An hour later, the salt field at the mouth of Weishui, this is the first time Qin Shi Huang saw the sea, with the smell of seaweed blowing his beard, looking at it, the blue ocean occupies most of the field of vision, the flood surges, as if the sun, moon and stars are out of it, the first time I see this scene, I only feel that it is magnificent, and I sweep the block in the chest!

But his gaze did not linger on the surface of the sea for long, and soon, Qin Shi Huang was attracted by the salt pans on the beach, which were connected and divided like fields.

"Let's talk about it." Qin Shi Huang looked at Heifu and pointed to these salt pans: "What's going on?" ”

Heifu said: "On the orders of His Majesty, the ministers rectified the salt administration in Jiaodong, and found that the salt production in Jiaodong was not as good as half of Tian Qishi!" There are two reasons for this. ”

He began to point out those problems one by one: "First, the attack of the pirates made the seashore restless, and the salt works craftsmen were scattered, and the scale was not as large as before. ”

"The second is that the Qi people have been boiling the sea to make salt for nearly a thousand years, which has exhausted the coastal firewood, and they need to transport firewood from farther hills, which is extremely costly......"

Heifu is right, the sea salt in these years is basically obtained by decoction, and it is said that the person who first invented this matter is called "Susha", which is a Laiyi monarch.

As far as the black man brain supplemented, Su Sha should be a foodie, when cooking clams in a clay pot on the beach, he accidentally boiled the water dry, but at the bottom of the pot, he got a layer of crystalline sea salt, reached out and tasted it, and since then he has opened the door to the new world, and the locals worship him as the "salt sect" and become the supreme god of the salty party.

Heifu still remembers the first time he came to the seaside salt field a few months ago after quelling the rebellion of the Tian clan in Yeyi: there was a ditch that brought the tidal seawater into the large pond dug up, and the subordinate concubines carried wooden barrels and carried buckets of seawater to the frying and brine stove room, which contained two rows of buried stoves, on which were set up with clay pots, and people were constantly bringing firewood, burning the fire day and night, and the whole seaside was billowing with smoke......

The method is similar to boiling sugar, first boiling high-concentration brine in a large kettle, then transferring it to a small kettle, and finally getting a white hemisphere, which is the fried pan salt, and then crushing and breaking it up to become bulk sea salt.

The golden time to boil salt is from October to January every year, this period is the agricultural slack, and almost all the people on the seashore will be mobilized to cut down and carry water, boil the sea for salt, and in three months, you can get 36,000 bells of salt!

This figure has tripled by the time it arrives in Tianqi, with an annual output of 100,000 bells, and the output of Jiaodong is about 50,000, but the price is getting more and more expensive, because there is too much wood consumed.

Heifu continued: "Salt is an official business, and after removing the capital, it is heavily taxed, so the price of the official salt produced is as expensive as molasses!" ”

The brown sugar in Nanjun is still considered a luxury today, which is a metaphor that shows the price of sea salt. Of course, the reason why it is so expensive is that the heavy salt tax of the imperial court has to be blamed, and in the same way, the price of private salt is one-third or even one-fifth of that of official salt, and the common people are not stupid, they must rather buy private salt secretly.

The cost is increasing day by day, and the sales are also being squeezed by private salt, and the expansion and reproduction of Jiaodong official salt has naturally become empty talk, which is also the reason why the official salt production in Jiaodong is becoming more and more sluggish.

Qin Shi Huang's head, Heifu's analysis hit the nail on the head, not only Jiaodong, but also the rest of the coastal counties, more or less have such a problem, the Qin Dynasty's salt and iron official camp system, in these places hit a head.

There are two solutions given by Heifu, one is to increase the crackdown on pirates and illegal salt; The second is to reduce the cost of official salt, so that its price can be slightly lowered, so that it can be profitable.

"So the minister thought of the method of making salt in Huamachi in Beidi County, which did not need to be decocted, and was directly dried by the sun and wind......"

In Hef's imagination, salt is dissolved in water, and when the sea water dries, doesn't it precipitate layers of salt? This is the salt drying method widely used in later generations.

But it's easier said than done, and the ancients were not fools, so how could they not use the simple and easy method of drying salt, but use the boiling salt method that boils salt for 1 minute and consumes about 400 catties of firewood?

After conducting a field trip and asking the craftsmen, Heifu learned that the sea salt was boiled, which was really a last resort. The salinity of the seawater is far inferior to the brine of Anyi Salt Pond and Huama Pond, and it takes too long to dry the salt, and the solar intensity is low in the winter when the farming is fallow and cannot be implemented.

After inquiring, he found that in fact, some salt farms in Jiaodong, because of the increasingly tight timber by the sea, have been half-dried and half-cooked: following the example of Bashu's well salt, the brine is stored and dried in autumn to increase the concentration, and then decoction is carried out in winter, so as to reduce fuel and reduce costs.

But to count on the sun the whole time? The weather on the seaside is unpredictable, and perhaps just when the brine is thick and the work is about to be completed, there is a sudden rain in the sky, so it will be wasted.

Heifu needed to find the most effective and fastest way to create the salt drying method, and he didn't know anything about it because he didn't learn science and engineering in his previous life. So he put a notice to deceive the Fang Shi who specializes in studying the changes of yin and yang, dealing with dansha and other things every day, purifying dew, refining pills, and conducting physical and chemical experiments. But most of them were lifted to the waterfront and let them figure out a way with the craftsmen.

The scholars were dumbfounded, they wanted to ask for the emperor's "way of immortality", but now they were in the company of lowly craftsmen and vassals, dealing with sea cement and sand all day long, of course they were unhappy, but as several protesters were detained by Heifu for disobeying orders, they could only do things honestly.

The three stinkers competed against Zhuge Liang, and after a few months of study, the alchemists and craftsmen really came up with a good solution!

"Your Majesty, please go this way."

Heifu led the way, leading Qin Shi Huang deep into the salt pans by the sea, and the first of them were the potholes, but they were not used to dry salt, but to make mud......

These pits dug on the beach were now filled with seawater left over from the last high tide, and a group of courtiers and concubines stood barefoot in the fields, raking the ground with toothed wooden rakes, mixing the sea water with the sediment, turning it into a cemented lump under the sun, and then sending it to the rear piece by piece.

"This is the first step in salt production. ”

The ministers didn't know why, because it seemed that those black mud lumps had anything to do with the salt of the white flowers.

Hefu then led them to several parallel ditches, and pointed: "This was built by Jiang Qi for hundreds of years, in order to take advantage of the tides and make the sea water flow through the ditches into the reservoir, so that it is convenient to get water for cooking. ”

The group walked down the ditch to the edge of a huge pond of ponds, where the water was divided into shallow salt ponds, where the water level dropped slightly after several days of sun exposure.

"This is the second step in salt production."

On the edge of each salt pond, there is an animal-powered waterwheel, and the blindfolded donkey is constantly turning in circles, driving the waterwheel to continuously extract the seawater in the pond and pass it to the next station: the filter tank.

The shape of the filter is similar to that of a terraced rice field, and each layer of water outlet is equipped with several layers of bamboo mats, which are carried by fixed bamboo baskets, bamboo chips and thatch, and a hard mud board containing a lot of salt is placed in the middle. After the seawater drawn from the reservoir enters the filter, it flows from high to low, and before entering the next layer, it is filtered through the water level difference, and then reciprocated one after another, until it is filtered five or six times before stopping, and the whole time is as short as one day and as long as two days.

Hefu said that the process is repetitive and long, but after one to two days of filtration, a higher concentration of brine can be obtained in the lowest filter! You know, if you only rely on wind and sun, this process will take more than ten days!

"Wait, Da Shangzao said that this sea water, after being filtered a few times, is getting saltier and saltier?"

The more the accompanying five masters and children listened, the more confused they became, which was contrary to the common sense he knew, Qin Zidi was not allowed to belong to the family unless he was meritorious, although Ziying was the son of Chang'an Jun Chengji, but his father was treason in his early years, and Ziying's background was actually very embarrassing, and he also made some contributions in the army, so he was promoted to the five doctors. He used to drink raw water from his soldiers, but he liked to strain it through a burlap cloth to make it look clearer.

Ziying knew that the more turbid the water, the clearer it would be after filtration, and in his mind, the taste should be lighter. Why is it that in this filter, as the position goes down, after many channels, the water becomes clearer and clearer, but the taste becomes salty?

"What the Jiaodong County Guard said is right, it is indeed getting saltier and saltier."

Zhang Cang didn't believe it when he and Heifu came to check it before, but after taking a sip of the water in the top and bottom filters, the former was just ordinary saltiness, and the latter almost killed him, so he had to believe this fact.

He also thought about the reason, and seemed to have an understanding, but Heifu asked Zhang Cang not to be quiet, here, he also wanted to dig a small pit for Fang Shi......

Faced with this problem, the ministers looked at each other, and the emperor also had doubts.

Heifu smiled: "It's not strange, why do you call it a miracle?" ”

Immediately, he looked at Lu Sheng and Han Zhong, who were following at the end of the team, and said:

"This method was brainstormed by Jiao Dongfang, and I don't understand the reason, probably because of the subtlety of the changes in the five elements of yin and yang? Su asked Mr. Han Zhong to be good at chemical things, why don't you ask Mr. to solve our doubts? ”

……

PS: I tried my best, but after checking the information all night, I only wrote one chapter in the end, and I wanted to cry so slowly. The second chapter will take about half past one to write well, and if you can wait, you can boil it with me.

This method of drying salt is not the same as modern times, using the five-step ancient method of Jiechi and Hainan, which seems to be more referenced.