Sun Yuanhua is a rare firearm master in the late Ming Dynasty, and has very rich experience in casting artillery muskets. Moreover, he had a good relationship with those Western missionaries such as John Tang and others, and if he helped Liu Fan, his dream of firearms would soon be realized.

When he first arrived in Shandong, Liu Fan wanted to save him. But at that time, his status was humble, he had no power and no soldiers, he was just a small general, and there were only about 500 people under him, even if he had some trust from Chongzhen, it was impossible to fight those bigwigs in the DPRK and China. In terms of cost performance, Liu Fan's role is not as big as these people! I believe that Chongzhen will not rashly oppose a group of central ministers because of a Liu Fan who has no value.

Now the situation is different, Liu Fan has nearly 5,000 people under him, and it is also a big force in Shandong and even in the Ming Dynasty. Moreover, Liu Fan also holds a cornucopia in his hand, which can produce salt worth millions of taels of silver every year. already has the capital to bargain with Chongzhen.

Sun Yuanhua was convicted of the Autumn Queen's beheading, which is usually between October and December according to the tradition since the Tang Dynasty. Because the ancients believed that spring and summer are the season when plants and animals grow, and it is the season for all hair to grow, and it is not possible to kill at this time. In order to conform to this solemn atmosphere, the ancients chose this time to execute the prisoners.

Now it is the middle of August, and Shihe is located in the Jiaonan area, which is still more than 1,000 miles away from the capital. Liu Fan has not much time left, and he must set off as soon as possible. In order to rescue Sun Yuanhua, Liu Fan decided to let go of everything in his hands and go to the capital after the Mid-Autumn Festival.

The Mid-Autumn Festival has been a traditional Chinese festival since ancient times, and in the Ming and Qing dynasties, it has become one of the important festivals on a par with the Spring Festival. Customs, such as appreciating osmanthus flowers, drinking osmanthus wine, admiring the moon, and eating moon cakes, have been passed down for a long time. The Mid-Autumn Festival is also a day of reunion, and Liu Fan is also fully prepared to meet today. The day before the Mid-Autumn Festival, Liu Fan had already given the people who built the city a day off. And give them a lot of rice, flour, meat, and other things, so that they can have a good festival.

During the Mid-Autumn Festival, Liu Fan convened the soldiers of the Broken Army during the day to hold a simple Mid-Autumn Festival party in accordance with the methods of later generations. He also invited a well-known opera troupe and acrobatic artists from Shandong to perform for the Broken Army. He also encouraged talented soldiers in the army to perform on stage, even if Liu Fan himself went up to present a song.

Liu Fan's pro-people behavior caused a huge repercussion among the low-level soldiers of the Broken Army, and the newly recruited soldiers were already full of awe of Liu Fan as a commander under the words and deeds of the veterans, plus Liu Fan usually looked like a soldier like a son. Now that I have witnessed Liu Fan's approachable side, it is really hard not to have a good impression.

In the evening, Liu Fan personally held a banquet at his home, inviting the father and daughter of the Zhang family, the senior officers of the Broken Army and the students of the Military Academy, as well as Ding Lu and others from the Shihe Salt Works, as well as the craftsmen in charge of building the city. At the banquet, Liu Fan announced the news that he would leave for the capital three days later. He also appointed Wu Tao as the deputy commander of the Broken Army, with full responsibility for all matters of the Broken Army after Liu Fan left, and also appointed Zhang Yao as the deacon of the Military Academy, with full responsibility for the recruitment and education of the Military Academy. and made arrangements for the construction of the city, the salt works and the patrol tasks of the broken army. After the banquet, Liu Fan convened Ding Lu, Wu Tao, and Wang Yong to discuss secretly, and decided to set up a working group with the three of them as the core, and to deal with major events by voting. and told them that they could turn to the Zhang family's father and daughter as allies in case of trouble.

Three days later, Liu Fan bid farewell to everyone and embarked on the road to the capital with 3,000 soldiers and 500 recruited people. This time, Liu Fan spent enough money to rescue Sun Yuanhua, and carried a total of more than 1 million taels of silver, except for more than 100,000 taels of silver left to maintain Shihe, almost all the rest of the belongings were brought. In addition, Liu Fan also carried a large amount of refined salt, which is not ordinary dried salt. It was reprocessed by Liu Fan's order, and it was almost close to the ordinary salt of later generations.

In order to refine these salts, Liu Fan can be said to have racked his brains. The Ming Dynasty did not have a large number of chemical additives in later generations, so it could only use stupid methods, and Liu Fan adopted the simple and practical method of recrystallization. In order to filter the impurities in the brine as much as possible, Liu Fan used two layers of cotton cloth to put a layer of charcoal in the middle of the method of filtration, which is very close to the effect of activated carbon in later generations. In this way, the impure substances can be purified, or the salts mixed together can be separated from each other, and a more pure table salt can be obtained.

These silver and salt were enough to load more than 500 carts, and actually caused half of the 3,000 soldiers of the Broken Army to be used to drive the carts, Liu Fan was worried that this would affect the battle, so he had to urgently recruit people to replace them, in order to ensure loyalty, Liu Fan did not dare to appoint random recruitment, but only selected the loyal and reliable ones from the people who built the city.

The large army marched along the official road, and because of the large amount of goods to be transported, the speed of the march of the captive army was seriously affected. It took half a month to leave the boundary of Shandong and enter Hebei.

As soon as the Shandong Broken Army was relaxed, it was suddenly tense, and it was no better than Shandong, where the Shandong Broken Army had made a name for itself after nearly two years of conquest, and was known as the new generation of "Qijia Army". All kinds of bandits and bandits knew that the Broken Army was not easy to mess with, and when they saw the Broken Army escorting goods with more than 3,000 soldiers, they didn't dare to make up their minds even if they drooled greedily.

It's different when you go out of Shandong, and the fame of the Broken Army is only valid in Shandong. As the saying goes, "people die for money, birds die for food", and when they see these hundreds of carts of goods, they are not unmoved, whether they are bandits, bandits, landlords, and even some officials and soldiers with poor character have joined the ranks of robbery. In the hundreds of miles from Shandong to Beijing, Liu Fan's broken army was attacked no less than 100 times. The most fierce battle is when it is about to enter the boundary of Tongzhou Mansion, a group of officials and landlords dressed as bandits united nearly 5,000 people in a dangerous valley to ambush the Broken Army, the two sides launched a fierce battle at the mouth of the valley, fortunately, the Broken Army is well-trained, and the vigilance is also very good, and after paying a lot of price, these "bandits" were finally defeated, in order to protect the goods, Liu Fan did not pursue.

This frequent attack made Liu Fan very depressed, at first Liu Fan didn't care, but there was still some secret joy in his heart, he was worried that he didn't have the opportunity to train the army, these bandits just let these recruits of the Broken Army see the blood, and speed up the formation of the army. But after a long time, as the number of attacks became more and more large, and the scale became larger and larger, Liu Fan felt that something was wrong, Liu Fan found that he had actually become a "Tang monk meat", no matter what "demons and monsters" along the way, he dared to bite himself. According to their confessions, as soon as Liu Fan left Shandong, they received news that a silver transport team with more than one million taels was on its way to the capital without an order from the household department. As soon as the news came out, almost the entire Hebei region was boiling, and almost everyone was tempted by such a large amount of silver. Liu Fan was furious in his heart, secretly guessing who was against him, thinking about it, he felt that there were more possibilities for those salt merchants, and he was even more angry in his heart, he was already low-key enough to bear it, in order not to cause a backlash from the salt merchants, he had already given up most of his interests, but he didn't expect these salt merchants to be so greedy, and they actually wanted to put themselves to death. In that case, don't blame me for being ruthless! Liu Fan secretly made up his mind that when he met Shandong again this time, he must uproot these greedy and stupid Jiaozhou salt merchants.