I really don't want to be a rebel [infrastructure]

Cheng Jingwei subconsciously asked: "New material? What new material?"

Luo Shixing said: "It shouldn't be considered a new material, it's still steel. However, the finished product should be as good as Baisteel, or better. The most important thing is that it can be mass-produced."

The corner of Wang Sui's mouth twitched: "Isn't it because you suddenly want to toss about these things just to sell knives?"

Luo Shixing looked serious: "Am I the kind of person who cares about money?"

Just when Cheng Jingwei and Wang Sui felt a little embarrassed and felt that they should reflect on themselves, they heard Luo Shixing say, "Yes, I am."

Cheng Jingwei couldn't help but pat his forehead, "Don't make trouble."

Luo Shixing patted his hand away and said, "Actually, it's not because we want to sell knives. Didn't we find charcoal before? If you want better quality steel, charcoal is essential. If you didn't have this condition before, I couldn't do it if I wanted to." .”

Cheng Jingwei asked: "What method?"

Luo Shixing said: "Converter furnace steelmaking method, this thing can make steel quickly. Now our seedling knives are all iron knives. When this method starts to be put into production, we can replace them with steel knives. As for improving the quality of steel, we need Continue to study."

Now, if you want to change from iron to steel, you need blacksmiths to forge continuously, such as the knife in Cheng Jingwei's hand, or the method of frying steel and pouring steel.

These methods are actually developed step by step. Compared with Baisteelmaking, they are definitely advanced. Before that, Luo Shixing planned to make gradual progress bit by bit.

As for the converter steelmaking method, he never planned to introduce it at all, because this method relies heavily on tar, also known as coal tar.

He didn't even have coal before, so he might have to go to Fucheng to buy it all the way, buy it back, refine tar, and then make steel. The cost is too high, and it's impossible to think about it.

If there is no tar, although this method can also make steel, it can only make pig iron with relatively low phosphorus content, otherwise the steel that comes out will be particularly fragile and shatter when hit.

Neither Cheng Jingwei nor Wang Sui must have heard of the converter steelmaking method, so the two of them kept silent, and waited for the results to come out anyway.

If not, then work overtime to continue producing seedling knives. The current seedling knives are iron knives, and the forging process is still very simple.

Wang Sui turned his head and went to discuss with the envoys of the Bi Sui Zhao. Fortunately, both parties brought along target language speakers, which is the current name for translators.

The communication between Wang Zhen and the envoy was very smooth. It is clear that Luo Shixing agreed to sell all the knives because he wanted to replace the new equipment. Sui Zhao's sincerity and straightforwardness, so I decided not to let them go for nothing.

The envoy of the Bing Sui Zhao was also very happy, and agreed on the spot, and asked someone to inform his master and transport the gold.

Both sides feel that the other party is very refreshing, and the host and guest enjoy themselves for a while.

After Luo Shixing found out, he couldn't help asking: "I do think they are very straightforward, but do they also think that we are refreshing? How do you communicate?"

Luo Shixing generally would not inquire about these details in detail, unless it was a major event, anyway, as long as there were no mistakes, he would just look at the results.

This time I was really curious.

Wang Sui said: "Don't mention it. When we were negotiating the price before, I compared a finger. At that time, I meant a tael of silver and a knife. I have actually left a lot of room for this price."

To put it simply, for one tael of silver, the other party can still bargain.

You must know that one tael of silver corresponds to a thousand Tongbao, which is 1000 yuan when converted into alliance currency, and the cost of making a seedling knife is only half a penny.

At that time, Wang Sui had already proposed to let the other party transport it by himself, and the other party agreed.

Since his own party is not responsible for the transportation, the price can indeed be lower, so his expected price is about [-] to [-] yuan, and he can make a lot of money this way.

Don't think that the price sounds cheap, like an ordinary well-off family in the Tang Dynasty, the living expenses for a year are probably between two to three pennies.

Ten knives can earn the living expenses of a well-off family for a year. This is still a well-off family. If it is replaced by a more ordinary family, it may be enough for two or three years of living expenses.

As a result, I never expected that the people on the opposite side misunderstood directly, and the target language people on the side didn't understand what Wang Sui meant, what was the unit behind a finger, and the envoy of Bing Sui Zhao said happily : "One tael of gold, deal."

The target language person hastily translated it.

Wang Sui:? ? ? ?

Are you so rich?

In fact, he also overlooked one thing, that is, the smelting technology in these places in the southwestern border is relatively low, and the government army of Datang here is actually not well equipped. Very good weapon.

If you want to grab it, you can't grab it, and if you want to buy it, you can't buy it.

In this case, the weapons worn by the men sent by the League of Worried Fathers simply astonished them.

Especially after these nobles found that the seedling knife was sharper than the knife in their hands, they naturally wanted to change the entire arsenal. At that time, they even ordered to buy as many as they could, and they didn't hesitate to spend a lot of money.

Anyway, they are not so short of money, it is ordinary people who are short of money.

At that time, the price given to him by the owner of the envoy was less than five taels of gold, and he won all of them directly.

However, the price Wang Zhen offered was one tael of gold. The envoy saw that he had saved four taels of gold, and the master would definitely reward him at that time, so he hurriedly agreed, fearing that Wang Zhen would go back on his word, and bought twenty of them on the spot. arms.

Luo Shixing was taken aback when he heard this: "Did he actually come out with two catties of gold? He's too courageous."

Wang Yan coughed softly: "It's not that he is brave, the main reason is that the people he brought are local brave warriors who are good at fighting, just... the Ouluo tribe, they have the impression that they are not very good at fighting."

So they are not afraid of being robbed or something at all. If they do, they don't know who will rob whom.

Luo Shixing paused and turned to look at Cheng Jingwei: "They look down on us."

Cheng Jingwei replied: "Yeah, don't patronize chatting, hurry up and eat."

Good guy, this is too perfunctory.

Luo Shixing snorted, and said vaguely: "Recently, try to step up production. Since they say to buy as much as they can, then make more money!"

You can never have too much of a good thing like gold.

While waiting for the people from Bin Sui Zhao to deliver the gold, Luo Shixing called Cui Shenji over and said, "You can take someone to build these two blueprints of the factory building."

Anyway, it is already late January, and the rice will be harvested in storage in mid-January, and it happens to be the slack season for farming.

Cui Shenji looked down and found a total of two drawings, namely the coking plant and the coal washing plant.

He was a little puzzled: "What is all this for?"

Can coal be washed?

Luo Shixing explained: "Strictly speaking, coal washing is coal preparation. The coal mines we dug out may be mixed with some messy things, and some coal mines are of good quality, and some coal mines are of poor quality, so they need to be selected. various uses."

In fact, Datang's good coal was also produced in this way, but this kind of work is relatively low-level, and Cui Shenji and the others may not have contacted it.

Cui Shenji nodded and asked, "What about the coking plant?"

"It is the secondary processing of coal, which can be used to smelt bituminous coal into coke for steelmaking."

In fact, what he needs is not only coke, but also coal tar, but no matter how detailed these things are, Cui Shenji may not be able to understand them, as long as he can build them.

The coal washing plant is actually a specialized area. Later generations of coal washing plants can use various machines to screen coal, but where there are so many machines now, there is a high probability of manual screening.

By the way, Luo Shixing set several standards for coal, such as gangue, all of which have their own uses.

The coking plant needs more complicated things. First of all, the furnace used for coking needs to be absolutely sealed, and the coal is heated to [-] degrees under the condition of isolating the air. This step is also called high-temperature dry distillation.

High temperature dry distillation can form coke oven gas, coke and coal tar and various products.

Coke is a good fuel, suitable for smelting, while coal tar is an important component of converter steelmaking.

The most troublesome part of high-temperature dry distillation is actually the material that isolates the air. First, it needs to be heat-resistant, and second, it needs to have sufficient airtightness.

In fact, the heat resistance of the existing materials is not enough. In the end, Luo Shixing directly chose to smelt a furnace and seal the furnace mouth with mud.

Mud has a relatively strong ability to withstand high temperatures, and the airtightness is sufficient. The only inconvenient thing is that when the coke is taken out after one furnace is smelted, the mud is directly scrapped and needs to be remade in the next furnace.

But this is a waste of labor, and it doesn't waste much money.

The blacksmiths in the manor immediately became busy.

They were already very leisurely before, and the farm tools were almost made. Because they were all made of iron, they were relatively strong. They didn't need so many weapons, and the ones made a while ago were enough.

As a result, they found that they were really idle and busy, and suddenly a lot of things came up, not only to build seedling knives, but also to build coking furnaces, and even the furnace for converter steelmaking. .

Both coking and steelmaking furnaces need to be strong and resistant to high temperatures, so it is better to use steel because the melting point of steel is relatively high, and the steel will not melt at a thousand degrees.

The manor was so busy that Luo Shixing didn't even care about the results of the exam.

He just gave out the papers for the initial test and the re-test written test and ignored them. By the time he realized it, there were already two more people around the bosses to handle things.

Even Wei Ziyao and Xiao Shanshi had two more people beside them.

One of the two people around Wei Ziyao seemed to know that he had planted land before, and the other looked a little shrewd, and it was said that he was very talented in calculating accounts.

And beside Xiao Shanshi are two young gentlemen.

Luo Shixing was a little worried that there would be rumors if she chose these two, so she couldn't help asking: "Why didn't you choose the little lady? Is there no one to take the exam?"

He didn't pay enough attention to the exam, so he forgot to mention that women can also take the exam.

It may be too late now, but he can directly give the green light to let the girls also take the exam, and then let Xiao Shanshi choose.

Xiao Shanshi explained: "This has nothing to do with men and women, the main thing is that they are suitable. These two people just know something about minerals."

Luo Shixing nodded and said, "If someone uses this as an excuse to attack you, just tell me."

While talking, he felt that he had been careless before, and the matter of the girl's study had to be put on the agenda.

Reasonably speaking, a woman who can survive the exile must be tough and extremely wise, otherwise she really cannot survive in the current world.

He originally thought that bringing this matter up would definitely attract opposition, but the big bosses were very calm in the end.

Luo Shixing felt a little strange. When Cheng Jingwei came to look for him, he couldn't help asking, and Cheng Jingwei said: "You just let the girls study together, and you didn't tell them to take the exam."

These bigwigs will not marry illiterate wives, so it is necessary for the little lady to read some books, and the education level of the mother also has a great influence on the next generation.

Luo Shixing: ...

Well, he actually ignored this matter.

Luo Shixing put his hand on his shoulder and said, "Okay, now we can proceed to the next step."

Cheng Jingwei turned to look at him: "Conscription?"

Luo Shixing said decisively: "Conscription!"