This place is indeed dangerous. The mountain is almost 45 degrees high, and it faces a valley. No matter you are coming from the east or the west, you need to attack Guancheng from above on narrow mountain roads and steep slopes.

However, there has been no war for a hundred years, and today Niangziguan has become a place with beautiful mountains and rivers and pleasant scenery.

The most common ones here are hanging springs, also known as waterfalls. The largest one hangs for hundreds of feet, flowing down the cliff like beads and scattered jade pouring down to the valley bottom. Pedestrians passing here have to carry umbrellas and wear tarpaulins.

Chengtianjun is a small military town. Nowadays, its military use has been downplayed and its use as a transportation node has become more prominent. It has gradually turned into a beautiful town with flowing water in every house and springs everywhere.

The local people use real tap water, and their houses are built with stones from the mountains. The stream flows around their yards, and the water flow is not small, which is quite convenient.

This is also a grain processing place. On the steep mountain wall, people used the site of the former Tang Dynasty military stone mill to install a new type of stone mill. There was no need to leave the house to process grain, and the hard work of pushing and turning was eliminated.

People from all over the surrounding villages come to the village with their animals to grind rice and flour. During their spare time in farming, the stone mills will not be idle. People here will peel off the bark of cypress, pine and other branches and grind them into "fragrant powder"

, made into rough incense sticks, and transported to the mountains for sale.

It was a small military town, and because of the existence of stone mills and commerce, Su You felt that the people here lived a quite leisurely life.

The chirping of birds, the gurgling of springs, and the grinding of stones all made Su You very interesting.

Many of the stone grinding edges are pavilions, which are also places for villagers to take a rest while waiting for their noodles to be grinded.

The villagers were quite surprised when they saw the cavalry team coming. The horses in this team were really good. They looked like top-notch official horses. Each horse was dragging two large bags behind them. They must have been horse materials. Other than that,

Besides, I didn’t bring any cargo.

This situation is really rare, because the Song Dynasty did not prohibit officials from doing business. Many officials served in various places and had to bring the local specialties from the government offices to sell along the way. Because they were exempted from business taxes, the profits were actually considerable.

We can only rest here tonight, Su You is very happy, because the water here must be good for making tea.

There are many houses in the military village. In the past, it could accommodate tens of thousands of garrison troops. Now that the army has been replaced, there is only one camp here. The captain leads 300 people and patrols the mountain roads to maintain public order on weekdays.

Su You had a decent meal of noodles here. In order to live up to the bad reputation, he also bought two chickens and made a portion of chicken soup noodles and a portion of chicken mixed noodles with his own hands, as a treat.

After leaving Niangziguan, even if you leave the Zhending Mansion, there are two roads, divided into the northern route and the southern route, both of which are almost eighty miles in length. No matter which one you choose, you will eventually arrive at a small army town to pacify the Dingjun.

Song Yongchen chose the Mianman River Valley, which was relatively easy to walk. Along the river, there were towering ancient trees all the way.

After crossing countless creeks and bridges and walking for a full day, the team arrived at a small plain in the hinterland of the Taihang Mountains, where the Pingding Army arrived.

The Pingding Army had mountains, water, land and forests, and the local people relied on the mountains and water to eat and drink. Also because after the military was withdrawn, the garrison moved away, and the population pressure dropped sharply, making life better than before.

The key is that there is coal, iron, and lime here. There used to be a lot of craftsmen in the town who secretly made some iron farm tools. They were so respectful that the local military turned a blind eye.

However, the iron ore here has a relatively high sulfur content and the quality of the iron is not good.

When Shen Kuo went to Zhending to visit Suyou from this road, he saw this situation and gave some advice to the craftsmen. He asked them to use the locally abundant bauxite to make refractory and insulating bricks using the semi-dry method, and raised the furnace temperature.

When making iron, limestone and dolomite, which are also abundant in the local area, are added and the slagging principle is used to remove excess sulfur from the molten iron.

Then the furnace gas is introduced into the lime water, and gypsum can also be produced.

Although Pingding is extremely rich in iron ore, Shen Kuo did not like this place because of its sulfur content and transportation problems. However, Shen Kuo's casual guidance made Pingding's steel production and quality qualitatively improve.

There is also an extra specialty, gypsum.

This directly led to a strange phenomenon. The ironware of the Pingding Army was extremely cheap. Every household owned iron pots, kitchen knives, hoes, sickles, hatchets... and had much more ironware than those outside the mountains.

The iron tool is too heavy, but it is a great boon to the caravans traveling on Jingxing Road.

Therefore, caravans passing by would like to stop here and replace their shoe shoes.

The presence of horse caravans brought prosperity to restaurants and hotels. This small military state deep in the Taihang Mountains actually became prosperous because of horseshoes.

Shen Kuo, an old boy, is a fan of officials, but he is not as clever as Cai Jing. He cannot make flattery appear natural and cannot give gifts in an elegant way.

He would only play the low-level way of rushing to the edge of the territory to greet the Shangguan, and then sending gifts to the edge of the territory.

So when Su You arrived at the Pingding Army, Shen Kuo was already waiting here.

A man like Shen Kuo, who had served as three envoys, minister of the Ministry of Industry, and had served as an envoy on several routes with a bachelor's degree, was already a great figure in the eyes of the Pingding Army commanders.

It took three days to get from Taiyuan Prefecture to the Pingding Army by horseback. Zhijun felt strange when he saw Shen Kuo coming here to wait for someone.

When I inquired again, it was Situ who wanted to inspect Taiyuan Mansion, and he was so frightened that he didn't even dare to show his face.

Shen Kuo was very popular in the Pingding Army because he directly brought a better life to the people here. Shen Kuo was not polite. He found the largest iron smelter and brought soya oil to make people happy.

The host continued cautiously, but when Su You chatted with him for a few words, Lao Guanguan was happy: "So Situ also started in our industry?"

Isn't it right? Su Youzhong's first assignment after becoming a Jinshi was the case of Sansizhou. The first thing he did was to modify the blast furnace to smelt refined iron.

And he is really not the kind of idle official who rolls up his sleeves and watches others work. According to Shen Qingtian, this man is the master of the blacksmiths of the Song Dynasty.

Even the semi-dry refractory bricks that we used to raise the furnace temperature were Situ's invention, thanks to Qingtian's guidance.

Su You smiled and said: "Yes, steel is the lifeblood of the Song Dynasty. I hope that the steel output of the Song Dynasty will be as high as possible. I will go to your house tomorrow to see the small blast furnace, and maybe like Shen Qingtian, I can also give you some advice.

.”

The next day, the team rested for a day at the Pingding Army. Early in the morning, Su You asked Shen Kuo and Lao Guanguan to take him with him to see the small blast furnace built by a local craftsman.

The small blast furnace is relatively simple, with a height of only three meters and a square shape. It is built on a hillside to facilitate the feeding of materials at the top and the molten iron at the bottom.

It looked similar to the one from the Erlin Department, but Su You could tell at a glance that it was a disposable stove.

So he turned to Shen Kuo and said: "Shen Qingtian's help didn't help Xi. You asked Lao Guan to do this. Isn't the cost too high?"

Shen Kuo said: "I just mentioned two ideas casually. If the technology is too deep, even a small workshop in Laoguan will not be able to do it."

"Why can't it be done?" Su You didn't believe this evil. After a detailed inspection of the blast furnace, he realized... it was really a bit troublesome.

In fact, it's not that it can't be done, but even slight changes will lead to an increase in equipment cost and technical difficulty, which is not something a small workshop can afford at this time.

However, there are not completely no solutions. For example, by modifying the bottom structure of the blast furnace, adding a steel shell and a waist water tank, the service life of the blast furnace can be extended. It can be used for at least two years, which greatly reduces the cost of furnace manufacturing.

However, in this case, management must be meticulous, and there cannot be a ceasefire. Workers must be recruited and three shifts must be implemented.

In the end, Su You drew a blueprint for Lao Guanguan. The furnace was smaller and the refractory bricks were thickened. This could ensure a higher temperature in the furnace and the amount of ironmaking at one time would be much less. However, because of the continuity, the total output in a year would be

It is much higher, and the cost is much lower than refining one furnace, destroying one and building another.

The molten iron produced has a high carbon content. According to the most primitive method of the Song Dynasty, mature iron sheets were repeatedly forged, placed in molds, and then poured with molten iron to reduce the overall carbon content and fuse them into steel after forging.

This requires a hydraulic forging machine to utilize the power of machinery.

He drew another drawing, and Su You said he would give Lao Guanjun a set of key parts such as the bearings as a reward for receiving him, and let Lao Guanjun cast and assemble the rest of the parts by himself.
Chapter completed!