While the front line was already fighting, Wang Ze did not stay in the Zhenhai Palace, and now he was inspecting the Sword Casting City on the north bank of the Tongjiang River.

Sword Casting City, the first large-scale iron mine discovered in the Xia Kingdom, has become the largest steel production area in the Xia Kingdom after more than ten years of construction.

Not only does it provide more than half of the steel production in Xia Kingdom, but even more than ninety percent of the weapons produced in Xia Kingdom are produced by the large arsenals here, and there is no doubt that Sword Casting City is the leading brother in the production of weapons in Xia Kingdom.

This time, in order to resist the attack of the Turkic army, the Xia State was able to expand its army by hundreds of thousands in one go, and even armed the National Guard of millions in one go, because the Sword Casting City provided enough weapons in time, and even the Sword Casting City had the spare strength to provide swords for the ordinary people.

In the past ten years, under the auspices of Blacksmith Cao, the amount of steel production in Sword Casting City has been increasing, in his words, not to mention providing weapons used by hundreds of thousands of Xia troops, even if the whole world is flattened together, Sword Casting City can provide enough weapons.

Wang Ze, who was riding on the horse, couldn't help but sigh, he couldn't imagine that Sword Casting City had developed to this point today, and Cao Blacksmith, who was fifty or sixty years old, still didn't change his original appearance, and kept boasting to Wang Ze about the development over the years.

The group rode forward as they spoke!

Of course, Wang Ze didn't walk, because the Sword Casting City was too big!

Since the early hours of the morning, he began to visit this city on horseback, and he almost did not stop to rest all the way, and after a morning, he only saw half of the place, and there were many military workshops that were only roughly visited, and there were many other places waiting for Wang Ze to inspect.

Looking at the shocked look on Wang Ze's face, Blacksmith Cao was extremely proud in his heart, Sword Casting City was developed little by little under the auspices of him and his eldest son Cao Lei, it can be said that this large-scale military industrial city is like his own third child.

Of course, Wang Ze was shocked, as early as when he was in Changguang County, Cao Blacksmith was already using small blast furnaces to smelt steel, and although he failed to find a large amount of steel at first after coming to the East China Sea, Cao Blacksmith has been studying the coke steelmaking method that Wang Ze said.

After the discovery of the super-large iron ore in Sword Casting City, Cao Blacksmith built a larger blast furnace for smelting from the beginning, and the successful research of coke brought the steel production here to a new level, not only the production of steel soared, but also the quality of steel was greatly improved.

After more than ten years of research, Sword Casting City has built a large blast furnace that can smelt nearly 100 tons of steel in one day, plus those blast furnaces that can smelt ten tons or dozens of tons a day in the past, and now the hundreds of blast furnaces built here can smelt more than 100,000 tons of steel in a year.

In addition, the Maoshan iron ore mine at the mouth of the Tongmen River and the large iron ore mine in Liaodong City, the steel production of Xia Kingdom reached an astonishing 150,000 tons at its peak last year, almost more than twice the steel production of Britain in the early days of the Industrial Revolution.

Steel is the backbone of the nation!

This sentence is not wrong at all, only with sufficient steel, Xia Guo has the ability to further manufacture a large number of weapons, a large number of machines, and weapons used by nearly a million soldiers, which are forged by large machines like flowing water, and then quenched by the master blacksmith to become excellent weapons.

Looking at the towering blast furnaces, as well as the puffs of smoke and dust, Wang Ze was very satisfied, although these will inevitably cause a certain amount of pollution, but Wang Ze still planted a large number of plants for greening, and the sewage will not be discharged indiscriminately.

At present, the main task of the Xia State is to survive, and only after defeating the Turks can we say anything else in the future.

"Huh? What's going on over there? Wang Ze rode around a bend and was suddenly caught by a suddenly smoking machine in front of him, which seemed to be not only smoking, but also a large amount of steam coming out.

It wasn't until he got closer that he noticed that there were more than a dozen young people in their twenties and thirties studying this machine, but why did Wang Ze feel that the more he looked at it, the more it looked like a steam engine?

"This is a steam engine that was only developed by the Institute of Mechanics last year!" Cao Lei, who had followed behind Wang Ze and Cao Blacksmith before, followed.

Cao Lei introduced: "This kind of machine does not have to worry about the physical strength of cattle and horses, but there are too few places to use, before only coal mine drainage used this kind of machine, these gentlemen are lecturers of the Mechanical College, they want to link the steam engine with the machine of the arsenal!" ”

Blacksmith Cao said disdainfully: "If you want my old man to say, this is the blind man lighting the lamp in vain, no matter how powerful this steam engine is, how powerful can it be?" It's only been ten days since they've been here, and I see that this machine has been repaired twenty or thirty times, and the money earned from working is not as good as losing it! ”

"Uncle Cao's words are too much!" Wang Ze smiled slightly, "When we first went to attack Jeju Island, didn't anyone look down on us at that time? They all feel like we're going to fail! ”

Wang Ze looked at the dozen or so busy crowds in front of him, and suddenly felt that one person was more familiar, but Wang Ze didn't pay attention, he continued to say to Cao Blacksmith: "Although this kind of steam engine has low power at the beginning, as long as the technology is mature, it will inevitably become the most useful thing in our Xia Kingdom in the future!" "Parkway

"Huh!" Blacksmith Cao has always admired Wang Ze, and when he heard Wang Ze say this, he suddenly couldn't use the ability of the steam engine everywhere, he sneered and said, "Our old man has always respected His Majesty, since His Majesty said this, he naturally has his reason!" ”

With Wang Ze's previous words, Blacksmith Cao also decided to dispel his prejudice against the steam engine, and when these people have any requests in the future, he will definitely cooperate, who knows if he will ask for others in the future!

"Your Majesty?" The originally busy crowd not far in front of him was busy for a while and began to rest, among which Wang Ze looked at the familiar middle-aged man just now and saw Wang Ze, and suddenly said in surprise, "It's Your Majesty, it's Your Majesty who came here to see us!" ”

Of course, Wang Ze used some pro-people means to these people, which moved these people, Wang Ze looked at the familiar middle-aged man and suddenly remembered, he said tentatively: "You are Qu Zhe, a student of the Mechanical College who often went to the School of Science to listen to lectures?" ”

"It's down there!" Qu Zhe was so excited that even tears flowed out, he said excitedly, "In the past, I listened to the teachings of His Majesty, I have been studying all kinds of machinery, and later I also participated in the voyage of Chen Duandao, and soon after I came back, I entered the Mechanical Institute to continue my studies, and I only began to study the steam engine with everyone the year before last!" I don't know why the power can't be raised! ”

Wang Ze looked at this steam engine carefully, it was obvious that this was still a very rough machine, these people began to start the machine in order to show Wang Ze their achievements, and immediately the whole machine was filled with steam, and a large amount of water vapor came out from between the sheepskins in the seal.

Wang Ze immediately knew what was going on, no wonder Qu Zhe just said that the power of the steam engine was not enough, so it was strange that the power of the steam engine could be raised without a completely sealed steam engine.

After knowing what was going on, Wang Ze directly instructed them to use rubber to seal the joints, so that the power of the steam engine would be greatly improved.

After more than ten years of continuous planting, the scale of rubber trees in the Nanyang region has expanded to more than 100,000 in the Xia Kingdom, of which there are more than 3,000 trees that have reached the harvest age.

With this glue, and the fact that ships have been sent to Yingzhou (South America) every year to collect glue from wild rubber trees, Xia Guo has a large amount of rubber storage so far, which is enough to provide sufficient materials for their experiments.

It's just that Wang Ze used these rubbers combined with silk to make hot air balloons before, and Qu Zhe and the others didn't know that rubber could be used to make seals and other objects after vulcanization, and Wang Ze's words could be said to have opened a window for them.

Leaving Qu Zhe and them, Wang Ze thought to himself that if the steam engine manufacturing technology matured in more than ten years, would it mean that he could directly enter the era of the industrial revolution? These steam engines really weren't made up by Wang Ze himself.

Wang Ze was always busy fighting wars before, where did he have time to invent these?

It's just that after more than 20 years of development, the seeds of the School of Science, the School of Machinery, the School of Metallurgy, etc., which Wang Ze established at the beginning, have their own development trajectory, and with the support of theory, the birth of these machines is also logical.

Wang Ze thought in his heart, the war horse under his crotch was accidentally tripped over something, Wang Ze was startled, and when he looked closely, it turned out to be a track made of wood and iron, well, it looked like a minivan track, what was going on?

Blacksmith Cao thought that Wang Ze had never seen such a thing, so he explained to Wang Ze: "Your Majesty, this is a special track for transporting iron ore from the iron mine to the iron-making furnace. ”

Wang Ze was stunned for a moment, I'll check!

There is already a steam engine in front and a track here, so will it be possible to overhaul the railway in another ten years or so, and take the train to Lhasa?

Ahem!

Wrong, I should have taken the train to Beijing, and now I haven't seen the shadow of Lhasa! The ancestor of the Tubo people, Shannanqiang, is still fighting, but now there is no shadow in Beijing, and it is still Youzhou Yan County in the Northern Zhou Dynasty!

But no matter what, it seems that after a little bit of technological progress, trains and railways are not a difficult thing!

At this time, Wang Ze suddenly heard a sound in the distance, and then saw that under the pull of twenty heavy horses, a train of more than ten sections of iron carts rumbled over, and it only took three people to pull such tens of thousands of catties of iron ore from the mine more than ten miles away.

Wang Ze sighed in his heart, isn't this what he needs? As long as the Turkic attack is repelled, no one in the future Xia Kingdom will be able to stop its strength, and the Han people will no longer have to worry about being slaughtered by foreign tribes in the future.

Seeing this train of iron cars drive past, Wang Ze continued to walk forward!

Suddenly, I heard a violent explosion in the distance, and it was loud! Wang Ze immediately frowned, could it be that there was an explosion in the blast furnace in Sword Casting City?