In the second year of the Great Qianyuan Xing, Shuzhong has been peaceful for a long time, because Dujiangyan has controlled floods, and the Bashu Plain has fertile land, abundant products, and a large population. Even if the road in Shuzhong is difficult to travel, caravans also come more, and there is an endless stream of merchants coming and going on the plank road, and Shuzhong is famous in the world.

The land of Bashu to the south, when the first emperor divided the king of Dian, the climate here is hot, the grass and trees are luxuriant, there are many miasma in the forest, after the king of Dian came here, after decades of governance, after defeating many barbarians and savages, he finally succeeded in gaining a foothold on the plain in this group of mountains, but he was really powerless for the mountains and forests.

The imperial court has also been expanding to the southwest in recent years, but with little success. The roads here are difficult to walk, the climate is hot, the mountains and forests are dense, and after the iron armor arrives here, it is heavy and difficult to walk, and it cannot be used at all.

Moreover, the poison insects in the mountains and forests are everywhere, often poisonous miasma, and the army enters it, and it cannot exert any power at all, and then against the southern barbarian savages who emerge in the mountains one after another, the soldiers suffer heavy casualties.

The Dian Kingdom and the Nanban have been entangled for decades, and they have not decided the winner. Even the land of Bashu was harassed by these southern barbarians. Seeing this situation, the imperial court prepared to send a large army to completely conquer the southern barbarians.

Wang Che appointed Ma Heng as the general of the expedition to the south, and transferred 50,000 troops from Jinling, Jiangzhou, and Bashu, and ordered him to attack the barbarians in the southwest.

Although the imperial court has not used a large number of swords in the southwest, but small frictions continue, Ma Heng has been in Cangwu many times to conquer the Shanyue barbarians, this time to the southwest, but also to fight in the mountains and forests, so he was ordered to be the commander.

After Ma Heng received the order, he set out from Jiangzhou, went up the river into Shu, prepared to use Chengdu as a base, gathered troops, and then went south to conquer the southwest barbarians.

After appointing Ma Heng as the general of Zhengnan, Wang Che began to prepare to inspect the world.

What happened in Guanzhong made him very uneasy about the current world, and he wanted to inspect it himself. The ministers of the DPRK and China tried to dissuade them, but they could not dissuade them at all. The power of the emperor of Daqian is very great.

Wang Che inspected the world, and naturally went out with a large army, including 3,000 forest guards and 2,000 elite cavalry.

Because of his strict training, Yu Linwei often fought on the border, and the royal family attached great importance to it, and he has always been one of the most powerful armies in Daqian, and the two thousand elite cavalry are also elite soldiers who have experienced a hundred battles.

Together with some accompanying officials and logistics personnel, the number exceeded 10,000.

The army first took the canal, first reached Daliang, and then followed the canal to the southeast, towards Xuzhou. Xuzhou is the place where the Xu State was located, when the Huai State destroyed the Han State in the Han Land to establish the iron smelting supervisor, and later after the Xu State was merged into the Huai State, the iron smelting supervisor was moved to Xuzhou.

Nowadays, Xuzhou is an important town for iron smelting, and more than half of the weapons and armor in the country are from Xuzhou Prison, which is the first in the output of iron and steel in Daqian. Huaiguo has been operating in Xuzhou for hundreds of years, and its roots are not deep.

Wang Che paraded here, and the officials in the city traveled ten miles to greet him. Xuzhou is the county of Surabaya County, with convenient water and land transportation, and it is an important town of the country, so it is natural to take a look.

"Ministers Geng Ji see Your Majesty, Your Majesty Qianqiu." The county guard Geng Ji paid a big salute to worship.

"Geng Qing, please get up!" Wang Che personally stepped forward to help him up, followed by the officials of the Xuzhou Supervisor of the Imperial Court, then the nobles and other officials, and finally some other people came forward to pay their respects.

After the visit, Wang Che entered the city together accompanied by everyone. Wang Che casually asked how much Xuzhou Supervisor produced in a year. Geng Ji said: "Xuzhou supervisor can smelt 520,000 catties of pig iron every month, and the merchants and people mostly profit from the iron smelting industry. ”

How much is 520,000 catties? In other words, it is 260 tons a month, which is more than 3,000 tons a year, and Daqian produces more than 6,000 tons of iron a year. (The author Jun checked the information of the Han Dynasty, and some information said that the Han Dynasty produced 30 million catties of iron a year, about 17,000 tons, but the Tang Dynasty only produced 5,000 tons a year, and the annual output of the Tang Dynasty was not even a fraction of that of the Han Dynasty, and the peak of the Ming Dynasty was 90,000 tons. ）

The production of 260 tons a month includes pig iron and wrought iron, and the steel needs to be further processed, and the output is very low. Much of Xuzhou's iron output was produced by private iron smelting yards, and the iron factories of the imperial court used more iron to forge steel.

Of course, there must be concealment in this, 260 tons will not be the total output of Xuzhou, and many private iron smelting yards will quietly conceal some of them to evade taxes.

The imperial court charged 20% of the tax on iron, but it could be deducted with pig iron, so there were not many people who dared to evade taxes. In particular, in order to reduce the price of agricultural tools and encourage farming, the tax rate was not high.

Wang Che stayed in Xuzhou for a few days, and specially went to inspect the Xuzhou Iron Supervisor to see how the situation of the Xuzhou Iron Supervisor was. In order to prevent the Xuzhou officials from joining forces to fool him, Wang Che deliberately asked the secret guards and embroidered clothes envoys to secretly investigate to determine the true situation of the Xuzhou Iron Smelting Prison and the living conditions of those craftsmen and ordinary people.

After some questioning, Wang Che got the final result and the answer given by the Xuzhou officials, an old blacksmith can earn fifty imperial silver coins a year. The result obtained by the Dark Guard was about forty-eight, which is not much different.

The annual income is forty-eight silver coins, which is a high salary in Daqian, and ordinary people can't earn so much money at all, the only bad thing is that the physical consumption is very large, the working environment is bad, and they need to supplement nutrition.

Because of the promotion of water conservancy projects in the imperial court, water conservancy facilities were also used in many places in the iron-smelting plant to improve work efficiency, and the output has been increasing.

Especially for forging a piece, pig iron and wrought iron need to be forged by hydraulic forging machinery to build steel weapons.

After Wang Che inspected Xuzhou, he did not find any major problems, and some minor problems were quickly corrected.

Wang Che understands the craftsmanship of armor, and now some of the armor used by Daqian is iron armor, some is a mixture of rattan armor and iron armor, and there are many kinds of inlaid iron armor.

Among them, the iron armor has fish scale armor, two crotch armor, and piercing armor, and the best defense is fish scale armor, which is only available to senior officers, and the two crotch armor is a mixture of leather armor and iron armor, and the piercing armor is better than the two crotch armor. The best actual defense is still the fish scale vine armor. The fish scale rattan armor is a layer of fish scale armor on the surface, and the inside is a rattan armor and lined with leather armor.

The process is complex, the cost is very expensive, and the output has not been high.

Wang Che did not understand technology, and after some encouragement, he rewarded some master craftsmen in Xuzhou Prison, and set up rewards and punishments for craftsmen who could improve or invent the iron-smelting process. If there is significant progress, you can be knighted and promoted, and the presiding official will also be rewarded.

For a while, the morale of the craftsmen in Xuzhou was high, and even those officials were ready to give those masters more time, so that they could improve their craftsmanship and technology, so that they could be promoted.

(End of chapter)