Jishihou is back!

The news quickly spread in Anfeng County, and then as if it had grown wings, it spread to the county government in a short period of time, and then naturally the capital...... Anyway, within a few days, Wu Xie received Xiao Buyi's flying sword handbook.

"There is a way of courtesy, Xiao plans to visit the door one day, just to inquire about the anecdotes about the three teachings."

Wu calculated the time and couldn't help but be a little surprised.

The speed at which this news spreads is comparable to that of an eight-hundred-mile fast horse! It seems that no matter which world you are, people's enthusiasm for gossip is beyond imagination!

He has not been idle these days, but has been busy - busy with guests, and even more busy with official business.

Anfeng County is his fiefdom, although he doesn't care about anything, but since the Hou Ye is back, the county's big and small officials and gentry and celebrities will naturally come to visit, and there are still many big and small things to ask for.

"I haven't been here for more than ten years, and I haven't seen them have anything to look for me, why do I come back with all the big and small things?" Wu Xie looked at the pile of official letters on the desk, couldn't help but sigh, and complained to the brother who was acting as a master next to him, "Haven't our county had a good life over the years!" It's business as usual - whoever was responsible for this kind of thing in the past will be handed over to whom!"

"That's not going to work. My father is very old, and since this year, he has obviously lacked energy. And I......" Wu Cheng smiled, "Someone can do it, why am I not happy to be idle?"

"Brother! The title of Marquis of Jishi is to be inherited by Zhizheng, you are doing things for your son, so you have to be lazy?!"

"With all these miscellaneous official duties, even the gods are afraid, isn't it normal for me to be lazy?"

"This reason is really irrefutable...... Wu Xie sighed, and opened a rather old-looking fold, which said that Ji Lu planned to promote new agricultural tools in the county to improve the effect of farming.

Looking at the date of the most excerpt, it was already three years ago.

"Huh? This thing is very good, why hasn't it been dealt with until now?"

"We did the math and found that using this deep plough can indeed have a certain effect. However, there is a significant additional cost to do so...... All the plowshares in the whole of Anfeng County were replaced, and the financial resources required came second, and the most troublesome thing was that we did not have so many blacksmiths - this plowshare needed to be forged with steel, and the requirements for blacksmiths were very high. Steel needs to be refined, but all blacksmiths who can forge 100 steels are generally in the weapon and armor business, they have money and status, and they disdain to do this kind of small business that is not very profitable and seems to be faceless. ”

Wu Xie nodded and understood the reason.

There is no concept of mechanical forging in this world, from a nail to a body of armor, all of which are forged by blacksmiths with a hammer. The problem of insufficient manpower is indeed unsolvable.

If the coercive power of the government is used, it may be possible to force those blacksmiths to make deep ploughshares, but this practice is harming the interests of the blacksmiths and the interests of the government itself. After all, compared with the deep ploughshare, excellent weapons and armor are more important strategic materials.

To solve this kind of problem, the simplest and most effective means is naturally to dispatch modern machinery such as steelmaking blast furnaces and forging hammer machines to carry out the big killer of industrial mechanization, but considering the huge impact of the industrial revolution on the earth, Wu Xie did not dare to rashly promote mechanization, and could only think of ways in the existing framework.

He thought about it, and after the last moment, he had an idea.

To make a qualified deep ploughshare, you don't necessarily need to find those blacksmiths! Isn't there a top-level workforce in front of them that far surpasses them in terms of skill and efficiency?

"Alright! I'll take care of that!" He stood up with the fold, "Let's go meet the official who proposed the plan...... It's much easier to build a plowshare than to compete with these documents!"

Wu Cheng laughed when he heard this, and the brothers strode out of the study, ignoring the piles of documents and official letters.

Fuck Kumon! What even the gods are afraid of, can't we hide if we can't afford to provoke it!

That official's name is Qi Xiang, the word is flying, and he is the supervisor of the county's agricultural and blacksmith department, and the nine-rank official. This name makes Wu Xie sound a little familiar to the Qi Supervision Division, who is not from the imperial examination, but an old official, who has made up for the absence because of his good work.

Qi Jian Si became a clerk at the age of fifteen and has served in many positions, which can be described as experienced. He is just forty this year, and when he is still in the prime of life, he is full of energy and wants to make a career.

When the Wu Xie brothers came to the Peasant Blacksmith Division, the Qi Supervision Division was taking two or three people to study around a large refining furnace, and they were immediately startled when they saw the Hou Ye brothers coming. If it weren't for Wu Xie casting a spell in time to support him, I was afraid that the frizzy young man among them would hit the stove, and I don't know what it would look like!

"This is a dog, although he has a clever brain, he has been impetuous, since he was a child!" Qi Jian Si first hurriedly thanked him, and then slapped his son twice, "I have been learning with him for a long time, but his temper just can't be changed!"

"Look at him, he's only sixteen or seventeen years old, right? We were also very frizzy at our age. Wu Cheng said with a smile, "It's not necessarily a bad thing for young people to be motivated, when my younger brother left home at the age of sixteen to seek immortals, I didn't expect him to become a Hou Ye and come back......."

This is naturally Wu Jie, and everyone laughed and gently revealed the matter of the frizzy boy.

"What is Qi Jian Si doing? Is this stove famous?" After laughing, Wu Chengcheng asked about business. It can be seen that he is quite familiar with official affairs, and he is also very attentive, which makes Wu Xie more determined to play the Ming court as soon as possible and transfer the title and position out of the court.

He is really not good at official business!

That stove is called "Spitfire Furnace", and it is something that Qi Jian Si has worked hard to design in the past two years. In a general furnace, the temperature should not be too high, because the fuel itself does not generate enough heat. In order to improve this problem, some people choose to use some precious fuels - such as the fire crystal commonly used in the Xianjia refining furnace, and some people choose to use a large amount of fuel to replenish the quality. The former is not within the scope of mortal consideration, but the latter has another problem - if there is more fuel, more air needs to be consumed, and if there is not enough air, it will not be able to fully burn, and the temperature will not rise.

Therefore, the ordinary furnace can only produce iron and not steel. Iron must be forged into steel by skilled blacksmiths – this is often referred to as "100 steels". Not only is it expensive, but the yield is extremely low.

Qi Jian Si ingeniously laid out the furnace inlet pipe on it, and the inside and outside of the outlet pipe were covered, and the hot gas sprayed out of the furnace was used to heat the inlet air, which naturally increased the temperature of the inlet air and made the whole furnace temperature to a higher level, and there was no additional cost.

Wu Xie understood the principle of this stove when he first saw it - this is "air preheating......

Although this method is a huge gap from the iron-making blast furnace he saw in the Jiaoli book back then, it is at least a great improvement in terms of thinking!

Qi Jian Si did not mean to keep it secret, and explained the principle of the flamethrower in detail. Wu Cheng immediately understood, turned his head to look at the smile on Wu Jie's face, and affirmed the value of this thing.

When he asked in detail, he learned that Qi Jiansi was able to smelt suitable steel at a relatively low cost to promote the deep ploughshare he invented...... With this kind of fire-breathing furnace, although it is not possible to make 100 steels, it is already relatively easy to produce crude steel, which greatly reduces the resistance to the promotion of deep ploughshares.

"It is indeed impractical to make a plowshare from 100 steels." Recalling the original incident, Qi Jian Si said, "I was thinking about promoting deep ploughshares, but I didn't think about how to make enough plowshares." After reflection in the past few years, I have figured out this fire-breathing furnace. This furnace could not make fine steel, but it could already burn ordinary iron tools, add charcoal and recast them, and what came out was crude steel. ”

"Crude steel is used to make swords and armor, and it is naturally unqualified. It could be used to make plowshares, but it couldn't be more suitable!"

Wu Xie took the crude steel used by the Qi Supervision Division as a sample, and with a slight sweep of his senses, he affirmed his statement.

Now that the biggest problem is solved, the next thing is much simpler. Wu Xie soon issued an order to build a fire-breathing furnace that could be used for metallurgy, and began to make crude steel and forge suitable ploughshares for the people of the county.

This incident touched him quite a bit, and it also made him reflect on some of his thoughts.

Promoting the Industrial Revolution is indeed a very dangerous approach. But if it's just a little bit of a small improvement, maybe it's not that dangerous, right?

Of course, as a glorious literary youth, Wu Xie didn't know much about industrialization and modernization, but this was not a problem - even if he couldn't study a suitable technique himself, he could still let others study it, and use his skills and power to improve and promote it.

But before that, he had one thing to accomplish first-

"Ji Shihou's recital?" Xiong Er, the son of the Great Chu State, opened the fold in confusion, the text on the fold was not the same as in his impression, and the payment was not the same, from "Worship the ...... again on behalf of the Marquis Wu Cheng" to "Wu Xie Jishou".

He understood in an instant what this change meant, and couldn't help but laugh.

The immortal has some concern for the world, and specially plays for the invention of the ploughshare and the fire-breathing furnace, which means that the immortal who sees the head and the end of the dragon is not the legendary Taishang forgetful person, nor is it only a lone person who only cares about relatives and friends, but a kind person who cares about the common people.

That's great news!

It is naturally impossible for the emperor of the human world to control the immortals to serve him, but as long as the immortals also care about the human world and the suffering of the Li people, then the interests of each other are the same, and they can even be regarded as allies.

With the help of such an ally with great magical powers, it is really a relief for the Great Chu State, which has not been in a good situation in the past few years!

So he approved the performance without saying a word, and sent a high-level team composed of historians, ceremonial officials, and chamberlains to award that Qi Xiang Ziegfei and add luster to him. And to write this matter into the history books in detail, give him a treatment that all officials dream of, and go down in history!

This is not only a reward for those who have contributed to the country, but also a show of favor for the immortals. A smart person doesn't need to be too obvious, he trusts the other person to understand what he means.

More than ten days later, when Wu Xie looked at Qi Jian Si from afar—oh, he has been promoted, and he will enter the Ministry of Industry in the near future—wearing red colors, smiling red, and then looking at the sentence on the holy decree, "All over the Great Chu, but the farm tools made by this furnace are all remembered by 'Qi Gefei'", he couldn't help but smile and nodded, and a sense of pride rose in his heart.

If you want to do something for the world, start here!