My house was confiscated and I was exiled. I emptied the emperor's warehouse and fled.

"Great, when will they arrive?" Su Yunwan asked in surprise.

Qin Junyi: "It is difficult to travel in winter, so it may take a little longer."

"It's okay. It's good that you can come. Ask the blacksmiths if there are any who are willing to recruit apprentices and who are willing to spend their money to teach their skills. The rewards will be generous."

"Okay." Qin Junyi agreed, but he was not very optimistic in his heart.

A blacksmith is a craftsman who uses pig iron as raw material, a furnace for calcining iron billets, a hand-operated bellows to control the heat, and a small hammer to create iron weapons and ordnance for the army and various farm tools for the people. and daily necessities.

Even though it is a hard-working job that requires dealing with heavy iron blocks, it basically does not accept outside apprentices. It only teaches its own descendants so that their descendants can use this craft in exchange for living expenses to support their families.

But this does not mean that they can live a comfortable life by forging iron. In order to prevent people from making weapons privately, the imperial court controlled most of the blacksmiths and worked in government-run iron casting workshops.

Craftsmen have a humble status, and blacksmiths are no exception.

Folk iron products are expensive, but the wages they receive are minimal, and they can barely support their families.

During wartime, their tasks were extremely heavy, and there were many cases of people dying of exhaustion on the spot.

Soon, Qin Junyi received a report from his subordinates. Only a blacksmith named Li Mao was willing to recruit foreign apprentices. The reason was because he had no sons and only five daughters.

Blacksmithing is a laborious job, and weak women are simply not qualified for such "hard work" work. However, Li Mao's younger brother and his family, with the idea of ​​"eating out their family", humiliated his wife and daughter behind his back.

In anger, Li Mao drove away his nephew who was half-learned, and he has been working alone since then.

Hearing that he could receive high rewards for recruiting apprentices, he was immediately intrigued.

Save up more money and let your eldest daughter find a son-in-law. When he waits for a hundred years, this family will be passed down.

The guards brought Li Mao and waited outside the door. Qin Junyi asked him to come in.

Su Yunwan saw a middle-aged man with a tall frame and a patchwork dress walk in with his head lowered and his legs kneeling: "The common people pay their respects to General Qin and Mrs. Qin."

"Excuse me, are you Li Mao?" Qin Junyi asked.

Li Mao stood up and showed an honest face: "It's the grassroots."

Qin Junyi: "How many more apprentices are you willing to take? In addition to the daily salary, every apprentice will be rewarded with two taels of silver."

"This...this is too much." Li Mao rubbed his hands nervously.

Their family's annual expenses are only about two taels of silver. If they recruit a few more people, wouldn't they make a lot of money? !

Su Yunwan smiled lightly and said: "That's right, we want to set up a cast iron villa to build the farm tools needed by Yanyun County and the weapons for the garrison soldiers. You don't have to worry about the disciples starving to death, as long as they are willing to teach you, we can Sign a ten-year employment contract, and your treatment will never be worse than what you had before."

Li Mao agreed immediately without saying a word.

Since being transferred to Yanyun County by the state government, he has been looking around for information and learned that the county magistrate and the county magistrate are both from Beiling Village, and the county magistrate is from the Qin family.

Not long after the battle in Beiling Village some time ago, he had a guess in his mind: the entire Yanyun County was the territory assigned to the Qin family by the state pastor.

Now that the two parties have shaken hands and made peace, he doesn't have to be taboo about being employed by the Qin family.

The Qin family's reputation for kindness had long been known far and wide, and they would not treat him badly, so they agreed directly.

Su Yunwan said: "Then tell me what kind of iron tools you have made in the past?"

Li Mao also revealed everything in the past without hiding anything.

He has superb skills in making iron tools, but because of his dull personality and unwillingness to do anything like flattery, filial piety and bribery, he has no skills and can only stay at the bottom.

But the iron-forging work assigned to him requires a master master to successfully forge exquisite weapons.

Faced with unequal pay for equal work, Li Maomin did not fight with the officials. After working for a period of time, he passively sabotaged his work on the grounds of occupational disease, and made minor mistakes from time to time.

Over time, the stewards no longer dared to entrust him with important responsibilities, and he was eventually reduced to making rough farm tools.

Even if he didn't say anything about these things, with the power of the Qin family, he could still find out. But if he wants to be reused, he can no longer hide his weaknesses, so he exposes his shortcomings.

Qin Junyi and Su Yunwan were in different time and space and had seen many such things. They didn't think it was strange, nor were they unhappy with Li Maosheng. Instead, they felt that they had made mistakes.

Su Yunwan said: "It's all over. We won't have that kind of thing here. Please tell me about the tools needed to create it and the process of building it."

When it comes to professional skills, Li Mao looks much more confident and starts talking eloquently.

It can be seen from his words that the current iron smelting process adopts the "block smelting method" and the "hundred steel method".

The block smelting method places iron ore and charcoal together in a furnace and ignites them to roast them to obtain wrought iron. The resulting iron tools contain a high proportion of impurities and have low structural strength. ·

The Baisteel method is to repeatedly heat and forge the wrought iron produced by the block smelting method to make steel. This method is too labor-intensive and is only used for forging exquisite weapons.

"I have an idea, please listen to it." Su Yunwan explained how to make iron in a blast furnace and fill it with steel.

In short, the molten pig iron is melted with iron ore and then poured onto the wrought iron to change the carbon composition. The technology of mixing pig iron and wrought iron is used to solve the problem of difficult separation of carbon steel and directly produce steel with high hardness and good performance, that is, refined iron.

Li Mao had never heard of this iron smelting technology. After thinking about it, he planned to test it with traditional tools first.

Su Yunwan asked Qin Junyi to send people to get the blacksmith tools as soon as possible. Qin Junyi immediately sent people to do it and mobilized vehicles to move Li Mao's family to live in Beiling Village.

After noon, two uninvited guests came to the Qin family. They were Nan Ruofu from Zhenyuan Escort Agency and Xia Yiming, a wealthy businessman from Jiangnan.

As soon as they met, they recognized that Qin Junyi and Su Yunwan were the transformed Wu Yuan and Mrs. Wu based on their eyesight honed from traveling around.

Qin Junyi and Su Yunwan also knew from their more sincere smiles that the other party knew the truth.

The four of them had a tacit understanding, and no one could reveal anything.

Later, Xia Yiming revealed his ultimate goal of going north: to take his nephew Lian Zi and Zhuo brothers back home.

Su Yunwan asked someone to bring the two children over. When Lian Zizuo saw his relatives, he rushed towards them with tears in his eyes: "Little uncle!"

Xia Yiming knelt down, looked at him carefully, touched his head and said, "It's okay, uncle is here to pick you up, be good~"

Then, he looked at his little nephew who was held in Fang's arms, cupped his hands to Qin Junyi and said, "Thank you, General Qin, for saving them and raising them so well. I'm very grateful."

Qin Junyi waved his hand and said, "I don't dare to claim this credit. If my wife hadn't been alert, the baby would have been in danger."

"Thank you, Mrs. Qin!" Xia Yiming bowed deeply.

Su Yunwan: "It's easy, no need to worry."

Afterwards, the four of them made tea and chatted about what they had seen and heard in Fucheng. Finally, the topic changed to Yanyun County.