Today, Gu Changwei marinated the fatty meat with soy sauce according to Ma Cheng's order, and added condiments such as Sichuan pepper and star anise, and the smell immediately became different.

There are no steamed buns at noon, they are all brown rice steamed, a piece of red braised pork per person, and then with the salted cabbage left in the morning, these more than 100 people eat really heartily, even Ma Cheng also feels that the food is a lot more delicious.

After eating, there is half an hour to rest, which is the soldier's personal time.

At the end of the day, that is, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Ma Cheng summoned these soldiers again, and it was a cultural class in the afternoon. Originally, Ma Cheng wanted to put the cultural class in the evening, but there were no lights in this era, and you must know that lamp oil was very expensive, so he could only put the cultural class in the afternoon.

There was no need to go out for cultural lessons, so Ma Cheng gathered the soldiers into a large room, asked them to sit on the ground, and put a blackboard at the front.

Ma Cheng walked to the podium with a white ash strip pressed with calcium carbonate, and then said: "Everyone is very good, we have to have a cultural class every afternoon, of course, I don't want you to take the imperial examination, but I hope you can understand etiquette and shame!" You know? ”

Xu Dahu disagrees with learning, he thinks that as long as he can cut people, what culture do you need to learn?

Xu Dahu raised his hand and asked, "My lord, why do we want to learn culture, isn't it just a matter of cutting people when we become soldiers?" ”

Hearing Xu Dahu say this, Ma Cheng scolded: "Xu Dahu, Xu Dahu, you really have no ambition, you Qiu Ba don't study, will you read official documents when you become a general in the future?" Do you still need a secretary to read the order that Lao Tzu gave you? Everything happens on the battlefield, what if your book dies? ”

After Ma Cheng finished speaking, he saw that these Qiu Ba were very unimpressed, and the angry Ma Cheng scolded: "I heard it clearly, Lao Tzu has to take the exam after teaching, if no one knows how to eat at night!" ”

Not being allowed to eat is a big killer, after all, the food in the army is too good, and the threat of not being allowed to eat is too great. Everyone heard Ma Cheng say this, and hurriedly sat upright one by one, opening their eyes wide to see what Ma Cheng was going to teach.

Seeing that everyone was quiet, Ma Cheng nodded and began to teach. Back then, if you want to teach these illiterates, you can't just teach a thousand characters with a hundred family names as soon as you come up. Ma Cheng now wrote a big horizontal on the blackboard, and then said: "This is one!" It's the one I read in the morning! ”

Then he wrote two more horizontals, and then said, "This is two! Ma Cheng wrote three more horizontals, and was just about to speak, when a kid below said: "My lord, I know, this is three!" ”

Ma Cheng looked good, and he was literate, so he hurriedly asked, "Are you literate?" ”

The guy said triumphantly: "Adult, the villain is illiterate, but one horizontal is one, two horizontal is two, and those three horizontal are three!" ”

Ma Cheng was so angry that his face turned green, and he scolded: "Your mother, according to your method, four horizontal is four?" ”

Everyone said in unison, "Yes!" ”

Ma Cheng was speechless angrily, turned around and wrote all the numbers from one to ten on the blackboard, and then said: "See, this is four, this is five!" ”

After teaching this afternoon's cultural class, Ma Cheng felt even more tired than in the morning, after all, he was only physically tired in the morning, and he was tired in the afternoon.

It was easy to teach them the five words from one to five in the afternoon, and it was already evening. The evening training is running, repeating the morning five-kilometer trail run again, then eating and sleeping, and the day's work is done.

Ma Cheng returned home and was so tired that he was lying on the bed like a dead pig, and he didn't even have the intention of coexisting with Gu Xiying. Gu Xiying saw Ma Cheng, who had already fallen asleep, sighed and called Yahuan Chunlian, and the two took off Ma Cheng's clothes and shoes together, and waited for Ma Cheng to go to bed.

Although the training is very hard, but the effort is rewarded, after the first few days of the adaptation period, the recruit training gradually formed a rule, no longer need to use the horse bucket to wake everyone up in the morning, every day before dawn everyone can get up for morning exercises.

The progress of the queue in this regard is also gratifying, after five days of intensive training, these 100 people can finally move forward at a relatively neat pace, although the formation is still twisted and crooked, but it is much stronger than five days ago.

The cultural class in the afternoon has also progressed steadily, Ma Cheng has finished teaching numbers, and began to learn hundreds of surnames, the first ten surnames have been taught, many people know how to write their surnames and are very excited, and there is an indescribable respect for Ma Cheng.

What Ma Cheng didn't know was that until now, these hundred people respected Ma Cheng in their hearts. Quite simply, ancient China attached great importance to scholars, no matter how poor the family was, as long as there was a little hope, they had to provide their children with education. So Ma Cheng taught these farmers who didn't know a single word to learn their surnames, and these people really recognized Ma Cheng as a teacher in their hearts.

Of course, not everyone is happy, Gu Changwei is the most unhappy one, the money spent in the past five or six days is all his money, the original one hundred taels of dowry that the old lady gave to Gu Xiying was spent by Ma Cheng for seventy-seven eighty-eight, and there are less than twenty taels left. Gu Changwei didn't expect that these Qiu Ba could eat so much, they needed a big fat pig every two days, and the silver in their hands could only last for three days.

Gu Changwei found Ma Cheng and said the difficulty, according to Gu Changwei's meaning, this is almost the same, there has been no army like this since ancient times, not to mention three meals a day, there are two taels of meat to eat every day. Gu Changwei himself was also a soldier, when he was a soldier in Guiyang, he had two multigrain steamed buns a day, and he loved to eat them or not.

Ma Cheng was also very anxious when he heard Gu Changwei say that he had been training soldiers in the past few days, and he didn't know what was going on in the sugar factory. It happened that there was nothing to do in the morning, Ma Cheng handed over the queue to Xu Dahu, and then took Gu Changwei to the Xicheng Sugar Factory.

Fengyang Xicheng was originally the location of shops and workshops, and naturally it was also the hardest hit area by Li Chuang's looting, and a large number of houses were burned down, and it has not been relieved until now.

Ma Cheng's sugar factory is located in Fengyang West Gate, which is far from the city center, so there are still a few houses left, one of which is where Ma Cheng's sugar factory is located.

In order to protect the secret of sugar production, Ma Cheng asked the housekeeper Ma Gui to send a few family members to guard at the door, but this is also Ma Cheng's over-carefulness, no one here in Fengyang dares to rob the Ma family's sugar recipe.

The family at the door saw Ma Cheng coming, and hurriedly stepped forward to salute: "The second master is here!" ”

Ma Cheng nodded and asked, "What about Ma Shun?" ”

"Second Brother Ma Shun is inside, Second Master, please come in!" After speaking, the family opened the door and welcomed Ma Cheng in.

The house is huge, it used to be the storehouse of some workshop, and there is a spacious yard when you walk through the gate. Now the yard is filled with rows of vats, with iron cylinders leading carbon dioxide from the furnace to the vats, and a few laborers stirring the solution with sticks.

At this time, Ma Shun came, and when he saw Ma Cheng appear at the door, he hurriedly stepped forward and said, "The second master is here!" ”

"Well, it's okay today, come and see how you're doing!"

"Second master, this is the reaction tank, the sedimentation tank and purification are in the back!"

Ma Cheng looked at the front yard, this Ma Shun really had two brushes, and it took only five or six days to set up the workshop.

Ma Cheng followed Ma Shun to the backyard, where there are also two rows of large vats, on one side there are workers putting the black-brown sugar bricks into the sedimentation tank to heat and dissolve, and on the other hand, workers are boiling the saturated solution in an iron pot to purify.

Ma Cheng was very satisfied after reading it: "Where do you put the purified white sugar?" Take me to see it! ”

Ma Shun led Ma Cheng to the last courtyard, which was much quieter, and this was a warehouse. Ma Shun opened the door with the key he carried, and it was relatively empty inside, with only a few bags placed here.

Ma Shun stepped forward and opened a cloth bag, which was filled with pure white sugar. Ma Cheng stepped forward and grabbed a handful, looked at it and tasted it, and sure enough, after large-scale production, the quality of white sugar can be further improved, and the taste and color of this white sugar are very close to the white sugar of later generations.

In fact, what Ma Cheng didn't know was that in addition to the accuracy of the utensils in the later generations, the production process was almost the same, all of which were semi-mechanized and semi-manual, and they were not much more advanced than the Ming Dynasty.

Ma Shun was very satisfied with Ma Cheng, and his heart was relieved, this was the first major thing he was responsible for alone, and what happened in the future all depended on the satisfaction of the second young master.

Ma Shun said: "Second master, today is the second day of official construction, yesterday because it was the first day, so only two bags of 200 catties of sugar were produced, with the increase of worker proficiency, the villain is estimated to be able to stabilize the output of 300 catties to 400 catties per day." ”

Ma Cheng was very satisfied with Ma Shun's progress, nodded and said, "Okay, second master, I'm satisfied!" How many raw materials do you need to produce 300 catties of sugar a day? ”

Ma Shun took out his notebook and looked at it, and then said: "Second master, if you look at the output of three hundred catties, you need five hundred catties of brown sugar, one hundred and fifty catties of lime, and thirty catties of charcoal, and the cost of one day is about two taels of silver!" ”

Two taels of silver a day, three hundred catties of white sugar are produced, even if each catty of white sugar is five dollars of silver, it is one hundred and fifty taels of silver per day, and the output ratio is seventy-five times, Ma Cheng saw a large amount of silver rushing towards him.

Of course, the benefits can't be calculated like this, in addition to the cost of raw materials, there are also the cost of workers, the cost of merchant sales, the loss of transportation, etc., but these are all counted Ma Cheng's estimated income a day is also about one hundred taels of silver.

"Okay, where are you going to sell your first step?"

"Second master, we have a shop in Nanjing, and the villain is ready to transport the first batch of 500 catties to Nanjing for sale!"

Ma Cheng was very satisfied after hearing this, the rich man in that place in Nanzhili was very rich, and the five hundred catties should be sold out soon.

"How much are you going to price when it arrives in Nanjing?"

Ma Shun thought for a while and said, "Second master, the villain is ready to set a price of three taels of silver and one catty!" ”