There are many brine springs in Xuzhou, and salt merchants have moved here one after another. Deng Ming has no other pillar industries yet. Therefore, the salt industry is not only valued by Liu Jinge, but also Deng Ming is also very concerned, so he took a few days to inspect it.

Now in the Wuquan in Xuzhou, there are a large number of carpenter workshops, which are making the goods required by salt merchants day and night. The most popular in Xuzhou now belongs to the carpenters and shipbuilding industries. This kind of cargo is a wooden tray with a large surface, with a very good bottom requirement and no leakage. Next to the salt well, a large number of these wooden trays are placed on the stones and placed in the air. The brine produced is poured into the wooden tray, exposed to the sun and sunburned into crystals.

"The salt drying method can save 93% of the manpower and save a lot of firewood and iron pots," Lu Huan reported Deng Ming and Yuan Xiang, who have always inspected the salt industry, said: "After using the salt drying method, I calculated the cost, which is about one-tenth of the salt boiling. Now, the salt drying method is used in the salt making method in Xuzhou. Sooner or later, Chengdu will also be converted to boiling to drying."

As early as the Tang Dynasty and even earlier, Fujian began to adopt the salt drying process, but the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties had no interest in promoting this technology. The most critical problem was the sale of salt monopoly. For the government, the profit of boiling salt could be set at all, and there was no urgent need to reduce production costs. After the Ming Dynasty implemented a stricter salt monopoly, it also began to crack down on Fujian's salt drying method because compared with salt boiling, the salt drying method was more difficult to control by the government. People who use the salt drying method to make salt are not as easy as stove owners. The government cannot control salt production by controlling iron pots and other tools - that is, although the production cost has been greatly reduced, the management cost of the government has been greatly increased. Even if some officials call for the adoption of cheaper and more efficient salt drying method, it is just a personal behavior.

After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, as the government's control ability declined, the salt-salt method was restored and expanded. However, after the Qing army entered the pass, the Qing court, which regarded salt as its lifeblood, made every effort to crack down on the salt-salt method. Like the feudal dynasties before China, the salt monopoly system made them not to consider the production cost. The most concerned thing was how to use firewood, tools and consumables to monitor the production quantity of salt to prevent stove owners from "stealing" national property. In order to achieve this goal, the Qing Dynasty also did not hesitate to reduce production efficiency and crack down on advanced production processes.

In Xichuan, Deng Ming implemented a system of selling everything. As long as you purchase a license, you can produce it at will. The salt factories are all privately owned. Therefore, how to improve production efficiency is the most concerned thing for these private salt factories. However, due to the severe crackdowns in previous dynasties, Lu Huan and other salt merchants did not know that there was a salt drying method. Until Mutan from Fujian saw that the salt merchants in the capital were still chopping wood and cooking salt, they casually mentioned Fujian's salt drying method.

Although Mutan's description made all salt merchants feel amazing, Sichuan salt still seemed unable to use this advanced process at first, because for Fujian, seawater is endless and the requirements for the salt field are relatively low; but in Sichuan, brine itself is wealth and is hard to propose from the salt spring. If it is lost in large quantities, it is an unbearable loss. Therefore, until half a year ago, although the salt drying method was repeatedly mentioned by salt merchants, no test of the salt field was successful.

Later, a man named Wang Hang had a sudden idea and thought that he could make a shallow and large wooden plate to serve as the salt field. Wang Hang was originally a garrison in Wanxian, helping Yuan Zongdi's soldiers come to Xuzhou with armor. He worked with the salt merchants to help carry brine. After hearing everyone repeatedly mentioning the method of drying salt, he suddenly had such an idea.

Wang Hang's own carpenter skills were not very good, but he still barely made a small sample for the salt merchants he worked for. The salt merchants must have much more resources than Wang Hang, so they quickly made a large test piece, and the effect was quite good. In return, the salt merchant paid to redeem Wang Hang from the Wanxian Army, gave him a small sum of money, and arranged a small position for him in the salt factory. This result made Wang Hang overjoyed and very satisfied.

But when Deng Ming came back and heard about this, he immediately called Wang Hang to go to Chengdu to apply for a patent. Then Deng Ming taught him two ways to benefit from selling patents: one is to sell the patent license to a carpenter's store at one time, and the other is to sell it by piece. Wang Hang finally chose to sell it by piece. Whether in Chengdu or Xuzhou, all carpenters under Deng Ming's rule would have to pay Wang Hang the patent fee for the salt drying board according to the area; while in Deng Ming's controlled area, wooden salt drying boards that did not pay Wang Hang's patent fee are illegal products and merchants are not allowed to sell it. The patent lasted for fifty years and the scope will expand with the expansion of Deng Ming's controlled area.

"Boss Wang is sitting at home every day to count the money, and he can't count it." Lu Huan joked to Deng Ming. Patent fees are added to each salt drying board, but even so, the salt drying method still reduces production costs by more than 90%. Moreover, for salt merchants like Lu Huan, Wang Hang's patent fees cannot be compared with their salt-making profits: "Now, Boss Wang tells everyone that his family business is given to him by the admiral."

"It was him who won it himself." Deng Ming shook his head and denied it flatly. He saw that as a large number of salt plates were manufactured, the quality of this wooden salt field became higher and higher. Only a small amount of concentrated brine penetrated out from the gaps in the bottom plate, and these brines formed conical crystals between the bottom plates of the salt field and the land.

According to the patent description, Wang Hang has the patent right as long as it is made of wood and used to dry salt. Improvements to Wang Hang's patent can bring new patent rights, but Wang Hang can still share profits. Unless someone designs metal or non-flat salt fields and can defeat existing products in the competition, it will cause Wang Hang to lose his wealth.

Since this incident spread, countless people have been thinking about new inventions day and night. Many of Yuan Zongdi's auxiliary soldiers from Wanxian County, and even his soldiers, were fine thinking about what could be invented so as to win an inexhaustible gold mine for themselves.

And there are indeed many things that have been invented, and many patents may not be able to win benefits for their owners, but some are still possible, such as a large umbrella for sheltering the salt field from rain. If concentrated brine or salt crystals are washed away by the rain, it will undoubtedly be a huge blow to salt merchants, emergency saving of the covered canal for concentrated brine.

In these inventions, almost everything that helps improve salt production will be purchased by salt merchants to make their inventors profit. Deng Ming, a tool recently applied for connecting wooden salt fields, looks like a nut and screw in his previous life, but it is just wooden. As more and more people get rich by this, it has stimulated more people to think about how to improve production methods - not only the salt industry, but also other manufacturing industries. As long as it has a real effect, there is no need to worry about not having private businesses to use it.

"Recently, I have bid for the Blacksmiths' Business in the Capital. I want a weapon that matches the muskets." Regarding the upcoming Chongqing Battle, Deng Ming had nothing to hide from a confidant minister like Yuan Xiang. The next day, he took Yuan Xiang to inspect a new Sichuan Army unit.

The hundreds of Ming soldiers standing in front of Yuan Xiang were all carrying muskets. The equipment on them came from the imperial camp. The batch of muskets seized by Deng Ming from the Imperial Guards were of good quality, comparable to the few shots he had obtained from Kunming. He immediately equipped an infantry team with these muskets. Now the members of this team were selected from the hands of the standing military crossbows. In addition to the muskets, all the Ming soldiers carried long daggers - they were almost all Zhejiang soldiers, and some Sichuan and Huguang people were also influenced by others to start using Zhejiang-style weapons such as long daggers.

Deng Ming drew several bidding pictures to the blacksmith shop in Chengdu, and told them that if the army adopted their designs, they would give them patents. If they did not buy weapons directly from the blacksmith shop, they would pay them a patent fee for each weapon until their design was replaced by a better and better design. When explaining to Yuan Xiang, Deng Ming casually drew a sketch: "I call this thing a bayonet. If it can be installed on a musket, our musket soldiers will have better hand-to-hand combat weapons, and they will not need to use a long dagger to fight the opponent's big sword and spear to fight desperately."

However, until now, no blacksmith shop has been able to provide a design that satisfies Deng Ming. The main reason is that the blacksmith shop in Chengdu is still too thin. Even with Deng Ming's sketches, their manufacturing innovation capabilities are still not good.

"In addition to holding a knife, I also bid for a device to be made to replace the current fuse," Deng Ming told the military and his officials. Now Taixi has invented a firing device called a flintlock device, which allows the musket to be fired safer and more frequently, and also helps to increase the loading and power. Deng Ming's statement was confirmed by Mu Tan. Although the main equipment of the Taixi people is still open fire muskets, there is indeed a legend about this kind of equipment: "But I don't know when it will be made. I also asked the envoy to sneak to Fujian and ask the Prince of Yanping to find a way to help me get the samples so that the Dufu can imitate it."

Deng Ming was extremely concerned about the muskets, which was a well-known secret in the western Sichuan officialdom. So although he felt that Deng Ming had launched a large-scale bidding for this and sent someone to Fujian to be overreacted, Yuan Xiang and others would not pour cold water on Deng Ming's aspects that were particularly interested in, but wished him success.
Chapter completed!