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Chapter Eighty-Eight—The Evil Slave Trade (I)

After Chen Ying came to Lingzhou, the biggest change he brought to Lingzhou was the use of charcoal instead of firewood. In order for the people of Lingzhou to survive the cold winter, Chen Ying brought the fire kang and fire wall of later generations to this era. The quarried coal was loaded into four-wheeled wagons and transported into Lingzhou City, or the six counties of Lingzhou, to use the eighteen towns of Lingwu for the people to cook, boil water or heat their homes.

Even if you don't want to spend money to buy charcoal, take a broom and sweep it casually on the official road, and the charcoal powder is enough for daily consumption. With the development of charcoal, this kind of thing was also mixed with part of the soil and processed into honeycomb briquettes, however, whether it is a fire pit or a fire wall, it is not as convenient as charcoal to use dry firewood. There is a way from shallow to luxury, from luxury to shallow, Lingzhou people are used to using coal as firewood, and they can no longer change.

In particular, after Guo Zhun moved his family to Lingzhou, he started a soft iron workshop, and Guo Zhun used the method given to him by Chen Ying to start building the simple briquette stove and iron chimney. In less than five months after Guo Zhun came to Lingzhou, the soft iron briquette stove entered thousands of households.

With the large-scale use of briquette furnaces, the consumption of coal in Lingzhou has gradually increased, only in terms of production and life, about 150,000 people in Lingzhou, a total of more than 40,000 households, the daily consumption of coal is as much as more than 200,000 catties, after entering the cold winter, plus the consumption of fire pits and fire walls, the consumption of charcoal has directly tripled, and now the daily consumption of charcoal is nearly 600,000 catties. If you count the heating consumption of the primary school hall and workshop established by Li Daozhen, the daily consumption of charcoal exceeds 1.5 million catties, if in later generations, this is only the carrying capacity of seven or eight coal king trucks, but for this time, such a difficulty is more than 100 times. Because of the coal, many industries were derived, and horse-drawn carts and ox carts carrying goods began to appear in large numbers in copycat versions.

When there were as many as two or three thousand four-wheeled carriages and ox carts in Lingzhou, some problems appeared. Li Daozhen took the Mo knife given to him by Chen Ying, and under the banner of Chen Ying, he successfully took over the coal mine developed by Chen Ying in Lingzhou. However, as the temperature plummets in the cold winter, new problems have arisen.

Originally, Chen Ying only used four or five thousand Turkic prisoners of war to mine coal mines, or because of heavy manual labor, or because of illness and injury, or because the working conditions were too poor, these prisoners of war were reduced by nearly one-third, and there was nothing to excavate 200,000 catties, and it was easy to complete this task, but with the increase in consumption, especially when Li Daozhen took over the four salt mines prepared by Chen Ying, using charcoal to cook salt, Lingzhou's coal consumption was close to three million catties per day, in this case, Each prisoner of war needed to dig out five or six thousand catties of charcoal to meet the consumption.

In particular, it was learned that Chen Ying also had three blast furnaces, each of which could smelt tens of thousands of catties of steel, and in this case, the amount of coal mined was far from enough to consume.

At the beginning of November, the weather in Lingzhou was really frozen outside, and seeing that the coal reserves in the city were less than ten days, Li Daozhen frowned and did not think about tea and dinner.

Xiao Tao saw it in her eyes and was anxious in her heart. She thought that Li Daozhen was sick, so she hurriedly went to Song Wu's sister-in-law, an old woman who had given birth, to see the situation.

When Song Wu's sister-in-law came to Bogu Law City, she found that Li Daozhen did not have an appetite because of physical reasons, but because of a lack of charcoal.

Li Daozhen sighed: "The weather is so cold, if the coal is broken, I'm afraid Lingzhou will not be able to hold on!" ”

"It's not that I'm afraid, but I definitely can't hold on!" Song Wu's sister-in-law said: "I heard that last winter, thousands of people froze to death in Lingzhou because of the cold weather. ”

The town general Ma Lao Liu said disapprovingly: "The charcoal is not enough, then digging is enough, and it is not a big difficulty, even if the ice and snow block the road, isn't there a snow boat carried by General Chen when he comes, as long as there is snow, it will gallop on the snow like flying." ”

Li Daozhen smiled bitterly: "I also know how to dig, but there is no one, there are less than four thousand prisoners of war in total, and now they each have to dig six or seven thousand catties of charcoal per day, which has reached the limit, and then increase the amount of them, I am afraid that more people will die of exhaustion, and when the time comes, the output will not only not increase, but will drop sharply." ”

"There is no one, in fact, there is a way to solve it!" Ma Lao Liu scratched his head and said: "General Chen has captured a lot of Turkic prisoners of war and asked them to dig charcoal, not to mention that these Turkic prisoners of war are tall and strong, and they are good at digging charcoal." ”

"We can't even see the shadow of the Turks now, where can we catch Turkic prisoners of war?" Li Daozhen shook his head and said, "It's really difficult." ”

Fifth sister-in-law Song suddenly had a flash of inspiration in her head: "County Lord, why did you forget Yu Guni?" ”

"Yu Guni? That Turkic barbarian? "It's not that Li Daozhen doesn't have an impression of Yu Guni, but the impression is very clear. Because when Yu Guni saw Li Daozhen for the first time, he learned that Li Daozhen had Chen Ying's child in her belly, so she actually crawled on the snow and kissed Li Daozhen with a boot salute, which made Li Daozhen blush.

Song Wu's sister-in-law said with a smile: "Now this Yu Guni is a rich man, and the population of his Yu Shooting Department is about to exceed 30,000, and most of them are young and strong, and the elite cavalry is tens of thousands of horses. As long as the county lord looks for him, he will definitely bring enough prisoners of war to the county lord! ”

Li Daozhen said without thinking about it: "That's fine, trouble the fifth sister-in-law to go to Lingzhou City and call Yu Guni!" ”

……

Yu Guni concurrently served as the general of the Tang Dynasty Lingwu at this time, but this general of the fourth grade, no one looked down on him in Lingzhou City, but Yu Guni didn't care, so he set up the big tent in the Wild Boar Ridge Valley outside Lingzhou City, because the Wild Boar Ridge Valley was leeward, and there was a natural hot spring, so it would not feel cold to camp here.

Unable to get the recognition of the officials and scholars of the Tang Dynasty, Yu Guni was also very disappointed. He also gave up the idea of drilling camp in Lingzhou, but Chen should reward him not low, and now the Yu Shooting Department does not worry about food and clothing, especially this winter, just in the station of Wild Boar Ridge, there are three or four thousand women pregnant, as long as the spring starts, these three or four thousand women give birth to three or four thousand children, and the population of the Yu Shooting Department will exceed 35,000 people, and it will increase to 50,000 or 60,000 in a few years.

Although the Yu Shooting Department still lives as a nomad, its living habits have also changed dramatically. At this time, they no longer use cow dung and horse dung to heat the fire as before, but use the charcoal cake produced in Lingzhou, each of which weighs one and a half catties, and is placed in the iron charcoal stove, three pieces can be burned for a day and a night, and the family of five boils water for cooking, which is very convenient, neither need to smell the pungent smell, nor do you have to look at the disgusting horse dung all day long.

Yu Sheshe people are very fond of this kind of charcoal cake, very fire-resistant, very clean, the most important thing is that it is very cheap, a sheep can be exchanged for a hundred charcoal cakes, which can be burned for a month. Especially in the cold winter when the ice and snow are covered, the herders have no firewood at all, and although they can burn the fire with sheep dung, cow dung, or horse dung, it not only has little calories, but also needs to consume a lot of dung. The most important thing is that the tinplate charcoal stove is also very convenient to transfer. Now more and more herders like this briquette stove.

A briquette stove was placed in the tent, and it was warm all day and night. Unlike the original cold and biting, for the Turks, briquettes are not expensive, and after a winter, it is only equivalent to the cost of consuming five or six sheep. Five or six sheep spend a warm winter, and for the people of the Yu Shooting Department, this is no different from giving it away for nothing.

On this day, Yu Guni had just vented on Xinna's Lite (Persian) concubine and squeezed out his excess strength.

Although Yu Guni has no strength, his brain is very active. He hadn't seen Chen Ying for almost half a year, and he missed the scene when he followed Chen Ying to the battlefield, and at this moment, a gentle microwave appeared in the milk tea bowl in front of him.

As soon as Yu Guni saw this scene, he knew that there was a cavalry approaching quickly.

Yu Guni smiled slightly, and slapped his palm on the plump buttocks of Concubine Lite: "Hurry up and put on armor for Yeye!" ”

This slap was very heavy, and a big red and purple handprint appeared on the buttocks of the Lite woman in an instant, but she didn't dare to slack off, and quickly put on armor for Yu Guni.

When Yu Guni put on his armor and walked out of the tent, he saw a group of cavalry appear at the end of the snow.

Yu Guni raised the sentry looking at the watchtower: "Who is it?" ”

"Black Flag Army!"

Yu Guni breathed a sigh of relief, and at the same time felt a sense of loss.

After a while, a team of war horses came to Yu Guni panting, and Yu Guni saw the big cake face of Song Wunu.

Song Wu's sister-in-law said: "The county lord of Baicheng is invited!" ”

After speaking, Song Wu's sister-in-law beat her horse and returned to the original way.

Yu Guni waved his hand left and right: "Go out with Yeye!" ”

The guards howled for a while, and followed Yu Guni towards the first town fort of Thin Bone Law City.

The horses' hooves trampled on the snow, and there were bursts of snow in a shallow manner.

More than a hundred cavalry slowly disappeared into the horizon.