On the second day of the dispatch of the night, a team of more than a dozen people came from the western mountain road and entered Xishan Town, but Li Xiong, Chen Yan and others who were sent to Yangquan to purchase sulfur saltpeter came back.

He brought back two carts of sulfur and saltpeter, which seemed to be three or four thousand catties.

"My lord, we're back with sulfur saltpeter!" Lao Li Xiong's waist was straight, looking at Chen Yue and smiling slightly, the rush of more than a month of travel made him full of exhaustion, and there was dust everywhere on his body, but he was still in good spirits.

"Young Master!" Chen Yan just looked at Chen Yue and smiled, but the joy on his face couldn't be stopped. For Chen Yan, a fifteen or sixteen-year-old teenager, these days with Chen Yue are the happiest times in their lives. Without the nightmarish slave life, they can live well fed, clothed, and have dignity, and unconsciously, they have an attachment to such a life, and they respect Chen Yue, who rescued them from the sea of suffering, as a parent.

When leaving, together with Li Xiong and Chen Yan, there were eight people, but when they came back, there were fifteen people, and the extra seven were guys sent by the seller, the mountain road was too rugged, there was heavy snow not long ago, and there were a lot of goods purchased, these people were to help transport the ore back, and then they came to meet the buyer and agreed on the next ore transaction. For the Yangquan miners who exploit sulfur saltpeter mines, the excavated minerals are mainly sold to the government and Datong Military Town, and some merchants who rush to make fireworks and firecrackers will also purchase, but it is rare to have a large merchant who can purchase thousands of catties at a time, and the price is much higher than that of the government. Li Xiong told them that the quantity of purchases would be larger and larger in the future, so he sent someone to contact the buyer, and if the buyer was willing to continue to buy, they would take the initiative, but they would add some freight appropriately. Finally, it is necessary to look at the identity of the buyer, after all, sulfur and saltpeter are military substances used to make gunpowder, and they dare not sell them to unidentified people.

"There are a lot of sulfur mines in Yangquan, and there are also some saltpeter mines that come out of it, and the amount we purchase is not too much, and the saltpeter can fully meet our needs." Li Xiong said to Chen Yue, and then reported on the accounts, spending less than three hundred taels of silver in total.

"The main reason is that the snow melts on the road, which makes it muddy and difficult to walk in some places, and many times you can only pass in the morning while it is freezing, otherwise you will come back long ago."

"On the way, I encountered a few thieves, thinking that we were fat sheep who were easy to bully, thanks to Ah Yan's escort, a sprint, killed five or six bandits, and the others who were shocked did not dare to move, so they came back safely."

Li Xiong babbled about the thrills on the road.

"Where are the bandits, how many are there, and are they far from here?" Chen Yue asked, the soldiers have been trained in the initial and need to pass the actual combat test, so it is a good choice to suppress the bandits.

"It's forty or fifty miles away from here, in a place called Woniu Mountain, there are no less than 100 bandits, we passed through the mountain road seven or eight miles away from Woniu Mountain, fortunately only about 20 people came out to rob, if there are more, I'm afraid we people will not be spared." Li Xiong said happily.

Later, Chen Yan told Chen Yue that Li Xiong was very brave in the fight with the bandits, and at least four bandits were killed under a spear, which made the bandits retreat in terror. Only then did Chen Yue know that this Li Xiong turned out to be a master, but thinking about the identity of his border army, he could understand it.

Since Li Xiong is so powerful, the old men who came to Xishan Town with him and are now raising horses should also have some skills, Chen Yue decided to test them in the future, and he couldn't bury them raising horses like this.

He gave some bounty and sent the people sent by the seller back, and agreed to send another batch of goods in three months, and Chen Yue paid a deposit of one hundred taels.

Next, under the leadership of Li Xiong, the production of gunpowder began. First, the sulphur and saltpeter are crushed with a large stone mill to form a powder.

Sulfur is better, the purity is very high, saltpeter is an associated mineral, there are a lot of impurities in it, and it needs to be purified.

Li Xiong put the saltpeter powder into a large pot, added water to dissolve it into a solution, and then put in the carrots and plant ashes to cook together, Li Xiong could not say why. Chen Yue, who has studied chemistry, knows that plant ash was once alkaline, and could react with various calcium salts, magnesium salts, and iron salts in saltpeter water to form carbonate crystal precipitation.

After boiling saltpeter water and plant ash, it is slightly cooled and poured into another vat covered with muslin to remove the dregs and nitrate crystals. Then the saltpeter water in the vat is cooled, and crystallized miscanthus will appear on it.

The process of deposit and withdrawal is not complicated, Li Xiong is very experienced, and he took a few auxiliary soldiers to work hard. Chen Yue allocated the eight gunnery and firearm assessment to Li Xiong, these people are obviously not suitable for fighting as soldiers, and it is not bad to follow Li Xiong as a technical soldier.

After the miscanthus nitrate is purified, the powder is crushed and mixed with sulfur powder and charcoal powder according to the proportion. Charcoal is the best charcoal fired by the charcoal craftsmen in the town, and it is no problem to use it to make gunpowder.

The three ingredients are mixed together in a certain proportion and then stirred to form a brown powder combination. Li Xiong carefully weighed the proportion of various raw materials with a rod scale, and Chen Yue noticed that these three proportions were not one sulfur, two nitrate and three charcoal, but the proportion of saltpeter accounted for more, and the proportion of charcoal was less than one-third.

Chen Yue himself doesn't understand the proportions and components of gunpowder, so if he doesn't understand, he won't interject indiscriminately, gunpowder can't be made indiscriminately, Li Xiong, as a military craftsman who makes gunpowder in Datong Town, still trusts Chen Yue in his technology.

Gunpowder is made by mixing the three powders together, but Li Xiong said that this powder gunpowder can be used as an primer for guns, but it is not suitable for propellants, because they are not burned very well in the chamber of the gun, and there will be residue.

Therefore, to make good gunpowder, it is necessary to re-dissolve these powdered gunpowder in water, then boil it, and then dry the paste gunpowder to form particles, which are most likely to ignite and explode.

In short, the process of making gunpowder is very complicated, and professional things are left to professional people. Chen Yue specially set aside a number of remote and isolated houses as workshops, and then allocated manpower and materials, explained the precautions, and stipulated that everyone was not allowed to bring open flames into the workshop, and the hair needed to be wrapped to prevent static friction after entering, etc., in short, all accidents must be prevented. Then, if there is any lack of explanation, you can ask Shan Minglei, the clerk of the inspection department, and let Li Xiong do it.

Just when the gunpowder production was just underway, the Ye Bu Hui who had been sent to investigate the enemy's situation came back and brought back the news that shocked everyone, and the Mantars had actually occupied Fangshan County!

ps: I recommend a friend's work "Struggle in the Late Ming Dynasty", Chinese and foreign Yi'an, domestic Yinfu, discipline and law, all of which are repaired.

Imperial widows, the rule of the whole officials, a whip, the Ming Dynasty in the sixth year of Wanli looked thriving. However, according to the course of history, the Ming Empire will inevitably move towards the sunset......

However, the sky does not die in the Ming Dynasty, and Ning Xiu, who did not belong to this world, came to the late Ming Dynasty and led the Ming Dynasty to another road of capital rejuvenation and industrial power.

Who said that the death of Ming died in Wanli? The capital burst out, and the Ming Dynasty with the rise of industry has no regrets!

The author has written a fine book, which is very strong, and the content of the book is very exciting, which should not be missed.