The snow covered the entire land and turned the city of Beijing white.

On the city walls, on the roofs, on the streets, there was a thick layer of snow everywhere, and the whole of Beijing became a world of ice and jade carvings.

Beijing's city gates have been closed for more than a month, and it has been cut off from the outside world for more than a month. From time to time, there were many Tartar rangers whistling past the city, and although there were not many of them, no one dared to open the gates of the city and attack them at the risk of the fall of the capital.

Emperor Chongzhen has issued several holy decrees, ordered the troops from all over the world to march into the king, and sent several eunuchs to deliver the decree, but no news came back.

The closure of the city gate severed the connection between the inside and outside of Beijing, and also made it impossible to replenish the materials in the city. The price of rice has risen from five taels to eight taels, and the imperial court has issued a holy decree not to allow grain merchants to hoard and limit the price of grain, and open the regular position to open the warehouse to release grain, so that the price of grain has not risen again. However, if the city gates were closed for another two months, even with an order from the imperial court, I am afraid that it would not be able to prevent the price of food from continuing to rise.

The price of grain has risen, and various other prices have also risen, such as the price of coal, raw coal has risen from one penny and two catties to one penny and one catty, and honeycomb coal has also risen to three cents a piece.

In the past month, Chenjia Coal Yard has made a lot of money, and it has made money every day.

Chen Yue went to Xishan to serve as an inspector, Chen Jianghe was not good at business, and the burden of Chen's coal yard fell on Wu Wan'er.

Chen Yue's absence made the other coal yards breathe a sigh of relief, thinking that they had a chance to breathe for Gou An, who knew that Wu Wan'er's methods were more tough and flexible than Chen Yue, and a set of combination punches made the coal yards miserable.

Wu Wan'er first sent people to rent a lot of storefronts in various streets throughout Beijing, opened hundreds of honeycomb coal stores in one go, and then promoted all those coal dealers to be the shopkeepers of the stores. Each street has a honeycomb coal storefront that sells directly to all the people. In this way, the honeycomb coal produced in the coal yard no longer needs to be sold door-to-door by coal dealers, which also greatly improves the efficiency of sales. Any user who burns honeycomb coal first can go directly to the store to buy briquettes, and more than 100 will have a guy personally deliver them to your home, which is really convenient.

At the same time, Wu Wan'er hired thousands of children of military households and began to make a large number of honeycomb coal, and transported the honeycomb coal made into dry to various stores.

At this moment, the benefits of honeycomb coal have spread, most of the people in Beijing have known about honeycomb coal, in the past limited to the limited production capacity of Chenjia coal yard, only popular in Xicheng, now Wu Wan'er has opened the shop to other cities and even the entire outer city, countless people are eager for this kind of briquettes that can save coal.

Of course, Wu Wan'er has the confidence to do this, and Chen Yue "borrowed" millions of catties of raw coal from the coal merchant is where her confidence lies. All the gates of Beijing are closed, coal trucks outside cannot enter, and no coal merchants risk their lives to transport coal to the Mentougou Coal Mine. And having the largest stock of raw coal in her hand is enough for her to spread the entire business all over Beijing.

The popularity of honeycomb coal has caused a sharp decline in the business of traditional briquettes, and many coal yards cannot sell a few catties of briquettes a day, which is said to be the best time to merge them, but Wu Wan'er did not do this, but sent someone to take the initiative to negotiate and discuss the business of honeycomb coal.

The Chen family invested in technology as a shareholder, and everyone cooperated to open a business, and the Chen family only accounted for 30% of the shares, and the remaining 70% was still theirs. For the coal mill owners, whose business is gradually reaching a dead end, Wu Wan'er's proposal is no less than saving them.

Having been engaged in the briquette business all year round, they naturally know how big the profits of honeycomb coal are, and even if they share 30% of the profits to the Chen family, the profits they get are far higher than in the past.

In one month, more than 80 of the hundreds of coal yards in Beijing have chosen to cooperate with Chenjia Coal Yard. With the consent of the head of the family, Chen Jianghe, a business named "Yishenglong" was quietly established, and there were more than 80 coal yards under his control. Most of Beijing's coal business is controlled by Yishenglong, which sells hundreds of thousands of honeycomb coals every day and makes a daily profit of hundreds of taels of silver. And as prices rise, daily profits will continue to increase.

Of course, the booming business has also aroused the eyes of countless people, and all kinds of open guns and hidden arrows have come one after another. Chen Jianghe, who was promoted to the rank of thousand, sent soldiers who were not on duty to garrison various coal yards every day, and caught more than a dozen thieves who tried to steal the briquette machine in a few days.

At the critical moment, Wu Mengming also stood up and successively rebuked several nobles who tried to meddle in the honeycomb coal business. Although Wu Mengming is only a commander of the Jinyi Guard, he is a celebrity in front of Emperor Chongzhen, and ordinary people don't want to offend him for this business.

The booming business brought a lot of silver money to the Chen family, and the silver earned in a month was as much as more than 20,000 taels, but these silver coins could only be stored in the silver village, and could not be converted into strength, because neither silver nor material could be sent to Chen Yue, who was far away in Xishan Town.

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Chen Yue was a little distressed, distressed by the shortage of gunpowder, when he came out of Beijing, he carried more than 100 catties of gunpowder, and also seized dozens of catties in Zhao Li's arsenal, but after dozens of days of training, the amount of gunpowder decreased sharply, and in a remote place like Xishan Town, even if he had thousands of taels of silver in his hand, there was no place to buy gunpowder.

As for making it yourself? First of all, Chen Yue didn't know the formula of gunpowder, what is the ratio of one sulfur, two nitrate and three charcoal, and the proportion calculated by this chemical equation does not work at all in practice.

And even if you know the recipe, where to find the materials when it's cold, charcoal can be found a lot in Xishan Town, but where can you find sulfur and saltpeter?

If it is only used for firecrackers, gunpowder can be used for a while, and the key is that there are two tiger squat cannons.

In the past few days, Chen Yue has led people to clean up the tiger squat cannon, wiped the rust in the barrel of the cannon, and found no obvious defects in the inspection of the cannon body. So he led people to move the tiger squat cannon to the wall of the inspection department and test fire the cannon outside the city.

Chen Yue has read the book of war, and has a certain understanding of the principle of artillery, this kind of tiger squat cannon is similar to a mortar, and the cannon is parabolic after being discharged, so if you want to hit the target accurately, you must accurately calculate the angle of fire. Chen Yue thought about it for a long time, recalled the parabolic knowledge of middle school mathematics, and then firing the gun test fire to calculate the approximate rate of fire of the artillery, and then calculated how high the elevation angle was and what was the range of the artillery.

After dozens of test firings, it was possible to figure out the range and elevation angle of this Tiger squat gun, and the results of the test were recorded. Then he taught it to the pro-soldier family who had been learning from him.

Chen Goudan, Li Daniu, these two people are artillerymen selected by Chen Yue from his family, and they are responsible for leading people to operate these two tiger squat guns.

It was precisely because of the repeated test firing of the Tiger Squat Cannon that the stock of gunpowder was extremely low and urgently needed to be replenished, which made Chen Yue very worried.