After a day and a night of travel, in the early morning of the next day, the train had entered Xiazhou, and it was very close to the city of Zhisuozhou in Xiazhou.

However, there is definitely not only one Xiazhou Yamen in Xiazhou City, but also many prefecture-level offices in Shuofang and Yunzhong, but the Xiazhou Yamen is the most core one, and the rest of the administrative offices are managed by the regimes of the northern ethnic minorities, that is, the imperial court management institutions set up with the annexation of the northern nomads.

Generally speaking, the yamen of various places should be located in the nearest regional center, but in the huge area north of Xiazhou, the natural conditions are too bad, and the nomadic population is not too much, and if you set up a state and county nearby, it will take too many resources, and you need to build city walls and government offices, and the nomadic people do not like to settle, so if you set up such a management city, there will be no population in it, so that it will not be in vain to spend such a big price, so, These annexed areas did not build cities on the spot, but chose the yamen of multiple prefectures and counties and placed them in the same city to save administrative resources.

This situation is only applicable to the nomads in the north, in the populous interior, it is simply unimaginable to set up the government of one state in the seat of another state, just like the Tang Empire set the capital on the island of Malacca, how can this be, it is absolutely impossible.

Not only did Xiazhou City assume the governance of many prefectures and counties, but in the north, northwest, and northeast fringe areas, many new prefectures and counties did not have their own independent governance cities, and all set up the yamen in the existing nearby cities, or a number of new prefectures and counties jointly built a city as the seat of governance of these states.

This unique phenomenon is the ruling strategy of the Tang Empire, which was formulated in order to quickly adapt to territorial expansion, among them, there is also the meaning of taking care of the surrounding subordinate people, after all, many areas that are set up as states and counties are also larger, and the population and economic scale cannot reach the minimum standards of states and counties, and even, even the standards of the county level cannot be reached, but in order to take care of these subordinate forces, they often set up states and counties, and give people with status in this area a state and county-level official position. As a result, they felt that they were valued by the Tang Empire, and then they were more willing to follow the Tang Dynasty and be the people of the Tang Dynasty.

Because these states and counties have vast land but lack sufficient population, therefore, under the state and county, there are no county-level units, but small tribes, that is, nomadic communities, a group of hundreds of people gathered together, even if it is a small tribe, in order to safeguard the interests of these small tribes, the local Haoqiang, who was canonized as state and county officials, will enter the designated city to set up a yamen, where to get in touch with the Tang court, what the tribe needs, what needs to communicate, they will coordinate, In this way, we can ensure that the common people of our nationality can live a normal life and their interests can be effectively protected.

And because there are not many people to manage, these special state and county yamen are generally not many, which is very different from the official state and county of Datang.

Even within the Tang Dynasty, there are great differences between different states and counties, Chang'an County and Wannian County in Chang'an City are more powerful than most of the states and counties in the country, whether it is economic strength or population strength, they can kill most of the states and counties in the country in seconds, after all, the counties in the capital belong to Jing County, and the strength is the strongest, and it is not difficult to kill ten ordinary states and counties in seconds.

The railroad track extending from the capital Chang'an to the north, after passing through Xiazhou, turns due west, because it is not far north of the vast desert, there is really no need to open to traffic, and there are many counties along the way due west, as well as Yanzhou City, the city of Yanzhou, the final destination is the station of Shuofang Jiedu envoy, Lingwu City of Lingzhou, and near Lingwu City in Lingzhou, there are many cities, which are relatively prosperous here, the reason is that this is the upper reaches of the Yellow River, these cities are arranged along the Yellow River, With abundant water, the city is naturally easy to form.

In addition, although this area of Lingzhou is in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the surface of this section of the Yellow River is relatively wide, much wider than some of the Yellow River, and this is very conducive to agricultural irrigation, and it is impossible to prosper.

Li An will not go to Lingwu this time, and will go back after playing in Xiazhou, which is also agreed with the emperor, and he can't easily change his itinerary.

"Li Shilang, it's less than fifteen miles away from Xiazhou City, and in front of us is the coal mine we are going to."

One of the subordinates ran in to report.

Li An saw the coal mine in the distance, and he could see the coal gangue piled up very high from a long distance, which could be regarded as a very large coal mine.

"Stop the car! Let's go to the coal mine now. ”

Li An opened his mouth and ordered.

Because the best means of communication at present cannot be faster than the train, and there is no telegraph in Xiazhou City, it is impossible for the officials of Xiazhou City to know the news of Li An's trip to Xiazhou City in advance, so there will be no one waiting to greet them, so there is no need to rush to Xiazhou City, and it is good to go to the coal mine where the incident occurred first.

After the vehicle was parked, Li An got off with a group of people, and there was not much distance from the coal mine to Xiazhou City, so after getting off the car, Li An did not plan to get on the car again, and directly let the vehicle go to the station of Xiazhou City, of course, the necessary materials and horse trolleys were unloaded, so that it was more convenient to go to Xiazhou City later, and there was no need to run, although it was only a dozen miles away, it was tiring enough to run with legs.

In order to facilitate transportation, there is a newly built road from the railway to the coal mine, which is still very good, it is a hard road, even if it rains, there will be no problem.

Haoqiang, who opened the mine, was also counting on this coal mine to make himself rich, but unexpectedly something happened, the coal produced by the coal mine contains too much sulfur, which led to a lot of people who use this coal, and there was a poisoning accident, which brought a bad impact on this Haoqiang, which directly led to a sharp drop in the price of this coal, and even, it fell below the cost price, and more serious is that someone claims, and the person who was smoked to death will naturally ask the coal mine for an explanation, if you can't give a satisfactory statement, others will not easily forget it.

Such a serious incident even attracted the attention of the imperial court, so much so that Li An was able to learn about this matter and used it as an excuse to come to Xiazhou.

It is the most normal thing for coal mines to contain sulfur, but under normal circumstances, as long as the content is not very high, it is not a big deal, but if the sulfur content of coal mines is too high, it is more troublesome, which can easily cause poisoning incidents.

However, there is also a good solution to the high sulfur content, that is, to refine the sulfur elements in these coals, so that perhaps the coal mine can still get two products, and the price of the by-product sulfur is much higher than the price of coal.

Even in later generations when the technology was very mature, the price of sulfur was two or three times higher than that per day, but in the era of backward technology in Datang, the price of sulfur could easily exceed ten times that of coal, or even hundreds of times.

After all, general coal only needs to be dug up with tools, and there are relatively few sulfur mines, and there are not many sulfur mines dug directly, and the cost is relatively high when extracting with technology, which is the main reason for the high price of sulfur.

There is also a great demand for sulfur, in the past, it was mainly alchemy that needed sulfur, and after Li An invented black powder, sulfur became one of the main materials for making artillery shells, and there are more and more firearms troops in Datang, which is definitely not a small amount in demand for sulfur, and under the premise of limited production, the price will naturally remain high.

At this moment, the coal mine is almost in a state of shutdown, because the sales volume is blocked, the price has fallen sharply, and it has become meaningless to continue mining, in order to reduce the loss, the strong owner of the coal mine has to stop mining coal, so that the loss will be smaller, but such a large coal mine has also spent a lot of money down, if you just give up, the loss is really a little unbearable.

Although the work has been suspended, there are still two people guarding the gate of the coal mine, and they are also carrying three pastoral dogs, presumably to prevent anyone from coming in and stealing things!

However, these usually fierce pastoral dogs, as soon as they saw so many soldiers coming, they were so frightened that they didn't dare to breathe out after just a few calls, and their tails were sandwiched between their legs.

"A few generals are here, what are you doing?"

The gatekeeper, looking at a few soldiers who had gone up, asked.

"I heard that the coal here will smoke people to death, and the imperial court sent someone to investigate, just the two of you, what about the rest?"

The soldier asked.

"General, no one has bought the coal here, so naturally there is no need to continue mining, the hired workers have gone back, just the two of us are guarding the door, there are still a lot of machines here, I am afraid of losing them."

The janitor replied.

As he spoke, Li An walked up, looked at the coal piled up in the yard, and walked over to take a closer look.

Gently picking up a piece of coal, Li An sniffed the smell, and then, pressing hard with his hand, wanted to see the strength and other characteristics of the coal, so as to determine what other substances were in the coal.

Through the preliminary judgment, it can be affirmed that the coal mine in front of us is a sulfur-rich coal mine, the sulfur content is not low, and it should have the value of mining, and once the qualified sulfur can be mined, then the value of the coal mine will be greater, and it can provide more wealth for the owner of the coal mine.

However, it is one thing to be able to mine, and it is another thing to have the ability to mine, for Li An, the coal mine in front of him has the value of mining sulfur as a by-product, but for the general local Haoqiang, they want to mine, but they may not have this ability, because refining sulfur from coal requires certain technology, and at the same time, it also requires a lot of machinery and equipment, and also needs to buy various necessary materials.

In short, not only need technology, but also need machines and materials, that is, it requires a lot of upfront investment, and how much benefit can be obtained, this can not be said well, the market has been in continuous change, if the market becomes better, then you can make a lot of money, and if the market becomes bad, then it is possible to lose money, and the maintenance price of the machine should also be taken into account, after these machines are bought, they are not able to produce products all the time, in case they are broken, it is difficult to find people who can repair them, Most of the talents are concentrated in the capital Chang'an, that is, they need to go to the capital to find someone to repair, which is very time-consuming.

Therefore, Li Ang is also in a dilemma, not knowing how to help this unlucky coal mine owner, in case he helps the unfortunate coal mine owner, it will be troublesome.

This time to the north, Li An brought a lot of technical personnel, they are also busy checking the situation of coal, and the inspection is more careful than Li An, after Li An's training over the years, these talents already have good technology, fully qualified for the important task of research, but they still need Li An to make a point.

After getting off the train just now, the train continued to depart, and it didn't take long to enter the station in Xiazhou City, so that the officials of Xiazhou City naturally knew the news of Li An's arrival, such an important matter, how dare they delay, after the meeting, they rode together to the coal mine, they didn't know that Li An came over is one thing, but now that they know, they can't pretend not to know, they must come over to meet them, in order to show their respect and attention.

No matter what era it is, the efficiency of officials to do things for the people is always very low, and it is very common to delay for a few months, but when officials go to see the leaders, the efficiency is not to mention how fast, almost as fast as they can, and they almost fly past.

"Li Shilang, Xiazhou Assassin Shi and other officials are here, as well as the generals of the local garrison."

One of the subordinates spoke.

Li An looked up and saw that they were indeed all big officials, although there was a distance between them, but the officials all had official uniforms, as long as they saw the official uniforms, they could know what the identity of the other party was.

In the whole of Xiazhou, there are many officials who know Li An, but Li An doesn't know them, so he knows Guo Ziyi and a few others, and from a long distance, Li An saw Guo Ziyi.

This Lao Guo is also a slippery material, how can he not actively come over to see the leader Ang Lee? Besides, he has a request for Ang Lee, he wants everything good in the R&D center, and if Ang Lee doesn't give it, he won't get anything.

However, this time, the other officials came on horseback, but Lao Guo was so awesome that he drove the motorcycle that Li An just gave him on the road, not to mention how much wind it was.

"Haha! Look at the old Guo to the cow, he actually drove a motorcycle and came, it's really windy! ”

Ang Lee said with a smile.

"General Guo is different from others, he is obviously an old man with a white beard, but he looks like a child, full of childishness."

Li Hanlu opened his mouth and said.

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