In the winter of the forty-fifth year of Jiajing, the sixty-year-old Jiajing Emperor Zhu Houxi died in the Qianqing Palace, the temple name is Sejong, and the name is Qintian, the Taoist Yingyi Divine Xuanwen Guangwu Hongren Great Xiaosu Emperor, and is buried in the Yongling Tomb of Changping, Beijing.

The successor, his son Yuwang Zhu Zaiyuan ascended the throne after 49 days of filial piety, and changed the name of the year to Longqing, which was the first year of Longqing. At the beginning of Emperor Longqing's succession, he honored the edict of the first emperor: the survivors were called, the dead were recorded, and those who saw the prisoner were released and reinstated.

Among these officials who were reinstated, there was a native of Qiongshan, Hainan named Hai Rui.

When the news reached Chen Junye's ears, it was close to February of the first year of Longqing.

Chen Mu didn't have much empathy for the emperor's death, but he felt that the steps of the giants of the times had taken another step forward. Several military households are not as sad and fierce as Ke Ze'er, this gang of broken people settle down You look at me, I look at you, and in the end it seems that it is not appropriate for them to be stunned when others are crying, Shao Tingda raised his leg and kicked Xiao Hachiro on his heels, and finally someone cried.

Anyway, drinking and having fun at this time is also inappropriate, but it can't be stopped when the happy event comes. I don't know what happened to Qingyuanwei this winter, in short, Luo Qianhu, who was on the city wall with Bai Yuanjie, was demoted to a thousand households in Lianzhou in the name of cowardice, and Bai Yuanjie relied on the military exploits of defeating the Japanese to take over the post of deputy Qianhu of Qingcheng Qianhu.

The arrangements for Chen Mu and the others have not yet been issued, but it is difficult for the Banner Army to pretend to be sad all day long, and even they don't want to appear at the Anyuan Station, running to the cave in the mountains all day long or rushing to the Feishui Bridge to be on duty—maybe no one can make them laugh and laugh.

Bai Yuanjie's promotion to a thousand households more or less means that their transfer from Anyuan Station is probably a good place to go.

But the sky did not fulfill people's wishes, seeing that it was the beginning of spring, there was no new order from the hundred households, and Bai Yuanjie did not send a message for more than ten days. It stands to reason that their duty at the Anyuan Post Station has ended, and they should go back to the hundred households to deal with the farming, but there is no news at this time, and even the small flag that connects them to defend them has not arrived as scheduled, which is inevitably speculation.

After waiting for half a month, Chen Mu sent someone to the 100 households, but was told that there was no one to take over the vacancy of the new 100 households, and sent someone to Fenghuang Street in Qingyuan City, but he was told that Bai Yuanjie, the deputy thousand households, had been traveling east along the Beijiang River by boat for more than a month and had not yet returned.

At this time, even Chen Mu himself has no bottom in his heart, what is his Shangguan Bai Baihu's plan?

No matter what Bai Yuanjie's plan is, Chen Mu's life will pass, since no one has sent him an order in the spring, he doesn't care about the fields of the hundred households, he simply continues to live in Anyuanyi, Old Man Zheng and others are all sent into the cave to continue to boil nitrate, anyway, when he leaves, this nitrate cave will be sealed, so he can just boil out thousands of catties of white nitrate now!

Cave nitrate basically does not belong to nitrate, but the tens of millions of years of sedimentary soil in the cave rich in potassium nitrate filtered out by soil method, relying on its insoluble in water but with the temperature rise and soluble characteristics of boiling collection, the yield is limited by the nitrate in the cave, 100 catties of nitrate and 300 catties of water mixed, after layers of filtration and boiling can finally get more than 30 catties of saltpeter.

In the past three months, Chen Mu's banner army has either carried buckets back and forth between the river and the cave all winter, or has been digging in the cave, filtering and boiling, and even the boiling waste has collected sixteen tanks of hundreds of catties and stacked them under the cave.

Because of this work, Chen Mu's well-fed and sleepy incense, Zhu Ding, who has a lot of work, has become stronger this winter.

The military households don't understand why Chen Mu is interested in wastewater, they are more willing to hold the nitrate and be poor, especially the two slaves, every time Chen Mu goes to the cave to check the stock of fire and salt, he asks him if he has the idea of selling these saltpeters to Japan - in the Ming Dynasty, saltpeter is forbidden to go to sea, and the Ming Dynasty saltpeter smuggled and trafficked to Japan can make ten times the profit.

In Guangzhou Prefecture, the selling price of saltpeter is 100 catties and 428 yuan, which is convenient for smuggling and selling in the sea, if in the north, the price of saltpeter will fall to 100 catties and 225 yuan.

Although the entrance of the cave of Anyuan Post Station is small, but the back of the mountain wall is narrow and deep, it can be guessed that even if only the top layer of nitrate is taken, the whole cave is more than 10,000 catties, but with the boiling and collection of hundreds of catties of saltpeter, the workload of digging nitrate is getting bigger and bigger, because they need to go farther to take soil in the cave, Chen Mu estimates that in another month, the soil that can be boiled out of nitrate within a thousand steps of the nitrate cave will be dug up by them, and it will be inappropriate to go farther.

Two thousand eight hundred catties of saltpeter, which is about the most profit that Chen Mu estimated that this nitrate cave would make in line with the hard work of military households.

It is difficult to obtain nitrate farther away, it is difficult to transport it in the cave, and it will also delay the efficiency of boiling nitrate, after all, Chen Mu only has three Yu Ding and two servants to do this, and the manpower is really limited.

But this is enough, even if they can only boil out 2,000 catties of saltpeter before they are transferred, even if they only sell it to the maritime merchant at a price of 25 taels after finding a market, the profit of 50 taels is enough for him to divide the three Yu Ding and the two Japanese Kou with three taels of wages each.

That's not waste, the high concentration of potassium nitrate is saltpeter, and the low concentration of light potassium nitrate is fertilizer, the best fertilizer in the world in this era.

Besides, the selling price will only be higher than this, not lower than this, and it will be worth it.

Eat and live for nothing in one winter, earn two more years, is there anything more beautiful in the world than this?

Chen Mu wanted to say that there really is - Shao Tingda found a bigger cave seven miles east of the post station, and he has embarked on the road of sustainable development!

There are many mountains and rivers in Guangdong, and there is no shortage of mountains and rivers in Qingyuan.

At present, there are only two nitrate caves that Chen Mu knows, except for the Anyuan Post Station, which is enough for them to find a chance to work for another year. Bigger nitrate caves, more manpower, more production, this means more silver, maybe it won't be long before Chen Mu can build a glass kiln in Qingyuanwei, and then the silver will really flow into his hands.

However, that requires a premise, that is, he has more right to speak, a larger network, and a stronger force in Qingyuan, at least he must have the ability to protect his small inventions among thousands of military households. Qing Yuanwei is a double-edged sword, which can not only protect his gadgets from being coveted by the outside world, but also inevitably from the inside.

Maybe when Chen Junye has money, he can try to bribe a martial artist!

Just when Chen Mu once again raised his gun to hit the wooden target on the trunk fifty steps away, there was applause from the side of the road, and when he turned his head, Bai Yuanjie, who had not been promoted to deputy thousand households for several months, was clapping with a smile, and when he looked back, his face with high cheekbones suddenly became serious, and said: "Bai Yuanjie, the deputy thousand households of Qingcheng, has an order, and the small flag Chen Mu killed five Japanese robbers, rewarded one hundred and twenty taels of silver, and awarded the general flag of the thousand households in Qingcheng!" ”