"Once upon a time, there were really people who called me the descendants of Shennong. Well, don't worry, if I'm not mistaken, not only is this not a dead place, but it's all money buried underneath. ”

One sentence made Minchan stunned, and her beautiful face was full of disbelief.

Lu Ren looked at Minchan, shook his head with a smile, and then took the torn grass blades into his mouth and tasted them. But after only a slight taste, Lu Ren immediately spit it out: "Phew...... It's really bitter and astringent, and it's salty. That's right. ”

Minchan was still a little puzzled, but Lu Ren called Li Dian over and asked, "Man Cheng, are there any people in our army who are good at digging crypts?" ”

Li Dian was Lu Ren's earliest assistant, and he was also the person who admired Lu Ren the most. Now seeing Lu Ren asking, Li Dian nodded and said, "There are some, but not much." Brother Lu, what are you going to do? Is there anything strange about this wasteland? ”

Lu Ren said: "I have a little eyebrows, but I'm not sure." Anyway, it doesn't matter if we delay for two or three days on the road, so let's give it a try. ”

Li Dian nodded and then dispatched people, and Guo Jia also came to the front with a wine gourd at this time, and asked, "Yihao, is there anything strange about this wasteland?" ”

At this time, Lu Ren dug up a few pieces of soil with a small knife he carried, crushed them, looked at them carefully, and said to Guo Jia: "Are you interested in listening?" ”

Guo Jia spread his hands: "It's okay anyway, you can tell me about it." ”

Lu Ren explained: "Under normal circumstances, if a wasteland like this is not able to grow crops. The larger one may be that the land is too salinity for growing crops...... By the way, you don't understand this, anyway, it's what we usually call saline-alkali land. But even in general saline land. It won't die if you plant anything. So I just took a look at the weeds here......"

Saying that, Lu Ren handed Guo Jia another piece of weed that was still in his hand, and said with a smile: "You taste it." ”

Guo Jia hurriedly waved his hand and said, "Don't don't, I don't have your ability in this area, you just say it." ”

Lu Ren smiled and put the weed in front of Guo Jia's eyes, and then the fingers of his other hand gently picked up the blade of grass, and then Guo Jia saw some fine crystal powder falling from the blade of grass.

Seeing this, Guo Jia was stunned. "What is this?" ”

Lu Ren said: "With such a high salt content, I suspect that there is a salt mine under this wasteland. Even if it's not a salt mine, there should be a salt layer. And it won't be very deep, otherwise there wouldn't be such a heavy salt on the surface. ”

Guo Jia's eyes immediately widened, and he asked Lu Ren in an unbelievable tone, "Are you serious?" Is there salt underneath this wasteland? ”

Lu Ren said: "To be honest, I'm not sure, but the salt content here is really frighteningly high." When I tasted the grass just now, I didn't even chew it, and it had a rather heavy salty taste in my mouth...... Lao Guo, look. The thin layer of white powder on the grass blades should be salt, and the powder is evenly distributed on the leaf surface, which is not easy to scrape off, unlike the external force of wind and sand that sticks to the leaf surface, it should be excreted by the weeds themselves through photosynthesis. ”

"Excreted by photosynthesis?" A bunch of people were stunned.

Lu Ren patted his head, and said in his heart that he forgot that these people didn't understand what photosynthesis was in plants at this time, so he temporarily found a similar alternative word: "What I mean is that plants can excrete excess salt that is harmful to their growth just like we excrete filth......"

It's okay not to say it. As soon as he said this, all the people around him turned a little blue. You said that Lu Ren is too, what kind of metaphor is not good. Do you want to use "excretion"?

However, Lu Renke didn't notice this, but casually clicked on the activation chip in the center of his eyebrows and looked up the relevant information. Not to mention, Lu Ren was worried about this aspect when he started to be a farming faction, so he asked Shirley to transfer some information in this area to him, but he has not been able to use it all this time.

And under this investigation, Lu Renzhi gradually understood. The Yan and Henan areas of the Han Dynasty were basically the modern Henan region, and there were a lot of sand barren saline-alkali lands left in the ancient Yellow River road and pan area. If there is dead groundwater in the ground of such a sandy barren saline-alkali land, then when the groundwater volatilizes upward, its salt will gradually carry upward. That may be the case here.

Looking at Lu Ren while checking the information, he half-referred to the information and said half-foolishly: "If there are salt, iron, copper, or other mineral deposits in the ground, some signs will often be shown on the ground due to some messy factors, and experienced craftsmen rely on these clues to find mineral deposits."

"Oh, I won't go far, the main reason is that this weed is much more viable than the trees, so it can withstand high salt fields. You don't look at the blades of grass that are only a few inches high, but the roots of the grass tend to be very deep and absorb nutrients from the soil, and even the salt in the soil will be sucked out, and the excess will be excreted from the rhizomes and leaves.

"I just assumed that the roots of each grass are three feet deep, which means that the weeds only absorb nutrients from the soil at a depth of about three feet. With such a high level of salt in just about three feet of soil, it's hard to imagine what it would be like further down. This would not normally be the case if salt from the salt layer did not overflow to the ground in the depths of the ground......

(Serious PS: There are very heavy gold finger ingredients above, don't take it seriously, don't take it seriously.) ）

There are also some jumble half-truths and half-truths in the back, so I won't be wordy here. Guo Jia and Li Dian are smart people who have a relatively strong desire for knowledge, and they actually listened to Lu Ren's explanation with relish for a while...... Of course, people like Zhang Fei and Xu Chu are a different matter.

And when Lu Ren finished explaining, Guo Jia and Li Dian couldn't help it, so they each tore off a few blades of grass to carefully inspect and even put them in their mouths to taste, basically as Lu Ren said, there is a thin but evenly distributed layer of salt crystals on the leaf surface, and the situation is similar after changing several places.

Li Dian had already brought a team of people over, and after a little survey, he found a suitable place and began to dig down. But don't think that the civil excavation ability in the late Eastern Han Dynasty is very poor, you must know that just according to the historical records, Cao Cao can "Gong Nai (one) night chisel danger for the tunnel, know the baggage"; Then when it came to the crusade against Karasuma, Cao Cao's army was even more "digging into the ground for more than 30 zhang to get water", which shows the strong excavation ability of these civil engineers under Cao Cao.

At least at this moment, Lu Ren was a little amazed, and even wondered if Cao Cao was really the ancestor of "Hair Hill and Touching Gold". This is not nonsense, because Lu Ren accidentally found that some tools for digging holes in the hands of civil engineers were actually the Luoyang shovel commonly known in later generations! This thing scoops up dirt really fast.

Without further ado, let's just say that Lu Ren's group worked hard in just one night, and the few civil engineers actually dug down to a depth of about ten zhang. At noon the next day, the sappers in the underground mine handed over to Lu Ren a few pieces of soil samples attached to the Luoyang shovel, and the color of the soil samples was slightly gray and slightly transparent.

Lu Ren looked at it carefully, and after comparing the information again, he was dumbfounded, and said secretly in his heart: "No, right?" This seems to be rock salt of good purity, but I don't seem to have heard of rock salt mines in this part of Henan, and the geological data sent to me by Shirley does not show it! Maybe it's really just an okay layer of salt that won't be dug up in a long time? Anyway, it wasn't shown or labeled on the map of my time. ”

Thinking about it again, I am also relieved that this kind of thing that will be erased from the map when the mine is lost has been more ancient and modern, both Chinese and foreign. In addition, the Yellow River has been diverted several times in history, and there are many areas that have been "washed" by the Yellow River. For example, for example, the famous city of Kaifeng, I don't know how many ruins are buried under its land.

However, although there was such a big discovery at this time, it was not the main purpose of Lu Ren's trip after all, it could only be regarded as a by-the-way. And Lu Ren has been playing civil affairs for a few years, and he is already familiar with this aspect of things, so he immediately asked Li Dian to arrange some people to stay here to keep an eye on it, and at the same time set aside an area for the civil engineers to expand the survey area, and he continued to return to Xuchang on the road.

There were a lot of words and annoying, only that when Lu Ren returned to Xuchang to return to Cao Cao, he handed Cao Cao a few pieces of mineral salt that he dug up. Cao Cao squinted his eyes and took the mineral salt, stretched out his fingers to wipe some and then put it in his mouth and tasted it, his brows immediately raised how high, and his face also showed joy.

Don't think that salt, which is only a few cents a pound in modern times, was not worth much at the time. In fact, what was the subject of commercial taxation called at that time? The benefits of salt and ironThe benefits of salt and iron, based on this alone, we can know that the proportion of salt taxes is still in front of iron. In addition, salt is a very important strategic material, because it is directly related to people's livelihood.

The most important thing is that Lu Ren accidentally discovered that this salt-producing place is not far from Xuchang, and if it can become a salt well and provide salt for the Xuchang area, it will be very helpful for the development of Cao Cao's current military and political center. At the very least, the salt on the land of Xuchang can get rid of foreign dependence to a certain extent, for example, it was more troublesome to transport sea salt from the coastal areas of Xuzhou to Xuchang at that time.

Especially now that it is a time of war, Cao Cao's territory is actually basically equivalent to being in an encirclement, in case there is a problem with the supply of salt, Cao Cao's territory is not to say that there is a big chaos, but a small scale of chaos is likely to break out. As far as Lu Ren knows, there have been several battles in history that have led to chaos within the other side by cutting off the other party's salt supply.

And in such a war period, if all kinds of materials can be self-sufficient, it is equivalent to occupying a considerable advantage. Cao Cao is a military master, so why don't you understand this truth? Therefore, after Cao Cao tasted the salt, he immediately turned around and ordered: "Wen Ruo, you should quickly dispatch the corresponding officials and craftsmen to open this salt mine!" ”

"No!"

At this moment, Xun Yu seemed a little more excited than Cao Cao...... (To be continued......)