Li Qigou was in Jinyang, and he did not come forward to oppose Li Siyuan, and some suggestions to issue a document and raise troops to crusade against the ministers were all vetoed by him.

He hoped that Luoyang would forget about his existence.

It's just that it's not possible.

The existence of Li Qi, the crown prince, made Li Siyuan and the officials and generals of the Luoyang court fidget.

Although the first emperor Li Cunqiao did not die directly at their hands, Wei Bo rebelled, and then everyone attached themselves to Li Siyuan, which is inseparable from the death of the first emperor.

If the crown prince Li Qi ascends the throne, has great power and controls the situation, he will definitely not have a good life for them, and it will be a blessing not to be killed and his family will be raided.

So everyone spoke one after another, supporting Li Siyuan to ascend the throne and become the emperor.

In this regard, Li Siyuan is also in a dilemma, and he can't make up his mind for the time being.

The days dragged on day by day, and the two sides were still safe for the time being.

But in private, Li Siyuan and the crown prince also sent envoys to various military towns, contacting and co-opting many jiedu envoys, hoping to draw them into their camp.

So far, except for the northern Jin Dynasty, only Wang De, the envoy of the Yiwu Festival, and Li Jiyan, the envoy of the Fengxiang Festival, openly expressed their support for the prince, and Li Jiyan also did a good deed, blocking the army of Zhang Yun, who was clamoring to return to Chang'an and avenge his brother, to the south of Chencang Valley, so that it could not enter Guanzhong.

Although Li Jiyan's name is only one word different from Li Qi, it has nothing to do with the Li family in Hedong. He is the son of Li Maozhen, the king of Qi, and this time he expressed his support for the crown prince, which still surprised Li Qi. In addition, although Kong Qing, the envoy of Zhaoyi Jiedu in Luzhou, and Xia Luqi, the envoy of Heyang Jiedu, who had already moved to Zezhou, expressed their willingness to obey the prince's dispatch, they refused to openly break with Li Siyuan, and their attitude was a little wavering.

Although Wang De was forced to force his father-in-law to be upright and win the position of Jiedu, he was recognized by Li Cunqing, the king of Jin, and married his beloved daughter to the son of the king of Jin, Jiqi, because he was married to Zhuangzong, so he was favored and trusted by the first emperor.

After receiving Li Qi's rescue letter, Zheng Jixuan, the general of the royal capital's advance department, led 3,000 Dingzhou troops to Jinyang to help the crown prince. and provided more than 100,000 silver coins and some grain and grass for the prince's use to support the army. It's an old man, and it's a military town that is desperate to protect the prince.

After Li Qi got some of the money and grain provided by the royal capital, he finally had a little looser on hand, so he ordered the water supervisor of the capital to recruit migrant workers to build a dam and repair the embankment and build a workshop in Yuci Huangzhuang on the shore of the cave and the Tangming Manor at the mouth of the Sanjiao River in Yangqu County.

The Kiln Department will be subordinate to the Superintendent, who will be responsible for the refining of building materials such as porcelain, pottery, bricks and lime, as well as household utensils. In the lime kiln, a small amount of cement has been fired for a long time, but people don't know what the cement is used for, so they clean it up and throw it away as garbage at the bottom of the kiln.

Cement, which is not mixed with sand and gravel in proportion, has no strength when mixed into a slurry, and is even inferior to clay.

The production process of cement is relatively simple, that is, the limestone is ground into fine powder, and then mixed with clay in a certain proportion and stirred evenly, and then put into the lime kiln for exercise.

As for the mix ratio, Li Qi is not very clear, but he knows the method, and he will figure it out after a few kiln tests.

If you want to develop machinery production, you need to use more mechanical parts made of steel.

In this year, the price of a pound of iron is as high as 30 cents, which is unbearable.

While inspecting the Jinchi Manor project in Beiyuan, Li Qi said to Wei Fengkui, the supervisor who will be the prisoner: "Is there a craftsman who can find iron ore in the prison?" ”

"There are a few experts in prospecting, I don't know what the prince commands?"

Li Qi looked Wei Fengkui up and down, and then said, "You go find a few craftsmen who can find mines, and come to the palace at night, I have something to tell them to do." ”

After listening to Li Qi's explanation, Wei Fengkui immediately resigned and went to the general to find a blacksmith who could find a mine.

……

Three days later, just over ten miles west of Gujiaocheng on the south side of Fenshui, a large group of men and horses were marching along the rugged mountain road.

This group of people was an exploration team led by Li Qi himself, composed of guards and several experienced blacksmiths, and the purpose of this trip was to conduct a relatively comprehensive survey and survey of the mineral resources in the Gujiao area.

Li Qi knew that the area around Gujiaocheng was a famous coking coal producing area in later generations, and there were several large and medium-sized iron mines, which were very suitable for the development of the iron and steel industry. Further along the Fen River, Lanzhou, Xianzhou and Lou Fan, there are also several super-large iron mines, but due to inconvenient transportation, they can only be put on hold for the time being.

Compared with other regions, the Wutai-Lanxian iron ore belt is rich in iron ore, and eighty percent of Shanxi's iron ore reserves in later generations are in this area, so it is relatively easy to find iron ore. Moreover, there are coal mines in the vicinity of iron mines, which are very suitable for the construction of iron smelting workshops. The only drawback is that the water in Jindi is not abundant, and with the current situation, the iron-smelting workshop can only rely on water power to carry out mechanized production if it is built near the river bank.

This team also hired more than 30 miners who mined, and more than 30 guard warriors led by Xia Jiqi, plus dozens of mules and donkeys used to carry weights, which also seemed to be mighty.

The prospecting methods of this era were extremely rudimentary, but the head craftsman Wang Mao brought a compass of the kind that should be used by feng shui masters, as well as some drawing tools. The main method of prospecting is to let the people use iron picks, sledgehammers, steel drills, probes and other things to dig out some samples from the soil or rock formations, and then rely on the naked eye to distinguish the mineral composition and content in them. In this case, personal experience becomes the main factor.

The most commonly used tool by the team was the Luoyang shovel, a cylindrical iron grave finder tied to the head of a bamboo pole or stick, which sometimes removed samples from nearly 20 meters of soil underground. Of course, if there are any discoveries, it is necessary to use the people to excavate some deeper pits with shovels, iron picks, steel drills and other tools to further determine the reserves and mineral composition of the deposit.

The Luoyang shovel was inserted into the soil layer more than two meters below the ground and touched the rock, "Wang Jiangtou, come and see this thing." Blacksmith Hao squatted on the ground, looked at a small rock sample taken out from under the soil layer by the tip of the Luoyang shovel, and said with some excitement.

When Wang Mao heard this, he also squatted down and carefully distinguished the ore samples he had just taken out.

"Dig down from here!" Wang Mao stretched out his right foot and drew a large circle on the ground and said.

Three days later, as the migrant workers hoisted a load of freshly chiseled iron ore from a wicker basket from a pit more than 10 meters deep underground, including Li Jiqi, everyone's mood became more and more excited, and now it can be concluded that they have basically discovered a large iron ore deposit.

"The iron-smelting workshop is built on both sides of the Dachuan River in the south of Gujiao City, and the silver money required is solved by me, and the nearby iron mine and Lanyu Coal Mine should start construction at the same time, and the iron mill must be completed and put into operation within the year." Li Qi commanded before leaving.