At night, the sky is full of stars, standing in the courtyard, looking at the Beijing city wall not far away, standing in front of you like a giant dragon in the night. This is the capital of the Ming Dynasty, but who would have thought that such a majestic and mighty city wall would be easily broken through by the peasant army in the near future, and soon fell into the hands of the barbarians, and the land of China fell into darkness from then on.

Chen Yue knew that there was not much time left for him, and he wanted to strengthen his strength as much as possible before the fall of Beijing, so that the father and son could have a loyal team in their hands, not because they had any ambitions, but just wanted to survive in this troubled world as much as possible.

"What are you thinking?" A fragrance came to the end of her nose, and Wu Wan'er's voice sounded in her ears.

"I'm wondering if such a majestic city of Beijing will one day be breached by the enemy." Chen Yue replied casually.

"How is that possible?" Wu Wan'er subconsciously wanted to refute, but then she thought of her hometown Kaifeng, which is also a majestic city, hasn't it also been breached? Although it was not the enemy army that destroyed the city, but the monstrous flood, the Yellow River was dug up by people after all.

"What's wrong? Are you homesick? Chen Yue keenly sensed Wu Wan'er's low mood.

"Where is there a home, the city is broken, the house is flooded, my father died on the way to Beijing, and my mother, my mother and my half-brother sold me and my brother to human traffickers...... "Wu Wan'er said sadly.

"Don't be sad, this will be your home from now on." Feeling the girl's sadness, Chen Yue clumsily persuaded.

"I'm not sad, I'm glad I met you and rescued me from the fire pit, I'm glad that with you, my brother and I don't have to live a life of exile again." Wu Wan'er's eyes were as bright as stars, and she looked at Chen Yue hotly. The man in front of her was different from the weak scholars she had seen before, and he looked a little rude, but he was meticulous, strong in martial arts, and even more rare in a chivalrous heart that helped the weak, and when he rescued her from the traffickers and climbed over the high city wall with her on his back, her heart fell.

"You are a young lady from a big family, you should have played the piano and painted in the show room, and lived a carefree life, but in my house, you can only eat coarse tea, and you have to do laundry, cooking, and doing the work of the next people." Looking at the girl's bright eyes and remembering that she was clumsy but very hard at learning to cook in the kitchen, Chen Yue was amused and very moved.

"I don't care about coarse tea and light rice, and I'm not afraid of hardship, as long as my brother is here, yes, with you, I don't care about anything......" The girl's voice became lower and lower, Chen Yue felt her strong affection, and couldn't help but reach out and hold a pair of soft wattles in his hands.

"Ahh Wu Wan'er let out a low scream, struggled for a while, and then stopped moving, letting the big hands wrap around her small hands, only to feel that her face was hot, and her whole body trembled as if she had been electrocuted.

Touching the soft and boneless little hand in his palm, smelling the seductive fragrance around him, Chen Yue was intoxicated, pulled the girl to his side with a slight effort, and lowered his head to kiss the seductive red lips.

"Ahem, ahem!" A sudden coughing sound broke the calm of the night, startling the men and women who were falling into lust, Wu Wan'er broke free of her hand, covered her face and ran to her room.

"You bastard doesn't sleep in the middle of the night, what do you want to do?" Chen Yue looked at Chen Ping with an innocent face not far away in annoyance.

"It's the master who asked me to watch you, and I don't allow you to mess around." After being silent for a while, Chen Ping said in a low voice. Chen Yue could only snort angrily and turned around and went back to his room.

Glancing back at his sister's closed door, Chen Ping's face was very complicated, his heart was in a mess at the moment, and he couldn't tell what it was like.

Chen Ping was full of gratitude to Chen Yue for saving himself and his sister, and vowed to repay him with this life. But even if he repays himself, he doesn't want to catch his sister again. Chen Ping instinctively thinks that his sister is the best girl in the world, she is good at piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, and she is better than most readers. So when Chen Jianghe secretly ordered him to look at the two, Chen Ping decisively agreed.

The next day, as usual, he got up early and practiced martial arts, annoyed that Chen Ping ruined his good deeds last night, Chen Yue added two percent more to his training, and Chen Mo had to accompany him to be punished. When Chen Jianghe and Chen Yan arrived with two briquette machines and two coal stoves, Chen Ping and Chen Mo were still standing in the courtyard.

The briquettes made yesterday were half-dried overnight and are ready to use.

A coal stove was placed in the courtyard, and everyone gathered around to see how Chen Yue used it.

First, put the soft hay on the bottom grate of the stove, take out the fire breaker and blow it vigorously, and then ignite the hay. Then put a small stick on top of the burning hay, and then put a coarser dry firewood, which is no different from the old stove fire.

When there was a primer in the stove, Chen Yue picked up a honeycomb coal with special fire tongs and put it into the stove, the special coal stove is also cylindrical, with a slightly larger aperture than a briquette, just enough to allow a briquette to be put in.

Everyone watched intently, to see if this thing was as good as Chen Yue said, and after a while, they saw that flames were coming out of the holes in the briquettes, and the briquettes began to burn.

The depth of the coal stove was just enough to accommodate two briquettes, and when the first one burned for a while, Chen Yue put the other one in, and used fire tongs to align the holes of the two briquettes, and everyone saw that flames came out of the hole of one briquette below, licking towards the hole of the second briquette.

The top of the coal stove is designed as a ring of protrusions, just enough to sit on a kettle or pot. Chen Yue filled Chen Yan with a copper pot of water, sat on the stove, and after about a stick of incense, he heard a rumbling sound and saw white smoke coming out of the spout.

"The water is boiling! Soon! Wu Wan'er said happily.

"This briquette can burn for nearly an hour, and it will definitely be no problem to make a meal. When not in use, seal the top with an iron sheet, and then block the air inlet below with a wooden plug, so that it will not burn again. Chen Yue took the copper kettle off it and demonstrated it to everyone.

"Will it be suffocated? You have to light a fire when you cook. Wu Wan'er asked what she was most concerned about, because every time the stove was extinguished, she had to spend a lot of effort to light it again, and her face was often covered with black ash.

"Of course not, even if it is sealed for two days, it will not be extinguished." Chen Yue's words made Wu Wan'er feel at ease, it would be much more convenient to cook with this thing.

"It's a little smaller." Chen Jianghe pointed out the shortcomings of this coal stove.

"The fire is not as big as the coal stove before, but there is no problem with boiling water for cooking, the most important thing is to save coal, in the past, you had to cook a meal with four or five catties of coal, and you need fifteen or sixteen catties a day, if you use this kind of briquette, you only need three a day." Chen Yue patiently explained the advantages of honeycomb coal.

"This briquette is more than two pounds, right?" Chen Jianghe lifted a briquette and held it in his hand.

"You can call it!" Chen Yue said and took a rod scale, carefully lifted it up with the hole where the briquette was hung with a weighing hook, and gently moved the weighing hammer until the scale rod was flat, just two catties in weight.

"In the past, it took 14 or 5 catties of coal to cook a day, but now you only need three six-catty briquettes, which can save too much!" Wu Wan'er said in surprise.

"Don't forget, there's 20 percent clay in each briquette!" Chen Yue reminded with a smile.

"This business is promising, it should be very profitable!" Chen Jianghe decisively came to a conclusion.

In the era when there was no honeycomb coal, cooking was very coal-intensive, and an ordinary family of five needed at least fifteen or sixteen catties of coal a day on average, and those with a large population needed thirty or forty catties. According to the selling price of one penny and two catties of coal, a household spends eight to twenty yuan a day on coal, which is 240 to 600 yuan a month, and more than two taels to five or six taels of silver a year.

For wealthy families, these are just a small amount of money, but for ordinary people, spending on fuel is a lot of money, because for an ordinary family, the annual income is only more than ten taels of silver.

But if you don't spend this money, you can't do it, this is the city of Beijing, not an ordinary mountain and rural area, you can casually find firewood in the field to burn. You can't cook without fuel, and going to a restaurant to eat will only be more expensive.

If it is replaced with honeycomb coal, only three briquettes are needed for cooking in a day, even if each briquette is sold for two cents, it will be six cents a day, which is one to two cents more than the original, and there are fifty or sixty cents left in a month, and it is more than half a tael of silver in a year, which is a lot of money for ordinary people.

And honeycomb coal has another advantage, that is, the coal furnace will not be extinguished when it is not in use, and there is no need to relight the fire every day. Therefore, Chen Yue can be sure that if honeycomb coal is promoted, it will definitely be widely welcomed by the people.

For Chen Yue, who is doing this business, a briquette is two catties, but there are four taels of clay that don't need money, so the cost of a briquette is only 0.8 Wen, and the price is as high as 2 Wen, which is 15% of the profit, even if the labor cost is deducted, the profit is as high as 100%. Although it is said that a briquette only makes a penny when it breaks through the sky, but Beijing has a population of 8 or 900,000 people, what a huge market! Even if one-tenth of the people choose to use honeycomb coal, they will make money every day.

When Chen Yue said his calculation of profits, the eyes of everyone present twinkled with stars, and the prospect described by Chen Yue was too tempting!