Chapter 85 Iron Smelting
Everyone is always more tolerant of patients. Our King Li is now a combination of madness and physical disability.
The Zheng family never imagined that widely publicizing King Li's deeds and deliberately concealing the actions of the Zheng family would have the opposite effect, causing the people to sympathize with King Li.
Gu Changxiao's mouth twitched when he heard this. "Master Ji, how many crooked hats do you want to make me wear?"
And Gu Changxiao found that he was no longer so angry when he heard the title "eunuch".
The previous anger was a man's instinct. Any man would not be willing to wear this crooked hat.
Even the real eunuchs in the palace hated being called like this in person.
But now he could calmly listen to people in the market calling him "eunuch", and he didn't care about the impact of this reputation after it spread.
At most, they cannot get married, and no woman is willing to marry him.
But, so what?
Women are the most untrustworthy!
His most respected grandmother was a woman, his cousin who always sweetly called him cousin was a woman, his long-engaged Lin Xuejiao was a woman, and even his respected aunt, the Queen...
These people were all women, and they were the ones who wanted to kill him. At the palace gate, they broke off his fingers that were clinging to the palace gate one by one...
He took a deep breath to prevent himself from falling into these painful memories, and turned to smile at Grandpa Ling: "At present, we can confirm that this imperial envoy is indeed looking for Taoist priest Xiao Ji for a prescription. The imperial doctors of the court have not yet found a good prescription to treat the plague in Luo City.
The medicine given by Taoist Xiao Ji is the best medicine I have ever seen."
Grandpa Ling asked anxiously: "What about secretly?"
If they were just asking for a prescription, they would have sent someone to read out the imperial edict as quickly as possible.
How could there be such a team of nearly a hundred imperial envoys heading towards Yan area at a leisurely pace?
"Well, according to my secret guards' investigation, there are Prince Yu's men mixed in there, as well as some assassins who are sent by unknown parties."
Grandpa Ling slapped his thigh and said, "They must be sent by Prince Yu! We have to find a way to send a message to Sui Sui. We can't let her be defenseless."
Gu Changxiao nodded: "Don't worry, we will get to the border town before the imperial envoy."
Of course, the letter also needs to be delivered.
Gu Changxiao asked the secret guards to go to the border town first and inform the "King of Li" that there were assassins mixed in with the imperial envoy.
To ease Grandpa Ling's worries, Gu Changxiao deliberately said with a smile: "I wonder what our little Taoist Ji is doing? Don't wait until we arrive before she does something earth-shattering."
Jinsui was instructing the blacksmith in forging iron. With a capital of 100,000 taels of silver, he could spend it more generously.
She originally wanted to buy pig iron from the surrounding cities, but Cheng Yu told her that pig iron was difficult to buy, unlike grain, which was sold by merchants.
They could only conduct private transactions with large aristocratic families. Although the King of Li had only offended the Zheng family, he actually made the aristocratic families in Yan dare not trade with him.
Who knows if they will follow the Zheng family's footsteps? Cheng Yu did not give any subtle reminders, and said directly: "Instead of looking for people everywhere, it is better to cooperate directly with the Yan family."
Jin Sui thought about the scene of parting with Yan Shiyilang and Shier Niang. If she were asked to beg the Yan family again, she would have to save her face!
Although the one who was lost was King Li's man, but coming to ask for help was a loss of her face.
She really didn't want to go, but Cheng Yu sent people to several state capitals and didn't buy back much pig iron. Han Xing took people into the mountains to find some iron sand and sift the iron themselves.
But that is just a drop in the bucket. Even if we find iron ore now, it will take some time to mine it.
Jin Sui thought about it and made a decision - forget about the face! First, use cochineal to make lip balm. With the help of a laboratory, this is very simple. Prepare the raw materials, cochineal, beeswax, and almond oil, and it is easy to make lip balm.
She also specially made lipsticks that looked like those of later generations, fired porcelain lipstick tubes, and made three colors of lipstick: pink, peach, and bright red.
Then he used red ginseng, pearls, cloves, jasmine seeds, snake oil and other raw materials to make ointments.
The winters in Yan are long and the skin is easily frostbitten, so even farm women would apply oil to their skin.
The one she made is white and delicate, has good antifreeze effect and fragrance, and is made of precious ingredients. It is better than any other one used in the palace.
Use cochineal to make rouge, and use Polygonum multiflorum, mint and other ingredients to make a shampoo cream, and a set of four women's skin care gift boxes is ready.
She put it in a pear wood box and specially dried some flowers to decorate it.
This gift is valuable, but in the eyes of those who don’t know its value, it is just rouge and powder for women.
She thought about it and sold another five thousand taels of silver to Mr. Jin for a makeup mirror and put one in there.
This way, it would be a very valuable gift! She didn't go herself, but asked Cheng Yu and Han Xing to deliver it.
By the way, Heihu also went with them, and for the first time this young man became sensible and asked Jinsui to give him a box of the fragrant ointment.
Jin Sui laughed, "Xiang Xiang Cream, what a good name! This is for the round-faced white girl!"
Yes, our Black Tiger has finally gotten the hang of it.
Jinsui was of course not stingy and also prepared a gift for Heihu.
"As for the gift, just say it's to apologize to Miss Yan. This is what I promised her before. The main point is to meet Yan Jiu and buy pig iron from the Yan family. The price can be negotiated."
In fact, Cheng Yu knew the purpose of this trip without Jinsui's reminder.
After they left, Jin Sui took the little pig iron she had to watch the blacksmith forging iron. She discovered that the blacksmith made swords one by one, and it took a lot of effort to hammer and temper them over and over again.
Even if she knew nothing about iron smelting, she knew that this forging method was extremely ancient and inefficient.
After she talked with several blacksmiths, she realized that in that era, there were no molds or methods of mass-producing ironware with molten iron.
Even the hoes used in farms and the kitchen knives were forged one by one.
Jinsui first went back to the laboratory to look for books. Fortunately, there were documentaries and books about iron smelting in her computer, so she stayed up late for two days to read them.
They then looked for a blacksmith to do experiments together. When they found that there was no way to burn pig iron into the molten iron like in the documentary, new problems arose.
The temperature of firewood is not high enough, so if you want to mass-produce weapons, you must use coal.
When you want to do something, there will always be a situation where all kinds of new problems line up to come to you.
To give the simplest example, in the future, if you are hungry in the middle of the night, you can just open the refrigerator, take out a few ingredients, and cook a bowl of tomato and egg noodles.
In this era, to make noodles, you had to soak wheat, grind it, sift it, and knead the noodles yourself. To make eggs, you had to raise chickens yourself, and as for tomatoes, there were none at all.
Now Jinsui no longer has to grind wheat, but to reclaim land and plant wheat in order to have a bowl of noodles!
But Jin Sui, who has lived two lives as a human being, is least afraid of troubles and difficulties. As someone who often did experiments in her previous life, she can understand this very well: difficulties are meant to be defeated, and troubles are meant to be solved.
Coal is available in all the mountains in the north, so we need to recruit refugees from the mountains. We will issue a public notice and implement a work point system. Anyone who carries coal out of the mountains will be rewarded.
One basket of coal was worth one work point, and work points could be exchanged for food, salt, sugar, cloth and other daily necessities at the border town market.
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