"Get out of the way and make way for Master Zhou!" The two archers each carried an iron-headed wooden stick and shouted loudly to open the way in front, people carefully gave way to a way, Zhou Ping smiled and said to the supreme good behind him: "Zen master, this is Sanhejin, the old yamen is too dilapidated, and the place is too small, I cleaned up the abandoned Wutong Temple on the hillside and made it a new yamen." ”

"I didn't expect it to be very lively here!" Zhishan looked around with the eyes of an old soldier, the Zhanghe River has become narrower here, and the Yamen of the Inspection Division is located on the high ground next to the ferry, where the entire ferry can be easily controlled.

"Yes!" Zhou Ping smiled and pointed to an empty piece by the river not far away and said, "Zen master, I have already bought that piece of land, and I will start construction when the yamen is repaired." The place is right next to the river, and it's convenient to get water, transportation, and repair a water drain, and then the stove will be built there! ”

Zhishan did not immediately answer Zhou Ping's words, he walked into the courtyard gate, and looked at the yamen of the inspection department with great interest, the renovation project has entered the final stage, several workers are painting the columns on the scaffolding, and the air is filled with the mixed smell of raw lacquer and fresh wood.

"Zhou Tanyue!" Zhishan smiled: "What are you going to do big, you can always say it now, right?" ”

"You guys move all of this to the backyard!" Zhou Ping gave an order and said to Zhishan: "It's nothing, since you want to build a patrol department, then you have to get the whole situation out." The backyard can be used as a shooting garden, and the archers can be trained when there is nothing to do on weekdays, and the empty houses can be used as dormitories and arsenals after being repaired, as for the open space below. At this, a mysterious smile appeared on his face: "I am going to move my father-in-law's blacksmith shop here, and build a steel cooking stove behind it to make it larger." ”

"Stir-fry the steel stove?"

"Yes, you can earn more money, and you can also fight some good weapons!" Zhou Ping handed the saber to Luo She'er behind him, and sat down in the first seat: "I have prepared the paperwork, but thanks to Shen Zhixian's face, everything went so smoothly!" ”

"That's what you were referring to yesterday?"

"Not bad! Only with good iron can you have good armor, which is naturally a major matter! Speaking of this, Zhou Ping laughed.

It turned out that after Zhou Ping made up his mind not to flee south in Youzhou last time, he had been seriously thinking about how he should prepare to deal with the upcoming catastrophe. The most urgent and effective measure is to build an army, and it is not difficult to recruit enough people in troubled times, but it is difficult to have good weapons and organize the backbone of the army, especially the latter.

It should be said that the scale of the Song Dynasty's control of civilian weapons was still relatively loose, and it was generally "forbidden crossbows and bows, armor and soldiers, and long soldiers and short soldiers." "On the premise of ensuring the military superiority of the government over the people, we can ensure the self-defense power of the people against the bandits, and a family like the Xue family, which is similar to the head of the township soldiers, can relax the last one. But even the bow and knife are not forbidden weapons, the price is not low, for example, it is recorded in the history books that in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, 1 bow 2 runs 800 wen, 1 knife 3 runs 300 wen, and these are just the cost of manufacturing, as for crossbows, long soldiers, and armor are forbidden to buy and sell. This is also the reason why in ancient times, peasant armies of 100,000 or 200,000 were defeated by thousands of officers and soldiers, in addition to the differences in the military experience and tightness of the commanders, to a large extent, because of the lack of weapons.

The best way to solve the problem of weapons is undoubtedly to make hot weapons directly, and if it can be made a primitive arquebus, it will be enough to overwhelm the existing enemy. But even without considering how to overcome the numerous technical difficulties in metalworking necessary to make body-barreled firearms, the huge demand for large quantities of sulfur and saltpeter alone was enough for Zhou Ping to veto this choice. Even if there is a big explosion of character and a few firearms can be made, it will not be able to reverse the whole situation, if it is leaked, the enemy with huge resources will soon be able to imitate a large number of firearms, after all, human beings are the most learning spirit in war. So Zhou Ping quickly vetoed the idea.

Then only from the cold weapon consideration, the bow and crossbow was first vetoed, the reason is very simple, the manufacture of composite bows requires a large number of horns and tendons, glue, arrows need a huge amount of feathers, horns and tendons are very scarce resources for an agricultural society, slaughtering cattle has always been forbidden by the government, even if it is a traverser, Zhou Ping can not solve this problem. Then there is only one last way left - that is, to improve the technology of metal smelting and forging, even if it is impossible for Zhou Ping to make iron armor due to the existing laws, but as long as there are corresponding materials and technical reserves, once the situation changes, there is no problem in producing modified cuirasses for washbasins and transformed spears for producing hoes. Therefore, whether it is to improve your cold weapon manufacturing capacity or to prepare for the next step of climbing the hot weapon tech tree, improving metal smelting and forging technology is a must.

As a former architecture college student, Zhou Ping does not know too much professional metallurgical knowledge, but he still remembers the periodic table in middle school, and he also knows that the so-called ironmaking is to remove impurities from various iron compounds in nature, and at the same time reduce to metallic iron through the reduction reaction at high temperatures, and steel is just an alloy of metallic iron and carbon elements, wrought iron, pig iron and steel are just how much carbon element content. These knowledge, which seems ordinary in modern times, are extremely precious in ancient times, plus his father-in-law's family is a blacksmith shop, and he has no less contact with iron-making and iron-making on weekdays, he attributed all the problems he encountered to one problem - the temperature in the furnace is too low, because the temperature is low, so the reduction reaction is not complete, only part of the iron ore and the reducing agent have a chemical reaction, and the iron that can be refined naturally is less; It is also for this reason that there are many impurities in iron, and only at high temperatures, iron is in a liquid state, and impurities with different specific gravity will be separated. In the final analysis, it is necessary to raise the temperature in the furnace, and to solve this problem is nothing more than a change of fuel, replacing charcoal with coke with a higher calorific value; One is to improve the blower, and the last is to improve the structure of the furnace. But all this is just a utopian dream, steel smelting is a very comprehensive problem, requiring comprehensive knowledge of chemistry, machinery, refractory materials and other aspects, which is not something that a college student who graduated from the Department of Architecture can solve. What's more, it required a lot of money, and Zhou Ping at that time was just a field guest under the fence.

But this trip to Liao changed everything, Zhou Ping not only got a lot of money, but more importantly, he saw a kind of frying steel furnace in the Ordnance Supervision Workshop in Kaifeng, which could "fry" cheap pig iron into precious steel, and there is no doubt that this kind of frying steel furnace represented the highest level of technology at that time. As a graduate of the Department of Architecture, Zhou Ping had a very good drawing skills, he quickly drew the size of the structure of the furnace into drawings, and obtained the key refractory materials and the formula for the catalyst from the old craftsman at the cost of 20 yuan. Maybe Zhou Ping doesn't have the ability to design a frying furnace out of thin air, but there is no problem in improving this furnace. Fortunately, the Song Dynasty allowed the private sector to run the iron-smelting industry, which of course required the payment of an iron tax, which turned over about one-fifth of the product.

"Zen Master, it's May, we will start work as soon as the summer grain is harvested in July, and we will start producing iron after autumn!" Zhou Ping stood at the door of the Inspection Division and pointed to the open tunnel by the river with great ambition.

Salmon Island, September of the first year of Xuanhe (1119 AD). That is, the temple island in the temple island archipelago off the coast of Yantai, Shandong Province, in ancient times, this island was the place of exile and imprisonment of prisoners, because there are many temples on the island, Buddhism is also called "Shamen", and the name of "Shamen Island" comes from this.

On the beach, the dense reeds stretch as far as the eye can see, and the snow-white reeds look like they are snowing, swaying with the sea breeze. Hordes of prisoners were cutting the reeds, which were an extremely important resource for the exiles on Salmon Island - they could be used to build huts, to boil salt and heat fuel, to sew reeds in cloth covers instead of bedding, and of course, to weave reed mats and sell them for winter.

"A group of thieves with an army, are they all itchy? Work fast, don't be lazy! One of the guards shouted loudly, and from time to time his hands flicked his whip over the prisoners' heads, making a sharp sound. However, except for a very small number of new prisoners, the vast majority of the prisoners did not react, but only worked with their heads down, and these unfortunate people were numbed by the suffering.

Yang Wu bent down, grabbed the root of a handful of reeds with his hands, and then threw a sickle into his arms, and a clump of reeds was cut down. He was a skilled worker, and the shackles on his body made a rhythmic sound, and it was rare for a prisoner to wear such heavy shackles as he was, because he was a felon, but more likely because he had no money to bribe the greedy guards, otherwise he would have lived comfortably even on the famous penal colony of Salmon - like a few men sitting on the ground chatting not far away, the vicious guards turned a blind eye to them.

"Oops!" There was a scream from the side, Yang Wu turned his head to look, only to see Yang Shun'er lying on the ground, covering his right foot with both hands, blood was flowing out of his fingers, and he hurriedly dropped the sickle and stepped forward to help him up, and asked, "What's wrong?" ”

"I accidentally got stuck in the reed, it hurts!" Yang Shun'er groaned, the reed is a plant with a very developed root system, different from the delicate leaves and upper parts, the bottom rhizome is finely textured, and the part left after breaking is very sharp, and the prisoners will hurt their feet if they are not careful. I came back in the evening to see the results and gave a lot of tips! It seems that Weber is also a niche writer in his life! But it's better than no one watching it, so let's do it seriously and do publicity!