better than the quality of southern iron, pig iron is two points, wrought iron four points should be no problem.

With so much iron, I will definitely not be able to use it up by myself, so this iron has to be sold, as early as ten days ago, Luo Wentian went to recruit scholars and find buyers at the same time.

500,000 catties of raw wrought iron, which can probably be sold for 15,000 taels of silver, is not much for Qin Chuan, who has deep pockets, but this is a long-term transaction, and it must be done, as long as it is not sold to Jin merchants.

After having enough blacksmiths, Qin Chuan also wanted to make a large number of ironware, and it was more profitable to sell finished products than raw materials.

For example, after opening up the West Tumut Department and the Yarkand Trade Road in the west, you can sell iron pots to them, and you can multiply your profits several times.

Moreover, Qin Chuan also wants to increase production, and the Dajian furnace must be increased, but he wants to engage in mechanization to improve efficiency, but he can't get a steam engine, let alone electricity, so he can only start with large tools.

First of all, all kinds of pulley booms, fixed with triangular brackets, are used to lift iron ore into the furnace, iron out of the furnace, etc., which can terminate a large number of manpower.

When the first boom was erected, Qin Chuan was standing next to him, watching the miners push a cart of iron ore and coking coal into the furnace with a chicken cart, when he suddenly slapped his thigh and shouted: "Track!" ”

Yan Sanqi and the others stood next to him, startled, and looked at him with puzzled expressions.

"Rails, we can do rails, we can also build conveyor belts."

Ignoring the puzzled expressions of others, Qin Chuan only patted Yan Sanqi's shoulder hard, almost slapping the latter to the ground.

"Quick, send a few people back to Mengjiazhuang, let Chen Zhan and Li Xuejing draw some blacksmiths out, the more the better, and immediately transfer to Montenegro, by the way, there are carpenters, and another batch of carpenters will be transferred."

"Wait, just call Chen Zhan too, you can't do without him if you want to cast big iron."

"Yes."

Although the red-clothed attendant behind him was puzzled, he still took the order.

"Lao Yan, send some people to cut wood nearby, ask for silver firs, thigh-thick ones, and then gather all the asphalt in the iron yard, it will be of great use when the time comes."

&nbs-->>

p; "By the way, click on how many mule and horse-drawn carts there are in the iron yard and the coal yard, and pick out the sturdiest carts, and it will be of great use when the time comes."

"Okay."

Yan Sanqi was also full of doubts, but he still took the order.

He didn't go far, but he couldn't help but stop, turned around and asked, "My lord, what are we going to build?" ”

"Hmmm......"

Qin Chuan squatted on the ground, found two branches to place in parallel, and gestured: "Let's lay two rails, and install the mule cart with iron wheels that can just be stuck into the rails, because the rails and iron wheels are very smooth, and the mule will be very easy to pull up, and the mule that can pull a thousand catties will not be a problem after getting on this kind of rail." ”

"So much?" Yan Sanqi was startled.

"Well, in fact, I don't know exactly how much I can pull, guess, but three or five thousand catties must be no problem."

Yan Sanqi looked at the two branches fixedly, frowning and thinking.

After a long time, excitement gradually appeared on his face, and he slapped his thigh like Qin Chuan, and then ran to arrange things.

Qin Chuan went back to Song Zhiting's house, brought the rice paper that Song Zhiting played with Danqing ink, and began to write and paint.

He wanted to build a carriage track, lay it between the mine and the iron yard, between the iron yard and the coal yard, and then connect the place where the iron was stacked with two furnaces, and use the rail car to transport coal, iron ore, etc., and also wanted to get a conveyor belt to send coking coal into the furnace, which could greatly save manpower and improve efficiency.

Moreover, he also wants to lay tracks in the mine.

Today's iron ore, if the slope of the mine is not large, can still be pushed out by chicken bus, but if the mine has a steep slope, it has to be carried out by manpower, not to mention the low efficiency, but also consumes a lot of labor.

The train of later generations can hold sixty or seventy tons of a carriage, and the rail car he engaged in can hold a thousand catties of a carriage, and the weight that the bearing and iron wheels need to carry is not large, Li Xuejing's bearing technology is already very mature, and the bearings of the rail cars are not a problem, and there is iron of good enough quality, and the iron wheels are not a problem.

If one mule can pull five carriages, it means that it can transport 5,000 catties each time, which is five times more efficient, saving four mules and four coachmen.

The only difficulty is the large amount of work, the amount of work to cast miles of railroad tracks is very large, and dozens of iron wheels have to be cast, modified vehicles and so on.

Qin Chuan estimated that the project would take at least two or three months.

Chen Zhan came that day, and after Qin Chuan showed him the drawings he had drawn and told him the principle, Chen Zhan couldn't help but be amazed and excited at the same time.

The next day he started working on the mold and preparing the casting track.

Qin Chuan also continued to stay in Montenegro and groped with him, and Lou Jizong, Luo Daniu and others sent people to report to him.

Three days later, an army of Emperor Guan rushed to Montenegro to report to him an incident: the lynx had returned from Xingxian and brought back more than 1,300 hungry people, but some of them did not know what disease they had, and a few of them died as soon as they arrived in Lan County, and their skin was dark and swarthy when they died.

Wang Jizong felt that this matter was very important, so he sent someone to inform the lynx, asking him to lead those people to find a place where no one was to settle down, count all the sick people, and temporarily separate them from others.

Because, Wang Jizong suspected that those people were suffering from the plague that had occurred in the Wanli period and the Apocalypse year.

Hearing this, Qin Chuan frowned at first, and suddenly his face changed greatly.

The skin of the deceased was dark, isn't this the Black Death?

Wasn't the Black Death the plague?

He clearly remembered that there was a tragic outbreak of the plague at the end of the Ming Dynasty, which seemed to have broken out in the Xingxian area in the sixth year of Chongzhen.

Thinking of this, he immediately asked the Guan Emperor army to take a shortcut to find the lynx, and asked the lynx to keep an eye on those hungry people, and not to get close to any village, nor to allow others to get close to these hungry people.

And all those who are sick or sick must be separated, and no one should have contact with those who are sick, including water and food, and they should only be kept in one place from afar.

Then, after Qin Chuan hurriedly explained a few words to Chen Zhan and Yan Sanqi, he immediately rushed back to Lou Fu to arrange preventive affairs.

The reason why the population of the Ming Dynasty dropped from more than 100 million to 14 million was not only famine and war, but also because of a plague.

From the sixth year of Chongzhen to the fall of the Ming Dynasty, it raged for more than ten years.

From Shanxi, Shaanxi, and then to Shuntianfu, all the way to the wilderness, purgatory thousands of miles.

In Beijing City in the 14th year of Chongzhen alone, there were more than 200,000 corpses registered by the government, and countless were not registered.

When Li Hongji captured the city of Beijing, he was confronted with a dead city where people and ghosts were so mixed that people did not dare to walk in the twilight.

The plague must not be allowed to enter the hinterland of Luliang Mountain.