The mines were filled with soot and sewage, and the unkempt and ragged crowds of people who came and went in them, most of them were feudal slaves or naturalized people, and the rumbling tracks were minecarts pulled by cattle, full of some kind of pre-industrial geek glitz.

I put aside what I was doing for the time being and came here, but it was because after returning to Guangfu, something I had been searching for finally came to fruition. As a postmodern attention traveler, there are not many intervention points that I want to gain an advantage in this era.

Before I made a special trip to find traces of the steam engine in this era, the result was a big disappointment, not only the huge Ben clock but also all kinds of power consumption is extremely low, the whole machine is shrouded in heat and gray smoke, almost impossible for people to get close, and after a period of time, you have to stop to clean up the dirt and precipitation in various gaps, or repair the water and air leakage caused by pressure expansion.

All in all, the product of this multi-mao steamed steel, in this era, has no punk beauty of the industrial age, but is just an extremely cheating existence.

It is called a pot mule machine because it is most characterized by the fact that the pot occupies most of the volume, and the unpleasant chirping sound like a mule.

Related to this is a Shaofu Temple artifact maker, that is, the master craftsman who is responsible for the mechanical repair of the workshop.

According to the division of the dynasty in the field of technology, or the incompleteness of the technology tree and the polarization, those professions that seem to be high-end and lucrative, but are valued and controlled by the imperial court, and their related professionals, can be called teachers, such as winemakers and firing masters, and those clumsy and common popular professions can only be called craftsmen.

In a way, the Southern Dynasty unconsciously clicked on the wrong technology tree, and this mistake has developed to the point that conventional means and administrative orders cannot correct Cheng Dù.

This is the development of hydraulic machinery of the era has reached the pinnacle of Cheng dù, so that the powerful top-down vested interest class, conservative and stubbornly resolutely reject any new alternative products, so even at the end of the Liang Gong era, the most primitive steam machinery has always been confined to the mine, as a drainage and lifting to pull the mine cart.

After all, in the territory of the Southern Dynasty, where rainfall and rivers were abundant, the advantages of sophisticated and systematic hydraulic machinery were still very obvious, and the early versions of the steam engine were always full of negative rumors of various accidents and multiple casualties, and only those feudal slaves who were expendable in the mines could not care about such crude and dangerous things. Naturally, there is a lack of incentive to make improvements for the sake of these cheap laborers.

Therefore, the steam engines used in these mines, also known as the mouth of the beast, are dauntingly associated with the accidents of the mines, constituting a kind of existence that makes children stop their hooves......

The person I am looking for, called Shen Yue, is said to be another branch of the Shen family of Wuxing, but during the Taixing period, the Shen family produced a strange woman, who was served as a servant into the Guangping Palace, and was favored by Tang Guangzong, who was referred to as the grandson at that time, not only gave birth to the eldest son, but also chose to be the side concubine, so it also staged a scene of joy and sorrow in the world.

It coincided with the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion, countless clans were scattered, and this Concubine Shen was also unfortunately covered in dust, and she did not know the news until the end of the Qianyuan Dynasty, when she was led to pacify the Liang Gong of Hebei, and re-found and fostered the mansion from the people, until the position of Guangzong was consolidated, and she was welcomed back to the palace and canonized Concubine Hui.

Therefore, although this Concubine Shen Hui has never been a queen, she actually holds most of the harem authority, and because she is the biological mother of the crown prince Xingzong, behind this son of Guangzong, she became the queen mother of Xingxian, and even overpowered the empress dowager Wenxing, who was born in the famous high-ranking Dugu clan.

Empress Dowager Shen assisted the Emperor of Xingzong all her life, inherited the government of Taixing, and maintained the Zhongxing atmosphere since the Qianyuan Dynasty, gathered virtuous and virtuous and promoted Tianwei outside, which was the beginning of the golden age of nearly a hundred years later, and was known as a model of virtuous virtue and virtue for a while.

Her most famous deeds are that at the moment when Guangzong was seriously ill and dying, she strongly advocated the recall of Liang Gong, who had been on leave in the South China Sea, and ran thousands of miles to return to the starry night into the Great Interior, and set up as an auxiliary regent in front of the monarch, ensuring the stable inheritance of Xingzong's status.

Then, after the consolidation of the throne of Xingzong, he personally persuaded the Duke of Liang, who was in the prime of life, to retire to his hometown at the cost of dividing the western part of the Lingxi and the South China Sea, and handed over the official position of Shijue to the eldest son Penglai Gong to inherit.

These two things alone are enough to preserve the long-term stability of several generations of emperors in the Tang Dynasty, and in the rebuilt "Female Training Book", it is only a model of virtue after the eldest grandson empress.

But also because of the relationship she temporarily sent on the Liang Gongfu, she has created a lot of conjectures that have been talked about in various wild historical records, such as the story that has to be told between the ministers of the Five Dynasties and the queen mother with a bumpy fate

But in any case, Qing took this Shen family out of the side, and overnight, it became a family of relatives who became upstarts, but the Shen family itself is only from a small family, and there is no background and accumulation, so even if he is a relative, he is just good and mediocre.

It's just that under the constraints of the Empress Dowager Shen, her duty is more low-key, and she has a good reputation compared to other relatives, so she has to pass on the title of Lord Xiang Lu for more than ten generations, and then in the Yiwei Rebellion, the earliest to run south to the outside of the ridge, it can be regarded as a small family in decline.

In Shen Yue's generation, he became a master craftsman in the construction department under the name of Shaofu Temple in the Southern Dynasty, and he was also a guest guide in the Hundred Crafts School.

His tragedy undoubtedly began at the moment related to the steam engine, as a respected senior master in the Shoji Division, he wanted to get more breakthroughs and inspiration, so the rough and bulky product of the pot and mule machine unintentionally entered his field of vision.

It is said that he tried to make it more refined, and then he brought a different result to his own hands, and he took his apprentice to make a scaled linkage model to prove that it could be used in other professions, and succeeded in gaining the appreciation and attention of a certain high-ranking official.

But this inadvertently touched the interests and nerves of others, so he paid the price

The disability on his body was also a failed promotion of external functions this time, and what was left behind, with the boiling water vapor gushing out with the explosion, directly took away a hand and an eye, and also turned his face into a terrifying yin and yang face, and he almost didn't survive the burns of Yan zhòng.

Then when he wakes up, he finds that he has lost the apprenticeship he had cultivated for many years and the reputation he had built up over his life, and was left to live in the shabby shackles of this mine-related street, making some pots and pans for a living.

It's not difficult to find him, but when I heard that the person I was looking for, Shen Yue, they all shook their heads, but when I asked a disabled person who knew how to do a handiwork, the kind of respect of several people who was asked would turn into a strange expression, and then pointed me to a general location.

The last man, who took us one foot deep and one foot shallow, to a garbage dump around the corner, and then suddenly shouted

"Old one-eyed, business has come to the door......"

I saw the wriggling garbage heap, and suddenly a person appeared, with the filth and tattered on his head and his hair that could no longer distinguish each other, shaking his head and looking around

"Who. Who, pot or pot handle,......"

I saw a man with a leaning body, draped in rags like sacks, and fingers like chicken feet, and I couldn't help but be a little disappointed. , not one of the most common beggars on the street

Unanswered, he was still somewhat neurotic to himself, and continued to rummage through the garbage heap, oblivious to us as if it were air.

"I am the ...... of Luo Fan"

The servant who came with him introduced it loudly

"I don't recognize you, don't bother ......"

His stiff body suddenly replied with a stirring spirit, and then plunged back into the garbage heap, muttering some kind of incoherent muttering with his back to us.

"Spare me ......"

"I won't do it again......"

The man who had been repeating it until I was pinching his nose and pulling out an item made of iron and wooden strips and bamboo strips from the canopy next to him, which was like a dog's hole and stuffed with messy things.

"Is this what you did......

I took a closer look, and it was a rather crude model of the mechanism, and when he saw it, he rushed forward like crazy, but was thrown into the air.

"Give me back ......"

He roared, then turned into some kind of humility, and frequently kowtowed to the ground and wailed.

"This is the last bit of my missing and demonic sign......"

"Judgment will not hinder your ......"

"Pity me, old shit, ......"

Then his voice stopped abruptly as I put the model back in front of him with my own hands.

He looked at me in disbelief, cowered in his arms, rubbed his broken sleeves that were so dirty that he couldn't see the original color, and stammered

"Thank you, Uncle Xie......"

"I need to hire someone who understands the building of institutions,"

I whispered

"Can you still make something like this......

"You're really not the ...... those people sent to tease me"

In his dull and numb eyes, there was finally some hesitation.

"Bastard, what's this ......"

The relatives next to him were scolded

"What are you that deserve the condescension of this clan to come and play tricks......"

"Are you from the Sea Domain......

He replied dumbfounded

"And the generals, Shaofu, none of them are in the department......"

"Exactly"

"In my lifetime, ......"

He read such a sentence, but suddenly he cried loudly, mixed with shouting a few names he didn't understand, and the mud on his washed face fell down one by one, obviously revealing his true feelings.

The first thing was to take him to wash Yujing, and then have a good meal, and then asked a few questions about the process of the institution, and his answer was acceptable, and it didn't seem that his thinking and memory were consumed because of the harsh environment.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, he also made his first request

"Can you get my apprentices back...... As a helper"

Of course, I was as good as a stream, and it took me half a day to send someone to follow him, and it took me half a day to find the three apprentices of the year, and the others either died of distress or disappeared.

However, reconstructing a working model of a steam engine, even the most primitive, is not something that can be done immediately, and many materials have to be procured and prepared, such as gel for sealing, dense soft iron for pipes, and even tung oil and cables.

In addition, vernier calipers, knives, molds, abrasives, fixtures and other simple tools have already had relatively mature specifications in this era, but civilian, official and military precision standards are not the same thing at all. The more the latter, the stricter the control.

After dealing with these things, I returned home, but I saw Chen from the Sect Domain, and he had been waiting for a long time.

His expression looked a little embarrassed and helpless, which made me a little strange and slightly worried.

"The Sect Clan is looking for me to talk?"

"No, it's just a small banquet......"