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The five hundred and seventeenth chapter is not raining (2)

On the morning of the tenth day after returning to Baiti Gang, Han Qian woke up very early. It was not yet bright and the light in the room was even darker. He lit an oil lamp in the study room converted from an abandoned ancestral hall and read the secret message that had just been sent from Xuzhou yesterday.

In order to prevent the news of his departure from Xuzhou and his whereabouts from leaking, all secret letters were written in cipher text and passed from layer to layer, requiring translation before they could be read.

This secret letter was translated by Xi Rong overnight last night.

Everything is going well in Xuzhou. The imperial edict and edict regarding the alliance between Chu and Shu have also been copied to Xuzhou.

The terms of trade between the two Shu and the Qianjiang River channel were supervised and implemented by the Wuchuan Salt and Iron Institute, which was nominally under the jurisdiction of the Hunan Transport Envoy, but was temporarily under the control of Xuzhou.

Yuzhou has also sent officials to further discuss the connection between the two parties.

Xuzhou has also further strengthened the renovation of Caojingling Post Road, and it should be widened to a five-foot standard before the end of the year, allowing cars and horses to pass through.

All of this means that Xuzhou consumes a lot of money and food, and can only squeeze out a limited amount of extra money and food in a short period of time to support the construction of the Chishan Society.

A more critical piece of news is that a small well was successfully drilled to a depth of 30 feet in Wuchuan.

The existing salt wells in Sichuan and Sichuan are all large and shallow wells.

This is mainly due to the technical limitations of current drilling technology.

The deepest salt well is thirty feet deep, but the diameter of the wellhead is more than sixty or seventy feet long, which shows how huge this so-called large shallow well is.

Not to mention anything else, how much manpower and material resources does it take to dig a salt well so deep and with such a large circle?

Not to mention the subsequent maintenance.

The two current salt wells and two newly discovered salt springs in Wuchuan are located in a mountain range on the east side of the Qianjiang River. This shows that there must be rich salt mines or salt brine resources underground in this mountain range with a complete geological structure.

However, the problem is that in Wuchuan County, the brine that flows through cracks in the rock formations to the shallow surface layer above the bedrock, and even directly flows out of the surface to form salty springs, is extremely limited.

This makes it seem that Wuchuan's well salt resources are very limited, but in fact it is just that with the current drilling technology, more salt brine cannot be mined.

If you want to mine salt brine on a larger scale, you need to improve drilling technology.

Directly break through the rock formation and use small deep wells to directly exploit the salt and brine resources located deep under the bedrock and deep in the rock formation.

Of course, Han Qian only provided the drilling idea of ​​using the Hyton drill to impact and break the rock.

This idea does not have any epoch-making technical content in it, but under this idea, to develop handy tools and form a complete set of drilling and mining supporting technologies is what Chen Jitang leads the Engineering School to do.

The preliminary research took three or four months, and the field drilling test was officially carried out in the Wuchuan Mountains in early April.

At present, it took only one and a half months to successfully drill a small well with a depth of 100 meters in the mountains on the east bank of the Qianjiang River, breaking through the depth limit of large wells in the world. Even if no new underground brine has been detected yet, it is still an incredible achievement.

If this technology were introduced to Shu, Han Qian believed that Shu's well salt production, based on the existing manpower, could be doubled or tripled in three to five years, or even higher.

"What's the matter, so excited?"

Xi Rong got up a little later, opened the door and saw Han Qian standing in front of the window with a smile, and asked.

"The secret message you translated last night, don't you know that Chen Jitang successfully drilled a 100-meter-deep well in Wuchuan?" Han Qian asked.

"What's so great about this, isn't it that we haven't dug a new salt spring yet? Spending so much manpower and material resources is probably in vain." Xi Rong asked.

Xi Rong knew that the Engineering School convened workers to dig a small well with a depth of 30 feet in Wuchuan, but failed to successfully mine brine. She felt regretful in her heart, but she did not think deeply about what was behind this practice.

What does the continuously improved drilling technology mean?

This gap in vision and knowledge, even if it is Xi Rong, cannot be made up by one's intelligence.

"How can it be a wasted effort?"

The person in the dream remembers that during the Song and Ming Dynasties, the people of Sichuan and Sichuan used small deep wells to not only extract brine and natural gas from the ground, but also extracted oil in Bazhong and southern Sichuan!

Han Qian was about to have a chat with Xi Yin about the significance of this new drilling technology, when He Liufeng and Lin Sheng knocked on the door and walked in.

Lin Shengxian reports:

"After nightfall yesterday, a group of people sneaked into the woods to the west of Baiti Gang, but they lurked in the woods all night without making any movement. We didn't dare to alert the snake, and we don't know exactly how many people lurked over. However, there were no traces last night.

If it rains, I will send people to go around to the northwest to search. I should be able to roughly judge from the footprints they left..."

Even if they use the telescope to observe anything unusual in the woods to the west and see some vague figures, but if they want to confirm the specific number of people in the ambush, the simplest and most direct way is to directly send troops and horses into the woods to deal with this group.

Ambush and make a tentative attack.

However, if you don't want to alert the enemy, you can get a general idea from the clues they left behind as long as you can find the route they took.

Feng Liao had just received the news at this time, and walked in with Guo Rong, Feng Yi, and Kong Xirong, and said: "They did not launch a sneak attack last night, and they continued to lurk in the woods. Apparently they still wanted to take advantage of the night to transfer more people.

Then it caught us off guard."

"Don't send people out to search, just pretend you don't know anything. Since these people are determined to only attack us sneakily, there is nothing to be afraid of. I am afraid that they will attack from the north and south sides in a dignified way!" Han

Qian said.

Feng Liao and the others thought about it too.

Han Qian also ordered Lin Sheng and He Liufeng, who were specifically responsible for the construction and defense of the camp: "Tighten the inside of the camp and loosen it outside, and do not make any other additional actions until tonight. Except for the main personnel, ordinary members of the congregation and children should not advance in advance.

Issuing a warning will prevent people from panicking and not daring to sleep at night. When it comes to actually facing the enemy, they will be exhausted and fall into the enemy's trap."

Han Qian wanted to ambush this enemy force in the woods to the west of Baitigang. If there were more men lurking to join them tonight, then they would not launch an attack until at least the middle of the night or early tomorrow morning.

"Sir, should you move out first? If the enemy army really wants to sneak in, it will be chaos. I'm afraid something will go wrong." Lin Sheng said.

"I don't have the courage to do that. I really let the enemy look down upon me." Han Qian waved to Lin Sheng and asked He Liufeng to go and do whatever he was supposed to do. Don't waste words to persuade him to leave. "If the enemy just made up his mind," he said.

If we sneak in from the west, there will be no chaos in the camp."

Unless absolutely necessary, Han Qian will not let Kong Xirong lead his guards and horses into battle to kill the enemy. This is to avoid leaking his whereabouts and to avoid attracting more attention at this time, but the guards and horses must stay in Baitigang.

Just in case, how could you escort him away at this juncture?

…………

…………

During the day, the camp was systematically strengthening defense measures on the north and south sides.

Due to the small size of the Baiti Gang Mountains, stable streams and rivers cannot be formed in the mountains, but there are still natural dry ditches formed by rainwater flowing along the valley terrain during heavy rain seasons.

The villagers who lived in Baitigang before dug ditches between the dry ditch and the lake to the east. On the one hand, they could divert lake water to irrigate the farmland on both sides. On the other hand, during heavy rain seasons, they could divert flash floods from the dry ditch in time.

, the ditch at the foot of the mountain is led into the lake for discharge.

Even from the remaining houses, it can be seen that before the war, there were still a small number of villagers living in the fishing village east of Baiti Gang, but they mainly made a living by fishing, and the ditches and other water conservancy facilities at the foot of the east mountain have long been destroyed.

It has been in disrepair.

This is also a microcosm of the significant population reduction in Jianghuai more than ten years ago.

For example, Shiliang County, which is mainly located on the Huze Plain, had a population of nearly 100,000 during the heyday of the previous dynasty. However, before the Jinling Incident, the population dropped to less than 20,000. Compared with a remote mountain county like Sizhou Jinhe County,

Not as good as anything.

These days, the camp is located on the north and south sides, and manpower is concentrated on clearing out an abandoned ditch on each side to divert water from the lake.

In this way, the land routes connecting the north and south sides with the outside world were blocked and could only be entered and exited through two simple suspension bridges.

On the east side, in addition to the extremely dense reed marshes, the lake beach is wide and shallow, making it difficult for even a shallow-bottomed boat to approach.

In the past two days, Lin Sheng, He Liufeng and others organized manpower to dig a row of wooden stakes in the dry ditch on the mountainside to the east, and then filled one side of the wooden stakes with earth and rocks, thinking of building a simple earthen fence five or six feet high.

dam.

When it rains, the accumulated rainwater will not only irrigate the slopes on both sides, but will also be a threat to any large-scale enemy troops who want to enter the camp from under the earth dam.

In addition to the sentry tower, they will also build protective walls along dry ditches and ditches to further improve the defense system; build a plank road through the shallow silt lake beach and extend it into the deep water to facilitate the entry and exit of ships.

In this case, the Chishan Association's base here can be gradually improved.

The day passed quickly, and the sky became dark and cloudy. The full moon was covered by dark clouds, and only a corner was exposed. There was barely enough light to see things.

Han Qian also went up the mountain after dark, squatted in the woods, and looked at the woods to the west with a telescope.

The forest extends from the foot of the mountain, about two or three miles in depth, and further to the west are deserted fields. There are several small-scale refugee camps, and the bonfires lit at night are clearly visible.

If the looking glass hadn't been able to vaguely see the northwest direction, and the shadowy figures of people and horses moving towards the woods to the west, it would be difficult to detect the slightest abnormality in such glances with the naked eye.

"The newly arrived group of people has more than thirty war horses, but there is no sound of horses neighing at all. Maybe they are the elites of An Ning Palace or Huaidong." He Liufeng frowned and came over and said.

.

The refugee forces secretly controlled by An Ning Palace and Huaidong may launch a surprise attack on them, but before actual contact, they cannot even figure out whether the enemy who intends to attack them is coming from An Ning Palace or from

Huaidong.

Of course, seeing that the enemy soldiers lurking in the woods were more cautious than they expected, Han Qian and the others were still more inclined to think that they were men sent by Huaidong, especially the small group of soldiers who were sneaking into the woods to the west at this time.

The troops are more likely to be the direct lineage elites sent directly from Chuzhou by Huaidong...


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