Chapter 579 Secret Force
Chapter 579 Secret Force
Gao Jiong went back to rewrite his memorial, and Xiao Xia returned to the government office. When talking with Gao Jiong at noon, Xiao Xia mentioned the 500,000 refugees in Donglai County. He had ignored this matter for a few days after he came back.
Of course, not everything needs to be done by him personally. This is why Xiao Xia knew about this situation but did not intervene. The Shangshu Xingtai has been working on the resettlement of refugees, and Xiao Xia only needs to understand the progress of this matter.
After returning to the official residence, Xiao Xia immediately asked Lu Miao to invite Liu Wenjing over. Not long after, Liu Wenjing arrived at the official residence of Prince Jin.
Liu Wenjing bowed and asked, "Your Highness, do you want to talk to me about something?"
Xiao Xia waved his hand and said with a smile: "Please sit down and talk!"
Liu Wenjing sat down, and Xiao Xia asked, "I mentioned the refugees from Donglai County when I had lunch with Lord Gao at noon. I want to know about the situation of the 500,000 refugees there?"
Liu Wenjing smiled and shook his head. "It's not 500,000 now, but 700,000. I just received a pigeon express from Wei Zheng this morning."
Xiao Xia took a deep breath. There were 500,000 people when he left, and only ten days have passed. How could the number suddenly increase to 200,000?
"Did something happen?"
Liu Wenjing nodded. "It seems that the warlord Meng Haigong of Dongping County and the warlord Xu Yuanlang of Lu County fought for Jibei County, causing a large number of people from Jibei County and Qi County to flee to Donglai County."
"Can Donglai County bear it?"
"It's a bit difficult at the moment, otherwise Wei Zheng wouldn't have sent me a pigeon letter. I suggest taking back some refugees from Donglai County and resettling them in the western counties of Jiangnan Road."
Xiao Xia nodded, "It's up to you to decide! I'll approve it after you draft a plan."
"Thank you for your trust, Your Highness. There is one more thing. Zhang Fan, the governor of Beihai County, sent someone to find Sima Wei and asked us to send troops to Beihai County to suppress the bandits."
"Are there any bandits in Beihai County again?" Xiao Xia frowned.
"It's still Gao Shida. After they were defeated by Tu Wanxu's army at Xushan in Gaomi County, they fled to Beihai County with more than 3,000 remaining soldiers and occupied Niushan at the junction of Qi County and Beihai County, looting food and harming the people. Not long ago, they looted Linzi County. The officials of Beihai County were extremely worried and begged us to send troops. They agreed that we could stay in Beihai County permanently after we suppressed the bandits."
Xiao Xia pondered for a moment and said, "We can ask Qin Qiong to lead the army to Beihai County to suppress the bandits!"
Currently, there are 20,000 Jiangnan troops stationed in Donglai County, including Qin Qiong's 14th Guard with 6,000 men.
Xiao Xia immediately gave orders to the military headquarters, agreeing to allow Qin Qiong's troops to enter Beihai County to suppress the bandits.
At dusk the next day, Yuan Xiaoju arrived at a Taoist temple in the south of the city. The temple was called Taiyi Palace, the largest Taoist temple in Yanling County.
Yuan Xiaoju followed Yuan Wenzhen to a small courtyard, which was the VIP courtyard of the Taoist temple. Some Taoist priests of status who came to Taiyi Palace would be arranged to stay here.
Walking into the courtyard, a young Taoist priest stepped forward and saluted, "Is Patriarch Yuan here?"
Yuan Wenzhen nodded, "Where is your master?"
"The master is waiting in the room, please come in!"
Yuan Xiaoju followed his nephew to the inner hall, where he saw an old Taoist priest with white hair and a youthful face standing.
"Wulian Tianzun, welcome Patriarch Yuan!"
Yuan Xiaoju nodded, looked at the old Taoist priest and asked, "Are you Xiao Yan?"
"Xiao Yan was my secular name from several decades ago. I am Xiao Jianli!"
Yuan Xiaoju said coldly: "What your name is has nothing to do with me, I only care whether what you say is true?"
Xiao Jianli took out a firecracker, placed it on the table and lit it. Suddenly, there was a "bang!" explosion, the sound was like thunder, and Yuan Xiaoju was startled.
Xiao Jianli smiled and said, "This is a paper fire bomb I made myself!"
Yuan Xiaoju's eyes lit up, and his look immediately became lively. He said with a smile: "It seems that I won't have run in vain."
"Master, please take a seat!"
Xiao Jianli asked Yuan Xiaoju to sit down and asked the little Taoist boy to serve tea, but Yuan Xiaoju was concerned about the secret of the paper fire bomb. "How did Taoist Xiao get the secret of King Jin?"
Xiao Jianli smiled and shook his head. "I can't get the secret of King Jin's fire thunder. It took me three years of research to succeed. Of course, King Jin's rocket also gave me some inspiration, otherwise I really couldn't think of it."
"Can you tell me more about it?"
"Three years ago, the King of Jin fought a great battle with Yuwen Shu's army on the Yangtze River. After the war, my disciples dived into the river and found dozens of unburned rockets from the sunken ship. After drying them, I got a lot of black powder. After studying it for a few months, I found that I had used this powder in alchemy before, but I didn't take it seriously. Then I tried it over and over again. It took me three years to finally succeed."
Of course, Xiao Jianli would not tell the whole truth. After the Jiangnan Army abandoned Jiangdu and retreated south, he actually found some scattered saltpeter fragments in the gunpowder factory warehouse. He also found the same saltpeter scraps in the dock warehouse. He gathered them together and got more than ten kilograms of saltpeter fragments.
Xiao Jianli had indeed seen saltpeter powder when he was refining the elixir, and knew that it could help combustion when hidden in a fire. He also knew that this kind of saltpeter powder could be found in toilets, so he mobilized his disciples to collect hundreds of kilograms of saltpeter powder in toilets all over the place, and then repeatedly compared it with the gunpowder stripped from gunpowder arrows.
Xiao Jianli himself was an extremely skilled alchemist who knew a lot of chemical methods, such as filtration and purification, etc. But even so, it took him two years to gradually understand the principle. It turned out that gunpowder was obtained by mixing purified saltpeter powder, sulfur powder and charcoal powder.
Then, after a year of repeated experiments, he finally got the gunpowder formula that could blow up paper fire bombs.
Of course Xiao Jianli wanted to sell the research results he had worked so hard to obtain at a high price.
Yuan Xiaoju nodded, "I want the recipe and production details, Taoist priest, please name a price!"
Xiao Jianli raised a finger, "Ten thousand sets of armor!"
Yuan Xiaoju was stunned. He originally thought that the other party wanted 10,000 taels of silver, but he didn't expect that the other party actually offered 10,000 sets of armor.
"Master Xiao, did I hear you correctly? You want weapons and armor."
Xiao Jianli nodded, "That's right, 10,000 sets of armor!"
Yuan Xiaoju suddenly understood and said with a smile: "The Xiao family still wants to rebuild the Liang Dynasty?"
"Same here, don't you also want to change the dynasty?"
"Does King Jin know?"
Xiao Jianli shook his head. "It has nothing to do with Prince Jin. To be precise, it's just that some of the Xiao family members want to rebuild their ancestors' business. Those Xiao family members who support Prince Jin are not of the same mind as us, so let's not talk about it."
"I completely understand and am willing to support you, but you have to make sure I can build an iron fire mine that can blow up the ship!"
Xiao Jianli smiled bitterly and said, "I don't have that much ability. I can only make paper fire bombs with all my effort. I can only provide a basic formula for the Patriarch. How to improve the rest is up to you."
Yuan Xiaoju took a sip of tea and smiled: "I am willing to believe in Taoist Xiao's sincerity, but how do I know that Taoist Xiao really knows the secret of the formula?"
This is also a very realistic problem. Xiao Jianli nodded, walked to the front of the hall and ordered: "Bring them all up!"
After a while, more than a dozen young Taoist priests came in one after another, each holding a plate in his hand, and each plate had a dozen paper fire bombs in it. The last one held a full plate of gunpowder.
Xiao Jianli smiled slightly and said, "If I didn't make them myself, where do you think I could buy these hundreds of paper fire bombs?"
There is some truth to that. One or two fire bombs might be obtainable by some means, but more than a hundred fire bombs can only be made by oneself.
Yuan Xiaoju walked to a plate of gunpowder and looked at it for a moment. It was exactly the same as the porcelain fire bomb gunpowder they had obtained.
"Can you try lighting this?"
"of course can!"
Xiao Jianli ordered his apprentice to put a plate of gunpowder in the yard. Xiao Jianli lit a fire stick and threw it into the plate. With a "bang!", flames burst out and a cloud of white smoke rose into the sky. The yard was immediately filled with gunpowder.
Yuan Xiaoju finally believed it, and he said happily: "Then it's a deal, 10,000 sets of armor in exchange for the formula and technology."
(End of this chapter)