The Ming army conquered Wenzhou, and the gentry, wealthy merchants, and big landlords who had taken refuge in the Qing court in the whole of Zhejiang were almost wiped out, and only a few of the gentry fled to Fujian and Jiangxi by mountain road.

The gold and silver treasures found from these people are not a small amount, and even many people took the title deed with them when they fled, but after they were driven out of Ningbo, Shaoxing, Jinhua and other places by the Ming army, people left the land, and the title deed was already a piece of waste paper, and their land had long been confiscated, all of which were owned by the Nanhai County Palace, and then leased to the farmers for cultivation by the Nanhai County Palace.

Wang Xinyu wouldn't die to engage in the pretense of "the king won't pay for food when he comes", if he doesn't pay for food, what will the court officials eat? What do the army eat?

The land tax under the rule of the Qiongzhou army is very small, and in some places in Nanyang, even rice can be planted without tax, but in fact, the tax is hidden in the sale of grain, grain is a national strategic material, and the grain merchants of the people have either been raided or merged.

Rotten Confucianism was either killed by the Qing court, or was killed by Wang Xinyu, at this time, the power to buy and sell grain was taken into the possession of the state, and no one jumped out to accuse the Ming government of "competing with the people for profit", and many policies could be easily implemented.

After being captured by the Ming army, not only the property they carried with them was confiscated, but also some of the family property carefully hidden in their hometown was also tortured.

Wang Yuyou was not polite to these guys who defected to the Qing court, as long as they refused to cooperate, they would be whipped if they should be whipped, and those who should be splinted should be splinted, and the tendons should be broken, boiling water and boiling oil, and all kinds of methods were used. Many people have too much gold and silver to carry with them at home, and when they escape from their homes, they carefully hide them in the ground, in tree holes, or buried somewhere. The results were all tortured.

And some gentlemen who did not take the initiative to cooperate with the Qing court, and had a better attitude after being caught, Wang Xinyu also let them go, let them pay a "tax" and then let them go home, so that they must pay taxes in the future.

Nonsense, why can't the Ming court collect the taxes of the gentry?

To tell the truth, those scholars are Jian people, during the Ming Dynasty, let them not pay taxes, and they also tried every means to get more benefits for themselves, and used "not competing with the people for profit" to block the emperor's mouth. But what is the so-called people? It's themselves and their family! Unable to collect taxes from them, Chongzhen had to add agricultural taxes from the north, and as a result, the peasants rebelled.

These scholars killed the Ming court, and as a result, as soon as the Qing court came, the knife was put on their necks, and they obediently took out the silver to pay taxes.

They don't understand the truth that there are eggs under the nest, they only know that people don't kill for themselves. When the aliens came, they had to take out the silver to buy their lives, but the money did not necessarily buy back their lives. gave the silver, but the Qing court didn't buy it, made all kinds of excuses, and with a wave of the butcher's knife, the heads of the people fell to the ground.

"The money confiscated and tortured is really a lot, and the students counted it, and the property we dug up from these guys is equivalent to more than 30 million taels of silver!" The master of the accounting room said to Wang Yuyou with an abacus.

Wang Xinyu smiled proudly, and he was indeed smiling very happily: "These gentlemen are really rich, the Qing court has already scraped them once, and we will scrape again and have so much silver!" ”

With so much silver, how many trips do you have to go to make money in sea trade to make so much money! I didn't expect that so much oil and water would be scraped out from these spineless guys, and the money was too easy.

Just as Wang Xinyu was looking at the bill with a smile, the transport fleet transporting weapons and ammunition from Dongfan arrived.

Gunpowder is a very important consumer item, a big war is fought, the consumption of gunpowder is tens of thousands of catties of calculation, fortunately in the trade with Dongying, you can import a large amount of sulfur, Nanyang also has a large amount of saltpeter, there is no problem in raw materials.

Qu Dajun, who was in charge of logistics, came up and whispered a few words in Wang Xinyu's ear.

"Almost successful? That's great! The clan should go to Tofan Island and see that thing! Wang Xinyu's eyes suddenly released a bright light, and he immediately dropped the bill in his hand.

"What is it that makes the big handsome so happy? Don't even read the bill? Wang Yuyou asked puzzled.

Wang Xinyu leaned close to Wang Yuyou's ear, lowered his voice and said, "It's a steam engine!" ”

"Angry chicken? Isn't that a steam-pot chicken? Wang Yuyou's eyes widened.

The catamaran sailing sailing in the waters of Wenzhou to Taiwan, at this time has entered the typhoon season, but Wang Xinyu is not worried, the speed of the catamaran clipper is very fast, running much faster than a typhoon, once it is found that something is wrong, it can immediately turn its head and drill into any harbor in Taiwan to avoid the wind.

"The ship is too fast!" Qi Bansun had already vomited so much that he could only lie on the bed and couldn't even get up during the two-day and overnight flight.

Wang Xinyu walked into Qi Bansun's cabin and said with a smile: "Is this still fast?" It's already very slow! If you hurry up, you Jiangnan genius won't even be able to speak. ”

Hearing about the steam engine experiment, Wang Xinyu was really happy, with the steam engine, what does it mean? With the steam engine, it was not only about owning a train ship and ironclad, but also about entering the industrial age! It can be said that without a steam engine, there could be no rear-loading rifles, no metal cartridges, no machine guns in the real sense of the word, no rear-loading rifled guns, no large chemical plants.

Once there is a steam engine, a series of advanced products such as armored trains, ironclad ships, machine guns, and large chemical factories can be produced, and they will have a crushing advantage over other countries.

Mini shells, hexagonal shells for front-loading rifled guns, these things are honestly not complicated in technology, but there is no steam engine, and the semi-manual production of hydraulic machinery is expensive, and it is impossible to produce it in large quantities, only a small amount of equipment, and the price of ammunition is ridiculously expensive. With a steam engine, what else are Minnie shells, front-loading rifled guns? Straight to the breech-loading rifle, machine gun and breech-loading rifled gun!

Without the steam engine, there could be no large-scale [sulfur] acid plant, which meant that explosives could not be produced in large quantities. The [sulfur] acid, which is made in a manual laboratory way, can only meet a small amount of explosives, and it is simply impossible to fully use new explosives. With the steam engine, a large lead chamber reactor can be built, and the [sulfur] acid, known as the mother of chemicals, can be mass-produced, and with this kind of thing, all kinds of new weapons can be called upon to come.

With a steam engine, it is also possible to create a steam gas torpedo according to the distance of the response.

Once you have steam-powered, rear-loading ironclad ships, steam-powered, torpedo boats equipped with torpedoes, then not to mention the Dutch, the navies of Western countries together are no match.

Because of this, Wang Xinyu was very happy to hear about the steam engine experiment and decided to visit Dongfan in person.

The steam engine was researched by the Dongfan Gun Factory, and Song Yingxing, the yard of the research institute, took his son, Dai Cang's father and son, Xu Zhengming, and a large number of skilled craftsmen and foreign craftsmen, according to Wang Xinyu's sketches, studied this kind of thing.

The catamaran sailing boat docked at the Dongfantai Nancheng Wharf, and Wang Xinyu saw at a glance that his wife and two prospective wives had also arrived. However, seeing his wife and prospective daughter-in-law did not find the soon-to-be-finished steam engine as exciting, he just nodded to his wife and two fiancées, and rode to the Dongfan Cannon Factory.

After seeing the "steam engine", Wang Xinyu smiled dumbly: What kind of steam engine is this? A pot of boiling water for burning coal, several copper pipes are connected to the pot of boiling water and connected to two iron cannon pipes. The two barrels were probably used as cylinders, and the original fire door became a steam inlet, and a connecting rod was inserted into the muzzle, which was connected to the flywheel.

Wang Xinyu walked into the barrel used to act as a cylinder, looked inside the barrel, and saw that the connecting rod was fixed to the piston, which was a bit like a steam engine cylinder. The fire door of the barrel is connected to the neat copper pipe, and on the other side of the fire door, there is an additional fire door, and a barrel with a valve is connected to the fire door, which is probably the gas outlet, after pushing the piston in the cylinder to run, the waste steam is discharged from the fire door, enters the barrel, and then discharges into the air.

Dai Cang said: "Don't underestimate this barrel, there is a delicate valve inside, and the valve is connected to the connecting rod of the cylinder. ”

While speaking, Dai Cang also pulled the connecting rod in the barrel hard, and the connecting rod drove a small connecting rod connected to the barrel to move, and sure enough, a sound of valve opening and closing could be heard in the barrel.

As for why two barrels were used as cylinders, because considering that the piston in the cylinder was difficult to retract, the reciprocating steam engine might be too demanding, so it went to the two-cylinder method, and used the valve to control the two cylinders to push in turn.

"Bring the water to a boil and experiment with it." Seeing such a rudimentary "steam engine", Wang Xinyu suddenly felt that this thing was extremely unreliable. There is not even a high-pressure boiler, so how much power can the steam produced be in that way?

The speed of boiling water is not fast, and after boiling for about twenty minutes, white steam rises from the pot of boiling water.

"It's time to experiment!" Song Yingxing shouted.

A craftsman walked up to the steam engine and pulled the valve switch for the gas supply.

With the sound of steam flowing, the steam maneuvered, but for the next half a day, the flywheel could not be seen turning, only a puff of white smoke could be seen constantly spewing out from the barrel and the barrel, and the steam made a "snort" sound, but it did not move for half a day.

Seeing this situation, Song Yingxing shouted anxiously: "Add more coal, pull up the bellows, and let the fire burn!" ”

A craftsman hurriedly sat down in front of the bellows, sweating and desperately pulling the bellows to make the fire burn more vigorously. But on the boiling water pot, I saw white smoke constantly coming out of the gap in the lid of the pot and flowing into the air in vain. (To be continued.) )