Chapter 680

"Go separately. Return in three days." the man in plain clothes waved gently, and the people gathered here dispersed.

Out of this house, they mingle with the crowd and are no different from ordinary people.

After the men in plain clothes and others left, they slowly took off the veil covering their faces, revealing a clear and elegant face. It was Xiao Ziya who had left by pretending to be dead in the capital.

He put the veil on his fingertips and rubbed it carefully, and the corners of his lips showed a faint smile.

Shipbuilding? She can find her own interest at any time.

If he is successful, he will go to dongshengzhou to pick her up in person and see what kind of ship she has built.

Dock of Lujiao port wharf in Dongsheng Prefecture

The rise of Lujiao port has only been a year. Before, it was just a small fishing village. Because the roads leading to the outside were closed, no outsiders came all year round. Even if people in the village wanted to go to the nearest market, they had to walk for most of the day. The people in the village have been fishing for a living for generations. They depend on heaven for food and live a miserable life. It was not until someone came to buy a large area of land here and began to build a port and repair the roads leading to the outside that antler port became increasingly prosperous today.

A whole row of houses have been built on the open space by the sea to stack the goods transported back from the sea. The port now has a long dike that goes into the sea, and the second one is under construction.

On one side of the long causeway are two huge ships, and villagers help to load and unload goods.

In the past, the villagers here were fishermen. Now almost all of them are employed by the owners of Lujiao port. Young and strong people get on cargo ships and run to the sea. They can earn the money they saved by frugality in the past two or three years. As for those women, children and old people who can work, they are also employed to help sort goods and do some suicide work.

Nowadays, the people in the village are getting richer and richer. It has changed from being inaccessible to one of the most lively places nearby.

"Fang Guanshi, this is the newly delivered iron stone." a team of vehicles and horses stopped at the edge of the Long embankment of the wharf. The person in charge of transportation greeted Fang Jianqing standing on the edge of the wharf from a distance.

It has been two years since Fang's family left the capital. Although Fang Jianqing is still young, his eyes and eyebrows have the courage that a decision-maker should have.

He looked back and smiled, "hurry to send it to the princess, she's waiting." he wrote his name on the receipt list, called the guard to check the authenticity of the iron stone, and then put the iron stone transport team in.

More than a year ago, Jianqing followed the arrangement of Wei ruoyi and came here from binghe county. At that time, there was only a newly built large ship in the port.

His adoptive father helped to buy an old ship and rebuild it.

Fang Jianqing took the nautical chart sent by Wei ruoyi, and according to the list of items listed by Wei ruoyi, he hired several old fishermen from the fishing village who knew how to observe the sea current, so he set foot on the unknown sea.

On his first voyage, the hardships were not enough for outsiders. He encountered storms he had never seen in rivers and lakes. Several times he thought he was going to be buried in the vast sea, but they broke through the difficulties created by nature and arrived at the destination of this voyage. An overseas small island country called Zhan Po. Although the name is a little strange and the country is not big, the island is rich in all kinds of spices, pearls and gemstones.

The porcelain brought by Fang Jianqing according to Wei ruoyi's instructions was startled to be something out of heaven there.

Although the ship had gone through wind and waves at sea and more than half of the porcelain had been damaged, he also brought back a boat full of spices and several boxes of pearls and gemstones with the rest of the porcelain. Even he thought the business was a little unexpected.

After he brought back a ship of wealth, he immediately wrote to Wei ruoyi to ask what else he needed to bring on his next voyage. Wei ruoyi told him that porcelain only needed to bring some high-quality goods. After all, things were rare. She asked Fang Jianqing to purchase some cloth, most of which were cotton, but there were also some high-quality Lake silk. Wei ruoyi has a silver tower in the capital. Most of the jewelry and pearls brought back by Fang Jianqing were transported to the Silver Tower in the capital. Wei ruoyi asked someone to make several sets of jewelry with these gemstones and pearls and asked him to take them back to Zhan Po.

Zhan Po people have lived on the island for generations. Although they also produce cloth, there is no silk, and the weaving process is not as good as the girder. Because of the limitations of the island, the color of cotton is also monotonous, so the cloth brought by his ship has become a hot commodity, because the pattern and color of cloth are not available to Zhan Po. That part of silk even sold at the price of gold. As for the top Lake silk, Fang Jianqing gave it to Zhan Po's royal family as a gift.

Through the opening of Lake silk, Fang Jianqing successfully obtained the license to do business with zhanpo royal family. It took him more than half a year to basically find out the sea route and establish stable trade relations with Zhan Po.

Even if zhanpo is not a vast island country, it has made weiruoyi a full pot, laying a good foundation for future development.

Moreover, with this experience, Wei ruoyi and Fang Jianqing also found out what overseas island countries need. Wei ruoyi was born in business and had a unique vision. Fang Jianqing was born in a merchant's family. He was influenced by it from childhood. The two people gathered together and became an invisible rich man in a short year and a half.

Wei ruoyi was hiding in the dock when the iron stone came.

The hottest weather has passed, but the dock is particularly stuffy because it is blocked on all sides and a stove for refining molten iron is erected outside.

Wei ruoyi's clothes were soaked with sweat, and the design drawing she drew was placed in front of her.

Molten iron is melting in the railway, bright and red.

"I can't go back to the princess." an old craftsman in charge of supervision came and shook his head and sighed, "there's nothing that the princess needs."

"So." Wei ruoyi also seemed a little disappointed.

I don't know how many times this has failed.

According to Wei ruoyi's original idea, the reason why the gun exploded was that the pig iron was not strong and tough enough, so she wanted to forge steel with iron.

The dock is nominally used for shipbuilding, and the iron stone she bought is also said to be used for shipbuilding, but in fact, she secretly turned it into an experimental site for purifying steel.

Unfortunately, her specialty is limited. Even though she vaguely knows how steel is made, she still can't solve many practical difficulties in such a short time.

Wei Ruo Yi couldn't help sighing at the furnace. He was really separated from each other like a mountain.

Her body is a genius for practicing martial arts. Unfortunately, she is not a genius for scientific experiments

Seeing that the time is becoming more and more urgent, Wei ruoyi can only make a quick decision when looking at the newly melted pot of wasted molten iron, "tell everyone not to do it for the time being."

"It's old and incompetent that let the princess down!" said the old craftsman with endless regret. He is the best old fellow old fellow with the seniority and ability. His family is iron and iron, so everyone calls him Lao tie. When the princess first came to him, he heard that it was an unprecedented kind of iron and was in high spirits.

Unfortunately, after so many failures, even he still doubts whether this so-called iron with good ductility really exists. I'm afraid it's something imagined by the princess. But he was humble and questioned, but he didn't dare to put it forward. He could only accompany Wei ruoyi to do the experiment again and again.

"In fact, I know where we failed." Wei ruoyi shook his head and said, "but there's no way. According to the current ability, we can't do that high temperature."

The first thing they have to face is the problem of high temperature.

In this era, no coal mine has been found. All molten iron needs to be melted in a firewood stove. The temperature of firewood can not reach that high at all, and it is extremely unstable.

Since steel cannot be cast, there is only

She handed the design to the old fellow, "Mr. iron, do you see if this can be molded in one time?"

She has improved the design drawing of the gun. According to the broken gun body left in the hunting ground, the founding queen is obviously no better than her. The gun cast by the hastily drawn sketch is to divide the gun barrel into two parts and cast them separately, and then pour them together with molten iron. Then the problem comes. The place where molten iron is poured is very weak. Without real welding, it can't bear the huge internal pressure brought by gunpowder launch.

She looked at several broken guns, all from the center line.

Therefore, to solve this problem, according to the existing conditions, we can only cast the barrel as a whole. She also added three iron hoops outside the barrel to enhance the tolerance of the barrel.

"It should be possible!" the old fellow carefully studied the design drawing drawn by Wei Ruyi, and nodded his head. "Only casting such a huge thing, the mould needed is very huge."

"As long as you say OK, let's think about other ways!" Wei Ruo Yi said with a sigh of relief and a smile.

"Good!" the old iron will see the blueprint several times again. "Can the old fellow need to calculate the required materials for the mould?"

"Take it, but you know the rules. You can only eat and live in the dock these days." Wei ruoyi nodded.

In order to avoid information leakage, there are not many people in the dock. Most of them are trusted bodyguards of the Wei family, and only a few blacksmiths recruited with high salaries. These blacksmiths eat and live in the dock these days and can't contact the outside world.

"Old and awake." the old fellow nodded.

Wei ruoyi explained everything, and then he got out of the interlayer of the dock. Outside the dock is really casting a big ship, otherwise it is difficult to block the line of sight of the outside world.

The guards here are all the secret guards of the Wei family, so even if Dongsheng Wang is very interested in the things in the dock, he sent many spies to inquire, all of them failed.

Outsiders only thought Wei ruoyi was really building a boat, but in fact she was experimenting with artillery in it.

Xiao Ziya must still have artillery in her hands. There is something with great power. Even if the artillery itself has such problems, it may be able to reverse the trend of the war at a critical moment.

So in order to deal with Xiao Ziya, she had to control a better gun than Xiao Ziya.

Wei ruoyi can only say that she is glad that she has passed through. Although she doesn't know how modern artillery is made, she has been to the museum and seen the more primitive artillery in the museum. The drawings she designs now are drawn by racking her brains according to the few memories left in the original and then improved.

It's also a last resort. After all, if she makes steel, the quality of artillery will be improved like flying.

Green pistil and green calyx waited outside. Seeing that Wei Ruo clothes came out sweating, they quickly sent the prepared clean towel and handkerchief to decorate Wei Ruo clothes.

"Where's the Lord?" Wei Ruo Yi asked as he wiped his sweat.

"The Lord has gone to the boundary river," said green Rui. "The king of Dongsheng sent someone to build a dam upstream, so that the people downstream have no water."

"Do this little action again?" Wei Ruo Yi frowned a little. "How boring he is!"

"He's too bullying!" green calyx said angrily. "Last time the Lord negotiated terms with him, he came to do things secretly."

"The drunken man's intention is not wine." Wei ruoyi said with a slight smile, "if he wants to toss, let's accompany him. See if he can toss something new."

"Princess, letter." Wei ruoyi's voice fell. Wei Geng came in with a letter sealed in a bamboo tube in his hand.

Wei ruoyi threw down the towel and handkerchief in his hand and took the letter paper. He frowned a little, and then slowly let go again.

"Princess, but something happened?" Wei Geng asked.

"Some people can't bear it at last." Wei ruoyi smiled faintly. "Let's go back. You let Wei Xin go and change the Lord back."

"Yes," said Wei Geng.

When Wei ruoyi returned to the house, Xiao Jin hurried back with a hood at night.

Wei Xin had passed by the river and pretended to be his appearance. She was not clearly involved with the officials sent by King Dongsheng. Xiao Jin, who was out of her shell, pretended to be Wei Xin and returned to the temporary palace overnight.

"Call me back, but there's something moving over there?" Xiao Jin asked as she untied her cloak as she entered the room.

"Exactly." Wei ruoyi nodded.

She handed the letter to Xiao Jin.

Xiao Jin looked at it again. "Then I'll set off and go back to Beijing secretly."

"Well. I'll take someone to meet my father when the artillery is cast in a few days." Wei ruoyi nodded.