The Dragon King finally opened his eyes. Since the beginning of May, several rains have fallen, which has greatly improved the drought situation. Wu Shigong arranged all the laborers to rush to plant crops, so that they could ensure that they could harvest more grain during the autumn harvest.

Because Wu Shigong used a lot of labor and livestock, and because Wu Shigong took precautions to build and dredge a large number of irrigation ditches, the whole process of rushing to plant crops was very smooth.

In addition, Wu Shigong also began to deal with the captured loot. He organized a caravan, loaded some of the materials he had captured and could not be used for the time being, and was led by Yuan Xingshan to transport them to Jining Prefecture.

Unexpectedly, after Wu Shigong's caravan was formed, these local merchants outside Yao Yuanwai asked to go together. Although the rebellion of the Holy Spirit has been suppressed, many scattered people have fallen to the grass, so the situation in the countryside has become chaotic.

These merchants were afraid that their caravan would be hijacked by robbers on the road, so they were willing to pay Wu Shigong some escort money to keep him safe. For these extra money sent to the door, Wu Shigong is of course disrespectful.

After two trips like this, Wu Shigong received more than 300 taels of escort fees in addition to the silver earned by his caravan, and what Wu Shigong paid for himself was nothing more than sending more than 100 soldiers to escort each caravan departure.

Although in the officialdom of Henan, except for a few officials who knew about it, the other officials almost did not know anything about Wu Shigong's contribution to the rebellion of the people in this extermination of the Holy Spirit Society.

However, with the word of mouth of those scattered chaotic people, Wu Shigong has simply become a demon and monster in the eyes of those green forest heroes. Therefore, during the two caravan escorts, not even a shadow of a small thief was seen around the caravan.

This made Wu Shigong very happy, as if he saw a new source of wealth. However, the good times did not last long, and the frequency of caravan departures quickly decreased. Up to once a month.

Wu Shigong's town is only a commodity distribution center in several nearby counties, and in terms of the total circulation of goods, there are actually not much. The bulk of the commodity trading between Guide and Jining Prefecture is, of course, between Guide City and Jining Prefecture. Judging from the distance, the goods of Wu Shigong's town are not dominant.

In addition, the circulation of commodities in the Ming Dynasty, especially the circulation of bulk commodities, was basically by water. Waterways are both inexpensive and safer.

The only advantage of going by road is that the time is shorter. From the small town of Wu Shigong to Jining Prefecture, the longest journey is only five days, and if you take the waterway, it will take more than a month. Therefore, only those goods that are urgently needed, with high prices and light weights, will go by land.

For this situation, Wu Shigong can only feel very regretful in his heart. But think about it: the money earned was originally unexpected. And now, although this silver is small, at least it has made up for it somewhat. After thinking about it like this, Wu Shigong also calmed down.

All the affairs of the Thousand Households Office have also been regularized, and there are people busy with every matter, and Wu Shigong also has some free time at this time.

One day, he noticed that the women in the clothing workshop were also very idle, so he ordered them to make a uniform for each soldier. Anyway, Wu Shigong seized a lot of coarse cloth this time, and these coarse cloths could not be sold for a few taels of silver, so he simply made these coarse cloths into military uniforms and distributed them to the soldiers, as a welfare for the soldiers.

But when Yang Goudan's wife came to ask Wu Shigong's opinion with the style of the military uniform, Wu Shigong suddenly had an inspiration.

Now all the soldiers of Wu Shigong, except for those guards who came from the capital, basically did not have any armor on them. Even the guards in the capital were basically cotton armor and leather armor, and only the main leaders had the twenty sets of ring-arm iron armor.

And Wu Shigong's current number of soldiers is very small, and for Wu Shigong, every soldier is very precious. Therefore, Wu Shigong also especially wanted to equip his soldiers with more armor to preserve the combat effectiveness of each soldier as much as possible.

But Wu Shigong had already inquired. Even the cheapest cotton armor costs more than twenty taels of silver, while the ring-arm iron armor costs one or two hundred taels of silver. Even more expensive is the plate armor, which I heard costs more than five hundred taels of silver.

As for the armor weishenme being so expensive, Wu Shigong also asked Yang Goudan about it. Na Yang Goudan told Wu Shigong: Every iron part used to make armor is hammered out by blacksmiths. All of them are made of 100 steel. The armor produced by this will be effective against the damage of weapons.

However, the production requirements of 100 steels are very high, and blacksmiths who can master this kind of jishu are very rare. Of course, Yang Goudan also boasted about himself, saying that he himself had mastered the jishu of 100 steel.

But what is even more troublesome is that 100 steels have to be tempered thousands of times, and the production time is quite long. Especially for plate armor, the production time of the front and rear plates of it reaches one and a half to two months. That's why the price of these armors is so expensive.

After Wu Shigong knew these truths, he understood that with these craftsmen under his command, it would definitely be impossible to mass-produce armor. However, Wu Shigong did not have so much silver to buy armor. Therefore, his mind cooled down at that time.

However, now that Wu Shigong saw the style of the military uniform, he remembered the body armor he had worn in his previous life. In his previous life, Wu Shigong would definitely not be able to manufacture the kelaf materials used to make body armor, but a design of body armor gave Wu Shigong an inspiration.

In the previous life, on the body armor, in the important protective parts, there are always several large pockets, when the person wearing the body armor is facing a battle, he will insert alloy steel or ceramic bulletproof pieces into these large pockets to increase the bulletproof performance of his body armor.

Wu Shigong thought: Can't he do this? As long as you sew pockets on your military uniform, and when you fight, you can also insert iron pieces in these pockets, doesn't it also play the role of armor?

Moreover, the cost of such earthen armor is very low, and even if a few pieces of iron are damaged during the battle, it is very convenient and cheap to replace. The only drawback, which is that the protection ability seems to have decreased a bit. However, for these soldiers, it is much better to have earthen armor than no armor.

After Wu Shigong's idea was proposed, everyone appreciated it greatly. This made Wu Shigong quite proud. He thought to himself: "After my buddy crossed, I finally opened a golden finger!" Dude has finally fulfilled his dream of invention! ”

Wu Shigong's concept of earthen armor was later widely used and developed in his army. When Wu Shigong's soldiers did not have iron pieces, they would stick pieces of wood in their large pockets, and even fill them with stones. Although the effect of this is not as good as that of inserting iron tablets, it still has a protective effect.

The only regret is that Wu Shigong's military uniform, worn on the soldiers' bodies, makes these soldiers look like beggars wearing patched clothes. Therefore, this kind of military uniform also has an alias, called "beggar military uniform". For this reason, many soldiers also wear a set of clothes over their "beggar's uniform". But this way of wearing it made Wu Shigong's earthen armor with a novel design not spread for a long time.

And so the days passed. One day in July, Wu Shigong suddenly received an invitation to Wu Shigong to go to the county seat for a banquet. The invitation was sent out by a gentry in the county town -- Lu Yunhuan.

What made Wu Shigong more interested was that in the invitation, Wu Shigong was invited to the banquet together, as well as the Yangzhou salt merchant Lu Jianchen. So, Wu Shigong gladly accepted their invitation.

Then Lu Yunhuan is a big salt merchant who is responsible for the sale of salt goods in several surrounding counties, and he and Lu Jianchen are now in big trouble in the sale of salt goods. Therefore, they wanted Wu Shigong to come forward to help solve it.