Li Qi left Youzhou in early September to return to his division.

The vast majority of the troops dispatched from Jinyang and Shanbei remained in Hebei to defend the newly acquired land of Zhenzhou, and only 3,000 Praetorian Guards cavalry were left with the division.

Originally, he wanted to travel north along the Lugou River Gorge Channel, mainly to investigate the possibility of building a dam. Later, he found that the terrain was steep and the water was so turbulent that it was impossible to build a barrage dam here with his current ability, so he abandoned the idea. After entering the mouth of the gorge, it was renamed the Sanggan River again, in fact, in many records, the Lugou River still continued to be called the Sanggan River.

This is from Youzhou to the north, or to take the south exit, from Juyongguan this road is much smoother and smoother.

The old city of Yanzhou is located in the center of the Guanting Reservoir in the later generations, and due to the flooding of the reservoir, the county seat of Huailai was moved to the northwest to the location of the later generations.

Li Qi took 3,000 pro-troops, together with more than 3,000 soldiers under Zhi Keyuan and Zhang Mujin, escorted more than 10,000 Khitan prisoners of war and began to return north, and then incorporated into the Shanbei and Yanmen garrison troops. In fact, there were very few real Khitans among these prisoners of war, most of them were the Han army that the Khitans had originally taken captive from Youzhou, as well as the Turkic, Qiang, Zubu and Tuyuhun people who were annexed by them.

These people were also similar to the slave tribe under Khitan rule, and the advantage was that they did not have much willingness to escape.

In this southern expedition, nearly 30,000 prisoners of the Southern Army and more than 10,000 Khitan prisoners of war were harvested, and more than 20,000 families who followed Lu Wenjin to migrate were all placed by Li Qi in Shanbei and Yunzhou for reclamation, which made the scale of the garrison in Shanbei and Yunzhou nearly triple, which made Li Qi feel a little more relieved.

It was the large-scale invasion of the Khitan that finally gave these places some ability to defend and resist.

……

Taiyuan Province is changing for the better, and since the starting point is particularly low, it has changed quite a bit from the outside. Especially when I came back from Hebei because of the war and the Khitan raids and looting from time to time, the people were struggling to make a living, and this feeling was particularly obvious in comparison between the two.

At least in the vicinity of Taiyuan Mansion, the people's lives are very stable, and the clothes on their bodies are much more neat.

Of course, what made Lu Wenjin feel the most was that there were no homeless people around Ruoda Jinyang City.

He has been an assassin for more than ten years, and has been the Lulong Festival envoy of the Khitan State for more than ten years, and knows that natural and man-made disasters in various places are unavoidable, so it is inevitable that refugees will appear every year. There are no hungry people fleeing around Jinyang, which can only mean that these people have been properly resettled.

From the faces of pedestrians on the streets, it seems that the city has been spared famine.

Li Qi naturally didn't have time to pay attention to Lu Wenjin's doubts, he was very busy, he needed to teach new knowledge to the students, and he also had to worry about the transformation of the workshop and the improvement of various products.

Now we just have a good beginning, and there is still a long way to go to make the leap from quantitative to qualitative change.

The most important is of course steel production.

Barrage dams have been built on the three main rivers of Gujiaocheng, and on the outside of the main canal of the dam of the Dachuan River Reservoir, two tall iron-making shaft furnaces are being built, and behind each iron-making blast furnace, a huge round red brick chimney with a height of more than ten zhang is also rising from the ground. When the iron-smelting workshops in this area are fully completed, they will form a steel base covering several miles.

The coal and iron mines are nearby, and the transportation distance is very short, which is one of the main reasons why Li Qi finally decided to set up the steel base in Gujiaocheng.

The origin of the industrial revolution in previous history was the large-scale use of steel to make machinery, and it was precisely because of the huge demand for steel that it triggered a large-scale mining boom. It was precisely because of the large number of coal and iron ore mines that needed enough power to drive the pumping machine to pump the stagnant water in the mine that led to the invention and improvement of the steam engine.

The new iron-making blast furnace uses steel as the outer wall and the main load-bearing structure, and only this kind of "earth blast furnace" with a height of only a little more than five zhang and a volume of less than 30 cubic meters will need to use hundreds of tons of steel, and it will take about two years to complete the construction of these two iron-making blast furnaces with the current capacity of the Gujiao Iron Workshop.

In this era when a pound of pig iron could be sold for 30 wen, and a catty of stainless steel could be sold for 150 wen, when Li Qi arranged to start using steel to cast furnace wall shells and steel beams, many people thought that the emperor was a little crazy and was ready to defeat some of the agriculture that had been accumulated with great difficulty.

The trial production of a hydro turbine made of steel and a volute-shaped cast steel blade blower did not go so smoothly, mainly because the blades had to have a certain angle and curvature, which required a lot of experiments. In addition, the manufacture of large cast steel molds is also quite troublesome, and in the end, Li Qi can only reluctantly let him make do with it first.

The No. 1 iron and steel structure ironmaking blast furnace of Gujiao Iron Workshop has finally completed the construction of the main structure, the blast furnace with a height of more than 20 meters and the supporting steelmaking, ironmaking, machinery processing and other supporting workshops, the entire production area covers an area of more than 30 acres, plus a huge chimney up to more than 50 meters, it looks quite large.

However, due to the refractory furnace lining, coupled with the construction and installation of many supporting facilities and machinery, this is expected to produce nearly 10 tons of molten iron per furnace, and the epoch-making iron-making blast furnace will not be officially put into operation until the spring of next year.

……

The success of the flat glass not only made the room sunny, but also made the greenhouse that Li Qi dreamed of finally become a reality.

Due to the geothermal hot spring heating of more than 60 degrees, the greenhouses of Longshoushan Hot Spring Manor and Xinkouzhai Royal Manor are much taller than those around Jinyang, and the interior is green and full of spring. These greenhouses are framed by three-inch square wood, divided into two-foot square panes by one-inch square wooden strips, and even the triangular roof is made of double glazing, like a transparent crystal palace.

This greenhouse vegetable garden and flower garden, which covers an area of less than five acres, uses tens of thousands of square meters of flat glass, which is also extremely luxurious.

In the vegetable garden, leeks, shallots, coriander, celery, spinach, garlic sprouts and other green patches are growing happily, eggplants and cucumbers have grown more than a foot high, and brackets have begun to be erected on the edges. On the side of the two grape trellises, melons and other melons and fruits are also planted, and the green seedlings also extend into a large field between the fields.

The two royal hot spring manors were turned into recuperation places, and staying in such a vegetable garden in winter has become the most proud thing for those noble veterans in Jinyang, so this vegetable garden has become the most lively place in the entire hot spring manor.

After a heavy snowfall, the wilderness suddenly became untouched. Not only humans, but also animals seem to be moving a lot less. Only the people in the hot spring manor, wearing thin clothes, stayed in warm rooms, through the glass windows, enjoying the snowy scenery of the mountains, and there were some later generations who had a poetic feeling when traveling in winter.