With huge financial support, Liu Ze was able to recruit more people, and at the same time, he strictly ordered all townships and villages to send this year's conscription to dig wells, and make every effort to fight the battle of drought and disaster relief.

According to the calculation of drilling one well per 100 acres of land, the number of wells drilled in one county in the plain alone must be thousands, which can be called the largest project in the history of the plain. Liu Ze eats and lives on the construction site, strictly supervising the progress of the project, the crops do not wait for anyone, no matter how dry it is, there will really be no harvest this year.

After fighting day and night, the first well finally came out with water, and with the clear and sweet well water, many people cried with joy, knelt down in front of Liu Zechang, and kowtowed to thank him.

Liu Ze also "invented" a simple water absorption device, which freed the people from the pain of pouring water from deep wells and greatly improved the water output rate of the well. In fact, this kind of water absorption device is very simple, and it is almost necessary for every family in the rural areas where there is a shortage of water in later generations, Liu Ze is just borrowing it by chance, and the common people have regarded him as a celestial man.

Many wells have been pumped out of water one after another, and the farmland that has been dry for a long time has also been irrigated, and the first stage of seedling protection and moisture protection has been completed, although Liu Ze is slightly relieved, but the follow-up terrain is still very severe, he has ordered to increase the intensity of drilling wells, and strive to drill more wells to fight drought and ensure a bumper harvest.

In Shunyi Township, Pingyuan County, which is close to Ande, the people reported to Liu Ze, who came to inspect, that there was a well that had been drilled more than 30 zhang deep, and there was no water coming out, which was very strange, while the nearby wells were generally drilled to more than 10 zhang and more than 20 zhang at most.

"You stupid people, if you can't get water here, won't you find another place to fight?" Zhang Fei couldn't help but scold.

The pavilion chief who was in charge of digging a well here was scolded by Zhang Fei. I didn't dare to refute, so I replied sneeringly.

Liu Ze stopped Zhang Fei, he knew that it was not easy to dig a well, especially if he had already drilled more than 30 zhang deep, he would definitely be reluctant to give up, maybe he could dig water in the next foot, if he really gave up, it would be worth the loss.

In ancient times, there was no mechanical equipment to dig wells, so it could only be done by manpower, first building bricks and stones into an octagonal cylindrical structure, and digging out the soil from the lower part of the tube little by little. The canister will sink underneath. Then put several layers of masonry on top of it, and so on step by step, digging down foot by foot. Fortunately, the soil quality of Pingyuan County is basically based on loess, if it is a sandstone rock layer. You can't dig a few feet in a day.

Due to the narrowness of the working surface. Only one man can go down to the bottom of the well at a time. Rotate every quarter of an hour, and it is not easy to dig more than 30 zhang deep.

Liu Ze glanced at the dark and bottomless deep well, and said, "Try one or two zhang deep." If you can't get water, give up. "There is a lack of oxygen at the bottom of the deep well, and it is estimated that the current oxygen concentration is less than half of the above, and people cannot engage in heavy labor in the hypoxic environment, otherwise it is easy to suffocate to death.

However, Liu Ze didn't dare to say this oxygen theory, but just ordered to live in the deep and play for a foot or two, and if there was no hope of getting out of the water, he would give it up.

At this moment, the bell tied to the rope leading to the bottom of the well flashed suddenly, and the pavilion chief was overjoyed and cried out, "The water is out, pull the rope quickly!" ”

When the well is deep, the conversation can only be completed by a bell tied to a rope, and the people at the bottom shake the bell to mean that the soil in the basket is full, and the person above pulls another rope tied to the basket to pull the basket up and pour out the soil; Shaking twice means that the people's body is exhausted and he needs to be pulled up to change shifts; If the bell keeps ringing, it means that water is coming out of the well.

If you happen to dig into an underground river or something, you only need to convey that the bottom of the well can be submerged in an instant, and at this time, the people above need to quickly pull the people below the well up, and if you slow down, the people under the well are likely to drown.

As soon as everyone heard the bell ringing wildly, they dragged the man under the well up, and when the man came up, everyone couldn't help but be stunned, and the man's body was covered with things that seemed to be mud and not mud and oil and not oil, black and shiny, and kept dripping down from him. The man spat out the black mud from his mouth, gasped heavily, and said, "There is no water at the bottom, and I don't know that such a black thing gushes out of there, and I almost drowned." ”

Liu Ze was on the side, he was shocked when he saw this, he dipped a little bit of his finger and sniffed it, and his heart couldn't help but be ecstatic - oil! That's right, it's really oil!

The area where the Plains Country is located is the location of the Shengli oil field in later generations, and it would not be unusual to find oil here. However, what made Liu Ze feel strange was that oil was generally hidden four or five thousand meters underground, and even the shallowest part of the burial was one or two thousand meters, and with the technical conditions of the Han Dynasty, it was impossible to drill such a deep well.

Why did you find oil only a few dozen feet deep here? Liu Ze was puzzled, and it seemed that it was estimated that the movement of the earth's crust had lifted the oil squeezed thousands of meters deep underground to a position close to the surface. The earliest record of oil in history is Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Bi Tan" in the Song Dynasty, which records the discovery of open-pit oil in northern Shaanxi.

Unintentionally, Liu Ze accidentally discovered oil, how could he not be pleasantly surprised, and immediately sent someone to take care of this well, and the oil produced in the well should be all packaged in wooden barrels and transported to a manor on the outskirts of the plains.

Oil is a good thing, it can be refined into gasoline, diesel, kerosene, although it is impossible to build a car now, but gasoline is very versatile, just using its flammable characteristics to make an incendiary canister, than the current army used with badger oil made of fierce oil canisters more than several times more powerful, if it is used on a large scale, it can form a sea of fire in a certain area, effectively kill and injure the enemy, it is definitely a sharp weapon on the battlefield.

According to the current conditions, building an oil refinery to refine oil is a complete dream, but the method of refining oil in soil can be found by looking it up in a notebook, and the technical requirements are not high.

This manor on the outskirts of the plain city, or last year's confiscation of Bai Jing's family property was confiscated back, Liu Ze changed it into a soil oil refining workshop, if you really want to refine oil in the county, the smell of thick smoke is choking, you have to let the people complain, this manor is far away from the town, the environment is quiet, and it is most suitable for use as an oil refining workshop.

Liu Ze ordered someone to pull more than a dozen cauldrons and put them up, put the black oil into the pot, and covered it with a special lid, the top of which was connected to a long pipe, and the end of the pipe was inserted into the wooden barrel next to it. Then the firewood was lit and the fire was blazing.

The technology of soil refining is very simple, that is, the use of different boiling points of different substances in the oil, boiling vaporization and then through a long pipeline condensation to obtain the finished product, according to the different boiling points, the first to obtain is gasoline, followed by diesel and kerosene, and finally left at the bottom of the pot is asphalt and some viscous things.

Zhang Fei looked at the reddish liquid in the barrel and wondered, the eldest brother made a big deal for a long time, just for this thing?

"Big brother, what is this? What is the use of water that is not water? ”

Liu Ze smiled silently, took a scoop of gasoline and poured it on a stone, lit it with fire, and instantly surrounded the stone with a blazing flame.

"It's strange that a stone can catch fire?" Zhang Feidun was interested and came up to see what was going on.

After the test, Liu Ze was very satisfied, although the gasoline produced by his own local oil refining was completely different from the gasoline sold at those gas stations in later generations, and it was estimated that the label could only be below 60, but its combustion was not inferior at all, anyway, there is no need to add it to the car now, and it is very good to be able to use it as a combustion tank.

Gasoline is the most volatile, Liu Ze put the produced gasoline into a well-sealed clay pot, then the mouth of the can is tightly pasted, and the gasoline tank is stored in a cellar that is protected from light and shade. Diesel and kerosene were also preserved in the same way.

The oil lamps used in the Han Dynasty were all made of animal fat, the burning time was short and there was an obvious peculiar smell, Liu Ze ordered people to replace the grease in the oil lamps with kerosene, not only the brightness of the oil lamps was doubled, but also the burning time was much longer than the animal fat, everyone was amazed.

Thanks to the results of Liu Ze's efforts to dig wells for water to fight drought and ensure production, the autumn harvest season in the plains has arrived, and although the output has been reduced by two or three percent compared with previous years, the people's food rations have finally been saved. But other states and counties are not so lucky, years of severe drought, starvation everywhere, homeless people without food to eat even gnaw all the bark of trees, thousands of miles of red land, white bones all over the field.

In this situation, the remnants of the Yellow Turbans in various places have re-emerged, and in the spring and February of the fifth year of Zhongping, Guo Tai rose up in the Baibo Valley in Hedong and attacked Taiyuan County, Hedong County and other places. In April, the Yellow Turban Army of Gepi in Runan County rose again and attacked the county on a large scale. At the same time, the remnants of the Yellow Turban Army in Qingzhou, Xuzhou, Chongzhou, and Jizhou also rose up one after another, and there was a great tendency to spark the prairie fire.

Among the Yellow Turban Army of the Roads, the most powerful was Zhang Yan's Black Mountain Army. After Zhang Niujiao was killed, Zheyan took over the banner of the Montenegrin Army, and changed his name to Zhang Yan. Because Zhang Yan changed the bad habit of the Yellow Turban military rape - adultery and plunder, and only killed corrupt officials and bullying landlords, she had a very high reputation among the people and won the support of the people.

The court was also very busy at this time, in addition to appointing Bao Hongjin to suppress the powerful Runan Gepi Yellow Turban, he issued an edict to all prefectures and counties to reorganize their armaments, recruit volunteers, and defend themselves against thieves.

The order was issued to the Plains Kingdom, and Lin Hai urgently summoned Liu Ze to discuss. Lin Hai is only a civil official, and he is still good at engaging in internal affairs, but on the military journey, he is helpless, so he can only rely on Captain Liu Ze to find a way. (To be continued......)