"Lord Li, you are really a noble person, how lucky you are to find such a mining area in good condition! You see, this is the shining mirror iron, this spherical shape is kidney iron, this long straight strip is pen iron, this scale-like overlapping is cloud iron, with the villain's many years of experience, this exposed place, there are so many kinds of iron phases appeared, its underground veins must be far-reaching, the reserves are extremely rich. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info villain dares to pack a ticket, if the ore reserves here are smelted into iron, it is to equip hundreds of thousands of armor soldiers, which is also a trivial matter. ”

Li Xiao stood on the boundary of the Longwang Temple in Shanxian County, and listened with a smile to a man wearing a coarse cloth short-sleeved shirt with a black and rough face, who was introducing himself to the iron ore situation with excitement and joy, and his words were splashing with spittle.

The person who introduced him to Li Xiao was named Yan Jun, who was originally the head of the Hongyin Mountain Iron Farm in Tieling, Liaodong. After the Tartars captured Tieling, Yan Jun took his family to flee Liaoyang first, and then fled to Jinzhou, and then in Jinzhou, because his eldest son was selected as a homeless soldier, the whole family was able to live in Li Xiao's army as a family.

During this time, Yan Jun, like other family members, has been assisting craftsmen in building Chifeng Fort every day. It's just that recently, Wu Liang praised Wu Liang in line with Li Xiao's intentions, and asked in the army if there were any craftsmen who knew how to mine and make iron, and Yan Jun saw that the opportunity was coming, so he immediately recommended himself to Wu Liang. After listening to Yan Jun's self-introduction, Wu Liang was very happy. So, this time, when Li Xiao led the General Army of A to Yanzhou to pacify the Liukou, Yan Jun also went with the army.

Seeing that Yan Jun said it so methodically, Li Xiao was very happy. Originally, he still had doubts about Yan Jun, but after listening to his words this time, Li Xiao decided that this person was the talent he needed very much.

Li Xiaosui smiled and said to Yan Jun: "It seems that Yan Jun you do have research on iron ore mining, so I will appoint you as the head of the iron yard and be fully responsible for iron ore mining and smelting here in the future." I will assist you with Wu Zanhua, and let you solve the required tools, manpower, costs, etc. ”

Yan Jun was overjoyed, knelt down and thanked: "The adults of Qianhu value the villain so much, the villain dares not to be wholehearted, and he will definitely live up to the trust of the adult!" ”

Li Xiao patted him on the shoulder encouragingly: "Mr. Yan, don't tell anyone about the opening of the iron field. After our army has built the castle here, the iron yard can start to be built, this matter is important, and Mr. Yan must not be cautious. ”

"Rest assured, the villain won't say anything about it to anyone."

。。。。。。

Li Xiao is a person who plans and then acts.

Therefore, after building the grass hut where the laborers and soldiers lived temporarily, the next focus was to build this castle that Li Xiao had painstakingly planned.

Li Xiao's plan is majestic and atmospheric.

He planned to build a super-large castle with a circumference of 12 li and an area of 2.25 square kilometers on the north bank of the Taihang Dike River that runs through the southern part of Shanxian County.

This castle will have three gates in the east, west and north, and there are moats dug around it, which is just filled with the water of the Taihang Dike River to make it surround the city.

Each gate will be built with an urn city, and the city tower, gun emplacement, female wall, pheasant moat, etc., will also be fully built. Like Chifeng Castle, it was designed with a height of 15 meters and a wall road width of 6 meters, which greatly strengthened the castle's defenses.

The functional orientation of this castle will be quite specific, purely designed for the future ironmaking industry.

Originally, Li Xiao could build a small fort to garrison the soldiers, but now that he has the money and personnel, and there is no agreement beyond Li Maofang's radius of ten miles, Li Xiao plans to build this castle in one step, saving him from having to expand the construction again in the future and increase unnecessary trouble.

This castle, as big as it sounds, is actually not too big.

Li Xiao even felt that it was quite small.

You know, a medium-sized steel plant in modern China covers an area of 10 to 15 square kilometers. For example, Shanghai Baosteel and the like are even more extensive, plus peripheral factories, about 40 square kilometers. Not to mention the modern era, it was in Houjin at this time, on both sides of the official road outside Shenyang, there were hundreds of iron shops, extending to several miles away.

This castle, Li Xiao has already thought of a very loud name.

Iron Dragon City.

This name is taken because this city fortress was built on the site of the Dragon King Temple, and secondly, because of the iron, so the name of this iron dragon city is quite appropriate. And this name is also in contrast to Li Xiaojun's Chifeng Fort.

Li Xiao's preliminary plan is that after the Iron Dragon City is built, it will also be the same as Chifeng Castle, planning four central avenues, and planning the entire castle into four regions: northeast, northwest, southwest, and southeast.

The Northeast District is a garrison for the army, building barracks, stables, school yards, arsenals, granaries and other buildings, and at the same time vacating some places as the location of the office. Li Xiao planned to build an interior wall to isolate it from the rest of the iron industry to ensure that military secrets would not be easily leaked.

The southeast area is a smelting area, and buildings such as iron-making blast furnaces, iron-frying yards, steel-making mills, iron ingot warehouses, and coal warehouses will be built. In the future, whether it is the manufacture of pig iron ingots, wrought iron ingots, steel ingots and other primary products, all will be produced here.

The southwest area is set up as a forging and smelting field, and in the future, various forging and smelting plants will be built in it for making various armor, swords, shields, and various household utensils.

In the northwest region, Li Xiao plans to build it into an artillery factory, a gun factory, an ammunition factory, a maintenance factory, and other military industries that are most closely related to Li Xiaojun. Of course, Li Xiao does not have qualified engineers and equipment yet, but this does not prevent him from planning in advance.

It can be said that the Iron Dragon City painstakingly designed by Li Xiao will be the lifeblood and key to Li Xiaojun's development.

This is also the reason why he wants to bring these key industrial technologies together in one place. Li Xiao believes that building all these industries in a well-protected castle will undoubtedly make their operation more convenient, and the army can also defend the city and better protect it.

The extensive mining, crushing, and washing sites are all located outside the Iron Dragon City, and only the excavated and crushed and washed iron ore is transported into the city for smelting.

If this Iron Dragon City is built, coupled with the mining and crushing sites outside, the area occupied by Li Xiaojun in Shanxian County will definitely far exceed the radius of ten miles, but Li Xiao is not afraid of Li Maofang's nonsense, after all, the castle he built is only 9 square miles, which is exactly within Li Maofang's requirements. Outside, these have been burned and plundered by the Black Scorpion Department, and now the idle land is being wasted, Li Xiao can completely build a few more watchtowers around these lands rich in mineral veins, claiming that this is a military restricted area, so as to legally take these lands as owned.

Of course, Li Xiao did not rely entirely on force, for the local villagers who occupied their own land to repair the castle and lost their land, Li Xiao gave them a compensation of 6 taels per mu of land, and also promised that he could recruit them into his army in the future, so as not to worry about their livelihood in the future.

Li Xiao gave a lot of money, but a large amount, you must know that during the Wanli period, an acre of ordinary land in Shandong can only be sold for 7 or 8 taels, and now in the war-torn world, the land is even less valuable, such as the land of Denglai, an acre of land can only be sold for one tael or two taels. Li Xiaoken gave 6 taels per acre of land, which shows sincerity. Those landless villagers who got money were all grateful, and no one complained.

After the site selection was completed, Li Xiao gave an order, and the construction of Iron Dragon City, a castle containing Li Xiao's ardent hopes for the future, finally began.

A huge construction team composed of more than 5,000 Liukou tribesmen and more than 4,000 homeless villagers in Shanxian County began to dig and lay the foundation along the plaster line drawn by Chang Dali and other craftsmen.

Due to the various buildings of Chifeng Fort, it was basically completed at this time. Chang Dali and other craftsmen, according to Li Xiao's order, have all rushed over from Chifeng Fort to be responsible for all kinds of architectural planning matters.

Because Chifeng Fort was built extremely well, Li Xiao had great trust in Chang Dali, so he handed over the construction of Iron Dragon City to him as a whole. The craftsmen gathered from Shanxian County, Jinxiang County, Chengwu County and other places also let Chang Dali manage them in a unified manner.

At this time, fifteen four-wheeled carriages that Li Xiao asked for were also built. Unexpectedly, although the carriage and horse shop has not yet been established, these four-wheeled carriages can come in handy in the construction of this Iron Dragon City first.

These fifteen four-wheeled carriages, each of which can pull 6,000 catties to 8,000 catties of goods, are now together with other horse-drawn carts and ox carts prepared by local craftsmen, from Shanxian County, as well as neighboring counties and towns such as Cao County, Jinxiang, Chengwu, Yutai, etc., to continuously pull and transport bluestone, bricks, marl and other materials to meet the needs of construction sites.

Looking at the busy and orderly appearance of the construction site, Li Xiao was very happy.

Li Xiao's salary standard for these people is that Chang Dali and other general foremen are in charge, Li Xiao generously gave him a salary of 8 taels per month, and the leaders of the craftsmen in charge of the following branches are 3 taels per person, and each ordinary craftsman is 1.5 taels of silver per person per month.

The villagers of Shanxian County, who helped the workers, and the people of Henan, who were separated from the Liukou, were given 0.5 taels to 1 tael respectively, depending on the severity of the work done by each laborer.

As for those old battalions or new army rogues, they have no salary at all, not only that, but these rogue laborers under the supervision of Li Xiao's soldiers will be beaten by the overseers as soon as they don't care about their work, and the leather whip stained with salt water is enough to make the beaten rogue laborers unforgettable.

Of course, if there is a stick, there must be a radish, and when they were beaten and worked, Li Xiao also gave them a glimmer of hope.

That is, depending on the performance, after one year or three years of labor reform, the newly attached army rogues can enjoy the treatment of ordinary family members, with monthly salary and food subsidies, and those with excellent performance can join Li Xiaojun's soldiers.

As for those soldiers in the old camp, depending on the situation, after 3 or 5 years of labor reform, they can enjoy the treatment of ordinary family members, and they also have the opportunity to be selected as Li Xiaojun's soldiers.

High-pressure labor reform, coupled with the temptation of hope, Li Xiao believes that these guys who used to kill people without blinking an eye will one day be able to obey and use them for their own use.

Li Xiao made a rough calculation, and now all the salaries, food, and other expenses of the whole army add up, and the monthly consumption of silver has reached more than 25,000 taels.

To build this castle, Chang Dali roughly estimated that it would cost a total of 120,000 taels of silver, and due to the abundance of labor, it could be largely completed in nearly three months.

In this way, it can be easily calculated that within three months from the construction of this castle to its completion, Li Xiao's existing 400,000 taels of accumulated silver will be quickly used up nearly half!

It's really like running water!

After the construction of Tielong City, the introduction of various equipment and the construction of factories are a lot of money.

In addition, there is a fixed salary of nearly 20,000 taels per month and food expenses, which are all hurdles that cannot be bypassed.

Praise painting Wu Liang frowned, although he pretended to be calm, but Li Xiao could still see what he was worried about.

"Mr. Wu, don't worry. If you don't spend this money, it's a dead thing, and it doesn't have any benefit. You can rest assured, in the future, this Iron Dragon City will not only earn back all the current expenses of our army, but also let our army really embark on the road of rapid development. ”

Li Xiao patted Wu Liang on the shoulder and said to him solemnly.

His face was full of confident smiles.