Zhao Chongyang and Fang La stayed on Xishan Island for two days, assisting Wang Yan and others in cleaning up their belongings and handling some spicy business before returning to Fangjiazhai with Fang La.

Before the two left Fangjiazhai, they had already sent people to the prefectures and counties in the south of the Yangtze River to buy people, because they were all men, women, old and children, and all of a sudden, the behavior of people in various places was emptied. After returning to Fangjiazhai, Fang La asked people to gather all the slaves they bought, and they got a total of 3,000 slaves.

On this day, Zhao Chongyang lectured the house slaves: "Everyone, I am your little master Zhao Chongyang Zhao Gongzi." Now, although you are domestic slaves that I paid for, I will not treat you as slaves. Men, women, and children all come to me with food to eat and clothes to wear. As long as everyone listens to the arrangement and does what you can seriously, you can still get paid. If you have a family, try to arrange for you to work in one place, and the family will eat and live together. Don't worry, whoever is chosen to work for me, I will definitely give you a salary if I say so. If you don't choose a variety of jobs, you will go to Xishan Island to open up wasteland and farm, and all the income will be yours, and we will also pay for the grain we hand in, and we will never ask for it in vain. In short, you will live better than the free people outside, except that you will not have to pay food and taxes, and you will not have to bear the burden of forced labor. ”

After that, he began to select people from the house slaves he bought to learn various skills. Young women mainly learn soap, soap, perfume and cooking techniques, and young men learn firearms, ammunition, lacquer, glass, and cement firing techniques.

After the selection of all the people, Zhao Chongyang personally took dozens of house slaves and dozens of loyal and reliable young people selected from Fangjiazhai to develop glass firing technology. At the same time, he sent people to hire craftsmen who fired porcelain and masters who fired bricks and tiles with high salaries, and built glass kilns outside Bangyuan Cave and cement kilns and lime kilns outside Fangjiazhai.

The raw materials for burning glass are quartz silica, soda ash, sodium carbonate and limestone. Quartz ore is everywhere, more than 90 percent of the river sand on the beach is silica, and limestone is everywhere. It is difficult to find natural soda ash, and its alternative material is plant ash, among which straw ash and tung shell ash contain the highest potassium carbonate content and the strongest alkalinity, and the effect of making glass is better than other plant ash.

Speaking of natural soda ash, Tongbai County, Nanyang District, Henan Province is a famous alkali mineral area, especially Wucheng and Anpeng trona reserves of tens of millions of tons, as long as these two alkali mining areas are in hand, within five or six hundred years, glass, soap, soap are enough.

Zhao Chongyang decided to build a small earthen stove in Bangyuan Cave first, first use a large ceramic vat as a crucible, and make some glass out.

The temperature of firing glass should be more than 1,200 degrees, and the ratio of quartz, limestone, and plant ash must also go through many experiments to get the best effect.

Zhao Chongyang led people to carry out many times in a row, and finally made a small amount of glass for the first time after half a month. Then, on this basis, the amount of plant ash is further increased, the amount of quartz sand is reduced, the amount of limestone is increased, and after ignition, coal is continuously added and air is blown in, so that the furnace temperature is unprecedentedly increased.

This time, due to the increase in temperature, there was a relative excess of plant ash and limestone, and the three raw materials finally began to react fully. In the end, a lot of molten glass flowed out of the simple furnace of the reaction, and Zhao Chongyang had the molten glass introduced into the prepared mold to obtain a number of beads and a batch of glass jade. Perhaps because of the impurities of the sand and the color of the plant ash, the first batch of glasswork obtained was slightly brownish-black, and there were many bubbles, which looked very poor in quality.

The three little beauties were present from beginning to end, and when they saw that the water jade beads and jade pei were made, everyone wanted some. Zhao Zhong said that these are not of good quality, and there are bubbles, and none of them are allowed to be left, and they are put into a dry crucible and re-furnace......

The formula ratio of the three raw materials is basically solved, and mass production can be carried out. Zhao Chongyang has ordered more than ten porcelain dry crucibles containing liquid glass, to solve the problem of bubbles, only before processing, stir the liquid glass while it is hot, and fully destroy the bubbles inside. Therefore, Zhao Chongyang improved the initial production process, imitating the procedure of steelmaking and adding a converter, that is, the molten glass made is loaded into the converter, while maintaining a high temperature, stirring, and then pouring the stirred night body into various molds to make various instruments required.

This time, Zhao Chongyang asked people to fully wash the quartz sand, and then add excessive plant ash and lime. In order to maintain the high temperature in the furnace, Zhao Chongyang asked the large crucible tongs for the charging reaction to be completely sealed, and then put the crucible into the furnace and calcined at a high temperature for more than ten hours. Ten hours later, Zhao Chongyang came to inspect and opened the liquid valve. There is already a small amount of liquid flowing out, indicating that the three materials are already reacting. After another two hours, Zhao Chongyang asked people to open the liquid valve, and a large amount of liquid flowed out, Zhao Chongyang said: "It's okay, the reactor will stop adding carbon, and the blower will drum for another half an hour." ”

As soon as the voice fell, someone had already introduced the liquid into the converter to continue heating, and began to stir continuously. After stirring back and forth for more than an hour, and no glass flowed out of the reaction crucible, it was stirred for more than ten minutes.

Zhao Chongyang personally commanded the first batch of molten glass into various molds. Two or three hours passed, and after all the glass toys had cooled, Zhao Chongyang picked up a glass bead and looked at it carefully, the quality had already surpassed the water jade beads that Hu Shang brought from Persia. The color is transparent, there are no large and small bubbles, and there is no cloudiness when it looks. This time, the glassware was mainly glass beads and jade pei, and only two glass jars and three glass wine jugs were made.

Hearing that the water jade was successfully translated, Fang La ran to see it for the first time, and when he saw these dazzling water jades, his surprise made the three little sisters laugh.

Next, Weng and his son-in-law set a reasonable price for glass devices, 10,000 pieces of glass beads and jade pei, and 100,000 pieces of glass jars and glass wine. Zhao Chongyang calculated that after the first batch of glass products is processed, he will receive an income of one million yuan. In order to ensure that high-quality glass instruments can open overseas markets as soon as possible, Zhao Chongyang asked Fang La to find someone to contact Hu merchants in Suzhou and Hangzhou, so that they can bring high-quality water jade products to the Persian Gulf coast, and strive to seize the European market as soon as possible. In addition, let Fang La recruit shipbuilders at a high price in the south of the Yangtze River, build a dock at the Nanjing wharf, and build more than 1,000 sea ships. After a year, his chamber of commerce sent people to sell the goods to Wajima and other places, and earned a large amount of gold and silver.

After the price was confirmed, Fang La sent people to send the goods to various places for sale that afternoon.

Next, Zhao Gongzi asked Fang La to send people to the porcelain workshop to order a batch of molds, including the zodiac, Maitreya Buddha, Guanyin, angels, Venus, Jesus, etc., among them, the mold of angels, Venus, and Jesus was specially carved by Zhao Chongyang with clay to take to do it. There are many styles of glass instruments for the next batch, and of course the glass statues such as Angel Angel are ready to be sold to Hu Shang.

Since soap and soap also need a large amount of plant ash, there is almost no stock of plant ash in several nearby villages, so Fang La asked Deng Yuanjue to take people to other places to collect plant ash.

The problem of glass is solved, and the next step is to make cement. The porcelain kiln master and brick kiln master invited to repair the simple cement furnace according to the graphics provided by Zhao Chongyang, and Zhao Chongyang made some improvements based on the memory of later generations. In mid-June, the firing of cement officially began. The raw materials for making cement are mainly clay and limestone, as well as slag, gypsum and other raw materials. The step is to first calcinate the clay and limestone at high temperature to make mature material, and then add an appropriate amount of slag and a small amount of gypsum to mix and grind.

The firing of cement is much simpler than glass, and I have been tested more than ten times in a row with a state of people for several days, and finally the firing technology of cement has been clarified.

Subsequently, Zhao Chongyang handed over the task of firing cement to the technicians and workers in charge of the work, and he himself went to the special training camp to participate in the special training. With the continuous increase of cement, Fang La began to direct everyone to use cement to carry out construction, repair houses, build docks, build fences, etc