Chapter 111 The Wei Office was busy and the imperial examination was promoted.
Pan Yazi brought five dirty middle-aged men. They were all extremely frail and looked at Su Ze with dull eyes.
They were not tied with ropes or shackles as imagined, and there were no cages to hold slaves. The five men were lined up in a row, like animals, allowing Su Ze to pick and choose.
As a modern person, Su Ze was still shocked by this scene.
He looked at the five people. There were no signs of torture on their bodies. Pan Yazi did not even restrain them, but they showed no sign of resistance. In the end, the man even made a flattering expression towards Su Ze, eagerly hoping that Su Ze would He bought it.
"One by one, tell your husbands clearly!"
Pan Yazi shouted sternly, and the five middle-aged men began to talk about their own situations in order.
They were all refugees from Jianyang. All four of their families starved to death while fleeing. Only the wife of the man with the most flattering expression was still alive.
All five people had worked in the book printing workshop in Jianyang and were all engaged in engraving and printing work.
The first four men all agreed to register, that is, to be sold to Su Ze as slaves for life. Only the fifth man only agreed to be a servant for ten years.
Su Ze looked at it, and unexpectedly chose the man whose wife was still alive.
Next, Chen Chaoyuan went to bargain. In the end, the servant named Yao, who could print, paid thirty taels of silver, and his sick wife also paid ten taels of silver, for a total of forty taels. The two of them had worked for Su Ze for ten years.
After signing the red deed, Su Ze handed the silver to Pan Yazi. Pan Yazi smiled and tested the quality of the silver with his gapped teeth. Then he called the servant named Yao aside with a smile, and finally took away most of the money for selling himself. , only took out a dozen taels of silver and sent him away.
The servant surnamed Yao supported his skinny wife and followed Su Ze silently out of the dental market.
After leaving the tooth market, Su Ze said to the newly bought servant: "What's your name?" "
Sir, I don't have a name. When I was in the book printing workshop, everyone called me Yao Chun."
Su Ze Looking at Yao Chun's dying wife, he took out another half a tael of silver and said, "Go to the city and rent a cart, hitch it to my horse, and drag your wife with me to Changningwei." Yao Chun burst into tears
. He knelt down and kowtowed: "Thank you for your mercy, Master!"
Yao Chun said timidly: "Master, I want to grab some medicine for my wife."
Su Ze waved his hand and said, "Do you have a prescription?"
Yao Chun hurriedly said Su Ze took out a carefully preserved prescription from his clothes. He saw that the prescription contained some affordable tonics.
Su Ze used the [Medical Skills] skill to check the pulse of Yao Chun's wife. Although Yao Chun's wife was weak, it was caused by malnutrition, so she didn't have any serious health problems.
Su Ze comforted Yao Chun, and Yao Chun knelt down gratefully.
Yao Chun was quite efficient in his work. He quickly grabbed all the medicine and rented a cart that could hitch a horse. He carried his wife onto the cart and quickly put Su Ze's luggage on the cart.
Su Ze was still not used to Yao Chun's tendency to kneel down, so he sent him to catch the carriage.
Chen Chaoyuan was a little moved when he saw Yao Chun never leaving his wife, but he still said to Su Ze: "This Yao Chun has to take care of his wife, so I'm afraid he won't be able to do his best." Su Ze said, "Those who have permanent property have perseverance
. It's good to be able to save one more person."
Chen Chaoyuan sighed and said: "The tooth market was not so big a few years ago. They were sold secretly a few years ago. The world has really gotten worse and worse these years!"
Su Ze did not. Answer: The world is in bad shape this year, but this year is probably the best in the next few decades.
A craftsman who knows engraving and printing technology can only sell for thirty taels of silver in the tooth market.
And Su Ze heard that an official from the capital offered a thousand taels to an opera singer trained by Mr. Tuohu, but Mr. Tuohu was reluctant to sell her.
At that time, a theater troupe in Yange's hometown spent one hundred thousand taels of silver to buy it from Suzhou Prefecture.
Su Ze could only curse: "This is a hell of a world!"
Su Ze said goodbye to Chen Chaoyuan and returned to Changning Guard with a carriage of things.
This trip to the city was quite fruitful. Unfortunately, Yu Zongyuan had not returned from the provincial capital yet, so Su Ze's idea of taking advantage of the fire to rob him came to nothing.
The rock candy brought to the city was also sold before leaving the city. Huang Tiju from Huimin Pharmacy rushed to the city gate and bought all Su Ze's rock candy on behalf of Mr. Fang.
Su Ze couldn't help but sigh that Mr. Fang was really a rich woman. She bought dozens of kilograms of rock candy without any bargaining at all.
Thinking about how cautiously I make money, I finally make some money to improve my life in the health center. In the eyes of rich people, it is just a drop in the bucket.
Thinking of this, Su Ze felt even more depressed, and even the excitement of making money some time ago had faded a lot.
In the Ming Dynasty, we still need to make high value-added luxury goods!
Su Ze finally figured this out. People in the Ming Dynasty were all poor. If you want to make money, you have to make money from scholars!
After understanding this, Su Ze took Yao Chun and his wife back to Changningwei and started making movable type without stopping.
Su Ze vaguely remembered the ratio of lead: tin: antimony used by the university club to make movable type, which was 80:18:2.
However, Daming's metal is naturally impure, and this ratio still needs to be tested repeatedly.
Lead is toxic when melted, so Su Ze also took protective measures before melting the mold.
However, Su Ze still felt uneasy, and in the end, the work of filling the lead liquid was left to Xiong Wu.
After this guy revealed his identity as a Hongyang Cult, he was detained by Su Ze for a few days and finally calmed down.
Su Ze did not force him to go to the government. Xiong Wu saw hope again, treated Su Ze with respect, and stopped saying those words that encouraged Su Ze to rebel.
Su Ze also warned Xiong Wu that as long as he spread the Hongyang Sect's stuff in Changning Guard, Su Ze would immediately send him to the county government office. This frightened Xiong Wu and made him curse and swear that he would never preach in Changning Guard. .
Xiong Wu couldn't understand what Su Ze was tinkering with, so he just melted and poured the lead liquid according to Su Ze's instructions.
Xiong Wu didn't understand why Su Ze had to be so careful.
Xiong Wu didn't dare to ask any more questions, but worked hard to help Su Ze make movable type.
After the movable lead type cooled down, Su Ze called Yao Chun again and asked him to carve words on the movable type.
Sure enough, success is not that easy. I don’t know whether it was due to too many impurities or some other reason. This batch of movable lead type was like tofu. It collapsed after just two strokes.
Su Ze was not discouraged. He changed the proportions again and asked Xiong Wu to make a new batch of movable type.
After three days of continuous experiments, I finally made movable lead type that was moderately hard enough for engraving and printing.
This experiment only used up all the lead and tin that Su Ze bought. Su Ze estimated that hundreds of kilograms of lead and tin would be needed to make a set of movable type that could print commonly used characters.
This is the result of Su Ze's mathematical calculations. Chinese characters are different from English. English is a spelling text. In fact, one page only needs a hundred or so movable types to print.
There are more than 3,000 commonly used Chinese characters. Although most of them can be combined with radicals, there are also a large number of single-style characters. Su Ze made statistics and calculated that for commonly used Chinese characters, a complete set of printed movable type molds requires at least two thousand movable types. Hundreds of kilograms of lead and tin are already quite economical.
Su Ze couldn't help but sigh, it's not easy for scholars to make money!
There is no difficulty in developing printing ink. Just as Su Ze thought, tung oil itself is a fast-drying vegetable oil and a very good industrial oil.
After the ink mixed with tung oil, rosin and carbon black is heated and stirred, the ink that can be used for printing is obtained.
The only disadvantage is that the tung oil ink is toxic. If you use newspapers printed with this ink to wrap food, you may have diarrhea for several days.
Buying lead has also become Changningwei's top priority. Lead is needed to make movable type and to make blunderbuss projectiles. Apart from asking Lin Deqing to go to the ghost market to have a look, he had no choice but to go to Fuzhou Prefecture to buy it.
Another major event in Changningwei is that the water conservancy project to clean up Jianxi has officially started.
The Chen clan is led by Chen Haizhang, the son of the clan leader. This guy was also the leader of the last clan fight against the Chen clan.
Chen Haizhang was very dissatisfied with his father's agreement to hire someone to build the creek for Changningwei, and he had a bad face towards the people of Changningwei.
However, Chen Haizhang was still quick at work. Construction started on June 3, and he led the Chen clan to dig out the reservoir on June 10.
On the Changning Wei side, because Lin Xianyang had not returned from sending the money to Fuzhou Prefecture, the old man of the family was personally watching.
There is an old man who is in charge, and the fields that have been occupied by digging reservoirs are recorded by the old man and the land is redistributed.
The excavation of the reservoir occupied three acres of paddy field owned by my grandpa. With my grandpa taking the lead and setting an example, the others in Changningwei did not dare to complain.
Su Ze could only lament that having an old man in the family was like having a treasure, and with the prestige of the old grandpa in charge, there was almost no obstacle to the project of building a stream, collecting water and flushing sand.
It has to be said that the "water conservancy" skill is easier to use than Su Ze imagined.
Su Ze only needs to go to the construction site twice a day to solve problems encountered during construction and arrange the next projects, and his experience will increase slowly.
After digging out the reservoir, Su Ze's "water conservancy" skill increased from Level 1, 21/100 to Level 2, 90/200.
For this time, Su Ze did not change the direction of Jianxi River too much. The main project was to dig the reservoir and narrow the water outlet of the reservoir. The construction of the reservoir has been completed for these two projects.
The project to narrow the river channel was also in full swing. On June 11, Lin Xianyang finally returned from Fuzhou Prefecture and brought back the latest news.
This time, the Qing army commander Ning Wei successfully passed the border, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
The Yanping Wei Yu family was severely blackmailed. It is said that Yan Maoqing was given tens of thousands of taels of silver, but Yan Maoqing still refused to let go.
In addition to lamenting Yan Maoqing's big appetite, Su Ze also lamented the Yu family's wealth. It seemed that the Yu family was going to bleed this time.
Another news brought by Lin Xianyang was that the Luo Jiao rebellion in Jiangxi had been suppressed.
Sure enough, as Su Ze expected, this rebellion was not written down in the history books, indicating that it was just a small-scale local rebellion.
It is said that after Luo Fu rebelled, he announced that he would establish an earthly kingdom of God in Jiangxi and called himself the Heavenly King of the Dharma Protector.
This guy didn't even capture the county seat, but he started to ennoble heroes, and appointed more than a dozen law-protecting marshals at one go.
Then Luo Fu began to enclose a large harem, taking in seventy-two "god concubines" at once, and also frantically collected virgins as concubines, which made the rebels very dissatisfied.
Because Luo Fu became king, officials from various places no longer dared to deceive, and reported the true situation to the court.
The court heard that Luo Fu was crowned king and reacted quickly.
Immediately, troops from several guard posts were mobilized to suppress the attack.
After the Luo Fu uprising, he was busy selling official positions and canonizing concubines. When the imperial army came in front of him, he hurriedly resisted.
As a result, Luo Fu was defeated in a battle. He led his cronies and concubines to run to the mountains, but was betrayed and had his head cut off by his men.
It is said that Luo Fu's head is now hanging on Nanchang City, and the "Dharma Protector Marshals" he canonized are also hanging on the city wall with him.
It’s impossible to rashly claim to be king! Su Ze silently remembered the experiences and lessons of this "rebellious senior".
Without the Luo Jiao rebellion, King Lu, who was originally planning to support Jiangxi, simply temporarily stopped his fleet in the outer sea.
The General Director-General of Fujian Beiwa Bureau issued a sea ban and required coastal guard stations to strengthen patrols of maritime areas.
King Lu even cut off the smuggling trade at sea for a time. The prices of foreign goods in Fuzhou City skyrocketed. I heard that there were many fewer smugglers in Yuegang.
There was also a lot of news in Fuzhou Prefecture about Lu Dawang's attack on sea ships. Fuzhou City had already recruited corvees to raise the city wall. The entire southeast was trembling with fear from the Japanese pirates who had less than a thousand Lu Dawang.
Lin Mojun also felt a sense of crisis, and even more intensively trained his soldiers.
Nowadays, the gunners can already use the "regular step" and "quick step", and can also complete left and right turn changes under Lin Mojun's command.
The second-stage shooting is already quite proficient, and the reloading shooting action is so proficient that I can no longer be proficient.
Lin Mojun's training results have exceeded Su Ze's expectations. Being able to train soldiers to this point in such a short period of time is enough to show Lin Mojun's prestige in the guard station and talent in training.
Lin Deqing also returned from the ghost market and brought another good news.
Lin Deqing found a stall selling lead in the ghost market and found a stable supply of lead.
After the rumors of Japanese pirates disappeared, the ghost market finally reopened.
Su Ze then realized that he had forgotten where he was.
Fujian itself has many mines and mines, almost every prefecture and county has mines, and lead is not a rare mineral.
Qianshan County in Jiangxi Province, not far from Yanping Prefecture, has been a famous lead producer in the country since the Southern Tang Dynasty. There is no shortage of lead in Fujian as a whole.
Lead was not expensive. The lead and tin Lin Deqing bought from the ghost market was enough for Su Ze to make two thousand movable types.
However, after all this trouble, the money Su Ze earned some time ago was basically all gone.
In the future, we will have to buy lead and gunpowder, and the Changning Guards will have to upgrade their weapons and equipment. We need to make money without delay!
Before going to the county seat, Su Ze wrote down the radicals and single-character characters that needed to be carved overnight.
Su Ze ordered Xiong Wu to continue making lead molds for movable type, and ordered Yao Chun to carve movable type at home, striving to open the printing shop within this month.
On June 13th, when Su Ze was preparing to go to the county seat again, Su Ze's imperial examination skills finally reached Level 4, 390/400. He could upgrade after one more day of reading!
(End of chapter)