?The south bank of the Yangtze River, Daye, Wuchang County, Ezhou, Zhou State, countless miners were busy in the mine. They walked out of the tunnel with baskets of iron ore, fell into the cargo compartment of the four-wheeled carriage, and then transported to the foot of the mountain.

The lively situation at the foot of the mountain is not as good as the mountain. Several iron smelting furnaces are emitting thick smoke and bright iron flows out. The craftsmen divide the work and cooperate to deal with it. Several iron smelting furnaces are preparing materials to open the furnace.

All blowers used in iron smelting furnaces are water discharges, that is, hydraulic blowers, which save a lot of manpower. The preheated wind is blown into the furnace, which can make the furnace fire burn more vigorously.

The sound of dinging irons came from the yard near the iron smelting furnace. After carefully designed hydraulic forging hammers, they were forging red iron blocks. The blacksmiths with horizontal flesh clamped the iron blocks with iron pliers and beat them into the desired shape.

Water drainage, air preheating and hydraulic forging hammer were the first processes to be put into use by Bazhou military weapon supervisors at that time. After years of exploration, it has been improved, so it is easy to promote it in Daye Supervisory.

Although the spring is chilly, the iron farm is filled with heat waves, and many people sweat profusely, most of them are shirtless. Occasionally, water trucks shuttle through them to transport cool water to quench their thirst for the craftsmen and servants.

"The water is salty, add salt?"

"That's right, the craftsmen and miners sweat a lot, and drinking water alone is not enough. Without salt, there is no strength, and without strength, this progress will be affected."

"How many craftsmen are there in the iron farm now?"

"There are more than a thousand chores, and there are more than two thousand miners in the mine."

Huangzhou General Manager Yu Wenwen is now leading Xiangzhou General Manager Yu Wenming to inspect the Daye Iron Supervision Field. Ezhou Governor Zhou Fashang accompanied him, and another person was accompanied by: Daye Supervisor Di Shiwen.

The Zhou State took Yingzhou. Because there was also a Yingzhou under the jurisdiction of Xiangzhou in Shannan, the Xinde Yingzhou was renamed "Ezhou". The prefecture was still in Xiakou, and the navy led the navy to break into Xiakou Shuizhai.

Zhou Fashang, who made great contributions to the Zhou army's capture of Xiakou, was appointed as the governor of Ezhou.

This large mine south of Wuchang County, Ezhou has been mined since ancient times, iron ore and copper ore smelting, but the scale has not been large. More than a year ago, after the Zhou State took over Yingzhou, Chen State, it mobilized manpower and material resources to develop with all its strength, and the scale of the mine became larger and larger.

Daxing Luye is the origin of Huangzhou General Manager Yuwen Wen named "Daye" here. Yu Wenming deeply agrees with this. Isn't such a busy mine the "Daxing Luye"?

In order to let Daye Supervisor open the furnace as soon as possible, Shannan Prefectures and County mobilized a large number of craftsmen to gather here, and Yu Wen Wen personally took charge of the coordination. The small mine in Chen State's hands in the past became a giant in just one year.

The iron farm was too hot, and the group was already sweating profusely after walking around. However, as officials, they could not be shirtless. So Yuwen Wen and others turned to the military equipment workshop to visit under the persuasion of the escort.

Armors, knives, spears, arrowheads, and related leather ropes, feathers and other raw materials are piled everywhere, but although there are many, they are neatly arranged, and there are many water tanks in the corners of the wall, so that flames can be extinguished with water in time.

There were also people coming and going in the military weapon workshop. The craftsmen were busy making weapons. Some officials counted the finished products and transported them into the warehouse. There were noisy people on the scene and any noise.

"Yuwen Xiangzhou, Yuwen Huangzhou, Zhou Envoy, the bronze yard is right in front of you, please!"

As always, Di Shiwen was unkind. As soon as the two Yuwen general managers walked out of the workshop, they led the way to the copper yard. There were also heat waves, and the copper ore mined was extracted from the furnace here.

Then, combined with lead and tin, copper coins were made by stacking casting method through the coin pattern and transported to various parts of Shannan.

Yu Wenming took out a newly cast copper coin from the coin box, looked carefully, and then threw it back with satisfaction. The copper coin collided and made a pleasant sound, and scenes appeared in everyone's eyes.

The soldiers' military pay, white food, piled up into mountains of cloth, and money, these are not problems.

Shannan Prefecture County has never had any large iron ore ore ore. Now that Huangzhou General Manager Yuwen Wen discovered such a treasure mountain, Daxingtai naturally focused on its full efforts to mine it.

Daye is located in the boundary of Ezhou and is under the jurisdiction of the governor of Ezhou. However, given its important position, the Huangzhou General Administration sent direct troops to garrison, while the operation of Daye Supervision is supervised by Daxingtai.

When making iron tools in the iron field, whether it is weapons or agricultural tools, farming and fighting will be twice the result with half the effort, but there is only one thing that comes out of the copper field: copper coins. The Daxingtai cannot help but ignore it, so the candidates for the Daye Supervision and Daxing Supervision are very important.

Therefore, the selfless and unkind and unkind, the best candidate became the best candidate.

Yuwen Wen privately complained that Di Shiwen was the "face paralyzed emperor". This man always had a stern face in the copper field and was patrolling the iron field. If anyone dared to engage in illegitimate fraud and embezzle copper materials, iron materials, etc., he would have to take off a layer of skin even if he didn't die.

After walking around the copper yard, several of them were sweating profusely. They didn't care about Guan Wei's disgrace. They drank salt and boiled water to quench their thirst. Then they rushed to the material yard to see the charcoal and coke used for copper and iron smelting.

“What is coke?”

"Just like charcoal is obtained from the smoldering of wood, coke is obtained from the smoldering of charcoal and used as firewood. The fire is more prosperous than charcoal."

"Carbonite seems to be able to burn, why bother with such an extra effort?"

"If the iron is smelted directly with carbon, the iron material obtained is very brittle, and the coke obtained after smoldering will be much better for iron smelting."

"Better? Could it be that coke iron smelting also has hidden dangers?"

"It is true that if the coke is not burned well, the iron refined is also very crisp. The craftsmen are still thinking about how to make the right coke, so Dayejian mainly uses charcoal."

Di Shiwen explained that in fact, Yu Wenwen taught him at the beginning, but now only Yu Wenming is present and needs to listen to the explanation.

"I believe that whether it is an iron smelting furnace or a copper smelting furnace, it must be drained with water, and the forging hammer is also driven by hydraulic power. It seems that there are only lakes near Daye. As the saying goes, "Water flows to a low place," how did this water improve?"

"Xiangzhou and Daye monitors use various canals, windmills and other equipment to divert water. There are also mountain springs on the surrounding mountains, which is a long story."

"Well, I will ask casually." Yu Wenming waved his hand. He really asked casually. This time he came to Daye to see with his own eyes the strength of Daye Supervision and to make plans for the next step.

If you invest a lot of manpower and material resources, you will have corresponding returns. Now it seems that the return is much greater than expected.

There are many wastelands in the Han Mian area. If they can be reclaimed, they will definitely be fertile land after several years. However, these places are often affected by floods. If you want to open up land and farm, you have to build water conservancy, and you have to mow grass and plow the land after the river embankment. With iron tools, you will be like a tiger.

If the Xiangzhou general manager Yu Wenming wants to organize the people to open up land under his rule, he must first see if the iron farm can provide enough tools. It is of great importance, so he couldn't help but make an on-site inspection in person.

On the other hand, he also replaced the big businessman Yuwen Liang and went to Daye to check the actual situation. It can be said that today's Daye Supervision is an equally important place except for grain production.

"Since it comes to charcoal, where does this charcoal come from?"

"There is also a carbohydrate production near Daye, which just replaces some of the charcoal."

"In this way, the people in Daye and the surrounding areas..."

This is the matter of Zhou Fashangfen, the governor of Ezhou. He immediately replied: "Xiangzhou, Daye City, together with Daye Superintendent and the garrison's family, now the number of households exceeds 5,000."
Chapter completed!