"Your Majesty the Witch King, salt is delicious, but it hurts!"
The Mongolian officer understood Xu Chen's actions just now and felt ashamed that he had misunderstood His Majesty the Witch King's noble sentiments, so he said something cautiously.
"Um!"
Xu Chen nodded slightly, picked up a piece of meat, ate it slowly, and began to think about the problem.
Salt has a corrosive effect, and long-term contact will definitely cause damage to the skin. If there is a wound, contact will be irritating and painful, and the wound will not heal easily if it is contaminated with a large amount of salt for a long time.
At this time, he had discovered that almost all the barbarians had red scars on their hands and feet caused by molting after being corroded by salt.
But there is no good solution at the moment.
The only way to start is with tools.
At present, all the tools for making salt are nothing more than wooden hoes, stone picks and rattan baskets, and the labor protection protection is almost zero.
It is definitely too late to make labor protection equipment now, so we can only make more simple and practical tools to minimize the chance of direct skin contact with salt.
So after a simple dinner, while the sky was still bright, Xu Chen asked people to find some wood and rattan and started making some tools.
The first is the wooden shovel. Whether it is digging or washing, loading baskets is a necessary step. There is no shovel at the moment. All is pulled by hand. It will be in contact and friction with the sediment containing a large amount of salt for a long time. Skin damage is inevitable. If there is
Without a wooden shovel, this step will be much easier.
The second step is to fish for salt from the salt pond. Currently, you stand directly in the salt pond and use a rattan basket to fish it out. The whole thing is submerged up to your thighs. Under long-term exposure to high-concentration saturated salt water that can precipitate salt, skin damage is inevitable, so Xu
Chen used a rattan basket to make a long colander-like rattan basket and tied it to a wooden pole so that he could scoop up the salt from the bottom of the salt pond while standing on the shore.
In addition, the same goes for washing salt. You stand directly in the pool, immerse the rattan basket filled with salty sediment into the water and wash it repeatedly. This process will also cause skin damage, so Xu Chen asked people to wash the rattan basket.
Two long wooden poles were tied to both sides of the basket, like stretchers, so that two people standing on both sides of the pool could easily immerse the rattan basket filled with sediment into the pool and shake it back and forth to wash it, without having to go down.
In the end, Xu Chen also asked people to use a piece of wood with good toughness to cut into a flat piece of wood. After it was smoked on the fire and softened, it was bent in half to make a kind of tweezers. This kind of tweezers was used to pick rock salt from the sand.
The crystal avoids the need to grab it directly with your hands.
Xu Chen gathered a group of people to work and watched these strange tools being slowly made. Apart from being surprised, everyone had no idea what Xu Chen wanted to do.
It was getting dark soon after being so busy, and most of the barbarians had gone back to their cabins to rest and sleep.
Xu Chen was not used to going to bed early, so he gathered a group of hunters to sit around the campfire and continue working by the light of the fire, while talking and laughing loudly. The atmosphere was very lively.
Two older barbarian women and several girls were squatting beside the campfire waiting, feeling uneasy and nervous.
They all knew that Xu Chen was the leader of this group of people, and his status was very respected.
But they don't know what the outside world is like.
I don’t know where the other tribes besides the Mongols are?
I don’t even know where Xu Chen and others came from?
I only know that Xu Chen and others have come a long way, are very powerful, and are very mysterious.
Although more than a year had passed since Xu Chen's last arrival, they clearly felt that Xu Chen's strength had become stronger.
We didn’t ride horses last time, but almost all of them came on horses this time. Although the Mongols occasionally came on horseback to patrol and inspect in recent months, Xu Chen and others had so many horses that they couldn’t count them.
In addition, there were a lot of unfamiliar faces this time, especially a group of ugly guys who looked like monsters. They were all ferocious and looked the most terrifying.
In fact, the barbarians couldn't even hate Xu Chen.
Because the hatred between them and the Mongolian people has been going on for a long time, and it is almost an endless situation. The Mongolian people have such powerful foreign aid, and it will only be a matter of time for them to be defeated. But if it weren't for Xu Chen, this tribe would no longer exist. Men, women, old and young
They would all be killed in that conflict.
Therefore, despite the fear hiding a trace of hatred, they still felt a sense of gratitude towards this young alien leader.
In addition, although they have been forced to mine salt for more than a year, the life of the tribe has actually become stable and prosperous. Not only do they have spacious and clean wooden houses to live in, but they also have fires to help them resist the cold and barbecue food. In addition, the Mongolian people continue to
Providing pottery, linen, and animal skins, and fully guaranteeing food, they completely got rid of their previous harsh and barbaric living conditions. In the past year, the tribe actually gave birth to several babies, and they were all alive and well.
.
Although Xu Chen's action of grabbing the girl today made everyone surprised and panicked, after understanding it, many barbarians felt a sense of gratitude in their hearts, making them feel a warmth they had never experienced before.
The strange tools that Xu Chen constantly made and modified also gave them some vague expectations.
Soon it was dark and quiet, and the bonfire gradually dimmed.
Xu Chen lay in a simply packed wooden house, listening to the howls of wolves and the roars of wild beasts that came one after another in the dark night and slowly closed his eyes.
In such barren mountains and ridges, it is difficult to live for a long time without a fixed and safe place to live.
This salt mine factory area still needs to further strengthen safety construction and protection.
However, it is a pity that there are too many things that need to be developed at the moment. The development of the Yugong clan is originally relatively slow, and there are also relatively few Mongolian people. Just opening up the internal and external roads is a big trouble.
In addition, in order to satisfy the expanding territory and growing tribal population, more salt mines need to be found.
This salt mine is too small to support future development.
While tossing and turning, Xu Chen slowly fell asleep, and when he woke up it was broad daylight again.
After a simple breakfast, Xu Chen asked someone to bring a few tools that he had stayed up late last night to make.
Two wooden shovels, two large rattan spoons for fishing for salt, two long rattan baskets for washing salt, and seven or eight small wooden tweezers.
These tools have simple structures, but they can greatly reduce the chance of direct contact between human skin and salt.
After watching Xu Chen personally demonstrate how to use these tools, not only a group of hunters exclaimed with open eyes, but also a group of barbarians, men, women, and children were stunned for a while and then became excited and excited.
With these tools, they will be less susceptible to salt corrosion, especially if they don't have to soak in salt water pools for a long time.
Seeing a group of barbarians happily using these newly modified tools to mine salt, Xu Chen couldn't help but let out a long breath.
Although the Mongolians didn't quite understand why Xu Chen wanted to help these Manchus, they were still very happy despite being surprised.
After all, with these tools, the barbarians were much more enthusiastic and motivated to work.
At first, they still didn't understand Xu Chen's refusal to kill these barbarians, but as the salt mines brought more and more wealth to the Mongolian people, the Mongolian people's attitude towards this group of barbarians was also constantly changing, and now their attitude is much better.
, are also very grateful to Xu Chen for his decision.
Because this group of barbarians are helping the Mongols accumulate wealth every day.
In the morning, under the guidance of Xu Chen, a group of people cut down some small trees and built a row of simple wooden frames beside the salt pond to replace the piles of stones used for draining water. They also gave detailed instructions to a group of Mongolian hunters on how to expand the salt pond.
As well as the subsequent processing and stacking of mud, rock and salt residue, in order to make the development of the salt plant more strict and orderly.
In the afternoon, he led people on horseback to patrol and inspect within a few miles of the salt mine. He told a group of Mongolians to communicate more with these barbarians and try their best to find more salt mines nearby.
Although this group of barbarians is very savage and difficult to communicate with, they must not have appeared in this area out of thin air. There should be some of the same race. The south is full of vast virgin forests. The situation is complicated. It is definitely impossible to rely on the Mongolian people to explore it.
, we can only borrow the power of these local barbarians.
As long as you find a salt mine, you can trade with them using advanced tools such as pottery, linen, and fishing nets, even if you don't develop it yourself.
Anyway, no matter what method you use, as long as you can get more salt.
As for the future, we can only take it slowly.
Returning to the Mongolian people, Xu Chen once again took a beautiful bath in the hot springs. He convened a meeting with the Mongolian chiefs and several leaders to explain the expansion and development of the salt mine. Then, under the leadership of several Mongolian hunters, he explored around the valley.
After some research, he found two smaller hot springs according to the instructions, and instructed them to dig and repair these two hot springs into two large hot spring pools as soon as possible. He said that after the witchcraft meeting in the fall, he would bring the great witch to inspect
Salt mine and praying for the Mongolian people.
When they heard that the great witch was coming to the Mongolian people in autumn, a group of Mongolian people were so excited that they trembled when they walked. They squatted on the ground and patted their chests excitedly, saying that they would definitely complete this important and great task.
After all the arrangements were made, Xu Chen had people climb up to the big tree beside the hot spring pool, cut off a few canes with more blooms, put them in rattan baskets filled with wet mud, and then led the people to leave the Mongols quickly.
On the way back, Xu Chen didn't make any stops, and rushed to the Yugong clan in just one day. After a night's rest, he personally took seven or eight people to sail and paddle a raft upstream.