Jingshi, in a teahouse near Jishuitan in Dongcheng.

The lively noise outside did not affect Zheng Zhiguan inside, drinking tea leisurely. The epidemic has made the entire Yanjing City deserted a lot, but this is Dongcheng, a place where foreign merchants and goods gather, and Yanjing can't be deserted here.

Otherwise, wouldn't the great Jingshi be finished?

Everyone knows the Tonghui River, a river that Guo Shoujing repaired, connecting the pond in the northwest of the imperial city in the west and the end point of the Grand Canal in Tongzhou in the east. That is to say, during the Mengyuan period, the materials transported from the south to the north along the Grand Canal could be transported by ship through the imperial city to Jishuitan.

The Ming people thought that this would be detrimental to the dignity of the royal family, so the tail of the water shipping from the Grand Canal to Jishuitan through the Tonghui River was cut off. Since then, most of the large quantities of materials transported from the direction of Tongxian have been concentrated in the eastern part of Beijing, rather than being transported directly to Jishuitan like Mengyuan.

So much so that there is a saying in Beijing that "the east is rich and the west is expensive".

The Zheng family has already bought a property in the capital, and now it has one more hand, although it is handed over from the left hand to the right hand, but it also has an extra layer of protection.

made a subordinate of Bei Zhili come forward to be the shopkeeper of the teahouse, Zheng Zhiguan was hidden behind him, although he was far from having cards like Fan Yongliang, but it was also safer.

Jingshi is the nest of the Ming Dynasty, the famous Jinyi Guard, and the ghost still knows what they are like? Everything is carefully engaged in good.

Zheng Zhiguan listened to the report of his subordinates: "Zhu Chunchen, the Duke of Chengguo, was the lord in the thirty-ninth year of Wanli, Chongzhen was added to the Taifu for three years, and the general camp was in Beijing for nine years. There are five pawnshops, two antique shops, two foreign goods shops, seven grain shops, one cloth village, one satin village, there are 300 hectares of fertile land in the suburbs of the capital, there are ten granges in Tongzhou, Jizhou and Miyun, and there are more than 1,000 hectares of land......"

"Dingguo Duke Xu Yunzhen, after Xu Da, King of Zhongshan, Chongzhen took the title for three years......" and then there was a string of slippery shops and fields.

There is also the national abbot Jiading Bo Zhou Kui, and Tian Hongyu, the father of Hetian Guifei.

These two people were heavily instructed by Zheng Zhilong.

During these days, in addition to taking revenge on a few blind officials whose buttocks were not clean, Zheng Zhiguan's biggest thing in Beijing was to investigate the family backgrounds of those dignitaries in the capital.

Including the rich families in the city, those with a poor reputation, as much as possible, they had to check the bottom of the matter. Of course, there are some eunuchs.

Zheng Zhiguan didn't know what Zheng Zhilong asked him to investigate thoroughly, and he would do what he did if he ordered it.

However, Zheng Zhiguan has limited manpower at hand, and some of the things that can be found are even more limited, such as the external store and field can still be found, but what about the internal family background? Who knows if those people have a mountain of gold and silver in their treasury, or if they have already lost their money? What's more, the family in this era is not only one family head, but also countless branches, and even the stewards of the house, and how many acres of silver money are held by those people against the reputation of the family, so who can say accurately?

I'm afraid that even their own families will not be able to explain.

Zheng Zhiguan, this is also a superficial kung fu. It's not difficult, but there are more people and the scale is larger.

The same as Zheng Zhiguan's ignorance at the moment is Zheng Zhipeng, who is sitting in Anping City, he returned to Anping City from Denglai to sit in Anping City, how long has he been gone, and now it looks a little disjointed.

First of all, there is the discomfort of living habits, and then the 'discomfort' of the changes in Anping in this short period of time.

For example, there are many, many more animal-powered cranes at the wharf than before, and there are also hydraulic forging hammers in the factory, in order to make better use of water power, Zheng Zhilong has already instructed Zheng Hongkui to take the time to build a small reservoir, and it turns out that after having a reservoir, this hydraulic power is more obedient.

It's just that everyone has to look forward to Shu, after seeing the role of the reservoir, a small reservoir can no longer meet the needs of Zheng's development, from armor to guns, Anping has too many workshops that use water power.

So, the further expansion of the reservoir was already underway before he returned.

Then there are the big windmills by the sea.

Under the strong southeast wind, the big windmill snorted and rotated, and its interior, through the combination of multiple gears, levers, and conveyor belts, the glowing knife saw sawed the logs into planks of the same size, which was on the shipbuilding deck.

And in the dock not far away, there are several warships under construction, as well as mountains of wood, and hundreds of craftsmen who are building ships in the early autumn of Gaoyang.

Wooden warships seem to be simple to build, but in fact the preparation period for construction is relatively long, because the wood has to be dried in the shade. Freshly cut timber is used directly on the ship, and such a sea vessel is all disposable.

It is said that the timber of the warships built by John Bull in the 18th century dries for more than a year, and the hull frame is covered for several months to continue to ventilate and dehumidify. For example, after the construction of the 1st class sail battleship Victory began in 1759, its hull was idle on the slipway for three full years, and it was not until 1763 that it was restarted, and it was officially launched two years later!

The long drying period allows the Victory's timber to remove moisture from the depths, and the quality of the construction timber will also make the life of each sail warship much longer than that of the "same kind".

In Zheng Zhipeng's mind, although the Shijing Shipyard has a large number of dry wood, but referring to the ships and warships built by the shipyard in the past two years, there should not be as much wood there as he sees now, right? Especially the big timber one by one!

It's hard to buy such good materials with money.

All this until he saw the wood drying kiln.

Zheng Zhipeng is very ignorant, but unlike Zheng Zhiguan, everything in Anping City is there, and he has enough time to understand and recognise them.

Anping's drying kiln is a very simple and rough drying kiln, because Zheng Zhilong doesn't understand this bullshit, he just came up with an idea.

Everything now is something that the masters themselves have figured out in the lessons of failure again and again.

Although the consequence of this was that the quality of the wood was inferior to that of its naturally dried counterpart, it allowed Zheng Zhilong to build a large fleet of not inferior quality in a short period of time.

Zheng Zhilong is not short of money, nor is there a shortage of manpower. What he lacks most is time!

Elm, pine, oak, teak, ironwood......

All the timber needed to build a warship is really not lacking in the Ishii shipyard.

Then Zheng Zhipeng went to the wire factory.

He really didn't understand the important role of iron wire, but the fine iron used was better than the military system.

It was only when he came to the gate of the wire factory and saw the barbed wire outside the door that he suddenly realized.

A large net made of iron wire, the branches and branches of which are full of spikes, as if they were hanging thistles. The two ends were secured with wooden stakes and a few supports in the middle created a rather sinister obstacle. Arrange two or three layers in front and back, hang some bells on them, and sprinkle a layer of thistle terrestris on the ground in the middle......

"It turns out that this wire is used like this...... as a antler thorn, but it is simple and clear."

It's just that with such extravagant appliances, only their Zheng family can afford it. That's all first-class iron!