Qiu Mao talked about the great wealth that he discussed with Gongsun Xu, but Liu Xing only smiled faintly when he heard it.

After listening to all the contents, Liu Xing did not agree, nor did he say no, but instructed his subordinates to arrange a residence for Qiu Mao and Liu Wu, so that Qiu Mao and Liu Wu could live in Longshou Cottage.

During the period of analyzing the feasibility of Qiu Mao's plan, Liu Xing discharged some detailed work and quietly went to Xiangping City.

Although there is a letter from the head of the Hou family, Liu Xing does not believe the words of Qiu Mao and Liu Wu, he must first make sure that there has been no change in the Hou family on the Xiangping side, and Gongsun Xu has not known until now that the people who robbed those caravans are from Longshou Mountain.

Only when he determines these two points will he consider the great wealth that Qiu Mao said that the Hou family wants to give him.

What is great wealth, it is a game, if one is not good, it will fall into the abyss, there are thousands of people on Longshou Mountain, he must not take the lives of these thousands of people as a joke.

No matter how good Qiu Mao said, he couldn't fully believe it, only if his subordinates went to conduct on-the-spot investigations, he would make the most correct judgment.

At the same time that Liu Xing lined up his subordinates to enter Xiangping City, Xiangping City sent a young team of more than 1,000 people to march in the direction of Longshou Mountain and began to clean up a place over there.

About ten miles away from Longshou Mountain, there is an iron-making furnace in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, but it's not! This iron-making furnace was abandoned decades ago.

When Gongsun Xu learned about the situation, he immediately discharged a large number of people and began to clean up and renovate the place.

During this period of the Han Dynasty, the production of steel was not high, and if he reused the blast furnace for ironmaking, it would play a very high role in the equipment of his soldiers and the cultivation of ordinary people.

Through the summary and analysis of those craftsmen under his command, Gongsun Xu had some preliminary understanding of the smelting at this time.

In the Han Dynasty, the steel smelting and casting industry was relatively developed, and there were places for steel smelting and casting on both sides of the Yellow River, north and south of the Yangtze River, in the northeast, Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, Liangguang and other border areas.

Before Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, some government-run smelting and casting workshops had "more than 100,000 people a year old". Private smelting and casting workshops often "gather a crowd or a thousand people".

Nanyang, Henan Province is an important seat of iron officials in the Han Dynasty, and the area of its production and operation area is not less than that of modern large-scale iron and steel plants, with a total of more than a dozen large smelting furnaces and countless small smelting furnaces

Although Xiangping is located in the border area, it is also an important base for the production of iron weapons in the Han Dynasty.

At this time, there were some improvements in smelting technology, and craftsmen had previously reduced iron ore with charcoal at a low temperature of 800 to 1,000 degrees Celsius, resulting in a sponge-like lump of iron with many inclusions.

Because the carbon content of block iron is very low, it is quite soft, and it can only be forged, not cast, so it is not an ideal material for fabrication.

Blacksmiths use block iron as raw material, heat it repeatedly, fold and forge, extrude sundries, and increase carburization and hardening it in contact with charcoal fire, which becomes block smelting carburizing steel, which is the most primitive steel.

In the manufacturing process of this kind of steel, it needs to be repeatedly heated and forged, so it is also called "hundred steel".

This steel-making method has a large amount of labor and low efficiency.

After the middle and late Western Han Dynasty, blacksmiths invented the "frying steel" technology. When the pig iron is heated to 1,200 degrees Celsius, it is sprinkled with ore powder and stirred continuously to reduce the carbon content of the pig iron (carbon oxidation) to form steel. It is a simple and fast process for making steel.

When frying steel, if the heat is not well mastered and the fire is over-fried, the carbon content of the steel will be low, and the frying steel will be fried into wrought iron. Later, craftsmen discovered that the addition of pig iron could compensate for this shortcoming. This led to the creation of a new steelmaking technology, the steel-filling method.

Gongsun Xu also heard from the craftsmen that the best blast furnace in the Han Dynasty at this time should be in Henan, the furnace height is about four or five meters, the volume is not very large, the daily output is not too much, and compared with the large steel mills of later generations, it is the kind of large-scale workshop industry.

At this time, there are often some failures in steel smelting, and at least two or three of the ten furnaces of steel production will have problems and fail to meet the desired standards.

But what! At this time, the smelting and casting also has a complete set of production equipment, including Tibetan iron pits, batching pools, cast iron pits, quenching pits, etc., and only its smelting and casting furnaces have smelting furnaces, discharge furnaces, reverberatory furnaces and forging furnaces (frying steel furnaces); Moreover, with the separation of mineral processing, batching, furnace, iron melting, iron tapping, casting and forging and other processes, smelting technology has reached a new height.

The steelmaking of this era is somewhat similar to the kind of earth-based steelmaking in modern China, using the same process, which is simple and fast.

Gongsun Xu knows best that the reason why steelmaking in the Han Dynasty was not developed enough was definitely because the height of the blast furnace was not enough and the architectural design was unreasonable.

After cleaning up the steel-making furnace about ten miles from Longshou Mountain, Gongsun Xu did not choose to use this steel-making furnace to make steel, but commanded his craftsmen to transform the entire steel-making furnace and directly transformed it into a brick factory.

Gongsun Xu knew in his heart that if the steelmaking industry on this side of Longshou Mountain was developed, or if it could produce good steel, this steelmaking furnace would definitely not be easily abandoned.

The most important reason for abandoning this steelmaking furnace should be that this steelmaking furnace does not have much value, even if it is steel, there will be quite a lot of scrap steel, and it can even make ends meet.

Seeing that winter was about to enter the winter, the steelmaking thing could no longer be carried out back then, so he might as well turn the steelmaking furnace in this place into a brick kiln first, and make some useful red bricks to use first.

Use the fired bricks to build a new frame and a blast furnace of a new height at the beginning of spring, so that it will be possible to refine good steel at that time, so that there will be no shortage of steel in Xiangping.

Gongsun Xu was a real estate developer in his previous life, and he had several large brick factories under his name.

Although Gongsun Xu didn't care too much about the operation of the brick factory, he knew the process and method of burning bricks, after all, the people below had to report to him when they did this kind of thing.

First of all, the materials for making bricks...... Soil, to be different, can not just find a place to dig some soil and then take off the blank and burn bricks.

The soil for burning bricks should not be too sticky, and there should be a certain amount of sand in it.

The soil in many places near Xiangping has this condition, and it will be relatively easy to burn bricks here.