Seeing that the bandits had been surrounded, Zhao Chongyang shouted loudly: "Put down your arms and surrender to avoid death!" All the personnel also shouted: "Lay down your arms and surrender to avoid death!" Seeing that there was no hope of escape, the remnants heard that there was a way out, and they threw down their weapons and knelt down to surrender. Wu Songshixiu led people to confiscate their weapons, let them bury the bandits who died in battle, and followed them to Tangzhou on foot.

In an encounter, it took only 20 minutes from the launch of the attack to the speed of the battle, and a total of 43 bandits were shot and killed, 24 wounded, and 128 remnants were captured with the wounded. Fortunately, the remnants of the bandits had more than 30 horses, and Shi Xiu asked them to help the injured people on their backs and follow them to Tangzhou.

After Zhao Chongyang arrived in Tangzhou, the Hu family and the Tang family had prepared nearly 40,000 pieces of fine porcelain and antiques for him, plus a total of more than 160,000 pieces of goods raised in Nanyang in the past ten days.

Because the negotiation with Wang Qing delayed the time to drill the alkali well, Zhao Chongyang and the others did not stay in Tangzhou for long, and returned to Anpeng with the convoy of coal mines early the next morning. At this time, Nangong Yongjie and Qian Xiao'an had already transported the porcelain and antiques raised by Xinyang and Tongbai County here.

After arriving at the shed, after dinner, Zhao Chongyang couldn't take a break, so he asked Shi Ma and Tang Ma to take Simei to rest, and he came to the warehouse containing antiques and porcelain alone. Gu Bao Daoyi said that a total of nearly 70,000 porcelain and antiques were prepared here, and Zhao Chongyang didn't know how to choose, whether there was a surplus or to make up, and it had to be handed over to the system to estimate the discount before it was counted.

So, Zhao Chongyang opened the system, stored all the treasures in the warehouse into the system warehouse, and asked the system to carry out the evaluation function to see if the exchange task of 200,000 yuan had been completed. The green light of the green jade pei flashed, and the system replied ten minutes later: "According to the accurate valuation of the price of Bian Liang City in Tokyo in this time and space, the goods you exchanged exceeded 31,000 antiques and porcelain. After a pause of about a minute, the system continued: "But now I don't know which goods are good to return to you, so I will temporarily open a platform for you to exchange antique porcelain for modern goods, allowing you to exchange goods beyond this era, but charged products, explosives and weapons to go out." Zhao Chongyang thought about it for a while, and asked for 5,000 toy binoculars, 3,000 bicycles, 100,000 beautifully made liquor bottles, 100,000 imitation glass plastic round mirrors, 50,000 imitation glass plastic large round mirrors, and 20,000 imitation glass plastic large dressing mirrors. The rest are exchanged for glucose, ammonia, and silver nitrate, and are matched according to the proportion of the chemical silver mirror. The system said: "10,000 guan in this era is equivalent to 800 yuan for the future generations to exchange goods for you, and the wholesale price of the bicycle you want in this era is only 500 yuan, and the rest of the prices are cheaper, so these goods you want are used up to nearly 3,000 yuan, and 28,000 guan are all replaced with chemicals for making glass mirrors, I am afraid that they will not be used up in a thousand years." It is recommended that you sell 1,000 yuan of Duyin supporting medicines, and buy more things for the rest. ”

Zhao Chongyang thought that he could not buy a live one, but he could buy a steam engine, so he decided to exchange two 10 horsepower steam engines for prototype research, and exchange four steel skeleton galleons with a displacement of 500 tons for future navigation. Thirty iron-hulled ships powered by steam engines with a deadweight of 20 tons were sold for long-distance transportation on inland waterways. The data is reported to the system, and the system says that those are obsolete products, and they are exchanged according to the processing price, and there are 12,000 pieces left. Sell ten pure handmade machine tools, sell 300 sets of various types of movers, sleeves, changing knives, glue handle pliers, tiger vises and other various machine tools, and the rest are all exchanged for nitric acid and ammonium water, because these two things are molar combined, that is, ammonium nitrate, which can be used as explosives, and the power is much greater than gunpowder.

It took two hours, and the exchange for the system was finally completed, and the system promised to fulfill its promise tonight and dig the mine for digging soda ash, and tomorrow morning, you can go down the mine to mine. As soon as he thought of this, Zhao Chongyang was so excited that he couldn't sleep for a long time......

At six o'clock in the morning, Zhao Chongyang and Bao Daoyi, Wu Song, Shi Xiu and others went to see the natural soda ash mine. A few people came to the southern edge of the Anpeng Basin, the forbidden land that had been fenced off and patrolled more than a month ago, and was three miles away from their current station. They walked to the iron gate, Bao Daoyi took the key from Zhao Gongzi and opened the door, and saw two pavilion-style buildings from afar. The two pavilions are separated by a mile (500 meters) of space. Upon closer inspection, each circular pavilion rises one metre above the ground, which prevents rainwater from entering the mine when it rains. The straight longitude of each round platform is 10 meters, the space of the pavilion is three meters high, the glazed tile is covered, there is a big well with a diameter of four meters in the center of the pavilion, there is a steel frame on the well, the steel frame is installed with a wheel, the big hanging basket slightly smaller than the wellhead is hung on the wheel with a steel rope, and more than 20 people can stand in the hanging basket. Outside the wellhead, there is a large turntable that is slightly smaller than the wellhead, and the rope on the wheel is wrapped around the turntable. There are three waist grind-like handles on it, and the three people push the turntable and turn it clockwise, and the basket is hoisted. Before the hanging basket was used, it was hooked by two large iron hooks. When the person wants to go down, standing in the hanging basket, the person in charge takes the iron purchase, and the hanging basket slowly slides down. The person in charge of the rotation of the turntable controls the speed of the slide.

There is a text description on the wheel: the entire steel rope is 110 meters long, the well is 90 meters deep, and the steel rope bears a weight of 100,000 catties.

Zhao Chongyang handed over five keys to the gate of the well and pavilion to Bao Daoyi, the general person in charge of the construction site, and left one on each of his bodies. When they saw that the mine had been completed, they walked back to breakfast. At eight o'clock in the morning, the first batch of backbones went to the side of the well platform, where Zhao Chongyang told them how to dig the side of the mine, and how to support the box wood when digging the hole to prevent the mine from collapsing. Among the first batch of backbones, there were more than 10 experienced miners who dug coal kilns supported by the Tanghu family, and they combined Zhao Chongyang's knowledge with their own experience in digging coal, and after listening to Zhao Chongyang's explanation, they became the first batch of people to go down the mine. Zhao Chongyang wanted to personally lead the team down to the No. 1 mine, but Wu Song and Bao Daoyi disagreed, and neither did the four little beauties who had just arrived with Shi Xiu.

Wu Song said: "Senior brother, you are responsible for the prosperity of the country, you can't be in danger, let me take them down, make sure there is no danger, you go down." Seeing that Second Brother Wu said so earnestly, Zhao Chongyang did not insist on the first batch.

Zhao Chongyang looked down at the well, there was a faint light at the bottom, and Zhao Chongyang estimated that there might be candles or lighting equipment made of natural luminous materials underground. Zhao Chongyang said to Wu Song: "I see that there is a bright light below, and it seems that the lighting equipment is already there." After speaking, he stepped aside, and Wu Song took the first batch of twenty people to stand in the hanging basket. Zhao Chongyang asked the person who moved the winch to pull the hanging basket upward, the hook was loose, the person in the hanging basket took off the iron hook, and the person who managed the winch slowly relaxed the winch, and the hanging basket slowly slid down into the well......

A minute later, the news came from the well: we had reached the bottom of the well, and now everyone was taking out the tools from the hanging baskets. After a few more minutes, Wu Song's voice came from the microphone: "You can pull the hanging basket up." ”

The six strong men who were in charge of the winch drove the turntable around like pushing the waist mill, and after a while, Wu Song shouted hello to the well, several people who pushed the winch stopped, Wu Song hung the hanging basket on the iron hook, stepped out of the hanging basket, and walked on the well platform. The second group, led by the foreman, began to go down the mine.

Wu Song said to everyone, there is no danger below, according to the old miners who have dug coal in the mine, this hole is spacious and bright, there is no water below, the whole rock layer is geologically stable, every few meters, is a ten-meter-wide trona ore layer. After the second group of people came together, Wu Song accompanied Zhao Chongyang to stand in the hanging basket and went down to the well with the second group of people.

After Zhao Chongyang followed Wu Song down to the bottom of the mine, he saw that there were several lights made of unknown materials hanging on the walls of the square mine at the bottom of the mine. The color of the surrounding mine is grayish-white, there is no layer of rock, sand and mud, but the wall in the middle of each side cave is also a symbiotic rock layer generated by minerals such as natural salt and sodium carbonate, which is much stronger than ordinary coal seams. Therefore, there is no need to support the compartment wood in the side holes.

All kinds of tools for mining are well prepared, steel drills, hammers, shovels, dustpans, spades, hammers, steel chisels, and trolleys. There are also countless hard hats made of lightweight alloys. Zhao Chongyang also asked Bao Daoyi to order thousands of rattan hats for local villagers. Zhao Chongyang saw that there were many hard hats here that were not needed for the time being, so he thought about putting them into the space and distributing them to the soldiers of the special training camp, which were much lighter than helmets.

Due to the high wages of the workers who dig the alkali mines, they pay five yuan a month, two shifts a day, the morning shift starts at 7 o'clock in the morning and works until 1 o'clock at noon, and the evening shift works from 1 o'clock in the morning to 7 o'clock in the evening, working only six hours a day, which is four hours less than the workers in other mines, and the monthly salary of the workers is two and a half times that of those miners. Therefore, as soon as the workers went to the mine, they kept working, for fear that the management would not be satisfied and ban them. No, it only takes an hour, and there are thousands of catties of natural soda ash in the hanging basket, and at this rate, it is no problem for the two mines to produce 100,000 catties of trona per day.