The day after Li Xiao and Chen Zilong discussed, Zhang Tongzhu, a blacksmith from Chifeng Fort, received a strange task. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

That is, to build 3,000 lead sinkers for fishing.

"Trawling?"

"Yes, this task is very urgent, please report to Master Zhang the amount of lead required, I will apply to the Money and Grain Division as soon as possible, these more than 3,000 lead sinkers, please be sure to complete it within two weeks." Chen Zilong, who has become Li Xiao's personal praise painting, concisely and clearly conveyed Li Xiao's order to Zhang Tongzhu, who looked confused.

"Don't worry, Chen Zanhua, the little old man promises to do it on time." Zhang Tongzhu saw that Li Xiao personally ordered it, and immediately agreed and promised Chen Zilong to complete the task as soon as possible.

After giving the blacksmith the task, Chen Zilong arranged for hundreds of women to sew a fishnet and silk net purchased from Laizhou City, and it took more than ten days to sew a fishnet almost the size of a middle school playground according to the size requirements he designed.

While sewing the nets, Chan had the carpenters design and make a huge hardwood winch to be placed on the stern of the No. 2 Fortune Boat. Faced with the amazed eyes of the crowd, including the sailors and soldiers, Chen Zilong explained that the function of this winch is to use the net to catch the fish at that time, and then use it to collect the net and catch it.

Only two days after the fishing net was knotted, the 3,000 heavy lead sinkers were also completed, and Chen Zilong installed a row of floating gourds on the four edges of this huge fishing net, and installed a lead sinker for sinking in the middle and tail.

Three days later, the entire trawl for fishing was finally made and connected with the winch.

"Alright, it's time to go fishing." Chen Zilong, who has been busy these days, finally showed a relaxed smile on his face.

Rao is Chen Zilong is full of confidence, but all the soldiers of the water division, including Feng Shi, the head of the water division, are skeptical of Chen Zilong's design.

In the last Jiang Zun rebellion, Feng Shi, the commander of the original naval division, who showed loyalty, was appointed as the new chief of the naval division because of his loyalty and familiarity with the operation of the ship, after Chen Monkey, the chief of the original naval division, was transferred to manage logistics. At this time, he looked at Chen Zilong's manipulation with a suspicious look, but he was muttering in his heart, when did this young scholar know how to design trawl fishing, can this thing really catch big fish, it shouldn't be fooling.

However, because this was a military order handed down by Li Xiao, Feng Shi was still very cooperative with Chen Zilong's work. Chen Zilong then taught the officers and soldiers of the sailor division the skills of casting nets to catch money, and Feng Shi and his officers and soldiers practiced it repeatedly and memorized it by heart.

After all the preparations were completed, Chen Zilong found two fishermen who were familiar with the fishing situation as guides, and asked them to take the No. 2 fortune boat and sail to the deep-sea fishing ground near Changshan Temple Island.

Two days later, Li Xiao, who was inspecting Longkou Bay, suddenly heard a commotion coming from the seaside.

"Lord Li, look, the No. 2 lucky boat that went out to sea to fish has returned."

Following the finger of Chen Zilong's hand next to him, Li Xiao saw that from the northeast direction of the sea, a lucky boat was following the north wind and quickly heading towards the shore.

Not long after, the fortune boat docked, and all the people on the shore were stunned by the mountains of fish and shrimp on the fortune boat.

Good fellow, it's all full, how many fish are there?

As soon as the Fu boat landed, Feng Shi laughed and jumped off the boat.

"Chen Zanhua, I'm convinced! The trawl you designed is a goddamn fishing weapon, this time I went to sea, only one day after a day to find the fish, this big net is amazing, the fish and shrimp are so full that they can hardly be pulled with a winch, damn it, I have been working at sea for so many years, and I have never caught so many fish. Feng Shi smiled profusely, and his two small eyes narrowed into two thin slits.

"Hehe, such a small plan, it's not worth mentioning, but the soldiers go out to sea to fish, it's very hard, Mr. Feng, hurry up and let people unload the fish and shrimp and weigh them." Chen Zilong was praised by Feng Shi, and he was also very happy in his heart, but he deliberately kept a calm smile on his face.

Soon, with the help of a group of sailors and soldiers and the logistics team that rushed to the scene, all the fish and shrimp were weighed, and it turned out to be a full 60,000 catties!

Everyone was surprised when they heard this number, and everyone looked at Chen Zilong with awe.

This Mr. Chen looks like a scholar, but he didn't expect this person's stomach to have such a real material, and he is really a human being.

"Master Li, Chen Zanhua, this is the first time for my sailor to fish, to be honest, I am not very skilled, I have scared away a lot of fish, if it is next time, I will definitely be able to catch more!"

Feng Shi rubbed his hands, and a look of joy and regret appeared on his face.

After listening to Feng Shi's words, Li Xiao, the commander on the side, also had a bright smile on his face.

He immediately calculated it in his heart, calculating that he caught it once in 3 days, and calculated it according to 10 catches a month, even if he could only catch 60,000 catties each time, the monthly catch would be as much as 600,000 catties. Enough to supply all the people who need to be fed.

If the sea route is quiet in the future, more ships can be sent to fish farther into the deep sea, and more fish can be obtained.

"Zilong, all the staff of Chifengwei can solve the problem of eating, it is all your credit, this official has thanked the soldiers and the people." Li Xiao took Chen Zilong's hand and said with a touched face.

"Adults have won awards, and even if students have subtle wisdom, they are limited." Chen Zilong still had an indifferent smile on his face, and he lowered his voice and said to Li Xiao: "My lord, there is a way, the wisdom of one person is not as good as the wisdom of others, and the students are thinking that there must be more wise people in our army, who can come up with more solutions to our army's money and food problems." Why don't you issue a notice to seek talents, and if there are suggestions that can effectively help solve the problem of money and food for our army, you can give a heavy reward. ”

"Excellent! Then this notice, you will write it, Zilong, and Red Phoenix City and Iron Dragon City will all post it. Li Xiao agreed to Chen Zilong's suggestion without hesitation.

What Li Xiao didn't expect was that the next day, Chen Zilong came to Li Xiao's Qianhu official hall with a smile on his face and a person wearing a coarse cloth shirt and looking like a soldier's family.

"Lord Li, this person is Xue Dafu, the father of Xue Qiang, the shield soldier of the Fifth Team of the First Division, and he has come to present the method of drying sea salt to your lordship." Chen Zilong said to Li Xiao with a smile.

Li Xiao hurriedly invited Xue Dafu to sit down, and Xue Dafu looked flattered and sat down diagonally.

Subsequently, this person introduced himself, this person was the head of the Dengzhou salt field, very familiar with the salt making process, because Kong Youde rebels plundered and burned, the Dengzhou salt field was destroyed, he had to become a homeless, when the family wandered to the vicinity of Laizhou, fortunately was found by Wang Yishou, the chief of B who came to Laizhou to recruit homeless people, and his son Xue Qiang was selected as a shield soldier, and then the whole family came to Chifeng Fort, and the family avoided the fate of freezing and starving on the streets.

"Xue Dafu, can I also open up a salt drying field in Chifeng City?" Li Xiao asked.

"My lord, of course you can, I see that there are a lot of tidal flats on the north coast of Chifeng City, if you can plan a large salt farm, it will be a steady stream of profits." The black and thin Xue Dafu spat at Li Xiao about the prospect of developing the salt farm.

Xue Dafu especially gushed to himself, but Li Xiao fell into deep thought.

Compared with Xue Dafu, who focused on the production of salt, Li Xiao thought more about the sale of salt in the future.

Li Xiao has read some history books in the late Ming Dynasty, and the book mentions the salt introduction system in the late Ming Dynasty.

During the Ming Dynasty, if a merchant wanted to sell salt legally, he had to first obtain a salt quote from the government. Merchants used salt to bring salt to the salt field to support salt, and then went to the designated salt sales area to sell salt.

This kind of salt citation, each quotation number, divided into two volumes before and after, after stamping, divided into two parts from the middle, and then rolled to the merchant, called "introduction paper" - salt citation; The pre-roll stub is called the "lead root". Merchants used salt to bring salt to the salt field to support salt, and then went to the designated salt sales area to sell salt.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court encouraged merchants to transport grain to the border in exchange for salt, and granted a patent system for selling salt. It is also known as the open method. The system of Kaizhong followed the system of the Song and Yuan dynasties, but in the Ming Dynasty, there were more openings in the border areas to attract merchants to transport grain to the border and enrich the military grain reserves on the border.

However, it is now the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the Kaizhong Law has long become a historical relic, and it has been replaced by the Gangyan Law.

History of the Ming Dynasty? According to the "Salt Politics", the general content of the Gang Salt Law is that the merchants who hold salt quotes are divided into 10 gangs according to the region, each gang of salt quotes is 200,000 yuan, and each gang is 300 catties of salt, or six coins and four cents of silver, which is called "woben", and the tax is three taels of silver, and the minister (transportation) is three taels of silver. Named after "Shengde is over the ages, the emperor has nine enclosures", those who have not entered the program have no right to operate the salt industry.

Of course, the statement in this history book is that the prices and tax rates in the Ming Dynasty are very different from those in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, which is not enough evidence. But it illustrates one point: the imperial court now directly changed the monopoly of salt from an official monopoly to a monopoly of contracted salt merchants, and the government only collects money and taxes, and then appoints salt merchants to monopolize official salt monopoly, and the descendants of this salt merchant can inherit this monopoly power. The government then designated areas for these salt merchants to transport and sell salt.

So, under what conditions are salt merchants qualified to sell salt?

First of all, this salt merchant wants to get the nest order.

The so-called nest order is actually a certificate of legal transportation and sale of official salt, a license issued by the Ming government. The list will indicate the amount of salt obtained by the salt merchant and the distribution area. Those salt merchants, through various channels, applied for qualifications from the salt transportation department of the imperial court, and then paid a deposit, and then found someone to have a guarantee, they could get the nest order issued by the imperial court.

With this thing, the salt merchant had the right to monopolize the monopoly, and this nest could be hereditary to descendants, and it could also be used to buy, sell and trade like silver.

With Nest Order, the salt merchant became an officially designated salt monopoly and had a monopoly over a certain area. According to the instructions of the imperial court, all salt merchants transported and sold official salt in their respective monopoly areas, and salt merchants were not allowed to sell across the border. There is also a special case, that is, since the salt merchant's power is too small to support a territory, then he can still sell it.

The so-called partnership is a partnership between multiple salt merchants to operate an area, and then divide the sales quantity internally.

After having this nest list, in the future, the salt merchant will pay money to the imperial court every year to get a qualification certificate for this year, which is the Nian Nest. With the New Year's Nest, there is the monopoly of the year.

In short, under this kind of salt system, the most important thing is the nest order, and if there is a nest order, there is a monopoly and monopoly power.

Li Xiao did not have such a monopoly.

He also did not plan to urgently apply to the imperial court for a nest order to sell salt.

Li Xiao, who had just been promoted to the commander of Chifengwei, did not want to offend the interests of too many people and encounter too many unnecessary obstacles to development in the early stage of his own development because of the salt trafficking.

Therefore, he did not intend to apply to the imperial court for salt quotations, so as not to make himself appear too greedy and leave a too obvious handle for those courtiers who looked at him with red eyes.

Li Xiao planned to use Jintangcheng on Xuanfu North Road as a base first, and first sell salt to the Mongolian tribes.

The Mongolian tribes do not have such a salt introduction system, but it is a pure transaction of paying money with one hand and delivering goods with one hand.

If Li Xiao does this, the sea salt produced in Chifeng City will have a hidden and reliable sales channel without the need for salt to lead to a nest and the like, and the price can be sold higher, and tax evasion can also be achieved.

At present, on the market, the purchase price of a load of illicit salt of 120 catties is three coins of silver, and in order to crack down on opponents and collect more sufficient salt, many dealers who buy illicit salt secretly mention five or even six coins of silver.

Of course, it is impossible for the smugglers to make a loss-making deal, and as soon as they change hands, the profits will be doubled. If it is shipped to certain salt-deficient areas, it is possible to increase the profit tenfold.

Rather than this, it is better to make the profits yourself.

As for the risk of smuggling with the Mongol tribes, the risk can be greatly reduced now with Jintang City as a cover. After all, there is no tired head of the salt inspection department who dares to come to the heavily defended Jintang City to seek bad luck.

Li Xiao believes that if he can really traffic the sea salt produced to the Mongolian tribes for a long distance, it will be absolutely no problem to sell 7 taels or 8 taels of silver for each load of salt.

Where the benefits are, although the mountains of thousands of thousands, there is no way to go up.

"Xue Dafu, your suggestion is very good, and this official has adopted it. Come and reward Xue Dafu with 50 taels of silver. Li Xiao smiled and patted Xue Dafu's shoulder.

"Thank you, Lord Li." Xue Dafu took the heavy white silver and smiled brightly.

Next, according to Xue Dafu's opinions and suggestions, Li Xiao also made a specific design for the entire salt field based on the salt mining knowledge of later generations.

Li Xiao designed 500 acres of salt farms along the beach in the east of Longkou Bay, named Chifeng Salt Farm, with an area about the size of more than 40 modern football fields, all of which are paved with thin bluestone slabs, filled with marl and glutinous rice juice, and built into a salt pan like a square grid with green bricks. These salt pans are connected to the sea by a number of curved channels.

Li Xiao chose this location to make full use of the open space on the beach, after all, an excellent deep-water port like Longkou Bay, Li Xiao will have plenty of funds in the future, but it will be a pity to build the first import and export seaport in Shandong, if it is only used to build salt pans.

The design principle of this salt pan using seawater to dry salt is actually very simple.

That is, whenever the tide is high, the floodgates are opened and the surging sea water is poured into the salt pans. The water is evaporated in the field and concentrated to a salinity of about 15 degrees, and then the sluice gate of the salt pan is opened, and it flows into the brine pond from the ditch, where the sediment is deposited. After clarification, the brine is pumped into the crystallization pool by a manual pumping truck, and continues to evaporate in a saturated state, and soon produces sea salt crystals of white flowers.

This novel method is much more efficient than the traditional method of boiling seawater to make salt by salt farmers, and it is a new salt-making technology that has only been used in Dengzhou Salt Farm in recent years. It is a pity that such a new type of salt pan was destroyed by the rebels of Kong Youde Geng Zhongming before it could produce benefits.

In view of the surplus manpower to build the city wall of Chifeng City, Li Xiao decided that Chen Zilong would be in charge and immediately dispatch a group of capable craftsmen, with a large number of family members and prisoners, to build a salt field in the planned place.

Seeing Li Xiao's support for his salt drying business like this, Xue Dafu was overjoyed, and he introduced to Li Xiao that now there is a construction team of more than 1,000 people, with sufficient supply of bluestone slabs, marl, glutinous rice juice and bricks, in two months, 500 acres of salt pans, dozens of large brine pools and crystallization pools, seawater gushing channels, and waterproof canopies and other facilities of brine pond crystallization pools should all be completed.

Although the salt factory is quite large, because it can use the bricks and bluestone slabs produced by its own workshop, the budget is saved, and according to Xue Dafu's estimate, more than 10,000 taels of silver is enough to build it.

Li Xiao was also very happy to see that the salt plant had started construction in an orderly manner, and he appointed Xue Dafu as the head of the salt plant, preparing to recruit 1,000 people to work in the salt plant after the salt plant was completed, and the entire salt plant would officially start operation.

Li Xiao remembers that he was taught in chemistry class that the salt content of seawater is about 3.5 percent, so 100 tons of seawater can produce 3.5 tons of salt.

According to Li Xiao's measurement, such as in the late autumn season in the north, the daily limit evaporation of the salt field can reach 6 mm, so that even if the production cannot be carried out on rainy days and the yield is halved on cloudy days, the most conservative yield of these 500 mu of salt fields in a month is more than 1.5 million catties.

This amount seems to be very large, but in fact, it is a bit insignificant compared to the salt consumption of the entire Ming Dynasty.

According to historical records, in the Ming Dynasty, each person consumed an average of 15 catties of salt per year, and Li Xiao's annual salt production was 150,000 quintals, which was only enough for 1.2 million people to eat for a year.

This pitiful number, compared with the population of more than 100 million in the Ming Dynasty, is really pitiful, almost a drop in the ocean.

However, for the Mongol tribes, which had a total population of millions, including slaves and settled Han Chinese, the salt production of the Chifeng Salt Factory was still quite insufficient.

Li Xiao optimistically estimated that if he could really sell 150,000 taels of salt to the Mongols every year, at the price of 8 taels per load, after removing the production costs and transportation costs, even if there was only a net profit of 5 taels per load, it would be a huge profit of 750,000 taels of silver a year.

With this money, Li Xiao will expand his army again in the future, and he will no longer have any worries.

If, in the future, in addition to the Mongol tribes, such as Korea, Japan, and Nanyang, all of them can successfully establish trade routes, Li Xiao's salt pans can be expanded again, which will bring him a steady stream of huge income and wealth.

Li Xiao sighed in his heart, no wonder many time-traveling novels regard salt making and selling salt as a good way to quickly expand money. The profits from the smuggling of salt are really only in it that you can understand how amazing the amount of money is.

"Dafu, if the salt field is running well, next year, it will be doubled to make the number of salt fields reach 1,000 mu, so as to make full use of the existing tidal flat site in Chifengwei." Li Xiao looked at the distant meeting of the sea and the sky, with a bright smile on his face and his eyes shining.

"Under the orders of the Lord, only the order of the Lord is obeyed!" Xue Dafu, who had a look of excitement and yearning, replied loudly. (To be continued.) )