At the end of July, a fleet of several canopy boats tied to each other from the turbid and mighty river, through the Yuxi River, upstream, from a distance, saw the two sides of the muddy river like a dragon lurking in the turbid river like a dragon.

The valley between the two mountains is more than ten miles wide, but from a distance, it is narrowed by the mountains on both sides.

Although the Tangyi soldiers relied on sturdy and fast rowing ships to achieve absolute superiority in the deep Chaohu Lake, before the completion of the Shanbei naval camp, the naval warships on the western flank did not have patrol tasks, and were mainly stationed in the Jianying in the south of Dongguan Village.

This is also to prevent the Lou Boat Army from launching a surprise attack from the river on the north side of Chaohu Lake, so that this side will not be caught off guard because of negligence.

For normal cargo ships, they don't have to worry much about sailing in the southeast lake area of Chaohu Lake and encountering enemy attacks, so they go directly through the mouth of the water and go straight to the destination of this trip.

According to the geographical records mentioned by the predecessors, in the past, ships passing through the west cliff of the mouth of the lake should be the bay with vast water potential in the southeast corner of Chaohu Lake, especially at the end of July is the most abundant season of Chaohu Lake, and the low-lying land outside the foot of the northwest foot of the mouth of the river should be submerged with the rise of the water level of Chaohu Lake, connecting into a broader lake area.

However, when the fleet passed through the West Cliff, Wang Jun disguised herself as a man, wearing a green cloth shirt and a brocade haircut, but she stood at the bow of the ship gracefully, looking at the new embankment that had been built six or seven miles away on the right side extending almost straight to the north.

This long causeway extends fifteen or sixteen miles to the north, and then connects to the slope of the southwest foot of Qingcang Mountain to the north, sealing the low-lying land on the east side of the embankment more than ten miles deep from north to south from the lake.

"Childe, look at the rippling place, the Tangyi soldiers dug a canal on the northern slope of the mountain before the end of last month, and the water mouth is a little south of the new embankment." A middle-aged man in a short coat stood at the bow of the boat, pointed to a place on the south side of the new embankment, and said to Wang Jun.

In order to obtain the fine iron, medicinal materials, armor and war weapons and warships produced in Xuzhou, Yangzhou also collected the scarce materials in Tangyi as much as possible and transported them to Tangyi, Donghu or Wanshou for trading.

First, Yangzhou lacked large-scale transportation ships, and second, Wang Wenqian also intended to break up the transaction with Tangyi into pieces, so as to be able to grasp the dynamics of Tangyi counties in time.

In the past six months, he was responsible for leading a fleet to and from Tangyi counties more than ten times, and he was more familiar with the garrison of Tangyi soldiers and major engineering affairs than anyone else.

Tang Shiyu is also the only person in this fleet who knows her identity, except for the attendants and maids around Wang Jun.

However, like everyone else, he thought that Wang Jun was idle and boring, so he disguised himself as a man and ran to Tangyi to travel, and he was somewhat disgusted that this eldest lady was too playful, and he didn't know that Wang Jun was here for himself.

Last month, Han Qian began to recruit laborers to build a water-dividing canal along the slopes of the Misu Mountain and Qingcang Mountain on the north and south sides of the Xindi, which has attracted the attention of Yangzhou.

The water-dividing canal is nothing new, and Han Qian's renovation of Wuliuxi in Xuzhou in his early years was a similar water conservancy project.

In addition to being able to discharge the rainwater from the Misu Mountains directly to the new embankment in the rainy season, the watershed canal can enter Chaohu Lake, which can reduce the waterlogging on the inner side of the new embankment, and at the same time ensure that there is enough irrigation water on the inner side of the new embankment in autumn and winter, which can be said to be a supporting project for the reclamation of fields on the inner side of the new embankment.

For a locality, such a water conservancy project usually needs to be accumulated for several years before it can be carried out once.

At this time, there were only ten Tangyi

Even if the population of the remaining 10,000 people is doubled, there is enough land for cultivation on the north bank of the Chuhe River, not to mention that there is no urgency to build such a complex and costly water conservancy project, and even the construction of a new embankment along the east bank of Chaohu Lake is not impossible to delay for a few years.

However, from the point of view of maintaining a stable flow of water with a drop to facilitate the operation of hydraulic equipment, it is extremely important to build reservoirs, weirs, and canals along the north and south slopes of the Misu Mountains and Qingcang Mountains.

Therefore, after Yangzhou noticed this sign, he also tended to think that Han Qian had the intention of abandoning Tangyi and focusing on the East Lake camp.

The use of villagers fleeing from their homes and abandoning villages to build tunzhai and resettle the small families of the generals is also near Liyang City, especially on the west side of the camp near East Lake, which is much denser than other places.

Wang Jun really wanted to make the boat go directly to the new embankment and go ashore to take a look at the newly built canal over there, but thinking that if she really brought it up, the people around her would make a fuss and dissuade her, so she had to look at everything along the coast patiently and curiously, and did not say anything.

The flotilla continued to sail north in line with the new embankment.

There is a large area of beach depression submerged by the lake on the outside of the new embankment, which is uneven, and it is very likely that several awning boats with a deep draft in the fleet will run aground, and they will have to continue to travel north along the bay in the dry season, and deal with it at the mouth of a stream that is flooded by the lake at this time, and turn east along the deeper stream to the wharf built on the outside of the new embankment.

In several key locations, sentry towers were built with logs before the lake flooded, and oil paste was lit at night, and if a ship entered Chaozhou after dark, it could also sail to its destination at night according to the guidance of the giant oil lamp of the sentry tower, and it was not necessary to worry about anchoring on the beach shore that was more likely to be attacked by enemy warships at night.

For more than an hour, the fleet anchored at the designated wharf outside the new embankment to unload the cargo, and Wang Jun took Xiangyun, a maid who was also dressed as a man, and two guards dressed as boatmen and the captain of the fleet to land ashore.

At this time, you can see the new embankment in its entirety.

The new embankment is about six feet high from the ground on the inside, but it is as wide as one zhang at the top, and two zhang wide at the bottom of the slope.

Although the embankment did not need to be as solid as the city wall, it was sixteen or seventeen miles long from north to south, and it was difficult to imagine that after the end of the war in March, the resettlement of the vassals was not delayed, and it took only three or four months to build the embankment before the lake swelled.

There are large cotton fields on the inner side of the new embankment.

It so happened that two sailboats had just docked at the dock before they arrived.

At this time, the two sailing ships were moving down a batch of machinery and components that looked like spinning wheels, but Wang Jun saw that these machinery and components did not look like newly made, and they seemed to be disassembled from somewhere, and then transported to the Donghu camp of the Tangyi soldiers by boat.

"In the past two months, Xuzhou has concentrated on transporting a lot of old spinning wheel parts, I heard that Xuzhou has already built a water-powered spinning wheel last year, which is very economical, but there are many spinning yarns, maybe this is how to eliminate some old spinning wheels to come here for use,"

Seeing Wang Jun staring at the two ships with puzzled eyes, Tang Shiyu explained,

But it's a pity that several new weaving factories under the jurisdiction of the Xuzhou Industrial Manufacturing Bureau have a very strict job recruitment review, and nothing is known about what it looks like. I thought that if the Marquis of Qianyang also built a water-powered spinning wheel in Tangyi, it would be easier to spy on it......"

At this time, the composition of the military and civilians gathered in Tangyi was relatively complicated, except for a small part of the old army of Zuoguang, mainly the displaced people who fled south from the coast of Hongzepu when the Shouzhou army surrounded and annihilated the right Shenwu army in Zhongli.

These homeless people not only have spies infiltrated by Huaidong, but also must have the eyeliner infiltrated by the Shouzhou army, and it is difficult to clear them in a short period of time.

However, Wang Jun is also very curious about Xuzhou

What does a new water-powered spinning wheel look like?

Of course, she also knew in her heart that Han Qian couldn't give up building this new spinning wheel that could use water power on a large scale in Tangyi just because he wanted to prevent spies who might infiltrate him, thinking that maybe a relevant workshop was already being built somewhere in Tangyi, but Huaidong's eyeliner hadn't noticed it yet.

Looking at the cotton fields on the inside of the new embankment, it is clear how enthusiastic and loving Han Qian is for planting cotton fields.

The battle in the Puyang River Valley had just ended, and Tingzi Mountain had not been conquered, let alone Liyang City, and Han Qian couldn't wait to organize women, teenagers, and even children to reclaim cotton fields on the south bank of the Chuhe River.

By mid-March, the newly cultivated cotton fields in Tangyi would reach 300,000 mu.

Of course, this is directly related to the already large-scale cotton planting industry in Xuzhou.

Otherwise, where would the seedlings come from to plant such a large-scale cotton field at one time?

Although cotton, commonly known as "white stacks", has been introduced to the Central Plains since the Qin and Han dynasties, the planting scale is extremely limited, and now many Central Plains areas regard it as an ornamental flower.

Even though the Chenxu Prefecture had the tradition of planting cotton weaving cloth and even paying tribute to the Central Plains Dynasty for a long time, in fact, at the time of Han Qian, the cotton fields planted in Xuzhou were only scattered three or four thousand mu, accounting for only two or three thousandths of the total cultivated land area of Xuzhou.

After Han Daoxun took charge of Xuzhou, the cotton fields in Xuzhou and surrounding prefectures and counties expanded rapidly from thousands of mu to three or four hundred thousand mu in a few years.

Without this foundation, Han Qian would not have been able to transfer 200 old farmers and farmers from Xuzhou to Tangyi to teach the general's family to plant cotton fields in a small way.

This is even if other families know all the methods of cotton planting and spinning, if they want to expand the scale of cotton planting, they have to go through the road that Han Qian has walked before, and they will not be able to compete in three or five years.

Han Qian's large-scale reclamation of cotton fields in Tangyi is even more convenient than reclamation of grain fields, and the scale of newly cultivated cotton fields is indeed more than that of newly cultivated grain fields in April and May.

In another month, 300,000 acres of cotton fields will enter the harvest period, and then deseeding, spinning, weaving and dyeing and other things will inevitably be connected in time.

And even if Tangyi transported thousands of hand-spinning wheels from Xuzhou, it would not be enough.

The vast majority of women in Tangyi have no experience in spinning cotton and weaving, and even if there are a group of farmers transferred from Xuzhou and familiar with the guidance of weavers, they will be extremely slow, and they actually do not have the ability to process such a large output of cotton seeds and weave cloth.

Although Han Qian can also transport the harvested cottonseeds to Xuzhou for processing, this cannot make full use of Tangyi's idle labor.

Based on Han Qian's careful thinking, Wang Jun guessed that he would most likely build a few water-powered weaving workshops before winter.

Although when she left Fanchang, Han Qian left her "Weaving Chapter", there is no pattern and method of hydraulic spinning machine, but it is almost certain that Xuzhou has made this kind of water-powered equipment with great effort, Wang Jun just regrets that he has not seen it with his own eyes.

In the past two years, Wang Jun tried to plant five or six hundred acres of cotton fields in the grange at the foot of Shugang Mountain, although she still followed the patterns in the "Weaving Chapter" to build hand-spinning wheels, looms and slaves to use them, and weave cotton cloth for sale, she found that even if the cotton cloth was reduced to the same price as linen, the output of one acre of cotton field was still much higher than that of the grain field.

She thought to herself, if Han Qian's output of nearly 300,000 cotton fields in Tangyi was doubled, the gap in the funds for raising the army could be filled by the end of this year, right?