"Those who have a country and a family pay attention to not suffering from widowhood and suffering from inequality, but God does not care about this. He likes to joke, the world's products are randomly distributed, but uneven, some places, within a thousand miles of lack of minerals, but in some places, within tens of miles, there are several large mines......"

Heifu looked at Cangshan in the distance and said, "Exian County, Hengshan County, is such a place. ”

On the way out of Echeng and on the way to his destination, Heifu chatted with Li Cang, who was in the same car, about the past.

"In the twenty-fourth year, I crossed the river from Yi County with your father and captured Echeng. This place is the town of the Ejun, he is the premier feudal monarch of the Chu State, and there are really a lot of ceremonial utensils in the mansion, and it took us three full days to finally finish moving. ”

Li Cang responded: "My father told me that my uncles settled in Yuzhang, opened fields, and set up sugar mills, relying on the money obtained from these bronze wares. ”

It can be said that it was the first pot of gold of the "Anlu Gang", and Heifu didn't know why there were so many bronzes in Ejun's house at the time, and later realized that this was the first month near the water......

"In the twenty-ninth year, Yuzhang established a county, and Yuzhang was established together, as well as Hengshan County, and the county governed Yi County. However, Hengshan County has few people and a narrow land, and it can be completely incorporated into Nanjun, do you know why it is a county? ”

Li Cang said: "My nephew doesn't know. ”

"Patina Mountain."

Heifu raised his index finger: "This one bonanza alone is enough for Hengshan Shan Independent County!" ”

It is said that as early as the Yaoshun era, there were already Sanmiao tribes digging pits and mining and smelting here, and the red copper blocks obtained from refining crossed the Yangtze River and were continuously transported to the Central Plains......

When it came to the Yin Shang Dynasty, the merchants were fond of casting huge bronze vessels to please the ancestors of the ghosts and gods, and in order to snatch the copper materials, when Wu Ding was in the middle of the period, he had a large-scale southern expedition and went deep into the hinterland of Jingman. The purpose of the southern expedition was to plunder copper, and a city was built by the river for mining.

When he arrived in the Zhou Dynasty, King Zhao of Zhou was not full enough to support the southern expedition, but also to seize the copper material. It's a pity that he didn't succeed and was defeated by the people of Chu, and King Zhao of Zhou drowned in the Han River. At present, the Dragon Boat Festival in the northern part of Jianghan, throwing rice into the water, is not Qu Yuan, but this one, which is said to be a tradition left by the princesses of Hanyang.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, the reason why Chu was strong and prosperous was able to win the Central Plains and compete with Jin Qi for hundreds of years was largely due to the rich copper and tin deposits in the south. The tomb robbery case handled by Heifu when he was the pavilion chief, and the bronze burial goods weighing more than ten tons in the tomb of the Ao family originated in southern Hunan.

Therefore, after the Qin Dynasty destroyed Chu, it stationed heavy troops in Tonglu Mountain, let it restart, under the labor of thousands of prisoners, the tunnel was dug deeper and deeper, and the ore was continuously put into the furnace, and then spit out hot copper water, cooled and cast into bright red copper ingots, and then fused with the tin transported from the south of the Yangtze River, and became the "dollar" that everyone liked.

However, after belonging to the Qin Dynasty, the copper green mountain was no longer a bulky but impractical ritual weapon, nor was it a spear and sword halberd during the war, but became a half-tael coin with an outer circle and an inner square......

This is the confidence that Hengshan County can set up a county independently, and the entire Echeng, as well as the Yi County on the other side, really exudes the smell of copper everywhere. Every year, Hengshan buys a large amount of grain from Nanjun, which has a developed agriculture, so that the convicts and craftsmen who open the mines can eat their stomachs.

But now, as the south fell into a bitter war, not only the soldiers were consumed, but also the blades, and with an order from the imperial court, Tonglu Mountain became an arsenal again, and the assembly line operation was working day and night, producing great evil......

The Hefu did not go directly to the Copper Green Mountain, but stopped forty miles north of it.

In the distance, there is also a mountain here, and as the trees are cut down by the convicts, the ochre stones underneath are revealed......

"Those who have ochre above have iron below, and the iron mountain has arrived!"

……

Ochre, this is the color of iron ore, and the vermilion lines seen on the mountain are ore seedlings. This mine was discovered by the people of Chu, but before it could be mined, it was taken over by the Qin people, and Hengshan County set up an iron official here, and in another two thousand years, Wuhan Iron and Steel would have to rely on it for food......

Most of the iron ore on the Iron Mountain was shallow, and after the convicts dug up the iron ore covered with mud, they transported it to the stream in baskets such as mules and horses to wash it, and then carried it downhill to the workshop, where dozens of furnaces stood.

When the iron official heard that the Marquis of Changnan was coming, he waited at the intersection early in the morning, and when he saw that the nobleman had arrived, he hurriedly came over to lead the horse for Heifu, nodding his head.

Hefu asked him, "I asked people to draw figures, and I asked you to make weapons, but they can be forged?" ”

The iron official responded: "Okay, okay, it is made of the best craftsmen, made of the best iron, and I want to send it to the camp immediately to show the Marquis of Changnan. ”

Hefu is here, not only for the weapon, but mainly to see the production capacity of Iron Mountain and Copper Green Mountain, how long will it take to arm his army, and what needs to be done to improve production?

Although he started with more than five farmers, mining was still the most basic.

While leading the horse for Heifu, the iron officer pointed to the wooden instruments that were spinning endlessly by the stream and said:

"Since the Nanjun water wheel came, the ink master has improved it slightly, and made a water row with it, and came here to teach the craftsmen, and now the water is used to drive the drain to blow the wind to smelt iron, and the iron quality is much better."

This is what has happened in recent years, thanks to the help of Hefu, the ink writers who survived the turmoil of banning a hundred schools and confiscating books from the imperial court began to focus on improving their equipment, and drummed up a series of hydraulic machinery.

Influenced by the "water spine" named by Heff, all instruments powered by water have a water character: the water spine of the rice pounding paper, the water mill for grinding noodles, and the water wheel drawing water from the river for irrigation are all water, and this chapter is no exception.

The utensils of the blast are "橐", smelting minerals, requiring extremely high temperatures, one is not enough, so use several 機, put them together, arrange them in a row, it is called "row of 橐". The raft is very large, and it originally needed to be pulled by manpower or livestock, but now it is installed with a water wheel and pushed by water power, which is called "water drainage".

With the water drain, the wind is strong and long-lasting, and the temperature of the iron furnace can be increased, and the iron smelted is more and better.

Hefu nodded, feeling a little relieved every time he saw that productivity had improved because of him. But he didn't have time to look at the specific process of smelting ore into iron, nor did he have time to listen to the iron official's sycophants, so he proposed to go directly to the last process: casting and forging.

Before they got closer, the heat wave rolled in, and there were clanging sounds everywhere, ** upper body, only around the craftsman in a cooked cowhide skirt, was forging iron, they were holding hammers, sweat flowing on the bronzed skin.

Before the unification, the iron soldiers of the Qin State were actually very underdeveloped, and the Qin people still preferred to use the bronze soldiers that could quickly equip the army after casting, rather than the iron soldiers that had been tempered for thousands of years, and the iron was mostly used for agricultural tools.

But after the unification, Shaofu directly absorbed the skilled craftsmen of the six countries, and made up for the shortcomings of the past.

The iron-smelting industry of Chu is very developed, there are many famous craftsmen smelting iron swords in the Spring and Autumn Period, Wandi is a famous iron-smelting center, South Korea seized Nanyang, after getting the technology of the Chu people, it has the reputation of being the first in the world of Korean soldiers.

But whether it is the Chu people or the Koreans, they have all focused on the iron sword.

Knowing that the Marquis of Changnan had arrived, the Chu blacksmiths immediately stopped what they were doing and knelt in a row on the ground.

But I saw that the ten weapons that had just been baked for a few days, polished and shiny, lying quietly in the wooden box, they were slightly shorter than the three-foot sword of the military standard, with a ring-shaped handle, but unlike the sword, the blade was wider, with a one-sided edge, and a thick ridge and thin blade.

In addition, there are also differences in the shape of each other, some have larger blades, some have straight ridges and straight blades, and some have a bit of special curves, and the overall shape looks like a dog's legs......

Hefu picked them up one by one and looked at them, yes, this was what he wanted.

At this time, the iron official has already begun to blow the embarrassing mode.

"His subordinates have served as bronze and iron officials, and have built countless blades, but they have never seen such a strange thing."

He was quite talented in acting, and pointed to the knife with an exaggerated expression: "Second and third sons, please see, the appearance resembles the sword of Yin Shang, but it is forged from iron. The single-sided blade saves a lot of troublesome craftsmanship and is easier to forge than a sword. The subordinates have tried, it is full of weight, thick ridges and thin blades, so the momentum is strong and heavy, the general blade is difficult to resist, and it can split the thick armor, and the prince is worthy of being a battlefield general......"

After speaking, he also sighed emotionally: "I have heard that if you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools, and if you want to be invincible, you must also be good at your soldiers!" ”

In short, the iron official blows these knives to the point that no one has ever done before, how awesome the design is, how reasonable the structure is, and it is only on a par with the cadre Mo Ye.

"Yes, yes."

The blacksmiths looked at each other, and said in their hearts No wonder the iron officer can be an iron official, and they can only be craftsmen, so it is so, and they also nodded and praised together.

Heifu only laughed and said nothing, and Lycang couldn't help laughing, but at this time, he heard a faint voice in the workshop mutter:

"It's so powerful, isn't it actually the firewood knife that I use to chop wood and cane at home!"

For a while, all the embarrassment came to an abrupt end, and everyone looked back, but it was a young blacksmith with a dark complexion, and he also found that his words had attracted everyone's attention, and he turned pale with fright, and hurriedly knelt down, and asked the black man for his guilt.

Heifu didn't think it was wrong, but laughed out loud.

"What is the sin? You're right, I asked you to make these knives out in order to chop vines and trees! ”