There are a large number of brine springs in Xuzhou, and salt merchants have moved here, and now Deng Ming has no other pillar industries, so the salt industry is not only valued by Liu Jinge, Deng Ming is also very concerned, so he set aside a few days to inspect.

Now there are a large number of carpenters' workshops outside the brine springs in Xuzhou, which are working day and night to manufacture the goods demanded by the salt merchants—the most popular goods in Xuzhou are carpenters and shipbuilders, except for the salt industry—and this kind of goods is a very large wooden disc, the bottom of which is very level, and it cannot leak. Next to the salt wells, a large number of these wooden discs are placed suspended on stones, and the brine is poured into the wooden pans, exposed to the sun, and dried into crystals.

"The salt drying method can save ninety percent of the manpower, and can save a lot of firewood and iron pots," Lu Huan reported to Deng Ming and Yuan Xiang, who had always inspected the salt industry: "After adopting the salt drying method, I calculated the cost, which is about one-tenth of the boiling salt. ”

As early as the Tang Dynasty or even earlier, the Fujian region began to use the salt drying process, but the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties had little interest in promoting this process, and the most critical problem was the monopoly of salt and iron. After the Ming Dynasty implemented a stricter monopoly on salt, it also began to crack down on Fujian's salt drying method, because compared with boiling salt, the salt drying method was more difficult to control by the government, and the people who used the salt method to make salt were not as easy to control as the stove households, and the government could not control salt production by controlling iron pots and other tools - that is, although the production cost was greatly reduced, the government's management cost was greatly increased. Even if officials call for cheaper and more efficient salt drying methods, it is a personal act.

After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, with the decline of the government's control ability, the salt drying method was restored and expanded, but after the Qing army entered the customs, the Qing court, which regarded salt as the lifeblood, made every effort to crack down on the salt drying method. The Manchus, like the feudal dynasties before China, were most concerned about how to use firewood, tools and consumables to monitor the quantity of salt produced to prevent stove owners from "stealing" state property.

In Xichuan, Deng Ming implemented a monopoly system for all things, as long as you buy a license, you can produce as you like, and the salt factories are also privately owned, so how to improve production efficiency is the most concerned thing for these private salt factories. However, due to the severe crackdowns of previous dynasties, Lu Huan's group of salt merchants did not know that there was a salt drying method, until Mu Tan, who came from Fujian, casually mentioned Fujian's salt drying method when he saw that the salt merchants in the capital were still cutting wood to cook salt.

Although Mu Tan's description was amazing to all the salt merchants, it seemed that Sichuan Salt was still unable to adopt this advanced process at first, because for Fujian, the sea water is endless, and the requirements for the permeability of the salt pans are relatively low; But in Sichuan, the brine itself is wealth, and it is painstakingly brought out of the salt springs, and if it is lost in large quantities, it will be an intolerable loss. Therefore, until more than half a year ago, although the salt drying method was repeatedly mentioned by salt merchants, no experiment with salt pans was successful.

Later, a man named Wang Hang had a whimsical idea that he could make a shallow and large wooden plate to serve as a salt pan. Wang Hang was originally a soldier in Wanxian County, who helped Yuan Zongdi's soldiers to come to Xuzhou with armor, and worked on the salt merchant's side to help carry brine.

Wang Hang's own carpenter skills are not very good, but he still reluctantly made a small sample for his part-time salt merchant to see, the salt merchant must have much more resources than Wang Hang, so he quickly made a large test product, and the effect was okay. In return, the salt merchant paid to ransom Wang Hang from the Wanxian army, gave him a small sum of money, and arranged a small position for him in the salt factory, which made Wang Hang overjoyed and very satisfied.

But when Deng Ming came back and heard about this, he immediately called Wang Hang to Chengdu to apply for a patent, and then Deng Ming taught him two ways to sell patents to make profits: one was to sell the patent to a carpenter firm at one time, and the other was to sell it by piece. In the end, Wang Hang chose to sell by piece, whether it was Chengdu or Xuzhou, all the carpenters under Deng Ming's house, the salt board produced by the company had to give Wang Hang a patent fee according to the area; In Deng Ming's control area, the wooden salt drying board that did not pay Wang Hang the patent fee is an illegal product, and merchants are not allowed to sell it, and this patent lasts for 50 years, and the scope will expand with the expansion of Deng Ming's control area.

"Boss Wang now sits at home every day and counts the money, and he can't count it." Lu Huan jokingly smiled at Deng Ming, each salt drying board added the cost of patent fees, but even so, the salt drying method still reduced the production cost by more than 90 percent, and for a salt merchant like Lu Huan, Wang Hang's patent fee could not be compared with their salt making profits: "Now Boss Wang says that his family business is given by the admiral." ”

"He won it himself." Deng Ming shook his head and flatly denied that he saw that as a large number of salt sheets were manufactured, the quality of this wooden salt pan became higher and higher, and only a small amount of concentrated brine seeped out from the cracks in the bottom plate, and these brine formed conical crystals between the salt pan floor and the earth.

According to the patent description, as long as it is made of wood and used to dry salt, Wang Hang has the right to patent. Improvements to Wang's patents can lead to new patents, but Wang Hang will still be able to share in the profits, unless someone designs a metal or non-flat salt pan and can beat the existing product against the competition, causing Wang Hang to lose his money.

Since this matter spread, countless people have been pondering new inventions day and night, and many of Yuan Zongdi's auxiliaries from Wanxian County, and even his soldiers, have nothing to think about what can be invented in order to win an inexhaustible gold mine for themselves.

And it is true that many things have been invented, and many patents probably do not win the benefit of their owners, but some of them can still be used, such as the large umbrellas that provide rain protection for the salt pans - if the concentrated brine or table salt crystals are washed away by the rain, it will undoubtedly be a great blow to the salt merchants, and the emergency savings are covered canals for concentrated brine.

Almost all of these inventions that helped to increase salt production were purchased by salt merchants for the benefit of their inventors, and a tool recently applied for to connect wooden salt pans seemed to Deng Ming to resemble the nuts and screws of his previous life, but made of wood. As more and more people became rich from it, it stimulated more people to think about how to improve the methods of production - not only in the salt industry, but also in other manufacturing industries, so that there would be no private business to use it as long as it had a real effect.

"Recently, I also asked for a tender from the blacksmith shop in the capital, and I wanted a weapon to match the firecracker." For the upcoming battle of Chongqing, Deng Ming had nothing to hide from Yuan Xiang's confidants, and the next day he also took Yuan Xiang to inspect a new Sichuan army.

Standing in front of Yuan Xiang, hundreds of Ming soldiers were carrying firearms, and the equipment on their bodies came from the imperial camp, and the batch of firearms captured by Deng Ming from the Praetorian Guards were of very good quality, comparable to the few shots he got from Kunming, and he immediately used these firecrackers to equip an infantry team. Now the members of this team are all selected from the standing army crossbows, except for the firearms, all the soldiers of this group of Ming soldiers carry long daggers - almost all of them are Zhejiang soldiers, and a few Sichuan and Huguang people are also influenced by others to use the long dagger as a Zhejiang-style weapon.

Deng Ming drew several tender drawings to the blacksmiths in Chengdu and told them that if the army adopted their designs, he would give them patent rights, and if they did not buy weapons directly from the blacksmiths, he would pay them a royalty for each weapon - until their designs were replaced by better and better designs. When explaining to Yuan Xiang, Deng Ming drew a sketch casually: "I call this thing a bayonet, if it can be mounted on a firecracker, our firecrackers will have better hand-to-hand weapons, and there is no need to use a long dagger to fight the opponent's broadsword and spear." ”

However, until now, no blacksmith shop has been able to come up with a design that satisfies Deng Ming, the main reason is that the blacksmith shop in Chengdu is still too thin, even if there are sketches of Deng Ming, their manufacturing innovation ability is still not good.

"In addition to holding knives, I also asked for a tender to make a device to replace the current arquebus," Deng told the military and his officers, who now had invented a firing device called a flintlock device, which allowed the gun to shoot safer and more frequently, and also helped to increase the charge and power. Deng Ming's statement was confirmed by Mu Tan, although the main equipment of the Taixi people is still an open flame musket, but there is indeed a legend that this equipment has appeared: "But I don't know when I can make it, I also asked the envoy to sneak to Fujian, and the king of Tuoyanping County will find a way to help me get a sample, so that the capital can imitate it." ”

Deng Ming showed great concern for the firecracker, which had long been a well-known secret in the officialdom of western Sichuan, so although he felt that Deng Ming had overreacted to the large-scale bidding and sending people to Fujian for this purpose, Yuan Xiang and others would not pour cold water on him in the aspects that Deng Ming was particularly interested in, but wished him success.

When he was demonstrating his firearms troops, a messenger hurried to the martial arts arena, holding an official document that had just been delivered: "Admiral, is there an incident in Chongqing?" ”