Early the next morning, the army was just preparing to march to Gyeyang. Suddenly www.biquge.info, a messenger from the front came to report that Luo Xuan's troops had conquered Jiahe County the day before yesterday and were expected to reach the outside of Guiyang Prefecture today; Lin Fengxiang, who had also left the army on the road, led 3,000 holy soldiers to occupy Lanshan County without using their swords and guns, abandoned the city without defending it, and had now attacked Linwu.

Feng Shaoguang was overjoyed and ordered to inform the whole army to boost morale. Immediately, Su Sanniang, Liang Litai and others led the soldiers of the Holy Army to continue to advance in the direction of Jiahe, but Liu Shengbang's injuries did not heal, so he stayed in the army. Accompanied by Zhou Shengfu, the deputy warden of the Holy Army, and dozens of personal guards, he was led by Luo Feide to the fire and nitrate mines in Jiuzhi Mountain mentioned by Luo Outline. Earlier, the mine had been occupied by Chen Yucheng and sent troops to garrison, and after Chen Yucheng set out with Luo Xuan, Luo Feide was responsible for sending people to guard the mine.

An unusually rugged and steep mountain road that leads to a mine halfway up the mountain. In fact, from the perspective of modern Feng Shaoguang, this is not a road at all, it is just that it has been stepped on, and there are slightly fewer shrubs and weeds along the way.

With such traffic conditions, even if there is saltpeter, it is difficult to transport it down the mountain on a large scale. Feng Shaoguang couldn't help but have a headache.

Walking further, the shrubs along the way turned into a large bamboo forest, and the wild Nanzhu was tall and straight, Feng Shaoguang couldn't help but smile when he saw it. He had already thought of a way, that is, to use these bamboos, split them in the middle, remove all the bamboo knots, and then tie them up and connect them into a long pipe, which leads from the mountain to the bottom of the mountain, which is the best way to transport ore. The ore is crushed a little, preferably in a round shape, and sent directly from the bamboo pipe to the bottom of the mountain.

When I came to a cave, there was an open space outside the cave, and a dozen people were carrying baskets full of ore. The entrance to the cave is supported by wooden beams, and this is the saltpeter mine.

The leader of the mine guard was a middle-aged man who saw Luo Feide coming and was busy with his luggage. Feng Shaoguang wanted to go in and have a look, so Luo Feide asked the miner leader to carry a torch and lead the way in front.

When you enter the mine, it is not only not damp, but rather dry. Only about 30 meters into the cave, the walls on both sides of the cave have been embedded with many gray-brown or light white translucent prismatic crystals, which are fire nitrates. Feng Shaoguang stood still, looked at the torch in the head of the mine, and asked, "That's how you usually enter the mine with torches?" ”

"Back to the Holy King, villains usually don't use torches to enter the hole, although mining is troublesome, but groping for habits doesn't have much effect. The Holy King must have been worried that the fire would explode when it encountered this torch, right? In fact, there is generally not a lot of powder, and it will not explode. In addition, the villain asked his subordinates to spray some water in the cave every day, and the torches must also be carried by the villain himself before entering the cave, just in case. The middle-aged mine head replied respectfully.

"Well, that's good, you must be careful with the torches, there is no need, don't bring the torches in." Feng Shaoguang nodded, this mine head is quite cautious. It's a pity that these days, there is no flashlight, otherwise, there would be no torches at all. But the flashlight must have electricity, and now that I am like this, where can I get electricity? Shaking his head, he continued inside.

After walking more than ten meters, the mine is almost at the end, and it can be seen that the more you go inside, the denser the saltpeter ore becomes. Feng Shaoguang is very happy! This is a saltpeter mine, the reserves are not bad, and in the future, you don't need to make nitrate from the soil, and you will go to the toilet everywhere to dig the corner. However, this saltpeter mine is more difficult to mine, slowly wet, knock the hole with a copper rod, knock it down piece by piece, and then pick it out, and then select it in a place where you can see the light.

Out of the mine, Feng Shaoguang suspected that the entire mountain was full of this kind of nitrate ore, and when he asked the head of the mine, sure enough, two places were also excavated on the side of the mountain, and mineral deposits were found. It's just that the terrain over there is more precipitous, and it is difficult to pick ore in and out, so no further excavation was carried out. The head of the mine is an old man who mines, he revealed that when the Qing demon occupied the saltpeter mine, he had to mine four or five hundred thousand catties of ore per month at the beginning, but later found that it was really difficult to transport the ore out, and then it was reduced to about 200,000 catties per month, and there are still hundreds of thousands of catties of saltpeter ore stored in the innermost part of the mine and not transported away.

Coming down the mountain, Feng Shaoguang summoned Zhou Shengfu and Luo Feide,

Feng Shaoguang called Zhou Shengfu and said, "Brother Shengfu, you are the deputy canon of the Holy Army, how do you usually make nitrate?" ”

Zhou Shengfu hurriedly replied: "Back to the Holy King, my subordinates learned the craft of making earthen firecrackers when they were young, and later made some earth-fired gunpowder by themselves. They use the nitrate scraped by the toilet, put it in a large pot, mix it with plant ash, heat it and boil it, and then cool the nitrate water to become coarse nitrate. ”

"Well, the method you said is only suitable for making nitrate from nitrate, using it to make firecrackers, and to make gunpowder, it may not work!" After listening to this, Feng Shaoguang shook his head and commented.

"In this way, Brother Shengfu, I will teach you a method of making nitrate, and you can go to Ningyuan County to find a few old craftsmen who can make nitrate and test it. Then, at the foot of this mountain, there happened to be a stream of water, which happened to set up the first nitrate-making factory in my Taiping Holy Country!" Feng Shaoguang said that the method of making nitrate is still what he likes history, and when he is idle and bored, he looks at it on the online forum.

For ore with high purity, it is directly crushed, soaked in hot water, and then dissolved to almost it, and then allowed to cool down, and what is precipitated is the fire nitrate with higher purity. But the purity of this saltpeter mine, although it is okay, is generally not to this extent.

For impure ores, there are not only impurities, but also miscanthus and nitrate, etc., it is necessary to use the method of boiling nitrate to make nitrate.

Some villages in the north can even feed thousands of people by using soil to make nitrate. This kind of production is already quite large-scale. What Feng Shaoguang needs is such a large-scale nitrate-making factory.

Feng Shaoguang still retained the habit of being a grassroots engineer, so he called Zhou Shengfu and a few craftsmen and instructed them to start a small experiment.

The first process of nitrate production is to scrape the nitrate. On the adobe bricks of the walls of old houses, toilets and other places, due to the deep age and the long-term dampness of the ground, a kind of white crystals that resemble salt but not salt will be generated, and it will be scraped down to become nitrate. Of course, now that there is a saltpeter mine, Zhou Shengfu does not have to work hard to run the toilet, and the effect and output are much better.

The second process is to pour nitrate water. Dig a nitrate pond, the bottom and the four walls are not leaky, the bottom is on the top of a layer of wooden sticks, the wooden sticks are spread with small foil made of sorghum straw, and then the bamboo mats are spread on the top. A pit was dug at the outside end of the pond and a large clay pot was buried so that the water from the pool could flow into the pot. After the preparation is done, pour the broken saltpeter ore into the pool, and then mix in some plant ash, how much plant ash is, depending on the purity of the ore. Then the top is filled with water, and the water will slowly pass through the saltpeter mine and pour it under the pool, dissolving the potassium nitrate in the saltpeter and flowing into the clay pot outside the pool, showing a dark color, which is the nitrate. To test whether the nitrate in the saltpeter is completely drenched, you can take a fresh egg and put it in the nitrate water to judge. If there are more nitrate-containing ingredients, the part of the egg that is out of the water will be more, and on the contrary, the part of the egg that is out of the water will be less, and if the egg sinks, it means that the nitrate can be stopped.

The third process is to boil nitrate. Pour the crimson nitrate water into the pot, boil over high heat, change to low heat and boil slowly, otherwise it will overflow, how can it be considered boiled? A shovel is dipped in the pot, if there is a thicker liquid hanging on it, it means that the heat is almost over, and the jargon is called "hanging shovel". At this time, the bottom of the pot also boiled out of the white salt, scoop the nitrate water on the top into the clay pot, let it stand for a period of time and then look at it, the bottom of the pot is full of white crystals, because it is stained with brine, the purity is lower, so it is called "waste nitrate". The black and red water in the middle is poured out and preserved, this is the "brine", as the saying goes: "the brine points to the tofu - one thing drops one thing" is said to be this brine. In addition to being used to order tofu, it can also be used as fertilizer.

Finally, there is nitrate. Carry the waste nitrate with a filter cloth, rinse it repeatedly with water, remove the water, and finally wrap the nitrate and put it in a small pool full of plant ash, so that the plant ash can completely absorb the water inside. Then add water to the pot and boil again, and add a small amount of water glue, wait until the shovel is hung, stop the fire, wash the liquid into a small steel tile basin, cool it, buckle it out, and become a crystal clear nitrate, which is nitrate.

The reason why it is so complicated, in fact, in the final analysis, is that the purity of nitrate * potassium contained in saltpeter ore is too low, and some * sodium nitrate * needs to be replaced with chlorinated * potassium in plant ash to react into nitric * acid * potassium, which Feng Shaoguang, who has studied chemistry, understands very well in his heart.

After Feng Shaoguang finished speaking, he asked Zhou Shengfu to continue the experiment, and he pondered the question of how to speed up the march of the holy soldiers, and suddenly heard Zhou Shengfu and several craftsmen cheering in unison: "Holy King, it's out!" ”

Feng Shaoguang hurriedly ran to take a look, did he really succeed in getting out of the nitrate? Zhou Shengfu held a nest of slightly yellowish fire nitrate in his hand, a clay pot, a shallow basin of nitrate. Zhou Shengfu took the fire sickle and ignited the branches, threw the fire powder in his hand into the flames, and burst into flames. That's right, it really is!

It seems that a few hours of busy work have not been in vain, the experiment is successful, the method is proved to be feasible, and then it can be mass-produced.

Feng Shaoguang asked Zhou Shengfu not to follow him to Guiyang, so he was stationed at the stream below the saltpeter mine to preside over the formation of the first nitrate factory in the Taiping Holy Kingdom! In terms of manpower, materials were all deployed from Ningyuan County, with Luo Feide assisting.

After arranging the establishment of the nitrate factory, Feng Shaoguang no longer stayed, and with the support of his personal guards, he directly chased the army in front of him in the direction of Jiahe.