As early as the beginning of Hanzhong, when Wang Huan and Meng Qiaofang of Xi'an were still staring at each other across the Qinling Mountains, Mi Layin and Ding Guodong of Gansu Zhen escorted a team of miners who came from Sichuan with Wang Huan's warrant, braved the yellow sand outside the plug and worked tirelessly to come to a desert between Jingtai County and Jingyuwei in Shaanxi, set up camp and stayed.

Mi Layin and Ding Guodong were confused at the beginning, what are these simple-looking miners doing all the way to this place where birds don't? Planning to mine here? For thousands of years, there was nothing but sand and dry soil in the ground, and not even a single grass grew in the ground, so could we dig up any treasures? But Wang Huan's words had to be listened to, so they had to send someone to accompany them, horse thieves in the wilderness, don't let the thieves in the desert ruin the lives of these miners.

After settling down, the miners began to work in full swing, cracking rocks with explosives and digging pits with hoes in the Gobi, and the sound of trumpets was incessant.

A month later, the news came that Mi Layin and Ding Guodong's jaws were shocked, and the Kuizhou miners had really dug up the ore in the Gobi Desert, and it was still a copper mine full of color, and the mineral reserves were said to be very rich, and it was the best high-grade copper mine.

Wang Huan disagreed, in later generations, this is a well-known silver and copper mining base at home and abroad, accounting for one-fifth of the copper produced in the whole of China from here, and it is strange that copper cannot be dug here.

Soon, a mining city was established outside the Saiwai, the high walls and the arrow towers protected the mine like an iron wall, the periphery was the soldiers of Gansu Town, and the inner layer was the direct mine guard sent by Ma Chongming.

A cart of copper ore was quickly pulled out through the cart, and the Kuizhou system spent a lot of money to establish countless military stations on the long official road between Jingyuwei and Hanzhong, which were equivalent to large and small Tunbao, and were also post stations, that is, the transit station for transmitting news, and also the stronghold for the passing carts to rest and fight.

The establishment of the Ore City had another effect, which was to promote official and private trade. In addition to Jiayuguan, Gansu Zhenhu City also opened one here, with the popularity of the ore city, soon gathered countless traders inside and outside the Great Wall, the exchange between the Ming Dynasty and the southern tribe of the Mongolian desert, such as newlyweds, blended with water and milk, so sweet that it is not like words, the border trade fattened a lot of merchants, and robbed a lot of business in the north.

Like a rainbow studded with pearls, this official road has become a link connecting Gansu Zhenhu City and Hanzhong, an important town in the Ming Dynasty, as an important stronghold of Wang Huan in the northwest, Hanzhong has soon become an extremely important commercial and military center, in order to accommodate more and more foreign people, the scale of the city has expanded a lot, and many houses have been erected outside the city, which is prosperous like Suzhou and Hangzhou in the south of the Yangtze River.

Ma Chongming sent his right-hand men to Hanzhong to take up a stint in Hanzhong, monopolized bulk trade, and set up tax cards to extract taxes. Of course, many people suggested to Wang Huan that they should not compete with the people for profit, and the practice of extracting commercial taxes was unacceptable.

Wang Huan scoffed, he didn't read the sage book Zhang Da, political economy Wang Huan can get high scores for a long time, Kuizhou's money is not blown by the wind, the so-called inappropriate family does not know the price of firewood and rice, the huge Kuizhou system expenditure is an astronomical amount every day, if you don't seize the opportunity to make money, I'm afraid the people will soon rise up to rebel.

The purpose of exempting food is to buy people's hearts, and the money of a small number of people levied by the commercial tax will not provoke a large-scale revolt. But plucking the hair from the rich, of course, there will be people who are unwilling, but Wang Huan used high-pressure methods, confiscated the goods of several illegal merchants who resisted taxes and evaded taxes, and arrested a few Confucian scholars who publicly criticized Wang Huan's tax policy, and immediately calmed down.

These big businessmen have forces behind them, and Wang Huan is not afraid, who is bigger than him in the northwest and southwest? After all, along the entire Great Wall, there was no war in the northwest, there were beacons everywhere, and there were no conditions for opening the mutual market to do business.

The business is booming, and the output of the Jingyubao copper mine is also becoming more and more stable day by day, and by the time of the establishment of Xu Erjue's Hanzhong Military Bureau, the copper ingots piled up in the official warehouse in the city have reached a scale of nearly 10,000 catties.

A cart of copper entered the war bureau, smelted in a blast furnace and added tin and lead, melted into bronze, and then poured into a molded iron mold, the whole cast into a golden and red barrel, after quenching and cooling, loaded on a solid frame built by a carpenter, with wheels and other parts, and finally painted and imprinted, a standard Napoleonic gun, even if it was out of the factory.

Hundreds of craftsmen, under the leadership of the two red-haired ghosts and Xu Erjue, have been rotating for more than a month, in addition to eating and sleeping, they are going to work, and they are doing their best to build the cannon that Wang Huan urgently needs in the flying copper flowers and high temperatures, like a machine with full horsepower, running at high speed.

……

Wang Huan is preparing for war, but in several other places in China, it is not as peaceful as Shaanxi and Sichuan.

In addition to Liaodong, there were wars everywhere, after Huguang's plug Yinxi and He Tengjiao were in internal strife, they were beaten by Jierharang and bloodied, the hard-earned Changsha was lost, Xiangtan was lost, the Ming army was defeated and retreated until Yuezhou barely stopped the decline, and the entire Huguang once returned to its original shape.

In Fujian, Zheng Chenggong's offensive gained a lot of territory, but it was not conspicuous, and his internal struggles with his uncles Zheng Cai and Zheng Lian involved most of his energy.

The army of Kong Youde and Geng Jimao of the Qing army, under the leadership of the Qing general Tan Tai, broke through Nanchang City in Jiangxi, Jin Shengheng and Wang Deren, who had been defending the lonely city for nearly a year, died in the city, and hundreds of thousands of troops of the Southern Ming Dynasty were around Jiangxi, but there was no one to help, and they sat and watched Nanchang break the city.

And Li Chengdong in Guangdong, except for a few shouts at the junction of Guangdong and Jiangxi and a few small-scale contact battles, there was no movement, I don't know for what purpose, Nanming Huiguo Gong is procrastinating, unwilling to go north.

In the ears of Emperor Yongli, except for the great victory in the northwest and the recovery of Xi'an, there was bad news everywhere, but he was helpless, and he didn't even have the courage to urge Li Chengdong, so he could only sit in the Zhaoqing Palace, singing and dancing, drunk and dreaming of death.

However, in March of the third year of Yongli, a message came from the north.

Dordor is dead.

Yongli didn't feel anything, but for Jiang Hao and Wang Huan, it was of great significance.

Less than a week after the pro-conquest Dolgon stayed in Shanxi, Dordo in the city of Beijing died, dying of smallpox, and in this era, there was no cure.

The death of Duoduo made Dolgon immediately give up his personal conquest, lead the army back to the north, and the owner of the white flag died, and the huge power vacuum must be distributed and filled in time, and in the hands of his own people, otherwise, the power that has been surging in the shadows among the Houjin nobles will immediately counterattack and put Dolgon to death.

Jiang Xuan, who was pressed by a thread, was able to take a breath, Dolgon took most of the army, and the remaining Azig and others could only maintain the siege of Datong, unable to exterminate the rebel army in other parts of Shanxi, so Jiang Jianxun and others immediately revived, setting off a storm in the whole province of Shanxi, and the chaos in Shanxi, which had collapsed somewhat due to the arrival of Dolgon's powerful war machine, boiled again.

This is exactly the moment Wang Huan was waiting for.

Dolgon returned to Beijing to deal with the civil strife in Houjin, although there were many generals left in Shanxi, but there were not many soldiers, and the Manchu, Mongolian and Han coalition forces together did not exceed 50,000 people, which was the weakest moment of the Qing army during the entire Jiang Jiu period.

(End of chapter)