Beginning the next day, the young people from all over the country began to gather in Liucheng, Duan Zhongzhong had already led 3,000 young people first, plus 3,000 Murowei people, and went to camp on the wasteland fifty miles northeast of Liucheng, and will build the county seat of Anhua here.

Of course, the scale of the city is not too large, and the labor and financial resources are insufficient, so it can't afford to hurt. But this county seat serves as a barrier to the north of Liucheng, and at the same time, it is also a springboard between the Khitan and the Xi people, which places great hopes on Zhuang Yi, and naturally it cannot be too small.

Of course, it was also necessary to resettle the Murowei people, and in order for these nomads to switch to farming, they had to give up their felt tents and live in warm houses. The circumference of the county seat is fourteen miles, and the city wall is three zhang high, which is comparable to the scale of the county seat in the Central Plains, and is only slightly smaller than Liucheng. After completion, there will be no pressure to garrison three to five thousand troops every day.

The second is to repair the road, which is in charge of Yang Deshou, and in the early stage, he and Duan Zhongzhong leveled the foundation of Anhua County, and then began to build the official road to Liucheng. And the soldiers stationed in Liucheng could not be idle, not only to participate in the work, but also to transport grain and grass supplies to various construction sites.

Zhuang Yi only divided the task and left it alone. He first led the second regiment of 1,000 soldiers to Ruluo to guard and capture, met the 7,000 young men who had rushed here first, and then arrived at the north bank of Penglu Water in the southwest to set up a large camp, and settled the young men who built the city, and then prepared to start construction, and the city was initially named the county seat of Juluo.

Penglu water is Xiaoling River, this place is called Jinzhou in later generations, and Zhuang Yi is very familiar with it. The city is located between two tributaries on the north bank of the Penglu River, so that the three sides of the water can be described as a natural barrier, and the scale is the same as that of Anhua County.

It is not an easy task to start a city on wasteland, first of all, you must burn bricks and tiles, cut wood, make all kinds of building tools, and measure the foundation and determine the location. But there are 8,000 strong laborers, Zhuang Yi and Zhang Yitai lead people separately, and everyone is not idle, and it is barely enough.

After more than ten days of preparation, the city was finally positioned according to the terrain, in the shape of an irregular diamond, and then half of the people began to level the foundation, dig the trench, and build the base of the city wall with rough stones.

As long as anything starts, it will be easy to do if it can't be picked up, so Zhuang Yi handed over the matter here to Zhang Yitai, transferred a thousand young men and a battalion of soldiers, and arrived at the seaside more than 60 miles southwest of Penglushui, which was the small fishing village he had been to last time.

When he arrived, it was dusk, Guo Wengbo had received the news in advance, and took fifty or sixty villagers to meet him five or six miles outside the village with a cart and horse, and when he saw Zhuang Yi dismounting, he trotted over from afar, saluted and said with a smile: "Zhuang Jun's envoy is really a believer, is this coming to build a salt farm?" ”

"Exactly...... The salt farm I want to build is very large, Guo Weng is familiar with this place, do you know where it is appropriate? Zhuang Yi returned the salute and asked with a smile.

"To the east of this village is the mouth of the Dongshan River, where the water is not very clear, and there is a sand lake bay thirty miles away to the west, and the flat land by the sea is big enough, but it is far away."

"It doesn't matter if it's far away, as long as the place is big!"

"Last year, my eldest man went to Liucheng with the military envoy to sell the batch of salt at a fair price, and I haven't thanked the military envoy yet?" Guo Weng Bo said politely.

"That's a trivial matter, and you deserve it, when my salt farm is built, your village will be able to get rich, I don't know how many young people are in Guo Weng's village?"

"There are more than 100 households, more than 700 people, 200 young and strong, the military envoy wants to employ people, we can all come to help!" Guo Wengbo smiled enthusiastically.

"Then you find two people to lead the team, wait for me to choose the construction site, and let them come by themselves!"

That night, Zhuang Yi camped in the open air outside the village to rest, and the next morning Guo Wengbo led the way, to the seaside called Shahu Bay, first let the soldiers take the young and strong to camp, and let Guo Wengbo lead the way around to inspect the terrain.

This small bay is located between two small protruding peninsulas, the sea is flat about forty miles from east to west, and after thirty miles to the north, it is all low hills and mountains, the terrain is good, but in this depression, the sea breeze is too strong.

Zhuang Yi chose the foot of the leeward hill in the northwest corner to build a garrison camp, a salt factory worker's house, a storehouse, a salt factory steward's public house, and several salt cooking workshops. Although the "frying salt method", which directly boiled salt from seawater in this era, has been eliminated, it can still be used.

Of course, in addition to the original frying salt, there is also the "piercing soil into salt method", such as the two salt farms of Lutai and Jinghai set up by Lu Longjun in Youzhou, and the Lucheng salt field and Yanshan salt field set up by the Henghai Navy in Cangzhou, have all adopted the method of piercing soil into salt.

This method of stabbing soil into salt is not to boil with soil, but to use an indirect way to take brine, choose a good beach salty land or salt field to scrape the salty soil, and then the salty soil is allowed to grow on the grass, and on the bottom side of the salt, dig the "brine well" that drenches the brine, and communicate with the brine with the reed pipe in the middle, and slowly pour the seawater from the top of the brine slip, so that the brine of the salt in the saturated soil seeps into the brine well from the bottom of the slide.

The brine obtained in this way already has a high concentration, but it still needs to go through the link of brine testing before use, that is, the concentration of the salt is tested. After the brine test, it enters the last process of sea salt production - decoction. Among them, it also has to go through complex links such as injecting brine into Cao, putting it on a plate for decoction, sealing the plate with lime, forming salt from soaphorn, and collecting salt and ambushing fire.

This method of taking salt is more complicated, and there is also the salt drying method, that is, it is completely exposed to sunlight to become salt without boiling, but it takes a little longer. But Zhuang Yi intends to use all three methods, because no matter which single method it is, it is not very good.

More than 1,000 people, under the assignment of Zhuang Yi, worked together to collect stones, burn bricks and tiles, cut wood and firewood, and in only ten days, built four large courtyards, a total of hundreds of houses, including a salt cooking workshop.

Early that morning, the large copper kettles on the twelve stoves in the salt boiling workshop, plus six large iron pots, were filled with seawater. Under Zhuang Yi's order, the official ignition started. In a few moments, the sea water boiled, and the steam filled the air.

An hour passed, the water gradually boiled dry, Zhuang Yi did not let people add more water, each large copper kettle is a hundred catties of water, now, he wants to try how much salt can be produced in a day. But the test results made him a little disappointed, only a thin layer of white salt condensed at the bottom of the pot.

Let people scrape it out, and there is only one and a half catties of salt. But this is not bad, since Dezong, the price of salt is as high as 370 Wen a bucket, and it has been adjusted repeatedly in the later period, and it has generally maintained a bucket of salt about 300 Wen, so many ordinary people can't afford salt, so they can only eat white food.

This catty and a half of salt can be worth more than 50 yuan at this price, but the price of salt in Youzhou is not so high, about 250 yuan a bucket, Zhuang Yi This is only a small business, and it is more cost-effective to sell it to the grassland in Shanbei.

However, he also plans to use the method of thorning soil into salt and drying salt, and then will open up stalls, attract tides, pour and extract brine, and decoction into salt, with his more advanced production and management methods, the cost can be reduced, the quality can be improved, and it is appropriate to get rich and raise soldiers.