On the second day, Rihito came to the center's steel-making furnace, and the blacksmith he had ordered yesterday immediately took out the crossbow arm that had been made. At the same time, the blacksmith master said: "Big island master, don't you know, when we built a few crossbow arms last night, it was really a difficult fight!" ”

"Oh! Why is that? Rihito asked incomprehensibly.

The master blacksmith immediately said: "That's right, our hammers are all wrought iron, the texture is relatively soft, and yesterday we used freshly smelted steel. After this section of steel burned red, it was a hard one, and our wrought iron hammer hit it, and this section of steel did not respond for a long time. ”

Li Ren smiled and said, "It's okay for me to pour a few hammers for you in the next few days, so that you don't have to deal with this situation in the future." When the master blacksmiths heard that Rihito was going to make them into a hammer from steel, they all grinned stupidly.

Just do it, Rihito started another furnace, this one no longer wants to fly as before, there is an assistant in charge of handing over the shift with Rihien, and four days later the blacksmiths got the hammer poured for them. Li Ren immediately said to them, "Masters! Now that you've got your own steel hammer, I hope you'll build the best armor and weapons for us Suzaku in the days to come. The master blacksmiths have expressed that they do their best to complete the characters and goals of the big island owner.

The foundation of everything has already appeared in the hands of Rihito, and the island has ushered in a period of rapid development. The master blacksmiths were no longer satisfied with the earliest hundred steels, after the appearance of this kind of steel that was molded in large quantities at one time. The masters put all the equipment on the island back to the furnace and tried to replace every item with steel.

During this period, although the enthusiasm of the masters was high, new problems appeared. The items made by the harvest are more or less inconsistent in specification and difficult to replace. At this time, Rihito had to start thinking and planning about the press that he wanted to make later.

First of all, Li Ren still looked for it first, Merlin and his group of master carpenters, and used wood to make the model of the stamping machine on the drawn drawings. The gears and gears in the middle are very difficult for Merlin, because everything is now in a primitive state, only wind power and water conservancy can be applied, and the new energy steam, can only become a reality after the appearance of the press.

On the island, there was only the original energy wind power, but how to make a windmill that could drive a stamping machine became the only obstacle now, and Li Ren thought of his primary cement in Wangjiazhuang, which was the only way to erect this super-large windmill.

However, the current situation is that Wangjiazhuang is far away, and transporting cement is a thankless task. But without cement, it is impossible to achieve your goals.

There is no way to start building a cement production kiln on the island, but Liren knows very well that when this kind of kiln produces cement, the dust pollution is very large, and in his previous life, there was an old-fashioned vertical kiln cement factory in his hometown, and when the cement factory was not in production, the air around the five miles was refreshing. As soon as they started to produce, the surrounding five miles of sky were covered in a dark cloud of thick dust, and it didn't take more than three minutes for anything around them to have a layer of cement ash attached to the surface. If you build in a residential area or near a steel mill, you will be in the dust for yourself and everyone. After taking a map of the whole island, Rihito carefully studied it, and found that it was a very good place to build a kiln to burn cement in a small mountain ten miles away from here.

Rinhito immediately sent a small group of soldiers to the recess of the hill to investigate, and in the afternoon the team sent a soldier back to report: "The recess is uninhabited, and a water source has been found. ”

"Very well, you go and tell them that you will camp there tonight, and start building the kiln tomorrow." Rihito ordered.

The next day, Rihito instructed Lehi to take care of the base camp, and he came to the small mountain with a thousand craftsmen and materials, and saw it with his own eyes, and Rihito was very happy. In the middle of the hill there is at least two miles of flat land, and a small stream flows slowly on one side of the flat land.

With the water, all that remains is the construction of factories and vertical kilns. All the personnel worked together to build a small factory and a small vertical kiln in ten days.

The completion of the construction of the vertical kiln made Li Ren more energetic, and he just ordered people to go to the base camp to transport limestone, because some time ago there was not much left in the refining of steel, limestone and clay, and now Zhang Yue, who is in charge of managing the materials, personally rushed to Li Ren to explain the situation, Li Ren frowned and asked: "How much money is left now, can you buy these two things in large quantities?" ”

Zhang Yue took the ledger and handed it to Liren and said: "Now there are only 200,000 taels of silver left on the whole island, if nothing else, we can hold out until the middle of next year, if we buy a large amount of clay and limestone now, we will definitely put all our plans on hold, and we will also face the problem of purchasing grain." ”

After hearing this, Li Ren immediately fell into deep thought, and took Zhang Yue and his guards to the stream not far away, Li Ren said, "How is the operation of our caravan now?" ”

"The caravan is mainly limited to dealing in ordinary goods, and the consumption of the caravan is very large, and now it can only earn a small amount of silver, and sometimes it can only face the situation of capital preservation." Zhang Yue reported truthfully.

At this time, Li Ren turned his head and asked, "If we use 100,000 taels of silver, how long can we hold out?" ”

"Wait, I'll do the math." Zhang Yue had to use the abacus he carried with him to carefully calculate and said: "If this is the case, we can only hold on until the end of the year." ”

Li Ren smiled at Zhang Yue and said, "That's good, as long as we can hold on until the end of the year, I can make the 100,000 taels we spend become 400,000 taels or more." ”

Zhang Yue is now very troubled by the matter of silver, it turns out that Liren and others have not yet accepted the imperial court's recruitment, and they can use the raiding team to quickly collect silver, and the island will have a great momentum for development. Now after being recruited by the imperial court, the problem of silver money has become a fatal point for the Suzaku army. Hearing Liren's confidence, Zhang Yue was very happy, but also had doubts. He asked, "Why is the lord so confident?" Can you turn a stone into gold? ”

"Huh! I can't turn stone into gold, but I can turn stone into silver. Rihito said with a smile.

Zhang Yue asked even more curiously, but Li Ren just smiled and said, "You don't have to ask too much about these." You just need to cooperate with me. ”

Li Ren instructed the soldiers to guard the cement factory that had been built, and he and Zhang Yue returned to the base camp. After coming to the steelmaking plant, Li Ren saw that there were already five steel-making blast furnaces, and after choosing one blast furnace, Li Ren said to Zhang Yue: "Tell people to look for white stones around, and remember to get a few from each location first." ”

Zhang Yue went to instruct people to do things with questions, and it only took two days for Liren to be full of all kinds of white stones in front of him. Zhang Yue carefully watched Liren carefully select among these white stones, and the selected stones were all classified and marked, and then asked the person who brought the stones to find the location of the stones.

In the end, Rihito picked out three locations and ordered someone to drive a carriage to pick them up. Ten taels of carriages pulled back with great difficulty, and Li Ren immediately asked people to unload the stones, and after selecting the most transparent, white, and impurity-free stones, they were piled aside, and those with impurities were carefully knocked out.

Zhang Yue is now staring straight at the side, but he hasn't cut out the reason yet. At this time, I saw that Li Ren immediately ordered people to make salt from seawater, and at this time, Zhang Yue's eyes lit up and immediately ran to Li Ren's side and said, "Lord! Can you really turn seawater into salt? ”

Li Ren asked Zhang Yue incomprehensibly: "What's so difficult about this?" Why do you ask? ”

"My lord! Don't you know, salt is a big deal now, and if we get it right, salt alone can make us a lot of money every day. Zhang Yue said happily.

Rihito then asked, "The sea is so big, don't other people know how to make salt?" ”

"Lord Qi, the current salt and iron are all in the hands of the government, and other people are not allowed to make salt and sell salt. In addition, the production of salt from seawater is only in the hands of the government. Zhang Yue looked at Liren and said.

Li Ren laughed and said: "What's so difficult about this, there are two ways to make salt, tomorrow you take a hundred people and we will build a salt pan on a beach." When the time comes, there will be as much salt as you want. But today I'm doing an experiment, so don't worry. Zhang Yue was suddenly in a surging mood, and stood aside quietly without saying a word.

The most critical thing to make glass is the soda ash preparation method, Li Ren thought of the Lu Bran alkali method seen on the Internet in the previous life, this method is the simplest, although a bit of a problem of too much pollution, but the current technology is only the most practical with this method.

However, this alkali production method uses sulfuric acid, and the current production method of dilute sulfuric acid is still in the hands of a few Taoists, and this method is not known to the general public. However, for his master is a half-immortal who cultivates the Tao, Liren has still seen it in "The Yellow Emperor's Nine Tripod Divine Pill Essence", and his younger brother Lixin also made a small amount of dilute sulfuric acid in order to better cultivate medical skills at that time. Now Riren is going to use this method.

He first asked the pottery master to make only a large clay dome and opened a five-inch diameter garden hole at waist level next to it. Then I made a clay cover with good sealing for this tripod. A hole of the same size was opened in it. Then let the potter master put it in the kiln to calcinate it to make it into a ceramic pot. Then Li Ren asked the copper smelter master to make only two copper pipes that could fit in the Dingshang Cave. In this way, Li Ren asked the plasterers to build a one-foot-high platform to place the ceramic tripod. At the same time, Li Ren asked the ceramic masters to make a copy of a round tripod and place it under the table, but this tripod did not have a hole in the waist, but a hole in the lid. When everything was ready, Rihito was left to wait.

Three days later, Li Ren came to the steel mill, and the pottery masters hurriedly asked people to carry two ceramic tripods to Li Ren, and Li Ren looked carefully and asked: "Do these two tripods leak in other places except for the hole?" ”

The pottery master was a little difficult to speak now, and one of them stumbled and said: "Qiqi big island master, the tripod of the two holes has not found a leak, but the tripod of one hole has found a little leakage." ”