Seeing that the bronze Buddha entered the iron box and was about to light the fire, Li Zhang asked with a trembling voice: "Is it really... going to melt?"
This is a statue of God...
Lang Jun and father, aren’t you afraid of being punished by gods?
Li Chengzhi almost threw the clay in his hand into Li Zhang's face.
My pants are off, what are you telling me?
He glared at Li Song fiercely: How did you mobilize your thoughts?
Li Song cursed bitterly: "What did I tell you before? If I don't refine this bronze statue, where will the iron material come from to forge the armor? Is it possible that you will charge into the battle shirtless?"
Shirtless?
Li Zhang lowered his head and said in a voice like an ant's groan: "It's not impossible!"
"Bang!"
Li Song threw the clay tablet in his hand smoothly and hit Li Zhang on the head accurately: "You should be allowed to die of stupidity... It doesn't matter if you die. Where are you, grandpa, your uncle, and your brother? How many times are you?
Can a dead bottle be more important than the life of a loved one?"
Seeing his father getting angry, Li Zhang held his head and dared not say a word.
Still his peers understand him.
Li Liang put his arm around his shoulders and murmured in a low voice: "My Li family started with military exploits and only served the military leader (Chi You). When did you ever trust this mortal body made of clay and copper? Besides, didn't you clamor yesterday that you wanted to beg for help?"
Will you give you a sharp weapon like the horse spear of Fourth Uncle (Li Song)? If you don’t melt the copper, what can you use to exchange for iron materials, and what can you use to buy a mulberry gun shaft?"
Li Zhang was indifferent to the first half of the sentence, but when he heard the second half, his eyes lit up as if they were electrified.
Sang Tuo’s wooden spear?
"Well... let's melt..."
Li Song's face turned blue with anger.
It sounds like if you said it won’t melt, it won’t melt today?
As Lang Jun said: It’s really itchy...
Li Song thought that some people would doubt it, and indeed some people doubted it: such as his younger brother Li Bai and his younger brother Li Feng.
After all, this is a god and Buddha, but everyone has a sense of awe, including him.
As for Li Chengzhi?
Most of the time, Li Song treats him as a human being...
When Li Song just said, "I don't know what day, these belongings will be the basis of the Li family's troubles," Li Bai and Li Feng were just like Li Zhang in front of him, and their eyes lit up...
If you really succeed one day, it will be a shining light for all generations and a great honor. How many bottles of Buddha are you still afraid of?
But Li Song didn't expect that after convincing Li Bai and Li Feng, Li Zhang, who usually obeyed him, would be reluctant?
Fortunately, Li Xian was not brought here, otherwise he would have had to jump up!
Two idiots...
Although Li Zhang has a straightforward temper, he is very strict with his mouth. Besides, with Li Song suppressing him, he will definitely not dare to speak nonsense.
Seeing that he didn't talk much anymore, Li Chengzhi didn't say anything anymore.
He quickly filled the pottery clay, sealed the box, and then instructed Li Zhao and Li Ming to add coke to the furnace.
The process is actually very simple, much easier than making steel. Just be careful not to make the temperature too high, don't refining the iron box, wait for the copper juice to drain out, and don't shatter the pottery mold inside when you tip over the iron box...
…
Not long after it burned, flaming liquid flowed out of the pottery ditch at the bottom of the blast furnace.
The furnace temperature at this time is only three to four hundred degrees. Where can the copper be melted?
This is the tin and lead in copper.
After the clay was dried, the furnace was resealed, and after less than half an hour of burning, a large amount of copper juice flowed out.
Li Chengzhi immediately stopped the two windmills, leaving only two windmills to blow the wind in evenly.
After two moments, Li Chengzhi breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the thin iron bars inserted in the chimney were standing straight.
The temperature control is pretty good...
Li Song, along with Li Feng and his three nephews, quickly moved the steel plate covered with clay, carefully letting the copper juice flow into it, trying not to waste a drop.
Each steel plate is one foot square, with ten clay molds neatly attached to it. The copper ingots cast from each clay mold weigh approximately ten kilograms.
This template can cast 100 kilograms of copper. Li Chengzhi used up all the steel he made in the past two days and one night before he could barely make 100 templates.
When these templates were used up, they were only about 10,000 kilograms, so he never wanted to leave any copper slag for these monks...
As the flames went out, the surface of the copper ingots in the mud fan slowly turned black. Li Chengzhi asked Li Song and others to quickly smash the mud fan and pour all the copper ingots into the pool next to it.
There was a boil in the pool, and mist filled the sky.
Li Bai asked in confusion: "Lang Jun, why does copper also need to be quenched?"
"What is quenching? This is copper washing!" Li Chengzhi replied calmly, "Didn't you see that the newly fired copper is black?"
Can it be washed with water?
Everyone was surprised and admired Li Chengzhi even more: Lang Jun knows so much!
Li Chengzhi couldn't explain to them what "copper oxide hydrogen reduction" was.
In fact, washing like this cannot completely remove the black color on the surface of the copper ingot. Li Chengzhi's main purpose is to make the copper softer, so that people will know at first glance that this is pure copper without lead.
When the fog cleared, he directed Li Zhang to fish out all the copper ingots with a claw fence, and the ten copper ingots were neatly placed in front of Li Chengzhi.
Under the light of the torch, every piece exudes an intoxicating brilliance.
Except for Li Chengzhi, all of them could not stop their heartbeats from accelerating and their breathing to increase.
It’s not that they’ve never seen copper before, it’s just that they’ve never seen such beautiful copper.
Nonsense, how can it not be beautiful? There is gold in it...
The melting points of the two are close, so it is very troublesome to refine them separately. The gold content of each is not much, so Li Chengzhi just did it.
What is refined in this way is called bonus gold, also called rose gold...
However, only one side of each piece of copper is this color, and the other five sides are still red and black.
Since they had to spend it soon anyway, Li Chengzhi acted very calmly and ordered Li Song and others to collect the copper juice, quench the water, and fish out the copper ingots in an orderly manner.
An hour later, there was no more liquid copper flowing out of the pottery ditch. Li Chengzhi immediately stopped the bellows and counted the copper ingots.
The fourth template has just been used up. There are about 400 kilograms of copper ingots and almost 300 kilograms of tin and lead mixture.
Li Chengzhi’s face is a bit dark.
This means that the copper content is just over half?
The evil-hearted monk even deceived the Buddha?
The others didn't speak, just looked at him quietly.
They had all advised Li Chengzhi before, regardless of whether it was lead or tin, or whatever was melted out, could they just cast it all for him?
It was Li Chengzhi who insisted on smelting pure copper.
But the loss is not big.
The color of the copper ingot is so bright. Anyone who knows the goods will know that it is mixed with gold. Even if the price is not double that of Sanqi bronze, it will not be much worse...
Next, is the most critical step: cast iron statue.
This is related to whether Li Song, Li Bai, and Li Feng, the backbone of the Li family, will support his decision to smelt all these bronze statues, so Li Chengzhi is extremely serious.
Using iron chains and levers, he turned the iron box over and made sure that the model was not damaged. Then Li Chengzhi directed Li Zhang and Li Liang to pour the smelted iron juice into it.
The pottery pillar used as the inner mold was a bit large, so thirteen crucibles were filled, and the iron box was full.
He did the math and found that it would only weigh 400 kilograms if he could hold it to death.
It’s too much to save...
Half an hour later, when he put down the iron box, smashed the ceramic model, and saw the true appearance of the iron statue, Li Chengzhi laughed nervously.
Not to mention the facial features, even the texture of the bun and the folds of the clothes are perfect...
Li Song and others were so excited that they couldn't even speak.
Is it really as Lang Jun said, exactly the same?
This is tens of thousands of kilograms of copper...
……
By the time the second statue was melted, the sky was already slightly bright.
To prevent anyone from prying, Li Chengzhi asked several juniors to sleep directly in the main hall, and also asked Li Song, Li Bai, and Li Feng to pack the cast copper ingots into boxes.
He counted and found that it was only eight hundred kilograms.
According to this ratio, in the end, at most, we can get more than 6,000 kilograms of copper.
But it is enough to cope with the current difficulties.
The things he lacks most at this time happen to not be expensive.
A pound of colored copper like this would cost at least three stones of corn, and ten thousand stones would cost at most three thousand pounds of copper.
Coarse iron material, that is, sponge iron freshly burned from iron ore, is not expensive. In the past, one stone of grain could be exchanged for more than ten or twenty kilograms. If replaced with this kind of colored copper, one kilogram could be exchanged for at least fifty or sixty kilograms.
Come back.
Then there are horses.
This is the great Wei Dynasty and what Longxi is most indispensable for.
During the period of Emperor Xiaowen, the Hexi Racecourse had not yet been moved to Luoyang. At that time, it was said to raise two million horses. There were two such large-scale horse farms in the Wei Dynasty: the Hanoi Racecourse in Hetao and the Heyang Racecourse near Luoyang.
Therefore, the price of horses in the Wei Dynasty is not expensive. A Xiliang horse that can be dragged to the battlefield will be worth the price of a good plowing ox: twenty stones of millet, or ten pounds of copper.
Li Chengzhi's suggestion is to exchange all of them for grain, which can be exchanged for at least 20,000 shi.
Twenty thousand shi is equivalent to 2.4 million catties. Adding the existing 10,000 shi, these nearly 10,000 people can eat until the beginning of autumn even if they eat freely.
But no one agreed...
Li Bai knelt on one knee and looked at Li Chengzhi excitedly: "Mr. Lang, do you remember what your servant said to you on the day Yin Guang came to cheat the door? If you can give me three hundred armored horses, let alone this ten thousand."
Even ten thousand thieves can be defeated by servants...
Instead of buying grain, it is better to buy iron and horses, and train all these thousand soldiers as armored cavalry. I can guarantee that in less than three months, I can lead this iron army and drive these thieves out of Jingzhou...
”
Can a thousand heavy cavalry defeat 20,000 rebel soldiers?
Theoretically, the odds of winning are quite high.
Li Chengzhi also vaguely remembered that there were many such battles in history books.
But the problem is, even if he doesn't understand, he still knows that the outcome of a war cannot be determined by just relying on written numbers.
There are too many influencing factors, such as weather, geography, luck...
Not to mention other things, except for the 100 old soldiers of the Li family, the remaining 900 soldiers cannot be regarded as having been on the battlefield. Compared with the refugees, they are not strong enough.
Who can guarantee victory every time?
The thief chief Liu Huiwang is not a stupid pig. He has suffered a loss once. How can he fight with you after knowing that you are a cavalry?
You only have one thousand people, and others have at least twenty thousand. Once we go up the mountain to fight guerrillas with you, how useful can your thousand cavalry be?
The lives of nearly ten thousand people depended on him, and Li Chengzhi really didn’t dare to gamble.
What's more, even if we win, there will be many troubles.
Li Chengzhi narrowed his eyes and asked solemnly: "A thousand cavalry? Li Bai, don't you know how many 'tiger cavalry' the imperial court has?"
The tiger cavalry he was talking about were the most elite heavy cavalry of the Wei Dynasty, with both men and horses. If they were a bit less generous, it would not be an exaggeration to say that they were the ancestors of "armored heavy cavalry" in Chinese history.
The Wei Dynasty claimed that there were more than 10,000 tigers riding on it, but Li Chengzhi doubted whether there were more than 5,000?
Even in the early Sui and Tang Dynasties, when the country was so powerful, Yang Jian's Xiaoguo Guards and Li Shimin's Xuanjia Army did not exceed five thousand...
But the small Li family can actually arm thousands of cavalry?
What do you want the court to think, and what do you want the wealthy family to think?
This is not the way to seek death...
As soon as Li Chengzhi's words came out of his mouth, Li Bai reacted.
Just thinking about meritorious service and forgetting whether it will cause disaster?
He blushed and opened his mouth, but he didn't know what to say?
Li Song knelt down again: "So that Lang Jun will know that it is precisely because of the rebellion that the customs defense in Jingzhou is almost non-existent. As long as we are more careful and buy it in batches, no one will realize that these iron materials and war horses are mine."
Purchased by the Li family.
But if the war is calmed down and the defense is restored, it will be extremely difficult to find such an opportunity. So I think that even if we don't have to deal with this chaos, my Li family will never let go of such a good opportunity...
”
Li Chengzhi couldn't help but stab Li Song.
Good opportunity?
You might as well just say that you are just going to rebel.
But thinking about it on the other hand, even if we don’t consider rebellion, we must at least protect ourselves. At the very least, we must ensure that the rebels cannot reach Kongtong Mountain before the court quells the rebellion.
He pondered for a moment and decided directly: "Then buy half of the food and half of the horses and iron..."
Just half?
Li Bai wanted to persuade him again, but Li Song gave him a sharp look.
Li Songke always remembered what Li Chengzhi told him on the night when Li Chengzhi and Hu Baozong fell out: if he dared to mention even a word related to "Li's rise", Li Chengzhi would not spare him...
"Servant, please obey your order!" Li Song responded loudly.