In order to save time, the expedition team was divided into two groups here again. () One route was led by Wang Luobin to Tiandu to inspect the mine, and the other route was Chen Haiyang was responsible for building Yulin Fort locally.

It's much easier to find Tian Du than Shi Lu. As long as you go up the Tiandu River, you can find the Huangni Ridge, and the famous Tiandu Iron Mine is on this mountain.

The expedition continued its journey in a rowboat along a narrow bay flanked by mountains covered with lush vegetation that some had visited in another time and space, searching for familiar sights.

"We're probably going along the lines of G224." Wang Luobin looked at the map, "I don't know, I only need to walk 2 kilometers to get there." ”

At noon on 20 April, the Tiandu expedition team successfully found the estuary of the Tiandu River, and judging from the map, it was not far from Da'an. In the past, it was not a few kilometers to the town of Tiandu. However, Tiandu Town itself is still not the location of Tiandu Iron Mine, and the iron mine is still about 2~3 kilometers away from the town

The expedition team abandoned the boat here and landed on the shore, and traced up the river, the river valley is surrounded by dense primeval rainforest, and it is difficult to see the environment in the distance, about 2 kilometers, a river valley appears in front of them, and there are several villages nearby. Wang Luobin stopped. It was the map and the north arrow for a long time, and then it was announced that this was Tiandu Town.

"Tiandu Iron Mine is still a few kilometers ahead, come on, everyone."

With Wang Luobin's cheering, the group continued to go up the river, and the road by the river was very difficult to walk. There are many kinds of snakes, insects and leeches here, all kinds of flying insects are like weaving, fortunately, everyone is equipped with a full set of tropical equipment as required, mosquito net hats, tropical training uniforms covered by the whole body, especially in the opening of the clothes are added with anti-leech tie sets, especially walking near some wetlands, rows of dry leeches attached to the branches and leaves feel that people come when they collectively "stand up and greet each other", which makes people look straight up goosebumps.

"Check your cuffs!" Ryu Zheng gave instructions.

After crossing the valley area, Wang Luobin asked everyone to take a break and shake off the leeches on their clothes and equipment. Check again to see if there is a winning bid. Fortunately, the defenses were in place, and although the leeches worked hard, the best result was to burrow their heads into the outer layer of the canvas. However, seeing the messy corpses of leeches all over the ground, Wang Luobin also felt that this development field was not so simple.

"I don't know if insecticides on a large scale will work."

"No need for pesticides." Ryu was observing the dead bugs that were twisting and turning, "Changing the ecology here can make it finish." It's too humid here, so we fill in the swampy area and naturally there won't be any. ”

Less than 1 kilometre ahead, there is an open river valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. This should be the location of Tiandu Village, and the famous Tiandu Iron Mine should be on the Huangniling in the southeast.

The problem is that the vegetation here is so dense that you can't tell which of the mountains are yellow soil. Although the mining area of this Tiandu iron ore mine is five or six square kilometers in circumference, the diameter of the pit developed in later generations is only 300 meters. It's a bit difficult to find this place.

"Except for the proximity to the port. The development here is no less difficult than that of Shiroku. "To remove a large amount of vegetation, a lot of work is required. ”

"It would be nice if we could build a railway, and the machinery and manpower could be brought in."

"The problem is that there is no manpower." Wang Luobin sat on a big rock, "Back then, the Japanese mined Tiandu, and Kao had to fill it with human lives for ore, and what we lack most now is human life-"

"What's so difficult about this, all the Jiannu captives caught in the future will come to open mines." Liu Zheng's nationalist sentiment burst out, "What other Malays from Southeast Asia, just come to the slave trade!" When consumables are used! ”

"It's all in the future, who are we going to fill in now? It's hard to do. Wang Luobin stared at this barren virgin land. The expedition team was scattered in all directions, measuring the mine with instruments and tapping rock samples. There are also people surveying the terrain here.

In the afternoon, according to the data of later generations, the expedition team had roughly detected the location of the Tiandu mine, excavated the exploration trench, and excavated a ton of sample ore according to Wang Luobin's instructions.

"Dig so much? Guys back to it, do you expect to make steel on this ton of iron ore? ”

"If you want to send it back for trial, the steel mill doesn't have such a small furnace." Even one ton of Wang Luobin felt that it was less - this kind of iron ore of more than 60 percent could be directly used in the open-hearth furnace to make steel, which required two shiyans.

"Okay. But as I said, we have to call everyone to come together for this ore carrying matter, otherwise several of us in the expedition team will be exhausted to death. ”

At that moment, the whole expedition team began to dig ore with sweat and rain, but fortunately, one ton of ore is not too much, and more than ten people dig for an hour is enough.

After the sample ore was mined, the expedition team completely covered the exploration trench of the mine with soil - a resource that is not yet known to the locals.

Tiandu iron ore is also an iron ore with very high iron content, so that during the Guangxu period, a local gentry only used a small square furnace and a dozen workers to smelt raw iron bricks in batches to supply the market, and made a lot of profits for a while. Wang Luobin didn't want such a thing to happen in advance at this time.

"Everyone have a good rest tonight, and tomorrow we will go to Damao."

"Where is Da Mao?" Liu Zheng was full of sweat and soil, and he wanted to take a bath in the water but was afraid of encountering leeches, and he was full of upset, looking forward to going back to the beach tomorrow to take a good bath, and suddenly heard a big grass for no reason.

"It's a manganese ore with reserves of 1 million tons." Wang Luobin said, "This is an important raw material for the manufacture of special steel. ”

"Boss, you won't want another ton of samples."

"A ton is not needed." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. "500 kilograms still need it." All glared angrily.

The next day, the expedition advanced inland. Before leaving, Wang Luobin called the fleet on the radio and instructed Chen Haiyang to send someone to transport the ore, and at the same time took special care: "We must ensure that the shipment is secret, especially not to let the locals know what is being transported." ”

After arriving at the site of what is said to be the Damao manganese mine, the expedition team began to take samples from the entire mining area and explore the trenches. This place is much harder to find than Tiandu Iron Mine. After tossing back and forth for five or six days, the expedition team was almost like a groundhog, turning over the surrounding soil layers. Chen Haiyang finished transporting the iron ore and did not see the expedition team return, so he quickly sent another group of people over to help explore the trough.

Zuihou they did find a small amount of manganese ore in the skull, but the real veins were ten meters deep underground. The difficulty of mining is still quite large.

"Wang Gong, I think this manganese ore will be forgotten for the time being-" Liu Zheng is no different from a coal black, "The shallowest place is ten meters, and there is water coming out below, so I am afraid that it will be useless if I don't dig a tunnel." ”

Wang Luobin looked at the swarthy trench in front of him. I'm afraid that the top-opening mining is no fun. However, the excavation of the tunnel involves a series of supporting projects: pumping, air blasting, tunnel lifting, supporting...... If this bunch of things goes down, even if all the local methods are launched, it will be a big project.

"Dig up a few dozen kilograms of sample mines." Wang Luobin looked helpless.

"What do you think this is, is it a copper mine?" Suddenly, someone showed him a piece of ore.

Wang Luobin picked it up and saw that it was a gray stone, but with a light green, glass-like luster. He weighed it with his hand and scratched it with the Swiss Army knife he was carrying, testing the hardness.

"I didn't expect there to be something good here!"

"What?!" Several people around him gathered around.

"It's phosphate rock!" Wang Luobin was very excited--to pass through one of the artifacts, the match, had to have this thing to be born. In this sense, phosphate rock is much more useful than manganese ore. He lit a lighter and set a corner of the ore on fire. The flame glows green.

"That's right, this is phosphate rock!"

The role of phosphorus is basically well known, even if you don't know that it is used to make matches, you also know that it is an important fertilizer for farmland. Now that phosphate rock has been discovered next to the manganese ore, the discovery that I thought was a little frivolous has suddenly become extremely valuable.

"Where did you find it?"

"It's on that hill." The person who found the ore hurriedly pointed out the location, and Wang Luobin was even more excited than finding the manganese ore. Hurriedly walked towards the trench.

The trench is hit on the slope of the hill, and at an angle of about 30 degrees, it is driven into the mountain about four or five meters, Wang Luobin is not a geologyist, but it can be seen that most of the core of the hill is composed of phosphate rock, which also does not constitute the conditions for mining in the sky. This disappointed him a little.

"At least one base can support two mining sites." He comforted himself in this way. However, in the near future, it seems that it is more realistic to go to Dongsha or Xisha to collect struvite stones.

Most of the members of the expedition team did not think it was so complicated, and everyone was enthusiastic and dug another 500 kilograms of sample ore to be brought back to Lingao to be handed over to the chemical and metallurgical departments.

When the expedition team returned to Yulin Port, the infrastructure project had just been completed by one-third of the way, and Yulin was a good place for development bases, with mountains, water, land, timber and stones, and almost nothing lacking. This place is different from Changhua Fort, whose purpose is simply to gain a trading base. Foreshadowing the future of stone mining. This is a large distribution center for resources obtained by crossing the group, and it is much larger than Changhua Fort in terms of scale.

Zhang Xingpei of Lingao Construction Company, who came with the ship, is an expert in wooden construction herding, and one of the many "turtles" in the crossing group, with experience in building houses throughout the process.

In particular, the consultant was Yu Eshui - this man participated in the expedition purely for the purpose of going out to play, and after experiencing the painful seasickness for the first few days, he had now become so energetic that he recommended himself to be the architectural consultant of Yulin Fort, who was obsessed with building a fortress for survivalists, and had a special interest in logistics and defending the city.

"You don't need to use it to deal with a siege, but at least you need to make sure that you can defend a lot of goods with a small number of men."

This is the key point that Yu Eshui extracted after listening to Wang Luobin's long-winded requirements of a large number of bases.

Zhang Xingpei used to be fat, and he has lost a lot of weight in recent months, but he is still the slow and logical appearance of the fat people in the past, he coughed before saying:

"How big is the yard requirement? What kind of cargo is piled up? Does it have to be sheltered? ”

"The goods should be ore, timber, coconuts, etc."

"That means having a larger yard." Zhang Xingpei looked at it for a long time and sketched a simple floor plan on the paper book.

The drawing of the blueprint is just a simple large courtyard with a square. Each corner has a convex fort. One of them is a residential area, which is larger in size. It can accommodate about 20 people for long-term residence and has a warehouse. Other skew forts also have full living facilities that can accommodate up to one class. The gate of the courtyard is next to the living quarters, making it easy to guard. The courtyard wall is a wooden wall erected in rows of wood, with a mound of soil at the bottom, 6 meters high, and the top is all sharpened, and no pedestrians can be used at the top. You can't climb up without a ladder.

The four convex forts, including the gate itself, were built of masonry. Roof tiles. A trench was dug outside the fort to bring in water from the river. There is a lot of rain in summer and autumn, so there is no problem with water use.

In order to facilitate the loading and unloading of goods, a pier of more than 10 meters will be built in the bay in front of the fort for ships to moorth.

"Isn't it a bit thin--" Chen Haiyang was very worried when he saw this design that looked like a medieval fortress.

"Defense is a little lower, but it's enough. The local rich people's stockades did not have this level. Yu Crocodile said, "The fortification of Anyoule City is nothing more than a wooden fence wall and a few towers. It can be seen that the biggest threat here is nothing more than a few dozen pirate sailors coming up and down, robbing a few unlucky people who didn't have time to escape. ”

Even if the enemy did rush into the yard, all that could be grabbed was ore and wood, which didn't seem to be of much value. If you really want to attack and fight, Anyoule City is obviously a more valuable target than Yulin Castle.

Everyone was discussing the details, and Jiang Qiuyan, the doctor accompanying the team, suddenly mentioned: "Who are you going to let stay in this Yulin Fort?" ”

"Eleven or twelve people are enough for now. Two or three traversers plus a squad of sailors. We will expand the scale according to the development situation in the future."

Jiang Qiuyan said: "Wang Gong." I don't think that's going to work. How many people are there in the group? Sprinkle pepper noodles everywhere like this, less will not work, and more will be a waste of talent. Let's not talk about ourselves, just the Marine Corps will lose three squads. ”

"That's right, we have to be stationed here, and we have to be stationed there, and I always feel that the troops are not enough." Chen Haiyang has long been plagued by the lack of naval forces. Whether it is a sailor or a sailor, the sea liliang department has a feeling of being stretched.

"And have you thought about a question? A few traversers were placed alone in this barren land, surrounded by nothing but themselves, not to mention the natives, not even a few living people, limited by the conditions of the executive committee and it is impossible to equip each stronghold with more comfortable living facilities, the days have passed, these people have not yet had a mental breakdown! Jiang Qiuyan gestured excitedly, making people feel that he was about to have a nervous breakdown