Chapter 600 Fire Well Natural Gas
Although Lao Cao had a serious look on his face, he was very happy in his heart.
Among his children, two sons worked in the army, but they were not successful enough and were promoted very slowly. The youngest daughter worked as a civil servant and devoted herself to learning from Ma Linger. She was daring and bold in doing things and conducting audits. She handled many major cases and was promoted like a rocket. All the ministers in the court were convinced.
While they were happy, the couple started to worry about their beloved daughter's marriage. Why didn't E'er consider getting married?
At the Zhao Mansion, Shunzhidi and several women were also drinking. Chen Chen blamed Zhao Yulin for doting on Hulan. He went to Qiongzhou without even returning home after receiving a letter from his concubine. What about them? What do they count for?
Chen Chen picked up the wine glass angrily and asked for wine, then he tilted his head back and drank it in one gulp.
Yangjin asked her with a smile: Are you jealous ? You are a woman with several children already, and you are not reserved at all.
Chen Chen pouted his lips willfully and pretended to be naughty, and said to Yang Jin: She wants it this way, just like that, what's the matter?
The naughty expression of the aunt made Yangjin laugh. She asked Chen Chen: Don't you know that it is your brother's habit to take care of the sisters' affairs when leaving Chengdu? She guessed that Brother Yulin was preparing to travel, and it had a lot to do with Hulan.
The women immediately fell silent.
Yangjin took a sip of wine and said to herself: The weather is getting warmer, and she is leaving too.
Zhidi and Chen Chen looked at her in confusion and asked: Where are you going? Didn’t you just come back from patrol?
Yangjin told her not to tell anyone that she was going to Tubo. Yulin Goth was a liar. She was promised to be the king of Tubo, so she had to go to Tubo to be the pacification envoy for at least a few years.
The women immediately fell silent.
At ease, Zhidi said that now that everyone has left, it is not easy for her to be the king anymore, so she quits.
Yangjin said why was she so stupid, she was just causing trouble for her brother. She thought Mr. Qiu from the Ministry of Industry would also resign, because Mr. Qiu's time had come.
In this case, the court will be short of manpower. How can we just stop doing it?
There was no pacification envoy in Tubo, and the new Song Dynasty did not allow local military commanders to shoulder both military and political responsibilities for a long time, as that would easily lead to warlord separatism. That was why she had to go to Tubo.
She told her sisters: Call Feiyan back and let us help her with the work. She is having a lot of fun hiding in Xinshi, so we absolutely cannot do that.
Zhidi immediately said that this was right and Feiyan should be allowed to come back to be her king.
Yangjin thought it was not important whether Feiyan became the king or not, the key was that they were short of manpower and she had to come back to work. The sisters were reluctant to let Yangjin leave, so they exchanged tea and talked all night long. At dawn, they all went to the west gate to see her off, and the team walked a long way but still looked back.
As for Zhao Yulin, he had just arrived in Qiongzhou at this time.
Hu Lan wrote him a letter, happily telling him that a fire well had been found and asking him to come and dig the well. Zhao Yulin had just finished his work and rushed all the way to Qiongzhou.
Coincidentally, Wu Jing and Zhu Fugui also arrived .
Chen Liu happily invited them to dine at Jinzhu's newly opened Wenjun Restaurant. Wenjun Restaurant, with its Korean kimchi made by Jinzhu himself, immediately became a favorite of the people of Qiongzhou. Since its opening, it has been full every day, even Hu Lan was surprised.
Hulan was fighting corruption in Qiongzhou and confiscated the properties of corrupt officials and profiteers. It just so happened that there was a luxurious building next to Chen Liu's house that had once been a restaurant, but no one dared to buy it. After Chen Liu found out, he and Jin Zhu went to take a closer look. There was a large enough wasteland behind the building to expand the business space and create a food and entertainment project like the bamboo forest firewood chicken in Huaxi Village. Jin Zhu liked it on the spot.
When Chen Liu saw Jinzhu's happy face, he immediately went to Hulan to buy it at a price higher than the asking price. After simple repairs and decoration, he opened for business.
When Wu Jing saw that Chen Liu had his own business and was starting to take off, she happily told Hulan that she, the eldest princess, also wanted to come to Qiongzhou to invest.
Initially, Chen Liu also participated in the establishment of Dujiangyan. This time, he took out 100,000 strings of cash from the industry in Huaxi Village and gave it to Chen Liu to do the work. He could choose the brothers and sisters of the Zhao family as his helpers, and they would definitely listen to Liu Liu.
Hu Lan said happily: Young Master Liu can rest assured now, everyone cares about you.
Chen Liu smiled shyly and said: Thank you, big sister, it’s not necessary to spend so much money.
Wu Jing said with a smile that there are many jobs to do in Qiongzhou. Now that our father is here, there will definitely be big moves, right?
Zhao Yulin told them: Mother Hulan is going to Huojing County to dig a fire well. Do you dare to gamble? This is a business that costs money. If the digging fails, the money will be thrown into the water and no sound will be heard.
Wu Jing agreed immediately. She believed in her father's judgment. They would provide the money to dig the well.
She knew that Qiongzhou was far away from Chengdu, and the government relied only on thin taxes to support the daily expenses of the government office. It could not withstand major risks and must be supported.
Zhao Yulin was delighted to see his daughter acting steadily and courageously, so he asked Hulan to handle the matter impartially and return to the yamen to draft a contract. If the fire well was built in the future, Chen Liu would be in charge of operating the fire well and must pay all taxes.
The next day, Zhao Yulin sent Wu Jing and Fugui away and went west to Huojing County to dig a well.
Huojing County was named Huojing because a gas with a bad smell that would burn when exposed to fire was dug out here earlier.
Some wells even produced brine, so the locals called these wells fire wells. They used the gas from the wells to boil salt and sell it to Tubo, thus creating an ancient Tea-Horse Road to the Western Regions.
Huojing County became famous for this.
Zhao Yulin and Hulan rode side by side, and Chen Liu followed far behind. He told Hulan that the stench coming out of the well was called natural gas, which was a rare underground resource. As long as the well was dug correctly, it would be inexhaustible. The natural gas in Qiongzhou was abundant, buried at a shallow depth, and brine was produced, which could be used to make salt.
In the past, when people dug a water well, they might accidentally dig up a salt well or a natural gas well.
Chen Liu took over the conversation from a distance. He had heard that when there was gas in the wells, people here made a lot of money by boiling salt with the gas. Some people even tried to use bamboo tubes with broken bamboo joints to collect gas and take them home for lighting, which could last for a while.
Zhao Yulin laughed and said, "Let's give it a try this time and see how our luck is."
Hu Lan said happily that he was extremely lucky and she believed that her brother could succeed.
As soon as we entered Huojing County, the county lieutenant Zuo Liangchen came to meet us. We asked him for instructions on how to make arrangements.
Zhao Yulin asked: "Mrs. Hulan is here too. How can there be no one in charge of Qiongzhou?" She is also the defense envoy of Qiongzhou.
Liangchen said honestly that after the rectification of the officialdom in Qiongzhou, all government offices at all levels would be led by their brothers, so the Third Young Master could rest assured. How could he, a subordinate who also served as the lieutenant of Huojing County, not serve the Young Master?
Zhao Yulin was too lazy to talk to him, so he asked the leader to lead the way and go straight to check the fire well.
Zuo Liangchen was his former captain of the guard. After Zhao Yulin arrested the county lieutenant and dealt with bullies in Huojing County and thoroughly cleaned up the bad apples, the county magistrate, the county lieutenant and other officials were all thrown into jail. After the county government collapsed, Liangchen had to be left in Huojing to take charge of the situation.
He accompanied Hu Lan through most of Huojing County. All the fire wells he had seen were dead fire wells, without any breath of air. The depth of the wells was only about thirty feet. He asked Zuo Liangchen with some disappointment: Is there no more?
Liangchen reported that he had searched all over the village and found only these. If there were any more, he would have to look for them in the mountains, which were very far away.
They asked the elderly people nearby, and they learned that the fire wells here were still burning thirty years ago. One year, there was a very fierce earthquake here, which destroyed many houses and killed many people. Afterwards, the fire wells gradually went out, and now they are no longer seen.
Zhao Yulin saw that it was getting late and told them to go back to the village in front to rest.
There happens to be a well right next to the Tea-Horse Road, which is the earliest fire well discovered in Huojing County. The well is less than ten feet deep. There is also an abandoned salt well next to it, but it has been abandoned because of the high cost of boiling salt after the fire well was lost.
With Liangchen's help, Zhao Yulin moved into the home of Mr. Wang, a wealthy man in the village. After division of labor and cooperation, the yard quickly became quiet. He asked the old man in the yard to come over for questioning.
Zuo Liangchen immediately invited the seventy-year-old Mr. Wang from the Wang family. Although his hair and beard were white, he was in very good health. After the two sides exchanged greetings, Zuo Liangchen listened to the old man telling the story of the fire well while drinking tea.
The old man was very talkative. He explained to him cheerfully: It was all about the ancestors. This village was called Wangjiayuan. There were nearly 20 households, 18 of which were surnamed Wang, and the other two were also related to the Wang family.
He remembered that when he was a child, there were three wells in Huojing County that produced fire gas. However, the other wells either only produced fire gas but no brine, or the brine wells were too far away from the fire wells, and the brine had to be transported over long distances by humans to make salt, which was too costly to make money.
The old man said proudly: His Wang family is the only one in the whole county that is blessed by God. The well at the head of the village not only produces fire, but also has strong fire power. The brine in the brine well next to it is inexhaustible and has excellent salt content. Everyone praised the Yin and Yang wells as the blessed wells of their Wang family and a gift from God.
At that time, his family lived in Qiongzhou City, and they had shops in Chengdu Prefecture, and their business was very big.
However, good luck cannot last forever. After a major earthquake, the brine in the salt well began to decrease, and salt could not be produced. His family invited gods, experts to look at feng shui, and performed shaman dances, but none of them could save Fujing. They went around digging wells in the surrounding areas, but they exhausted their savings.
His ancestors believed that his family had not done good deeds and had been punished by God, and their family's financial resources were cut off. From then on, their ancestors established a rule that their descendants should be kind and generous and be honest and decent people.
The old man's story was so miraculous and plausible, but Zhao Yulin never believed in ghosts and gods. It was probably because his ancestors had done something bad in the past, and the fire well had died. After trying their best to find the fire well, they could not find it, so they thought it was a punishment from God.
He was thinking to himself that it was an indisputable fact that the well at the entrance of the village produced gas in the past.
This means that there is natural gas buried right under your feet.
Since there is gas underground, did they use up all the natural gas just by cooking that little bit of salt?
It is absolutely impossible.
They didn't dig very deep at that time, and the gas well had been abandoned for decades. Perhaps because of an earthquake, the movement of the underlying rocks blocked the gas outlet.
Maybe if we dig deeper we can produce gas?
Following this line of thought, Zhao Yulin decided to try the well at the village head, and asked the old man: Can he dig out the fire well? Maybe he can vent his anger.
