A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Emperor Yuan Cong

Chapter 118 The Alchemist
"Can you really draw talismans and seals to communicate with the God of Salt and recover the brine?"

On the ruins of Yanjingzhai, the town army, government soldiers, Turkic captives, guards, soldiers, and local tyrants, kitchen households, burners, and firewood customers were all working together to clean up. Lu Huairang came to Huaiyu and asked in a low voice .

"Worth a try."

"How sure are you that it will work?"

"It's up to people." Huaiyu didn't promise.

Lu Huairang was a little disappointed, but in a blink of an eye he became a little excited again. He said in a low voice, "The three salt villages in Longyou are all cornucopias. Do you know how profitable they were before?"

Huaiyu smiled, "Didn't you say that you can buy [-] horses a day?"

"Eight hundred horses is definitely an exaggeration, but the profit of salt is astonishing, especially the Qiang people from far and near who eat salt, but they all come here to trade and trade directly with horses, fur and medicinal materials. Salt here is just like money and silk. Currency, even better than copper coins."

Huaiyu heard the meaning of his words, the salt horse trade, which means that there is still a way to make money.

"Is the profit great?"

"I have inquired about it. When it was prosperous in the previous dynasty, the party members drove horses to exchange salt. A good horse in the two capitals of the Central Plains cost [-] to [-] yuan, but here it only costs a few thousand yuan."

People in the Tang Dynasty generally divided horses into father horses, dun horses and grass horses. The father horses were naturally male horses that had never been gelded, the dun horses were castrated horses, and the grass horses were mares.

Straw horses are the cheapest. Even people from Dangxiang, Turks, or Central Plains generally don’t ride mares. They are ashamed to ride mares. There are many specific reasons, one of which is that mares are mainly used for breeding. Most of the time of the year is pregnant, and the pony has to be taken care of after giving birth, so it cannot be used for riding or carrying things at all.

The father horse is not castrated, and it is not very suitable for riding, especially not suitable for being a war horse in the army, otherwise it is not docile, and it is easy to chase the mare.

Commonly used Dunmu horses are divided into fine, inferior, and rough horses. Now the price is generally around [-] silk, [-], and [-] horses, while grass horses are about half the price of Dun horses.

"In the early years, party horses were even sold for a piece of silk for a grass horse."

No matter how worthless a mare is, you can only sell one piece of silk. The profit here is indeed too high. If you sell it to Guanzhong, how much will you earn?

Even at the usual transaction price of the Qiang people, the fine grass horse is only about ten pieces of silk, which is only more than 3000 yuan, which is several times the price in Chang'an.

Huaiyu looked at the excited Lu Huairang, and guessed that this guy had found some opportunity to make money. Sure enough, this guy suggested to Huaiyu that the upper well with the highest brine volume should be designated as an official salt well, and only the official salt farms should be allowed to get brine. Definitely have to step in.

Going down the well will get brine for the local tycoons, but they also have to secretly insert a share.

Xiaojing gets stew and cooks salt for other retail investors.

The superficial reason is to facilitate management, but in fact it is to take advantage of this opportunity to reshuffle the salt-making industry in Yanjingzhai, and of course have to take advantage of the power in hand.

Lu Huairang wants to directly intervene in the salt making business and share the share. As long as he has salt in his hands, he will naturally be able to exchange for cheap cattle, horses, sheep, fur and medicinal materials, etc. when he trades with the Qiang people. The price of livestock, etc. traded by people is cheap, and you can make a lot of money by changing hands after you get it.

In this way, you can make a fortune by making salt, and make another fortune in the mutual market.

This guy has always had a good brain in these areas, and he can see through every corner.

Such a person should not be a son-in-law, whoever should be a son-in-law.

"Anyway, there is no brine in the salt well now. At this time, we propose to adjust the division of the salt well, and there is little opposition from everyone. Besides, now that the salt well village is in ruins, it is up to Erlang, please go back to the father of the salt god. I have soldiers and horses in my hand. From now on, Hospital Town will be permanently stationed in Yanjing Village, and you will guard the nine salt roads, so who dare not cooperate with us?"

Huaiyu really wanted to tell Lu Huairang that he would be the general manager of the hospital, and Jiuyou Yisuo was also his subordinate, so he had to rely on himself to draw amulets to ask the father-in-law of the salt god to restore the brine.

If you really want to get involved, how can Lu Huai let anything happen?

However, the interests of Yanjingzhai are too great, and the interests involved are extremely wide, and there must be many backers behind those local tyrants. If he doesn't pull Lu Huairang to the top, it may not be easy to settle the matter afterwards.

It would be better to push the son-in-law Lu Huai to the front, and then pull Cheng Chumo, Uncle Wang Da, and Qin Shixing brothers together. Now the son-in-law, the governor, the commanding army, the town general, Sima, and the governor all share the benefits. He is naturally safe when he is young, and he is not afraid of having a little less food, and eating alone is a bad thing.

In the face of huge benefits, it would be a lie to say that he is not moved.

Especially when everyone else is doing it, there's no reason why you shouldn't join.

Huaiyu asked Lu Huairang to do it boldly. He concentrated on studying the talisman and invited the grandfather of the God of Salt. After finishing it, he will come to draw a symbol to ask God.

As for washing the salt well, there is no rush now, I have to invite the God of Salt back to wash the well, or else the God of Salt has not invited the brine to come out, so he will blame himself.

Huaiyu got some Glauber's salt, salt, etc., and began to fiddle with the bottles and jars.

"What are you doing? Are you preparing symbols for drawing?"

Fan Xianji asked him curiously.

"I'm making a baby."

When Huaiyu saw the Glauber's salt, he thought of making soda ash, but sulfuric acid is needed to make soda.Fortunately, for sulfuric acid, Taoist alchemists have long invented the production method. The oldest method is to use vitriol, ferrous sulfate, as a raw material, and put it in a distillation kettle to obtain sulfuric acid. However, alchemists called it Green vitriol oil.

The basic principle is that green vitriol decomposes during exercise, releasing sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide, in which sulfur trioxide and water vapor are condensed at the same time to obtain sulfuric acid.

But now that there are piles of thenardite in front of him, Huaiyu no longer needs to refine the sulfur first to make alkali, and use thenardite to skip that step.

Glauber's salt contains sodium sulfate. Firstly, crude Glauber's salt is heated with water to make a saturated solution, then clarified to remove sediment, then steam melted, evaporated, crystallized, separated and dried to obtain pure Glauber's salt.

Then use Glauber's salt plus limestone and carbon powder to reduce and carbonize at high temperature to obtain black ash as a crude product. After leaching, evaporation, refining, recrystallization and drying, heavy soda ash can be obtained.

This kind of soda production method is relatively backward. It consumes more Glauber's salt and a lot of waste liquid. In particular, it needs to raise the furnace temperature to [-] degrees, which consumes a lot of heat.But if it is only a small-scale production, these are not problems, and the temperature of the blacksmith's closed bellows furnace can reach [-] degrees with charcoal.

It took Wu Huaiyu several days of trial and error before he succeeded in getting what he wanted, soda ash.

"What is this?" Although Fan Xuanfu has been helping out for the past few days, he has no idea what this mysterious alchemy is refining.

"It's alkali."

"What is this for?"

"It has a wide range of uses, such as pharmaceuticals, dough, papermaking, dyes, textiles, and can also be used to make fragrant soap and glass."

Fan Xuanfu stared wide-eyed at Wu Huaiyu's small white powder, as if he was juggling a trick, "Could it be some kind of universal elixir that can do anything?"

"I didn't lie to you, not only can it be made into fragrant soap, but it can also be made into a detergent for rinsing wool, and it can also be used as an alkali for tanning leather.

Purify it again, that is to eat soda ash, and it can also be used to make steamed cakes with noodles. "

"Add lime water to make caustic soda, which not only has a strong cleaning effect for removing oil stains, but also can be used for papermaking, etc., which is also a good thing."

(End of this chapter)