‘Ha’a, Ha’a…’ Zhao Bing stood on the deck on the deck and watched the fleet Yang Fan sail on the Grand Canal through the waves. They turned back from Sizhou to enter the Huai River, and went downstream from Chuzhou to the canal and headed towards Xuzhou.

Suddenly, I sneeze a few times in a row, and I suddenly felt my eyes turn black, all of them were shining golden stars. It took me a while to recover from the clarity of my heart, and I secretly scolded me who was thinking about myself again!

"Your Majesty, the wind on the river is strong, it's not that it's cold, right? Let the imperial doctor take his pulse!" Wang De became nervous, and while using a silk scribble to wipe the dirty sprayed for His Majesty, he advised him with worry.

"It's okay, I want to see the scenery along the way, otherwise I don't know when I will come again!" Zhao Bing waved his hand, still staring at the two sides of the canal.

"Your Majesty, both sides of the strait are wilderness. What's the best thing to look like? Let's go into the cabin to rest!" Wang De looked at the two sides, and could only see small fields and sparse houses from afar. By chance, he passed by a town, and it was already in ruins. It really made people not interested, but the little emperor was very interested and enjoyed it. He often talked about the past and the present with several officials, recalling the past.

"Do you know that more than a hundred years ago this place was a prosperous and prosperous place, with thousands of hectares of fertile land around it and a dense population. Unfortunately, Du Chong dug the Yellow River embankment to prevent the Jin soldiers from going south and turned it into a marina. Since then, our dynasty has fought with the Jurchens and Mongols here. The population has been separated for a hundred years and the fields have been deserted. But this canal has also made it happen. Things in the world are so wonderful." Zhao Bing said with a smile.

Sometimes Zhao Bing also felt that things were impermanent. In the second year of Jianyan, Du Chong, left-behind Tokyo, in order to resist the Jin army's southward, digged the Yellow River embankment west of Ligudu, Hua County, Henan Province. The Yellow River flowed into the Si River through the south of Hua County, Puyang, Jucheng, Juye, Jiaxiang, and Jinxiang, and then entered the Huai River from the Si River to the Huai River, through the Huai River along Xuzhou, Suqian and Huai'an into the sea. This is the famous "Yellow River seized Si and entered the Huai River" in history. From then on, the Yellow River diverted to Xuzhou.

In the Yuan Dynasty, due to the capital of Dadu, the political center moved northward and the old canal was silted, which was unbearable. In order to shorten the land transport route to facilitate the transportation of grain in the south and north, the Jeju River, Huitong River and Tonghui River were successively dug to the north and south, and the Grand Canal that runs through the north and south was initially built. The original Sishui River from Jining to Xuzhou and the Sishui River from Xuzhou to Huai'an, which was seized by the Yellow River as part of the canal, was included in the north and south pit transportation system.

Zhao Bing also knew that for more than hundreds of years, the Yellow River channel in Xuzhou was used as a canal channel for a long time during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Unfortunately, in modern times, due to the development of society and the development of road traffic, the role of the canal has dropped greatly. In addition, the development of industry has reduced the amount of rivers, the Yellow River began to flow out, and the navigable section of the canal shrinks, resulting in the Jiangbei Canal being cut off, which has become a historical relic. Now he is lucky to see the full picture of history, and naturally feels glad and contentment.

"Your Majesty, the canal has been open for some time, but it has not changed much!" Wang De was not sure what His Majesty was thinking, but he was determined to persuade His Majesty to return to the cabin, so he naturally had little interest.

"This is a big advantage. After a few years of the opening of the canal in the Mongol Yuan, the two sides had just recovered their vitality, but because we recovered the south of the Yangtze River, the canal was cut off again. The rise and fall of the first-tier towns of the canal are mostly closely related to the smoothness of the canal and the normality of the canal transportation. When the canal transportation is prosperous, the canals will flourish, and the towns along the canal will flourish. As such, as the canal transportation gradually declines, the canal transportation function will weaken, and the towns along the canal will naturally decline, but this place will soon recover and become a prosperous place again." Zhao Bing smiled.

In fact, Zhao Bing only explained the dependence between canals, canals, and towns from an economic perspective. The opening of canals is the most political significance. You must know that after the Grand Canal became the main waterway of canals, canals can use the convenient conditions of the Grand Canal to connect north and south to transport grain to most parts of the country, becoming a powerful means for dynasties to adjust materials and check and balance society.

Therefore, the canal transport has always been an indispensable and most important material basis for maintaining the central government in all dynasties. Especially after the economic center of society and economy moved south, there was a situation where politics and military centers and economic centers were separated. The canal transport has more outstanding military significance for the politics of various dynasties. The imperial court carried out grain transport in the south and north year after year, and the grain supply almost all residents in the capital city's daily food, and greatly supported the normal operation of the entire central government organs.

At the same time, grain grains have become an important material force to support the dynasty's military system. The huge local garrisons distributed in various places throughout the dynasties, the defense and attack on the long border line, and the various wars conquered by the four sides were made by grain transportation as a strong material support. As Zhang Fangping, a Song Dynasty man, said: "Today's momentum, the country is based on the army, and the army is based on food, and food is based on grain transportation."

"Your Majesty, let's go back to the cabin!" Wang De was not interested in hearing His Majesty talk about national affairs. He knew that his responsibility was to ensure His Majesty's health. Other military and national affairs were all over the place in his eyes. He even persuaded and pulled the little emperor back to the cabin, and called the accompanying doctor to take the pulse. He gave up when he learned that His Majesty was fine, but he should not let him leave the cabin again.

Since this area is a newly recovered area, in order to ensure the safety of Your Majesty, the fleet continued to enter Xia Pi two days later. At this time, Zhao Mengjin had led the First Army and the Second Cavalry Division to Yingtian Prefecture north, and left the Fourth Army to station in Xuzhou. The Third Division of the Fourth Army stationed here sent troops to guard the road until they entered Xuzhou. The commander of the Fourth Army Sun Kai had already led the generals in the city to welcome him here. The fleet docked at the wharf outside the city. After entering the city for a day, Zhao Bing met the generals, inspected the city defense, and after asking about the situation in the city, he took a boat to inspect the Liguojian.

In order to transport iron ore from the Song Dynasty, the Song Dynasty dug a canal from Liguojian. This canal began at the foot of the southwest mountain in Yang Village, Liuquan Town, and after the many springs of Liguo Pearl Spring and Sow Spring, it flowed into Weishan Lake. The river is 16 miles long and the river is 10 feet wide. It was called the "Tianghe River" at that time, so it was very convenient to take a boat.

Zhao Bing knew from historical books that since the Han Dynasty, Liguo has been an important place for iron ore mining and smelting in my country. At both ends of Baijia Bridge and on both sides of the Iron River, there were once dense iron smelting workshops, with fireworks and noisy. After being changed to Liguojian in the Song Dynasty, relying on its resource advantages, it formed a complete system of mining, smelting and manufacturing.

After arriving at the local area, Zhao Bing already knew that the Yellow River water passed through Xuzhou to capture Si and went into the Huai River and then flooded several times, causing a large amount of silt to accumulate in the riverbed, blocking the passage of swimming into the Huai River, and the flood stagnated into Weishan Lake, flooding most of the mines in Liguo, causing Xuzhou's mining and smelting industry to decline from prosperity. However, the situation in front of him still shocked and disappointed him. After the Mongol Yuan occupied Xuzhou, he also wanted to recover and mined the mines near the lakeside, but the scale was greatly reduced because it was impossible to eliminate the water gushing in the pit.

Although Zhao Bing was disappointed, he still inspected the existing smelter. Because the war had stopped production here, he could only ask some craftsmen to ask and understand the smelting process. He found that the process used here was still very primitive, basically following the Han Dynasty methods, but it had also been improved. As for the on-site, the smelting used blast furnace iron smelting. The body shape of the furnace was vertical square, with the bottom of the furnace body being 1 3 feet wide and about 1 5 feet long, the wall thickness was about 3 feet, and the height of the furnace was more than 7 feet.

The inner cavity is elliptical, and the furnace door is set on the front of the furnace body. When building the furnace, the refractory clay is mixed with salt and quartz sand, mixed, stacked and tightened layer by layer, and then dried. Each iron furnace is filled with 2,000 kilograms of iron ore, and the fuel is made of hardwood or charcoal, and the special leather blast is smelted. After the iron ore is melted, the pig iron is reduced by carbonaceous reducing agent, and the molten iron flows out from the waist hole of the iron furnace. A furnace of pig iron can be refined every hour, which will obtain about 700 kilograms of iron. The blast furnace can be recycled, and after the molten iron is exhausted, it can be immediately installed for smelting.

If it is for casting, let the iron be injected into a strip or round casting mold; if it is for making iron, build a square pond a few feet away from the furnace and a few inches lower than the furnace, and build a low wall around it to allow the iron to flow into the pond. Several people stood on the low wall with willow sticks, dried the pre-dirty mud and pounded it into powder, sifted into fine powder like flour, and quickly and evenly unspilled on the iron. Others stirred vigorously with willow sticks, so that the iron would be fried quickly. When cooled slightly, some people would cut into squares in the pond, while others would take it out and hammer it into round pieces. Zhao Bing knew that this process was the purpose of stir-frying iron.

The method of steelmaking is: first beat the cooked iron into a thin sheet about half an inch long and wide like a finger, then bandage the thin sheets tightly, place the pig iron on the tightly cracked iron sheet, then cover it with broken straw sandals, and apply mud under the cooked iron sheet. Put it into the furnace for blasting and smelting. When it reaches a certain temperature, the pig iron will first melt and seep into the cooked iron, and the two will merge with each other. After taking it out, it will be knocked, melted and then knocked, and repeated this repeatedly. The steel that is hammered in this way is called fillered steel.

Although everything was not satisfactory, Zhao Bing was not discouraged. As he knew, he had already begun to re-explore Liguo iron ore during the Qing Dynasty. Although science and technology at that time had progressed, he felt that it was not insurmountable now. The most important thing at present is to survey the surrounding areas of the old iron ore, find new veins, and restore the original mine caves. At the same time, craftsmen were drawn from the craftsman workshop to introduce the previous new technology to innovate, but the move to the north of the weapon workshop could only be temporarily delayed.
Chapter completed!