The emperor would rather have a

Chapter 199 Zhao Pu is here?

Upon hearing this, Xiang Xun nodded slightly, picked up his teacup, and took a sip.

"I've heard that His Majesty will lead the main force of the Imperial Guards back to the capital, leaving only 5,000 men for Li Chongjin, plus tens of thousands of laborers and able-bodied men transferred from neighboring prefectures and counties... I wonder if they can be able to besiege Liu Renzhan of Shouzhou?"

Li Yi remained silent upon hearing Xiang Xun's words.

But he felt that it should be enough. After all, Liu Renzhan had been besieged for so long. Even though he had stubbornly held off Zhou's army, his own losses must have been considerable.

Therefore, Liu Renzhan could only hope for reinforcements from the Southern Tang Dynasty to come to his rescue.

However, it was the dead of winter, and even the Zhou army was struggling to maintain its strength, so the Southern Tang army was even less likely to achieve anything significant.

The Tang army's greatest advantage was that it was fighting on its own soil, which reduced the pressure on its logistics. However, launching an offensive was not so easy.

Moreover, Li Chongjin was no mere figurehead; the Imperial Guards under his command were mostly elite troops from the Dragon Swift and Tiger Swift Armies, more than capable of holding positions and fighting in the field.

Just then, Xiang Xun suddenly lowered his voice and leaned forward slightly: "Brother, have you heard that Zhang Ying, the defense commissioner of Anzhou, was killed by his subordinate Cao Cheng and several others?"

"Huh?" Li Yi was taken aback, then realized. The Zhang Ying that Xiang Xun mentioned was Zhang Yongde's biological father.

He stroked his chin and pondered, "I've heard a little about it; it must have happened in the latter half of last month, right?"

“That’s right.” Xiang Xun nodded slightly, his gaze sweeping across the doorway, and continued, “It is said that Zhang Ying forcibly married the daughter of his subordinate Cao Cheng. The young woman was only thirteen years old, and she threw herself into a well and died the day after her marriage… Her father, Cao Cheng, colluded with several officers who had been punished by Zhang Ying, and broke into the backyard of the government office under the cover of night to kill them.”

Li Yi glanced at Xiang Xun's expression and couldn't help but find it a little amusing.

During his time staying in Tokyo, he spent time with Xiang Xun and discovered that Xiang Xun seemed to have a gossipy nature and was quite interested in all sorts of rumors.

However, Li Yi remembered that Zhang Ying was killed in December of the second year of Xiande in history - the historical record states that "on the day of Xinwei, Anzhou reported that Zhang Ying, the defense commissioner, was murdered by thieves".

It's actually about half a month earlier than recorded in historical records.

His mind raced, and he shook his head, saying, "I am not aware of the details. But when I heard you mention this, I suddenly remembered that, according to the report from Huainan a few days ago, those who murdered Commander Zhang seemed to have fled to Jinling?"

"According to the Tang army officers captured at the front, this matter should be true..."

Xiang Xun paused for a moment, then said softly, "I heard that Prince Consort Zhang is determined to avenge his father's death. This time, when the Emperor returned to his capital, he volunteered to stay in Huainan to assist Li Chongjin... Compared to the revenge for his father's death, personal grudges are secondary."

Li Yi knew he was referring to the discord between Zhang Yongde and Li Chongjin.

As they were talking, an official from the yamen came in to refill their tea. The two immediately stopped talking about the matter and began to chat about some trivial matters.

After a long while, Xiang Xun stretched and stood up to straighten his robes: "I have benefited greatly from today's conversation with my worthy brother. However, that document from the King of Wei..."

Li Yi quickly cupped his hands and said, "Brother Xiang, rest assured, the jade will be returned to Zhao intact first thing tomorrow morning."

Xiang Xun shook his head and laughed, "Alright, alright, you can stay a day or two longer. I have other matters to attend to, so I'll take my leave now."

Li Yi finished his tea in one gulp, then stood up and said, "It's time for me to go and inspect the various departments..."

The two walked out of the official residence one after the other.

They bid farewell at the entrance of the government office and then went their separate ways.

……

On the banks of the Cai River, a huge waterwheel is already taking shape.

The wooden spokes mesh with the gear set, which will eventually drive the blast furnace bellows and the stone millstone.

At the dock on the riverbank, a newly built pier extends into the deep water, and flat-bottomed boats fully loaded with materials are gradually docking.

The advantage of this wasteland being adjacent to the waterway is now fully apparent.

By the afternoon.

As the sun began to set, a biting north wind swept across the wasteland outside Kaifeng.

Li Yi arrived in a hurry with his men. He reined in his horse at a high point and squinted at the bustling construction site in front of him.

This piece of land, which he had purchased privately, is no longer a desolate wasteland overgrown with weeds—hundreds of craftsmen and laborers are working hard under the orders of their supervisors, ramming earth to build foundations and laying stone walls.

Strange buildings, beginning to take shape, are rising from the ground.

The most eye-catching thing is the round blast furnace built of rammed earth in the center of the construction site.

The furnace body and base are about ten feet high. The outer wall is made of layers of clay mixed with straw and tamped down. The inner lining is coated with fire-resistant clay. There are ventilation openings at the bottom of the furnace. More than a dozen craftsmen are working hard to operate the wooden bellows.

This is Li Yi's optimized version of the iron smelting furnace of this era, based on his modern memories—a "traditional blast furnace"—although far inferior to the smelting technology of later generations, it should improve the original efficiency.

Based on his understanding, current smelting technology still mainly relies on the crucible process.

First, the ore is reduced in a furnace to produce pig iron. Then, the pig iron is decarburized, purified, and excess impurities are separated to obtain easily malleable wrought iron.

Then, molten pig iron is poured between the layers of wrought iron sheets. The molten iron envelops and soaks the solid or semi-molten wrought iron blocks, and the high-carbon molten iron permeates into the low-carbon wrought iron.

Ultimately, the compositions of the two materials become more uniform, resulting in steel billets with a suitable carbon content, which are then used to forge weapons and armor.

Of course, this is just an ideal scenario.

In practice, however, neither efficiency nor quality can be guaranteed. Often, a "softening treatment" is required before the steel billet can undergo further hot working.

The process typically involves holding the steel billet at a specific temperature and then subjecting it to prolonged, uniform heating and slow cooling to eliminate the internal stresses generated during forging and quenching.

However, low efficiency and the inability to consistently control the quality of the produced steel remained unavoidable. It all depended on the craftsman's personal experience, and even required a certain amount of luck.

After inspecting the official smelting workshops, Li Yi discovered that a large proportion of the weapons and armor forged were defective.

As for these substandard products, the imperial court was reluctant to discard them, after all, they had cost a lot of money, and the national treasury was not that wealthy.

Defective products are usually given to irregularly organized troops... Those soldiers are already doing well if they can be equipped with weapons and armor, so naturally they have no choice.

However, Li Yi felt that rather than whether it was possible to manufacture it, it was more important to ensure quality, maintain stable and large-scale production, and keep costs as low as possible.

Otherwise, if it costs several thousand strings of cash and a dozen craftsmen spend several months to create only one precious sword that can cut through iron like mud.

Or they might create cheap but fragile weapons that break easily, ultimately wasting manpower and materials.

What's the point?

Therefore, Li Yi planned to use knowledge from later generations to improve the furnace design and operation methods in order to improve steelmaking efficiency and quality.

If conditions permit in the future, some key processes from modern smelting technology can be introduced—such as precise temperature control, or the addition of certain alloying elements—to improve the performance of steel.

"We'll dig a ditch here to bring in water, and build a few water pumps for the kilns that will be added later."

Li Yi walked around the riverbank, summoned the officials in charge of supervising the construction, and gave them a few instructions.

The so-called water pump can be seen as a water-powered blower. It uses water power to drive the machinery, causing the leather blower to open and close continuously, sending air into the iron smelting furnace. It requires little effort but is very effective.

This method was applied to smelting processes long before the Sui and Tang dynasties.

"Your Excellency understands," the official hurriedly replied. Li Yi nodded slightly, said no more, and strode towards the blast furnace.

At this moment, the craftsmen are busy at work.

Piles of Cizhou iron ore sand, transported from Caishui Wharf, were stacked beside the furnace. Several shirtless craftsmen were using long-handled iron tongs to feed coke into the furnace opening. Dark red flames shot out from the gaps in the furnace chamber, and the air was filled with a pungent sulfur smell.

“The furnace temperature is still not high enough.” After observing for a while, Li Yi frowned and said to the supervisor beside him, “Let’s try adding another set of bellows and increase the charcoal ratio to 30%.”

Humans have used iron for a very long time, but for a considerable period of time, steel that meets the required standards could not be produced on a large scale.

Until the advent of the Babson process, the first inexpensive process in human history to produce steel on a large scale from pig iron.

After that, humankind mastered the technology of mass-producing steel, and steel was used extensively in everything from transportation and infrastructure to military and daily life.

Li Yi was not a professional in the field, but he knew that the key to the Babson process was to strengthen the blast furnace and increase the height of the furnace.

By increasing the air volume inside the furnace, the gas pressure is increased, enhancing the ability to penetrate the material layer inside the furnace, thus increasing the combustion intensity and directly raising the furnace temperature.

Moreover, this also allows for increasing the height of the furnace body.

Once the furnace body is heightened, the time for the rising airflow inside the furnace to contact the ore is extended, naturally improving energy utilization.

The two complement each other, working together to optimize efficiency and output.

China's smelting technology transitioned from pit furnaces to vertical furnaces very early on, making it relatively easy to increase the height of the furnace.

Therefore, Li Yi focused on the air intake. He drew on the idea of ​​the Béla Steelmaking process and placed the air inlet at the bottom of the blast furnace, which is the so-called bottom blowing method, in order to increase the reaction temperature inside the furnace.

However, due to limitations in refractory materials and sealing issues, the bottom-blowing method is not very effective at present.

However, Li Yi felt that his approach was correct, and the rest was just a matter of improving it little by little in practice. This kind of thing can't be rushed.

He pondered: if he could refine molten steel to the required specifications, he could try casting large armor plates, thereby improving the design of the armor and increasing its defensive capabilities.

Other areas may also benefit from this.

Of course, this is just a preliminary idea, because no concrete results have been achieved yet, and the possibility of failure cannot be ruled out, and all the work may end up being in vain.

But it's better than not trying at all, right?

Further away, several brick kilns resembling inverted giant bowls are under construction. These are "vertical kilns" prepared for firing cement—the kiln top has a feeding port, and the side walls of the kiln are spirally arranged with ventilation holes to ensure uniform high temperature.

Under a row of thatched huts built along the riverbank, craftsmen are grinding limestone, clay, and iron slag into powder.

Next to the crowd was a uniquely shaped "rotary kiln": a long, sloping trough made of bricks and stones, with specially made guide plates inside, and a wooden gear set driven by a waterwheel at the end.

According to that envoy Li, this is called the "clinker cooling zone." The scorching hot molten material rolls down the slope and is cooled by the water flow brought in by the river.

The craftsmen had never seen such a design before, but they dared not question the words of the nobleman, so they could only do their jobs according to his instructions.

Li Yi walked to the kiln and squatted down, grabbing a handful of the mixture and kneading it in his palm.

He shook his head: "It's not ground fine enough, and the moisture content is too high. It needs to be dried in the kiln, otherwise it will clump and affect the calcination."

The craftsmen dared not say a word and quickly ground the already ground limestone again. The stones that had not yet been ground were taken to a low-temperature kiln for reheating.

Li Yi stood up and looked at the several "cement kilns" in front of him.

He thought to himself: It is said that fire is the foundation of human progress, and upon closer examination, this makes a lot of sense.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the advancement of human technology inevitably involved working on "fire-making"... Even the Industrial Revolution was still inseparable from "fire-making".

The design of these kilns was improved, and some results were eventually achieved.

It's not just steel and cement... things like ceramics, glass, and other refractory materials can also be used.

……

Behind the sheltered hill, there is a courtyard enclosed by a rammed earth wall.

The three stone houses are arranged in a triangular shape, with thin wooden planks covering the roofs—so that an accidental explosion would not cause too much damage.

Inside the room, Zuo Congqin was directing his apprentices to grind saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal in separate containers.

Upon seeing Li Yi enter, the "alchemy master" wiped the soot from his forehead and said, "I've tried the 'one part saltpeter, two parts sulfur, three parts charcoal' formula, but the burning speed is never consistent..."

Upon hearing this, Li Yi took a piece of saltpeter out of the sack and examined it closely.

He knew that potassium nitrate was a compound that should be a salt-like crystal.

The stone-like thing in my hand is grayish-brown, and I have no idea how much of it actually contains any active ingredients.

According to his designed process, after the saltpeter was crushed, it was mixed with water and stirred in a wooden barrel, and the water was filtered out using the gauze used for filtering tofu.

The filtered water was poured into a large pot, boiled, dried, and finally stir-fried to produce a pile of small particles that looked like salt.

Then, people used bamboo sieves to sift and classify the materials, mixing approximate amounts of charcoal and sulfur powder for testing.

Mixing is quite troublesome. If the dried raw materials are stirred too much, they will spontaneously combust. If they are not stirred evenly, they may not be mixed properly.

But the most difficult part is testing the formula. It requires testing and modifying it little by little. Moreover, there are many factors that affect the combustion speed, so it is difficult to achieve any results in a short period of time.

But Li Yi wasn't in a hurry. After all, it was all about trying. If it succeeded, that would be great. If it didn't... well, he could just keep taking it slow.

Zuo Congqin stroked his beard and pondered, "For now, this gunpowder will not achieve the effect that Governor Li wants, but it is far superior to the kind of powder that the government uses to start fires."

"Moreover, the method of filtration, purification, grinding, and proportioning is truly ingenious. When I used to refine pills with fire, I could produce some gunpowder, but it was extremely unstable and often risked exploding with lightning. On the contrary, the method given by Commander Li has subtly subdued this substance."

Upon hearing this, Li Yi really wanted to tell Zuo Congqin that they were only in the experimental stage of formula testing, so the danger was naturally not that great.

But if we wait until the results are achieved... a small explosion every three days and a big explosion every five days would be considered mild.

"It's alright, there's no rush."

Li Yi dusted himself off and stood up. "I'll leave this matter to Daoist Zuo. If you need anything, please let me know."

He felt that bringing Zuo Congqin to Tokyo was a very wise decision.

Zuo Congqin was not only helpful in gunpowder, but he also provided valuable advice on kiln and waterwheel techniques.

No wonder people say that reading ten thousand books is not as good as traveling ten thousand miles.

Zuo Congqin's extensive travels and knowledge in his early years were truly remarkable; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call him a polymath.

Just then, a personal guard rushed in, bowed, and reported, "Commander, someone sent by the garrison commander said that the three men recommended by Commander Liu have arrived in Tokyo."

Upon hearing this, Li Yi's eyes flickered slightly: Zhao Pu is here?

(End of this chapter)