"The fifth day of the second month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty?"

The whole person half leaned on the porcelain pillow, put down the bronze mirror, reached out and scratched the tight hair, Min Yuanqi sighed deeply.

There still seems to be that flash flood in my mind, and the forehead sometimes jumps occasionally, and the heavy blow at that time seems to have a shadow that cannot be erased now.

"It's really crossed......"

From an ordinary person in later generations for hundreds of years, he became a test hundred households during the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty, that is, the military attache of the Ming Dynasty...... This span is a bit too big.

From clothes, hairstyles, looks...... And then to the people around you...... It's all changed.

People are social animals, detached from everything that originally existed, all the struggles of more than 30 years have been zeroed, and family and friends have no possibility to meet again.

Growing up in a welfare home, the strong nerves formed after a lot of experience saved Min Yuanqi. said that he had been hiding for more than ten days without seeing anyone, and today, he can finally accept his new identity: Emperor Ming Nanjing Zhongjun Governor's Mansion Dahewei Yunti Guanshou Imperial Office tried 100 households, and also led the general flag, which is Min Yuanqi's hereditary military position in Dahewei.

In addition to the hereditary official position, there is also a two-in-depth 100-household official hall, more than 100 acres of offshore thin fields with limited harvest, and nominally, there are seven stones of grain every month.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the country was in turmoil, and the income of 10 million silver and 20 million stones a year was mostly used in military affairs in the north.

Min Yuanqi lifted the futon on his body, turned over and went down the pit, grabbed a half-used cotton robe beside him, buttoned it with all hands and feet, put on a black gauze warm hat, tied a bronze medal engraved with his name and official position on his waist, stepped on the thick cotton hard-soled official boots, and then tied a waist knife with a scabbard covered with silver, and immediately became radiant.

When grabbing the waist knife, Min Yuanqi felt the weight of the saber, it seemed to be six or seven pounds in weight, when he pulled it out, the blade was shiny, the blade was extremely sharp, when holding the knife handle, the right hand and the knife body seemed to have a sense of flesh and blood, this treasure knife is an ancestral thing, if it is sold, you can get more than ten taels of silver, but Min Yuanqi knows that this is the most cherished thing by the ancestors.

Looking at his hands again, full of calluses, Min Yuanqi is only twenty-one years old, but in his mental memory, he began to boil his body at the age of six or seven, and he practiced martial arts non-stop, and there were not many ordinary military households willing to practice, but there were still many children of martial arts families like Min Yuanqi who practiced martial arts seriously.

Min Yuanqi stood in the middle of the room and looked around.

Inside the hall are several sets of badly damaged mahogany tables and chairs, on which are placed earthenware tea sets, all of which are worthless.

In the middle of the room was a tribute table, on which were gray brass five tributes, and above the head were black tiles, wooden beams, and the windows and window frames were finely tuned, showing excellent taste, but they were badly damaged. The mulberry paper window paper has been damaged in many places, but it has not been replaced.

Because the windows were pasted with paper, the weather was cold, and the windows were tightly closed, so the room was slightly darker.

In the corners of the inner room were several large cabinets as high as the beams, a table, and a bed, all made of worthless elm, plus a few bits and pieces, and in this way, constituted a whole world.

Push the door out, the courtyard outside is not small, all are paved with bluestone slabs and cobblestones, the main hall of five bays, the side compartments on both sides are also much larger than ordinary houses, there are kitchens and thatched houses on the east and west sides, there are firewood houses stacked with sundries in the backyard, and the south of the courtyard is the gatehouse of three bays.

On one side of the side of the porch is placed a row of weapons, swords, guns, swords, halberds, on the wall are several recurve bows, and in the corner of the wall are quivers with arrows and bows with bows.

Everything is a serious product, carefully crafted by craftsmen for the officer, and like the long knife placed in the main hall, it is all inherited by the ancestors.

On the eaves of the corridor of the side compartment, there are four black wooden plaques that are wiped brightly, and the font on them is gold lacquer words, and the elders in Min Yuanqi's memory attach special importance to these four couplets, and wipe and repair the paint on time.

Min Yuanqi looked at the couplet and whispered: "Remembering to Huaidong, the spring breeze once played Taoxuan." The sword dancing army in front of the honorable is solemn, and the flowers are laughing and laughing. The strange bones seem to be worthy of the earth, and the strong heart is tired of the dust. There is no reason to lay a bunch of life, and the eyes stop and the clouds surround the cemetery. ”

This is actually an elegiac poem, the poem is called "Bang Dahe Wei Min Gonghu Hou", Min Yuanqi knows that this is the poem of Cheng Minzheng, the waiter of the Ministry of Rites and a bachelor in the Hongzhi period, and the Min Gonghu Marquis in the poem is an honorific title, which should be a senior military attache at the level of a commanding envoy, and also the ancestor of Min Yuanqi in this life.

Cheng Minzheng was dismissed because of the Tang Yin case, but after all, he is still a dignitary among the civil officials, more than 200 years ago, the Min family still hung this couplet in front of the door of the house dedicated to the ancestors' spirit cards, which shows how proud and proud the ancestors of the Min family are after getting this poem.

"Honoring the former sword dancing army Rongsu?" Min Yuanqi shook his head, the situation described in the poem and the reality he is in now are completely two worlds.

"Brother Yuan Qi!"

Just when Min Yuanqi smiled bitterly, the outer door of the courtyard was pushed open, and a young man wearing a felt hat and an extremely dirty mandarin duck jacket walked in.

Searching in his memory, Min Yuanqi knew that this person's name was Min Yuanjin, who was a small flag official under his own general banner and his cousin, and he was usually here with Min Yuanqi.

In the past ten days, Min Yuanqi has been in a bad mood, and he has never gotten up to go out under the pretext of illness.

"Brother Yuan Qi," seeing Min Yuanqi get up, Min Yuanjin was very surprised, but he didn't dare to say anything, he only hugged his fists and said: "The salt boiled by the sea has already been obtained, please show Brother Yuan Qi, do you want to take a look?" ”

The Yunti Pass Imperial Palace is close to the sea, is the mouth of the Huai River, because of the large difference with the sea level, you can hear the loud sound of the Huai River water flowing into the sea every day, this place is called Xiangshui in later generations.

The whole Dahewei is widely distributed, Yuntiguan is the easternmost guard of the palace, it is very far away from the Huai'an Mansion where the guard command yamen is located, although there are many households in the place where the thousands of households are located, but they are in charge of Shanyang, Yancheng, Guannan counties, and the county seat of the three counties is also far away, and it is quite inconvenient to come and go.

There are many tidal flats and saline-alkali lands in the locality, agriculture is difficult, and commerce is underdeveloped, so it is a rather closed and backward place.

There are pros and cons to everything, and there may be advantages to disadvantages, Yunti Pass is to eat the sea by the sea here, and the military attaches of the guard station rely on the sea to boil salt to get extra money.

At the beginning of each month, each military household would hand over the salt that had been honored to the military attaché, and after the amount was counted, it would be sold.

These things, Min Yuanqi searched in his memory, and he immediately knew them.

This month's delivery of salt has been delayed because of Min Yuanqi's illness, and the military households under his rule do not hand over the salt to Min Yuanqi, and they dare not sell it, even this Min Yuanjin.

No wonder this person came to visit several times a day.

"I'm already well, so I'm going to take a look."

recalled Min Yuanqi's original tone of speech, and there was no delay in answering.

The two of them went out of the courtyard gate one after the other, and the people in the houses and streets along the way bowed and saluted when they saw Min Yuanqi coming. These people are all military households under his rule, and when they saw Min Yuanqi come out, of course they were very respectful.

The weather was very cold, Min Yuanqi kept nodding to passers-by, and he was secretly sighing in his heart.

The narrow streets are lined with sewage and garbage. The children playing outside were thinly dressed, their faces were blue from the cold, and the adults were also in tattered clothes, all of them were like Hanako.

Originally, the military households were the permanent garrison soldiers of the state, and the battle jackets on these military households should be changed every three years, but looking at the battle jackets on these military households, they have not been changed for at least ten years.

The houses along the street are all crooked, and they do not look good. And most of them are mud walls and grass houses, and only a few are brick and stone houses.

Min Yuanqi's residence is a legacy of ancestral property, although it is not very good, but it is already the best house within a few miles.

After walking for several miles to the east, the howling of the sea breeze was already very obvious, and the sound of the Huai River entering the sea was also very obvious. When he smelled a choking smell of smoke, Min Yuanqi knew that it was time to boil salt.

After climbing a small dirt slope, you are faced with the endless sea, the sea is grayish-brown, not as blue as the southern sea. There are large tidal flats along the coast, and the large and small wetlands formed by fresh water are covered with aquatic weeds and reeds, and they are still a decaying scene in late winter and early spring.

Dozens of ragged men and women were busy on the shore of the sea.

Min Yuanqi felt the sea breeze blowing on his face, and a salty smell came to his face.

Looking into the distance, there are obvious five cities along the south bank of the river, which are not covered with bricks, and are all rammed earth for the city. Min Yuanqi knew that this was built in the year of Jiajing, when there were traitors to seduce the Japanese from the sea to go ashore, burning, killing and looting all evil, the imperial court set up a general member here, built five earth cities on the south bank of the Huai River to garrison, Wanli 20 years to prepare the Japanese to move the total to Haizhou, here there are only a few earth cities and a virtual palace guard.

A hundred years later, the seawater here backs up to form a tidal plain, and the mouth of the sea moves back for a hundred miles, and the Yunti Customs is only left on the ground, which is far away from the mouth of the sea.

Dahewei is nearly 100 miles away from Yancheng, close to Shanyang and Dongyang, but the method of boiling salt and selling salt is exactly the same as that in Yancheng.

The first is "Na Chao".

The tide is quite particular, "the tide is at the head of the dry and sunny days, the tide is in the usual days, the tide is at the end of the rain after the rain, and the night tide is in summer and autumn." Levee to absorb the tide, build a dam on the seashore, introduce seawater, about seven days, when the seawater naturally evaporates, the soil at the bottom contains a considerable concentration of salt, and then the soil can be taken for later use.

The next step is to "make halogen".

The thatch by the sea is dried, and then the stove is built with wet soil, and the thatch is built on the bamboo chips, and after it is paved, a natural salt drain is formed, which can be made into brine.

The salt mud collected by Nachao is spread on the grass, and the seawater is taken from a large bucket, and the salt mud and thatch are constantly washed, and after the mud and grass are passed, the usable brine is filtered out.

The brine is filtered again to remove impurities, and it is loaded into a jar to settle for a period of time, which is the last decoction.

Use a large stove, a large iron pot, first burn over a large fire, after the brine boils, simmer slowly, after eight hours, the water is boiled dry, and the white salt is formed, which is the complete method of boiling salt.

In front of Min Yuanqi's eyes, there is a detailed panorama of the ancients boiling salt on the seaside.