Early the next morning, Yue Yue was going back, and Zhang Chu was reluctant to send it to the entrance of the village, feeling very disappointed. Seeing his lack of energy, Yue Yue said, "Go back, the weather is cold." ”

Zhang Chu had no choice but to stop and wave to Yue Yue, and then watched her carriage leave. The carriage had just walked a short distance and suddenly stopped, Yue Yue got out of the carriage and turned around and walked towards Zhang Chu. Zhang Chu's heartbeat suddenly increased, whether she wanted to stay, or give me a parting kiss. Yue Yue approached Zhang Chu and stood there with his face blushing and bowing his head, and Zhang Chu stretched out his hands excitedly. Finally, Yue Yue seemed to have made up her mind, raised her head and said to Zhang Chu, "We haven't said anything about the shareholding yet." ”

Zhang Chu softened like a deflated ball. Said helplessly: "Okay, let your father, give him five hundred taels of silver, and I will give him two hundred taels a year." ”

Yue Yue got in the car and really left.

Zhang Chu stood in the cold wind for a long time, and finally thought hatefully: "Two hundred taels a year, let you be happy for a while, and wait for me to make the coal mine bigger to see how your father and daughter come back and beg me." ”

There is always a time to wake up from a dream, Zhang Chu took back his little romantic feelings, and the holiday was over. The next thing is to face an even more cruel reality, and no matter what, you have to live well. It's not that easy to live. Zhang Chu led people to capture Zhoujiabao a few years ago, and Zhou Lianming's family is still digging coal in the mine, and it is impossible for the government not to retaliate. The implementation of the armor protection system, rent reduction and interest reduction made the landlords full of hatred for the security team, and more importantly, the poor did not really support the security team, but were watching what new tricks the security team would play and how long the security team could hold out. Is it that when the officers and soldiers arrived, the security team ran away, and the tax collector's office had to collect it again.

It is now the first year of Chongzhen, and Zhang Chu knows that the emperor Chongzhen is a rare unlucky emperor in history, and since he ascended the throne, he has ushered in the cold period of the Xiaoice River period, with major droughts and floods in summer, and extremely cold in winter, and various disasters are frequent. It's really a natural and man-made disaster, and it continues year after year. Shaanxi is the hardest-hit region.

In order to survive, it is necessary to ensure the food supply of the 1,000 or so people in the security team, and to be able to defeat the counterattack of the government and the landlords. There are too many things to do, and Zhang Chu can't help but lament his miserable fate.

But there is still work to be done. Zhang Chu immediately ordered the guards to go with him to Qiaojiagou.

Qiaojiagou's craftsmen and a group of newly recruited migrant workers are busy under the leadership of Deng Qingnian, and they have not rested even during the Spring Festival.

Now the three dikes built on the stream of Qiaojiagou have been completed, and the dikes are built in turn with the change of terrain, and the water level is raised by the dikes, forming a pattern of cascade development and utilization. Workers are installing equipment in the newly built building. The water coming down from the dam rushes against the newly installed water wheels, which turn and drive the machinery below.

Next to a closest to the mouth of the valley, the water wheel rotated rapidly, driving the huge hydraulic forging hammer in the nearby factory, which smashed on the mold below one by one, beating the iron ingot into iron sheets, and then making a helmet and cuirass on a smaller forging hammer next to it. Armor is an important equipment of the team, and it takes a lot of manpower and material resources to make a set of armor, and now there is a shortage of steel, Zhang Chu has to let craftsmen use wrought iron to build, and some basin-like helmets and cuirasses and back armor have been made. Then carburizing and quenching treatment. How much can it be protected. Zhang Chu tried to wear a helmet made of it, how it looked like a Vietnamese soldier's helmet hat. However, this look is more convenient to make, and it can prevent throwing bows and arrows.

Along the stream up to the factory next to the embankment in the middle, there is the sound of hammers rising and falling, craftsmen use traditional techniques to make swords and other weapons, they put the block of wrought iron in the hot charcoal for a long time to heat the surface carburized, and then forged into carburized steel sheets, and then fold and forge the carburized steel sheets in half many times, and finally make the shape of swords. This steelmaking method is also called 100 steelmaking. However, due to the use of hydraulic forging hammers, the labor intensity has been greatly reduced, the hammering force has been strengthened, and the frequency has been accelerated, so that better quality swords can be produced. Zhang Chu was very satisfied with this, and the weapons and equipment of the security team were not a problem.

A taller iron-making blast furnace has been built next to the top embankment, where Deng Qingnian directs workers to fill the furnace with iron ore and coke.

Deng Qingnian was very happy to see Zhang Chu, and after saying hello, he introduced the situation of the blast furnace to Zhang Chu. This blast furnace is the third blast furnace they have built here, and the furnace shell is all cast with pig iron to improve the strength, and the refractory bricks in the furnace are of higher quality and can withstand higher temperatures. After the construction and use of the first two blast furnaces, everyone is very familiar with blast furnace ironmaking. The individual parts made are even more precise. The completion of this blast furnace will greatly increase the production of iron, but the consumption of coal and iron ore will increase, and the mine will have to increase the number of people. Zhang Chu decided to recruit another group of displaced people to increase the output of ore.

Zhang Chu watched around the blast furnace and was very happy. In particular, the water wheel used to drive the blower has been continuously improved according to Zhang Chu's requirements, and the wooden parts have been replaced with steel parts, which runs more smoothly and more powerfully. Now the craftsmen make a new water wheel is much better than the previous one, and now each workshop is using these water wheels as the main power, which not only reduces the intensity of work, but also can now be done with powerful water power for work that could not be done by manpower before.

Zhang Chu went to the previous iron-making blast furnace again, after the collapse of the first blast furnace, the craftsmen rushed to work day and night, and rebuilt the blast furnace, and soon put it into production, and now most of the iron used by the craftsmen is produced by this blast furnace. Looking at the busy workers, Zhang Chu couldn't help but feel in his heart that the Chinese spirit of enduring hardships and standing hard work is unmatched by other nations in the world, and as long as they are given basic living guarantees and fair treatment, the workers will create miracles.

Seeing that everything was going smoothly, Zhang Chu's confidence in defeating the enemy became stronger. He was also concerned with the production of artillery and muskets. Artisans are making cannons and muskets in specialized firearms-making workshops, and now there is no problem for artisans to forge smaller guns, but the yield of larger guns is still very low. In terms of muskets, it is already possible to create a longer barrel on the basis of the short musket. The barrel is built with skillful technology and can really be done by hand. There is a very widely circulated video on the Internet in the previous life, two foreigners completely used manual methods to create a rifled flintlock musket, as a lover of historical novels, Zhang Chu has watched this video over and over again, and then compared it with the manufacture of guns written by the authors of the great gods of history in the novel, to see that the great god is brainy, and that great god is open-minded. After watching, many questions about the making of muskets were also solved. Creation makes people, but I didn't expect Zhang Chu to use this knowledge to survive today.

After comparison, the actual operation of the two foreigners is more reliable. They just made the barrel out of a piece of iron. A few days ago, Zhang Chu explained and drew pictures to the craftsmen, and finally Zhang Chu had no choice but to make clay sculptures again, so he taught the craftsmen how to make the musket in the video. Craftsmen are constantly improving their techniques and tools. The barrels were built a bunch, but most of them were flawed, and finally a few qualified barrels were made, and then a few guns were assembled, and Zhang Chu was going to see these guns today.

The gun was brought in, and it was still a smoothbore arquebus. Although Zhang Chu had taught the craftsman how to make a flintlock pistol, due to the limitation of the material, the power of the spring was unstable, and the probability of firing was too low to reach the practical level. Therefore, it can only be ignited with a fire rope. As for the rifling, due to the poor quality of the steel, the precision of the tools made is still too low, and the craftsmen are still experimenting repeatedly.

Zhang Chu and the craftsmen took the guns to the shooting range outside, and there were members of the special security team in the field who were responsible for the test of the guns. The first shot was fired with black powder with four times the normal charge, mounted on a special wooden frame, and everything went smoothly when loading and firing, and the smoke was misty with a gunshot, which was an unavoidable shortcoming of black powder. The craftsman hurriedly stepped forward to check whether there was a crack at the back end of the barrel, and only relieved himself when he found no flaws, and the team members continued to experiment with the normal dosage, and after a few rounds, everyone came to the wooden target more than 100 meters away to inspect, and saw that many bullets had been deeply penetrated into the wooden plank, and it seemed that there was no problem with the power of the musket. Zhang Chu ordered to produce a batch of muskets for emergency use according to this standard, and then slowly improve them. Teams are also to draw people to practice using muskets.

Time is of the essence, and there should not be much time left for the security team to prepare.

Sure enough, a few days later, the people who were outside came back to report that a group of officers and troops was coming to Yanchang County.