The carriage and horses were running all night, and at dawn, they were already walking on the edge of a big river. At this time, Ren Yijiang had already transferred to war horses and entered with Chen Dexing. He seemed very familiar with the situation in Nanfen County and pointed out: "This is the Prince River, known as Yanshui, Dalianghe and Liangshui in ancient times. Because Yan Prince Dan once fled here, it was named Prince River. There are two branches of the Prince River at the source of this Prince River. The southern branch is in the Caomaozi Mountain in Nanfen County, and the northern branch is Pingding Mountain in Fushun County. The lower reaches of the Prince River are connected to the Liao River, which is connected to Haikou. With this Prince River in Nanfen, Fushun, Xiangping and Liao River, it can be connected to one line. Now the trees cut down from the two mountains in Nanfen and Fushun are all tied into wooden rafts, so they will be put down from the Prince River. If the King comes here in summer, the rafts in the river can be connected to more than ten miles!"

Chen Dexing said: "Who are the people who cut down trees?"

"Slaves are all slaves, including Mongolians, and lustful people. There are also some unruly and unruly barbarians who are all locked with chains to log and mine in Nanfen and Fushun counties."

Beiming did not allow private slaves to be stored. All slaves were official property, and the source was prisoners of war. They were governed by the Government Affairs Department and the Military Affairs Department. Among them, the slaves under the Government Affairs Department were mainly responsible for the construction of large cities such as the Mingdu Prefecture and Liaoyang Prefecture. The slaves under the Military Affairs Department were all concentrated in Nanfen and Fushun counties. They were engaged in logging and mining. The wood cut down was used for the construction of Liaoyang Prefecture and Shenyang Prefecture. Now there are tens of thousands of juren farms in Liaodong, and many houses are needed to be built. In addition, there are a large number of prefectures and counties to be built, so the sales of wood are very good. Therefore, cutting trees and discharged in places close to the river is a good deal. The Military Affairs Department made a lot of money by cutting trees with slaves.

Chen Dexing said: "You can't just think about making quick money. Fushun's coal and Nanfen's iron are the foundation!"

Ren Yijiang said: "I understand that it is not a matter of finding iron ore overnight. Although Fushun and Nanfen produced coal and iron in the Liao and Jin dynasties, it has been decades after all. The original mine has long disappeared, so we have to look for it patiently."

Chen Dexing, who has lived and studied in Dalian for several years, did he not know about Fushun Coal and Nanfen Iron? That is the pride of the old industrial base in Liaoning. It is the largest open-pit coal mine and open-pit iron ore in Liaoning. It is also a very high-quality coal and iron. The coking coal of Fushun Coal Mine and the low-phosphorus thioirite in Nanfen are the best in Asia! Especially when China's iron smelting technology in the 13th century was still quite primitive, desulfurization and dephosphoration have always been a difficult problem. The best solution is to use coke to smel low-sulfur and low-phosphorus iron ore to solve the problem at the source.

Chen Dexing said: "Now good coal and iron have been found, can the logging business be stopped?"

Ren Yijiang smiled and said, "Why don't you wait until the autumn harvest is over, and you can go to the four kings of the Mongolian host to catch tens of thousands of slaves? As long as there are slaves, the Military Affairs Department can take care of both ends."

"I can. Why have you become a slave owner?"

"Brother, do you think I'm willing?" Ren Yijiang said with his beard, "Do you know how difficult those Mongolian slaves are to fiddle with? Otherwise... you'll kill all these Mongolians!"

The Mongols! They were all captured by the Eight Banners soldiers, how could they be willing to be slaves? Even if they pretended to be tame, Ren Yijiang would not dare to rest assured. So he prepared iron chains and shackles for these Mongolian slaves, locked them up and let the soldiers take them up the mountain to cut trees and go to the mine to work. It was really troublesome!

But it’s a joke that people kill, and the population is more precious than gold in Liaodong. How can you bear to kill?

Chen Dexing smiled and said, "They have great uses! After a while, the Mongolian slaves will no longer be your Military Affairs Department."

Ren Yijiang shook his head and said, "Not belonging to us? What should I do if Fushun Coal and Nanfen Iron? No slaves...what do you want me to mine and smelize iron?"

"There are no slaves and merchants!"

"Businessman?" Ren Yijiang sneered, "Where are they willing to come to Fushun, Nanfen? Moreover, even if they are willing to come, they have to have slaves, otherwise who will do their job?"

Chen Dexing smiled and said, "Don't there be anyone who works in the work?" As he said that, he raised his whip and pointed at Deng Ming'an and Deng Mingli who were sleeping soundly in the carriage behind him.

"Just both of them?"

Chen Dexing nodded and said, "It's just the two of them! There is a folk song on Zhoushan Island saying: Eighty percent Deng, two percent Shen, and 10 percent Shen. Although I took their land, their remaining power in Zhoushan is still there. When they climbed up and called, there was still a reputation for tens of thousands of followers!"

A shout from the high school. Tens of thousands of followers! This is not a good thing!

When the last sentence was expressed, the two sleeping Deng family members trembled at the same time, and their foreheads were sweating like sludge!

Ren Yijiang raised his whip and said, "King, Nanfen County is coming, and you will be here after passing this forest!"

A moment later, a solid castle suddenly appeared in front of Chen Dexing. The outermost edge of the castle was a trench nearly three meters wide. Only half of the water was placed in the ditch. The exposed ditch was one person high. Rows of sharpened wood trench could be seen under the water. Behind the trench is a solid castle made of triangular rammed earth, and behind the castle is a high wall of five hundred steps. There is a plank road between the high wall and the solid castle. There are two protruding prism-shaped bunkers at both ends of the high wall, which are connected to the high wall. In front of the triangular solid castle, there is a laid down suspension bridge.

"Wow, is this a county town? The defense is almost over to the Mingdu Mansion!"

Ren Yijiang scratched his head, "Isn't this the fundamental place? There are several camps surrounding Mongolian slaves. If you are not careful, what happens in the future, the disaster will be a big deal!"

"That's true..." Chen Dexing nodded, "The iron smelting plant is in Nanfen. If Mongolian slaves were killed, they might get hundreds of thousands of kilograms of steel at once. If they had to build weapons and armor, the trouble would be no small matter. Therefore, you can't use Mongolian slaves to dig iron and coal, otherwise you would have to worry about death!"

"The Mongols don't need to start mining, where do they want to go?" Ren Yijiang shook his head, "What can these grandchildren do well except killing and setting fire?"

"Then let them continue to kill and set fire!" Chen Dexing looked at the bastion built by Ren Yijiang with Mongolian slaves, paused for a while, and murmured: "There are too many people in this world who want to kill. Who can do this better than the Mongolians? They have killed half of the people from the old world in thirty years!"

"What? It's not enough to kill half of the world? Brother, do you want them to kill?"

Chen Dexing nodded seriously and said, "There are many people in this world who need to be killed. If you don't kill more, how can you mess with Xia Jun and Yi people? So these Mongols are still valuable!"

"Then...will you still let them cut down trees and dig coal now?"

Chen Dexing snorted coldly: "Of course I want it! If you don't suffer a little, how can you know how terrible I, Chen Dexing, are? They are also beasts, fear power but do not have virtue! I can do it, how should you fix them and how should you fix them? Don't think about giving me kindness and virtue!"

At this time, there was a commotion on the other side of the moat, and then a team of knights rode their horses from behind the triangular solid castle (the city gate was hidden behind the solid castle). The first one was Qita, the general manager of the Iron and Metallurgical Bureau of the Military Affairs Department, and the eighth of the twenty-two brothers in Qionghua Tower.

Zita turned over and dismounted and bowed, "Brother, I've been waiting for you!"

Chen Dexing also got off the horse and laughed: "Old Ba, your place is so remote that it is so tired that the Lone King has been walking for a day and a night, and he has never even closed his eyes!"

Qita laughed and scratched his head and said, "Brother, am I even more miserable? The whole family is nesting in this mountain valley, a nest for a year, and even the Mingdu Mansion has never been there once."

Chen Dexing walked up, patted his old brother on the shoulder, and said, "It's so hard, but who made you my brother? He used to be a blacksmith again. Iron smelting matter is so important, you can only take care of it."

Although Chen Dexing didn't know much about steelmaking and ironmaking, he never stopped trying to find high-quality steel smelting methods. He also told Qita about the little metallurgy knowledge he knew, such as reflectors, refractory bricks, coke ironmaking, iron frying method, crucible steelmaking method, the effect of thiophosphorus on iron, etc. He also allocated a large amount of funds every year, allowing the Qi Laoba to recruit many blacksmiths to study iron smelting techniques. But now, it is finally time to achieve benefits!

"Fortunately, I finally took out something this time!" Qita said as he made a gesture from Suke and invited Chen Dexing into Nanfen County.

After entering the city, Chen Dexing first followed Qita around. There were almost a thousand households in the city. In addition to following the Song Kingdom, he had military status, he now had a blacksmith's mansion. Some of the farms were divided into houses of Sir Jue and Eight Banners on the banks of the Prince River outside the city. In addition, there were government offices and rows of warehouses built along the walls of the North City. There were no iron smelting blast furnaces and wrought iron workshops.

Chen Dexing asked: "The furnace and workshop are not in the city?"

"They are all built outside the north wall, facing the Prince River, in order to build water trucks using the Prince River."

Chen Dexing's eyebrows jumped: "Oh, do you have both a hydraulic hammer and a hydraulic blower?"

Zita smiled and said, "I finally fulfilled my mission... But we didn't invent these two things ourselves. Brother, you have come up with the idea, but we craftsmen don't know much about the mechanism, so we asked colleagues from the Shipbuilding Bureau to do it."

"Okay!" Chen Dexing nodded, "Let's go and have a look first, and then have a meal after watching... Lao Ba, you have to invite my brother to have a good meal."

"Okay, I asked my wives to cook in person... Although Nanfen is a little stuffy, they eat a lot. There is wild game in the mountains and forests, fish in the Prince River, and we also raise cattle and sheep ourselves."
Chapter completed!