"How long is it before the furnace can be opened?" Lu Chen waved at the blacksmith workshop steward on the side, originally the blacksmith workshop was mainly managed by Liu Laosan, but with the expansion of the workshop area, Liu Laosan is now managed with Du Junxuan's father Du Chengze as the principal and deputy manager, after all, Liu Laosan is illiterate, so Du Chengze helps Liu Laosan manage as the deputy manager, and now the blacksmith workshop steward is Ai Xu who was pulled up by Liu Laosan.

Seeing Lu Chen waving at him, Ai Xu hurriedly trotted over, "The villain has seen Your Majesty!" Master Hou! Ai Xu hurriedly knelt down to greet Li Yuan and Lu Chen, usually Lu Chen doesn't let these people kneel, but with Li Yuan here, there is no way.

"Excuse me!" Li Yuan waved his hand, and Ai Xu replied: "Thank you for your grace" Only then did he stand up tremblingly, but Ai Xu admired his own marquis even more, and he was only given a "grounding order" by the emperor some time ago, but he actually brought the emperor to Lujiazhuang a few days later.

Don't underestimate the emperor of this era, in this feudal period, let alone a flat-headed common man like Ai Xu, even if it is some officials from afar in the imperial court, he may not be able to see the emperor in his life.

Ai Xu felt that he was able to meet the current founding emperor at such a close distance, because his ancestral tomb was smoking, and he even had an urge to worship his ancestors, and he talked about this matter with his ancestors.

"Ai Xu, how long will it take for this furnace of pig iron to be opened?" Lu Chen looked at Ai Xu with a dark face and asked, when Ai Xu became a steward, Liu Laosan mentioned to Lu Chen, after all, the ironworks are quite important workshops, if the person who took over was not loyal, Lu Chen would never hand over the ironworks to the other party to manage.

And Ai Xu is Liu Laosan and Du Chengze reviewed together for a long time, and even consulted Du Yanliang's opinion before determining the candidate, Ai Xu is thirty-two years old, born in a blacksmith household, his wife died in childbirth when he gave birth to his son, Ai Xu pulled his son Ai Tao alone, when Lu Chen set up the ironworks, this Ai Xu was the first batch to come in to work.

"Back to Master Hou's words!" Ai Xu said and took out a bamboo slip he was carrying, then opened it and looked at it, and at the same time looked at the hourglass on the side, this hourglass was also made by Lu Chen, in fact, it was not made by Lu Chen, but taken out in the base.

With Ai Xu's eyes, Li Yuan also discovered the existence of the hourglass, because this hourglass is not small, and it is more than a foot high, but as soon as he entered the ironworks, Li Yuan's eyes were attracted by the blast furnace on the side, and he ignored the hourglass placed on the side.

At this time, when I saw it, I was immediately surprised, the hourglass that Lu Chen made was made of glass, with square gilt bases at both ends, and four gilt pillars connected to the two bases, and the gilt base and pillars were carved with slender spiral patterns, shining golden in the sun, and the white fine sand in the glass hourglass was constantly flowing.

"This is Ruri?" Li Yuan pointed to the hourglass with some surprise and asked, you must know that most of the glaze in this era was brought by Hu Shang from Dashi, so the fingernail-sized glaze is very valuable, and the transparency and purity are not as good as the effect of Lu Chen's hourglass, Li Yuan has never seen such a transparent glaze, how can he not be surprised, just this hourglass can be exchanged for a three-entry mansion in Chang'an City.

"Uh..."Seeing Li Yuan's surprised expression, Lu Chen couldn't laugh out loud, "It's just a glass product, is there such a fuss?" Lu Chen scolded in his heart, "Look at your appearance that you haven't seen the world!" Return the emperor! Of course, Lu Chen didn't dare to say this.

But Lu Chen immediately came to his senses, now it's the Tang Dynasty, this thing is called "glass", and it's also the kind of imported goods, everyone takes this thing as a treasure, Lu Chen suddenly felt that he should make glass, glass is a good thing, and you can use this thing to make money, "glass", it's priceless!

"Back to Your Majesty! This thing is indeed glass! It was given by the minister's master to the minister for timekeeping! Lu Chen finally suppressed his desire to laugh, and replied respectfully to Li Yuan.

"Timekeeping?" Li Yuan looked at the fine sand in the hourglass, frowned slightly, and thought about it.

"Yes! Did Your Majesty see the flowing grains of sand? Lu Chen pointed to the grains of sand that were flowing downward, at this time, there was not much white sand left in the upper half of the hourglass, Li Yuan nodded, "The time from this half to the other half is exactly an hour!" And one upside down and one turn is also the time to be able to smelt a furnace of pig iron! Lu Chen said and pointed to the ironsmiths who were getting dressed on the other side, at this time these craftsmen had already put on the somewhat heavy coats, and as these craftsmen put on their coats, a smell of burnt spread out from those clothes, and these officials who entered the ironworks couldn't help but take out silk handkerchiefs to cover their mouths and noses after smelling this smell, Li Yuan was of course no exception.

"What furnace is this?" Lu Chen turned his head to look at Ai Xu and asked, Ai Xu just took out the bamboo slip just now to report the output, but he didn't expect it to be interrupted because Li Yuan was attracted by the hourglass.

"Back to the Hou Ye, this is the third furnace today, this furnace is finished, so far it has been released today..."Ai Xu said and began to look at the number of furnaces recorded on the bamboo slip and began to calculate the output, after each furnace came out, Ai Xu had to calculate the output, this furnace was just about to come out, Ai Xu had not yet calculated it.

Looking at Ai Xu's appearance of calculating the output there, Lu Chen couldn't help but shake his head, "Our Zhuangzi can produce 5,000 catties of iron in one furnace now, and isn't it 15,000 catties in three furnaces?" Lu Chen directly knocked Ai Xu's head with a folding fan, and Ai Xu smiled at Lu Chen.

"Just know the giggle! Let you follow Du Lao to learn literacy and arithmetic, and you learned such a little thing? Lu Chen glared at Ai Xu directly, and Ai Xu shrank his neck.

"Master Hou, some of the books you gave me didn't understand Old Lady Du, so we won't be able to understand them even more!" Ai Xu said with some grievances from Ai Ai.

"Hey!" Lu Chen looked at Ai Xu's expression and shook his head, it's not that Lu Chen hates iron and steel, it's just that he has too many things to be busy with now, and now the children's school is still under construction, to say that this thing still needs to be systematically educated, during this period of time, Lu Chen is busy with the planning in the Zhuangzi during the day, and at night he is giving lessons to his own neighbors led by Du Yanliang.

Damn it, Lu Chen has been teaching Chinese pinyin and Arabic numerals in the first grade of primary school for a while, mainly because most of these people are literate, Lu Chen was expecting these literate people to be easy to teach, but Lu Chen found out that he was wrong, this teaching is really not as good as teaching those who are not literate from scratch.

"Lu Aiqing, how much iron do you say this furnace can produce?" Li Yuan was directly shocked by the figures reported by Lu Chen, good guy, Lu Chen's iron production on this day is almost catching up with the amount of other ironworks for half a month.

"You can produce up to 20,000 catties a day!" Lu Chen responded to Li Yuan very casually, "After all, there are up to four hours of work a day here, and after a long time, these craftsmen can't stand it!" "For a reasonable work system, Lu Chen is strictly required to implement, who dares to let these craftsmen work overtime privately, Lu Chen can definitely clean up the workshop steward, don't want it, serious will be driven out of Lujiazhuang, now these farmers in Lujiazhuang treat Lu Chen as a god, automatically Lu Chen came, and their food and accommodation have changed a lot.

Lu Chen will occasionally get angry, but these Zhuang and Weiwei soldiers will not complain about Lu Chen, why did the Hou Ye target me again, but will directly reflect on whether he did not do a good job, which made his own Hou Ye angry, it is said that Zhao Si of the cement mill some time ago, because he was lazy for a quarter of an hour when he went to work, Lu Chen didn't say anything, Zhao Si was directly carried by his mother Sun Auntie, chased from the east of Zhuangzi to the west of Zhuangzi, and finally came to the Hou Mansion with his ears to kneel down and apologize to Lu Chen, directly gave Lu Chen a cry and laugh.

In fact, the reason why Zhao Si secretly rested for that quarter of an hour was because the old lady suddenly wanted to eat fish the day before, this stupid child ran to the river of Zhuangzi in the middle of the night to touch the fish for the old lady, and when he went to work the next day, he dozed off for a quarter of an hour, Lu Chen naturally knew the cause and effect, so he did not deliberately punish Zhao Si, but just told Zhao Si that if there was such a thing in the future, he could tell himself in advance that there were fish in the Hou Mansion, and he ran to the river in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter to touch the fish.

And this stupid boy didn't tell his mother about it, he was beaten by his mother with a rolling pin, Lu Chen told Aunt Sun about the cause and effect of this beforehand, Aunt Sun was in tears, and Lu Chen also rewarded this mother with a handful of leeks, which moved the two of them indispensably.

"If it were twelve hours, wouldn't it be more?" Li Yuan looked at Lu Chen and asked, no wonder Li Yuan would ask this, after all, there was no "eight-hour work system" in this period, and many tenant servants of the family were adhering to the idea of "as long as you don't die, you will die".

"Your Majesty, if someone changes shifts, it is natural that the furnace can be turned on all the time, but the total population of this Lujiazhuang is so much, and it is enough to be self-sufficient! Moreover, working at such high temperatures for a long time, it is easy for people to become dehydrated! Lu Chen explained to Li Yuan with a smile, "Moreover, this is only a small blast furnace, if it is a larger blast furnace, a furnace can produce tens of thousands of catties or even hundreds of thousands of catties of molten iron for four to six hours!" Of course, the premise is that there is enough iron ore! As Lu Chen spoke, he looked at Zheng Shanguo who was standing aside, and at this time, Zheng Shanguo was looking at the craftsmen who were busy in front of the blast furnace with a pale face.