Late Ming Dynasty: From the Defeated Soldiers at Daling River to Ascending the Throne

September 22nd, the fourth year of Chongzhen's reign, morning.

The snow had stopped, but the sky remained overcast, with leaden clouds hanging low.

Because of the previous night's encounter and the threat of the giant insect, Chen Feng and the others decided that they could no longer stay in this place.

That night, one of Chen Feng's seriously wounded soldiers couldn't hold on and passed away.

The group then left the hut on Dachong Mountain and followed Zheng Sanfu northward.

The remaining seriously wounded soldier was placed on horseback; his condition was very poor, and it was uncertain whether he could survive.

They walked along the shady side of the ridge, trying to avoid the passes where the Tartars might see them. Zheng Sanfu walked in front, knowing every hill and every grove of trees as well as his own backyard.

"Water flows in this ditch in the summer," he said, pointing to a dry, rocky ditch.

"Look at that slope over there. It looks gentle and easy to walk on, but there's a muddy swamp at the bottom. Once you go in, you won't be able to get out."

"That rocky cliff up there offers a view of the main road, but it's too conspicuous. Last month, a night scout was shot into a pincushion by the Tartars there."

Chen Feng listened silently, taking it all to heart. This was the value of a living map of the occupied territories, something that no later atlas could provide.

They arrived at their destination in the evening.

It was a solitary mountain peak, backed by an even higher main peak, with steep slopes on three sides, and only a zigzag path winding up to it on the southeast side.

The mountaintop was leveled by human hands and surrounded by an extremely simple wall, or more accurately, a fence.

Upon entering the village, Chen Feng's heart sank even lower.

Zheng Sanfu previously mentioned that there were "about a hundred people" in the village, a large portion of whom were women, children, the elderly, and the infirm.

Several emaciated children, wrapped in ill-fitting tattered coats, stared blankly at the newcomers in the cold ground. The women, mostly with numb expressions, wore thin clothes patched upon patched, and silently busied themselves among the low shacks.

The so-called "young and strong men," though numbering sixty or seventy, all looked malnourished, and their "clothes" were a motley collection, including tattered Ming army uniforms and old Tartar leather jackets...

Weapons lay haphazardly against the wall: rusted spearheads, chipped knives, and hunting bows with cracked backs. The entire village was filled with an atmosphere of despair.

Several new plots of land have been reclaimed on the edge of the village, and the ground is now covered with a thin layer of white snow.

An elderly man with one arm strode out of the largest shack. He was about fifty years old, with deep wrinkles on his face that showed the marks of time. His empty left sleeve was tied with a straw rope, but his steps were steady. He was the old sentry officer Qin Shouyi that Zheng Sanfu had mentioned.

"Sanfu! And who are these people...?" Qin Shouyi's gaze quickly swept over Chen Feng and the others, pausing for a moment, especially on the officer's cloth armor and waist knife at Chen Feng's waist.

Zheng Sanfu hurriedly stepped forward and quickly explained the reason in a low voice. When Qin Shouyi mentioned the bloody battle last night, he frowned.

Upon hearing this, Qin Shouyi clasped his one arm and bowed deeply to Chen Feng: "Lord Chen is righteous and saved my worthless brothers. I thank you on behalf of everyone."

Chen Feng returned the greeting with clasped hands, "Elder Qin, you flatter me. We are both in distress, and it is only right that we lend a helping hand."

After exchanging pleasantries, Qin Shouyi led them into the shack.

The group sat around a small fire pit, which was slightly warmer than the outside, but the cold wind from outside still blew straight in through the cracks in the walls.

Thinking of the few thin fields outside the village, Chen Feng asked, "Old Qin, those fields outside the village..."

A bitter look appeared on Qin Shouyi's face. "That was wasteland. The Tartars would come to search the mountains and burn down the villages every year or two, and we had to move every time. Once the land was cleared, it had to be abandoned before it could be cultivated, and no food could be grown at all."

He paused for a moment, then said, "Planting it is just for the sake of having something to remember."

Qin Shouyi's tone was very calm, but Chen Feng felt very uncomfortable listening to him.

He had just thought that his farming experience from his later life could help these poor people grow food, but he immediately realized that his limited knowledge from his later life was of no use in this era of scarcity, as it was detached from the modern industrial system.

Let alone fertilizers, even farm tools and water conservancy require a stable environment, which is simply impossible given the current situation Qin Shouyi described.

There was a moment of silence in the shack, broken only by the crackling of burning firewood.

Suddenly, Chen Feng remembered that he seemed to have glimpsed a kind of yellow stone with a metallic rust color on the way into the mountains.

Could that be pyrite?

Then, he recalled a drunken conversation he had with his military academy instructor from his previous life, who loved to talk about military history: "...Yizhou was one of the important sources of sulfur and iron for the early Later Jin dynasty. It was because of Yizhou as a logistical base that they were able to have enough gunpowder and steel to manufacture the Red-Clad Cannons during the Battle of Dalinghe..."

Pyrite... Ironware... Sulfur... Gunpowder!

To make gunpowder, a large amount of saltpeter is needed. Although natural saltpeter mines are hard to find, it is possible to boil saltpeter using traditional methods.

A rough but potentially feasible plan was rapidly taking shape in his mind.

"Old Qin," Chen Feng looked up, "do you have those smelly, yellowish stones around this mountain? The kind with rust on them?"

Qin Shouyi and Zheng Sanfu exchanged a glance, both somewhat puzzled.

Zheng Sanfu thought for a moment and said, "A section of cliff collapsed on the back mountain, and a lot of rocks rolled down. It seems... there are some like what you described."

"Great!" Chen Feng's spirits lifted. "That stuff is called pyrite. We can use it to extract sulfur."

"Sulfur?" Qin Shouyi's eyes widened suddenly. "The sulfur used to make gunpowder?"

"That's right!" Chen Feng nodded. "Not just sulfur. Your village has a large population; you can scrape off the loose soil from the dry toilets and the base of old walls, rinsing it with water and boiling it to extract saltpeter. You can also make your own charcoal. With sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal, you can make your own gunpowder!"

The shack fell silent for a moment, then suppressed gasps filled the air, and even Zhao Sheng and the others looked at Chen Feng in surprise.

Gunpowder was a controlled substance in the late Ming Dynasty. Apart from the Wanggong Factory and Fireworks Bureau in the capital, which were responsible for its production, only a few important border towns could produce it.

The gunpowder privately manufactured by civilians was for their livelihood, and the formulas were never leaked. Moreover, most of it was of poor quality and did not meet military standards at all.

Qin Shouyi was so excited that his one arm trembled slightly. He suppressed his emotions and asked, "Lord Chen, is this method... truly feasible? What tools are needed?"

"The method is simple and uncomplicated, but..."

Hao Dadao couldn't hold back any longer. "Boss, just say what you have to say! I'm dying to say it!"

"It's just that the production volume is not high, so it's a bit difficult to produce a weapon capable of defeating ten thousand men."

Chen Feng's words were true. In the era of the War of Resistance against Japan, when everyone was boiling saltpeter, a hundred catties of dry toilet soil and loose soil from the corner of the wall could only yield about eight ounces of saltpeter. Soil from old dry toilets could yield more, but only about one catty. Judging from the Yizhou garrison, it was unlikely that they had that kind of high-quality material.

Qin Shouyi laughed and said, "It's alright, as long as Lord Chen is willing to provide the prescription, we can find a way to get the ingredients!"

After careful recollection, Chen Feng explained the methods for boiling saltpeter and extracting sulfur from pyrite, which drew frequent nods from the crowd.

Meng Changgeng said jokingly, "Boss, are you perhaps a weasel that's asking for a title? You know so much."

Chen Feng glared at Meng Changgeng and continued, "There's another matter. Relying on robbery and theft for food isn't a long-term solution. I've heard that in the Fujian area of ​​the south, there's a crop called sweet potato. Its vines creep along the ground, and its tubers grow underground. Although it's not very cold-resistant, it's not picky about the soil and can grow even in poor mountain fields. The yield might be several dozen bushels per mu. There's also something else, I've heard that people in Datong, Shanxi, grow it called 'yam egg,' which also produces underground fruit and is cold-resistant. If Elder Qin has the opportunity in the future to contact merchants traveling north and south, perhaps he could try to find some seedlings. Although these two things aren't very suitable as staple foods, at least they can fill our stomachs."

This description of crops yielding "dozens of bushels per mu" was nothing short of a myth to Qin Shouyi and others who had been struggling on the brink of starvation for years.