While fierce fighting was underway in Binh Duong Province, a compact renovation was underway at Lok Liang Hill at the end of October.

10,000 acres of fields are planted under the management of Liu Lianqing, one by one.

After Nanshan leveled the site, Deng Dahu led people to build spacious and neat houses, bluestone streets, living sewage canals, as well as centralized bathhouses and public toilets.

The city walls of the new city have also set up crossbows to defend the city.

When Tang Xidong didn't bother to look for something instead of cow tendon to make a bowstring.

With the 3,000 displaced people up the mountain, the Xiucai Xu Sansheng had already instructed the craftsmen to make a bowstring out of twine and animal skins instead of cow tendons.

Tang Xidong also accidentally saw the crossbows erected on the city, and asked the craftsmen in surprise to find out.

When he found Xu Sanxing, who was mixing with the blacksmith in the craftsman's workshop, Tang Xidong was very surprised, a Xiucai actually liked to fiddle with craftsmen's objects, of course, he Tang Xidong was an exception, and at this moment, he actually let this exception find another exception.

Thinking about this era, scholars who study the Four Books and Five Classics hard and do Baguwen all day long are generally pure and high-ranking people who will not touch the work of these craftsmen.

After Tang Xidong inquired carefully, he learned that Xu Sansheng studied under Wang Zheng, who was a teacher of Mr. Kuixin in Shaanxi, and Wang Zheng liked Western studies and studied many "strange and obscene objects" from Western missionaries.

Xu Sanxing has been studying with Wang Zheng since he was a child, and he is naturally very interested in things like mechanical principles.

Tang Xidong did not know who Wang Zheng was, if he knew, he would definitely have a good impression, you must know that this person was very famous in later generations, and he wrote many works that recorded advanced science and technology such as "Illustrated Sayings of Instruments" and "Illustrated Illustrations of Strange Weapons" during his lifetime.

Wang Zheng was still an official in Yangzhou at this time, and Xu Sansheng was one of his disciples.

After talking with Xu Sanxing, Tang Xidong found that this person had a lot of insights into mechanical principles, and even knew how to make existing firearms in the Ming Dynasty.

Such a character naturally cannot be idle, and Tang Xidong immediately appointed Xu Sansheng as the manager of the cottage craftsman workshop, responsible for the production of utensils.

Although he looked down on the backward and inferior firearms of the Ming Dynasty at this time, Tang Xidong would never fail to develop and manufacture firearms by himself.

When the steel is smelted out in the future, he is ready to build a batch of thermal weapons that are advanced in this era, and Xu San Province will inevitably reuse them at that time.

After the city walls on both sides were built, Tang Xidong asked Li Shangquan to divide his people into two teams to defend the city walls on both sides, and then practice attack and defense with each other, so as to prepare for the attack of foreign enemies in the future.

Recently, the cottage has taken in a lot of displaced people, and the population has exceeded 8,000.

While everything was steadily progressing, Tang Xidong began to prepare to break the situation where the cottage industrial base was zero.

The first step was to build a coking plant.

In the later era, there were basically several coking plants in every town, and Tang Xidong naturally knew the method of coking from that era.

In later generations, there were all kinds of coke kilns, and in the beginning, the toiling masses were groping, and after the era of the great movement, the technology gradually became mature.

Tang Xidong didn't dare to guarantee that what he made would be the best, so before building the kiln, Tang Xidong still took a few mason masters to build the kiln first.

The first thing to solve is the construction of coal washing ponds.

The function of the coal washing pond is to separate the coal from the gangue, and another point is to separate the coal from the peat.

The role of the coal washing pond is very important, the coal gangue is separated, and after crushing, it can be used as an admixture for brick firing.

After the peat is cleaned out, it can be used to make briquettes.

The separated coal blocks are used for coking, which is convenient for transportation and conducive to coking into lumps.

The coal washing pond is actually a large water tank built up, with a higher upper mouth and a sedimentation tank at the lower mouth, and a plurality of water tanks in the middle, which is convenient for workers to sort coal and gangue.

With the flow of water, the coal begins to flow downward, and the coal block and gangue have different qualities, which can be separated by the buoyancy of the water flow, and finally the peat is deposited in the sedimentation tank.

The sink should be large and the water flow should be more, and there was no water in the back mountain, and Tang Xidong had to put the coal washing pond next to the stream at the bottom of the mountain.

Dig a slope and let the masons build the pools and troughs according to their own design.

Then have a craftsman build a sluice gate by the stream, lift the gate with a stirring handle when water is needed, and close it when it is not needed.

At the same time, in order to save the flow of water, Tang Xidong sent people to dig a water tank in the middle of the last pool, and remixed it into the downstream stream with the terrain.

The coal washing pool basically does not need to be experimented, except that there is no waterproof material, the technology is simple and the operation is convenient.

But the only bad thing is that the coal washing pond is at the bottom of the mountain, and after thinking about it, Tang Xidong still thinks that the coking plant site will be re-planned at the bottom of the mountain, after all, in this era of simple transportation conditions, it is necessary to transport the coal down, separate it from the coal washing pond, and then transport it up, and fire it in the coking plant, which is too much of a waste of labor.

Thinking about the fact that the coking plant will need to use the lime on the opposite side of the official road and the stream next to it, Tang Xidong feels that the relocation of the coking plant is the most ideal location.

Moreover, the stream is in a narrow valley between the two mountains, and the wind is strong here, which also saves the need to re-do the bellows to blow air into the kiln after the coking kiln is covered.

After the operation of the coal washing pond, Tang Xidong found that the effect reached his expectations, so he made another one from the side, and the two coal washing ponds could temporarily supply the supply of his own coking kiln.

The coal washing pond was completed, and Tang Xidong began to build a coking kiln.

The coking kiln designed by Tang Xidong is not a common round kiln in later generations, but a square kiln.

It looks like a boxy square kiln with six chimneys rising from the top, and under the square kiln is a fire tunnel, a semi-oval deep pit, which serves as a furnace for burning coal.

There are square furnaces built at the four mouths of the square kiln, which are used to ignite the fire, and the furnace mouth is enlarged, and a figure-eight wall is built on one side to facilitate the entry of wind power.

The walls on all four sides of the square kiln have hollow flues.

The inlet is reserved in advance, and then blocked after each coal is discharged.

Coking is the premise of steelmaking, and good coke should have less sulfur and less ash, and at the same time, it is necessary to eliminate waste and increase the amount of coke.

Fortunately, in the later era, the method of coking in the soil coke oven has been explored very perfectly.

After the coke oven was coated with two thick layers of mud mixed with dead branches, the airtightness was already very good.

The fire was lit and the chimney was plugged, and there was no smoke coming out of the mud cracks, which basically met the requirements of airtightness after blocking.

The feeding port is relatively large, after all, it is necessary to climb people to go in and discharge, and the coking discharge needs to be smeared with a layer of lime slurry, and then a layer of coal and tamped, followed by a layer of limestone, a layer of coal is tamped, and the material is discharged in turn.

This is done in order to react the sulfur in the coal block with hydrated lime during high temperature calcination to achieve the effect of desulfurization, in addition to the need to brush the entire fireplace with lime slurry with a thick layer before discharging, also in order to adsorb the sulfur in the coal block.

Although it is very troublesome, but after all, it is the experience of later generations, and the limestone is in the north mountain on the side of the official road, for the villagers who have rushed to the novelty, it is like a child playing in the mud, and it is not troublesome.

Whatever Tang Xidong commanded, they did.

After seeing a lot of things that have never been seen before, the whole cottage seems to have a blind worship of Tang Xidong.

What Mr. Tang said is right, and what Mr. Tang asked him to do must be useful.

The prestige seems to have become stronger and stronger as time goes by, gradually obscuring the presence of Liu Lianqing and others.

At this time, the most talked about Tang Xidong's good was that Liu Lianqing and the others did not stand up to deprive Tang Xidong of his authority.

First, after they realized the changes brought by Tang Xidong, they also had respect for this scholar, and the other point is that these people know very well that everything in the cottage is changing rapidly for the better, and the cottage is no longer the small cottage where more than 1,000 people lived in great difficulty, and all of this depends on this scholar.

The cottage is now inseparable from this scholar.

Filled with fuel, the first coking, Tang Xidong personally took people in to discharge, and when he came out of the dull coke oven, the whole person was dyed black and white by coal and limestone, and only a pair of bright eyes and neat white teeth were revealed on his face.

When he got out of the coke oven, Tang Xidong looked up and saw Liu Lianqing and Deng Dahu and others standing outside the furnace, it seemed that they had been waiting for a long time.

Tang Xidong smiled the moment he saw Liu Lianqing, like a briquette showing a row of white teeth, but it looked extraordinarily brilliant.

Liu Lianqing glanced at Tang Xidong with disgust, as if he was a little blamed for wanting to do it himself, stepped forward, took out the white handkerchief on his body, and wanted to wipe his face.

Tang Xidong hurriedly stretched out his hand to stop it: "Don't wipe it, just wait for it to be washed with water, wipe my face, and this handkerchief will be useless." ”

After speaking, without waiting for Liu Lianqing to speak, she walked to the stream and began to wash with the help of the cold stream.

In the clear stream, a black coal stain gradually drifted away along the stream, and the two men next to him waited for him to finish washing before walking to the stream to wash it, and the respect for Tang Xidong seemed to have been integrated into his usual every move.

Liu Lianqing looked at his hurriedly washed face, although there were still a few dark shadows, but he showed a delicate appearance, walked up and reached out again with a handkerchief to carefully and gently wipe the water stains on his face for the man in front of him.

"Why do you have to do it yourself, leave it to others, and you will do it." The coldness on Liu Lianqing's face turned into gentleness, and her voice filled the temperature.

"After all, it's the first time to line materials, and everyone can learn it by teaching it by hand." Tang Xidong smiled again.

It was as if I had already seen the day when the coke was made.

"The fields over there in the new city have all been planted today, and I think that there seems to be nothing to do, so I came to see you." Liu Lianqing put down her handkerchief, raised her starry eyes and said.

Tang Xidong nodded, thought about it, and seemed to really have nothing to do for the time being, except waiting for himself to start the industry.

When a large number of coke ovens are built, everyone will be busy again, after all, it will be followed by cement plants, iron-making, and steel-making.

"Everyone has been busy for so long, it's time to take a good rest, since there is nothing to do for the time being, let's divide most of the people to rest!"

Liu Lianqing nodded without hesitation, and seemed to be getting more and more accustomed to listening to Tang Xidong make decisions.

In the following time, under the guidance of Tang Xidong, the entire coke oven was sealed.

Taking advantage of the sky, Tang Xidong personally lit the four stoves, looking at the raging fire, his eyes showed a deep expectation.