My Apprenticeship to Uncle Jiu: I Was a Warlord in the Republic of China

After a night's rest, he took ten Taoist soldiers to Tengteng County.

After several months of development, Tengteng County already had a population of 3,400, and the surrounding land had been almost fully cultivated.

Now there are 15,000 acres of land, 1,400 acres of paddy fields, and thousands of acres of grassland, which are divided into eight farms, raising more than 4,000 livestock of various types.

Those hills that were not suitable for farming were planted with fruit tree seedlings, and the spaces between the fruit trees were filled with medicinal herbs.

Three of the hills are specifically used for planting. After several months of purchasing, the medicinal materials on these hills that are 10 to 20 years old have already grown on a considerable scale.

In order to develop the economy of Tengteng County, Jiang Li also invested in the construction of a number of factories specializing in the production of tables, chairs, benches, weaving backpacks and vegetable baskets, as well as making hemp ropes, in short, some basic furniture and daily necessities.

Of course, fans and other handicrafts of slightly higher value are also produced in special factories.

The industry that requires the most manpower is naturally the food processing factory that processes and produces dried pumpkin, sweet potato vermicelli and noodles. This factory is usually responsible for making noodles and shelling rice.

When the season comes, we will focus on making dried pumpkin candy and dried sweet potato and sweet potato flour.

As for making bamboo tubes for growing mushrooms, that thing consumes a lot of energy, so it requires a lot of manpower.

In addition, Jiang Li also hired a papermaking master and built a paper mill outside the county town. However, papermaking requires a lot of water, so it was built far away from Tengteng County, as close to the river as possible.

Because he was afraid of polluting the water source, he specially asked people to use cement to build a canal and a large pool for convenient water use.

All these workers work ten hours a day, are provided with three meals a day and three days off a month, and their wages are quite good.

After looking at the factories in Tengteng Town, he checked the shops in the county town. In addition to various snacks and shops selling various daily necessities, all the shops were complete.

The most important thing is that Jiang Li opened a combined Chinese and Western medicine hospital in the town.

It is precisely because of the existence of this hospital that people from several nearby towns and twenty or so villages often come to this hospital for treatment.

Because here there are not only traditional Chinese medicine, but also fashionable Western medicine. The key is that Jiang Li invited a very good surgeon.

This means that wound infections and acute appendicitis, which are difficult to treat with traditional Chinese medicine, are no longer incurable diseases.

The first medical team of 50 people formed by Jiang Li has also been completed. Although they cannot complete any difficult operations independently, they can still do simple wound hemostasis, disinfection and bandaging.

Since this medical team is composed entirely of men, it is quite easy to lift the wounded.

After inspecting these, he took people to the military camp to check. When they arrived at the training ground, they saw that they were training in full swing, and it was obvious that there were a lot of people.

After entering the military camp, I found Jiang Youzhong. After listening to his report, I learned that 800 new soldiers recruited from thirteen towns were currently being trained. According to the progress, they would be able to form an independent army in another month.

So Jiang Li made an inspection and learned about the food, accommodation and training issues in the barracks. He then asked Jiang Youzhong to continue training according to the plan and report back after the training was completed.

The next day, he took two hundred veterans and headed to Wuzhu Mountain.

When they arrived at Wuzhu Mountain, he had someone take him and the army on a tour around the area, and then he arranged patrols and sentries at various locations.

Because most of the workers were still staying in Youlin Town, there were not many people on the mountain at this time. Although he had asked them to come over when he arrived, they probably wouldn't be able to get there in a while.

So he began to check out the buildings here. The area for assembling bullets was arranged in several bamboo houses.

The punching machine and the equipment for casting bullet heads are located in the outside shed, while the smelting furnace and the place for making gunpowder are two independent buildings built directly with cement and stones to prevent rain and fire.

I visited the workers' sleeping rooms, the canteen, the toilets and the warehouse one by one. They were all made of bamboo using local materials, including the tables, chairs and benches.

For this reason, this small market was expanded several times. Because of this, there was no transpiration effect of bamboo in the middle, and the sunlight could shine directly into the open space.

The fog on the mountain also disappeared, leaving only fog in the surrounding areas, which can hide the central area.

Jiang Li was very satisfied seeing this. He had to admire Uncle Jiu's strength. He solved Jiang Li's problem with just one glance.

It turned out that Jiang Li listened to the report from the people he sent to build Wuzhu Mountain. Although the fog on Wuzhu Mountain could hide traces, it was too humid. Not only would the metal tools rust easily, but the gunpowder would also become damp, making it impossible to use as an arsenal.

Jiang Li was very distressed when he learned about this. After much thought, he finally found Uncle Jiu and wanted to get a set of formations from him to disperse the fog.

As a result, when Uncle Jiu went there, he just walked around and said that there was no need to set up any formation here. As long as the bamboo in the central area was cut down, sunlight could shine in and the problem would be solved.

Jiang Li didn't say anything when he heard this. He just ordered people to clear a large area of ​​land, and those bamboos were just right for building houses.

And now the situation is just as Uncle Jiu expected. The fog has dissipated and the sun is shining brightly. It is surrounded by a large amount of vegetation and there are few people. It is a rare arsenal address.

After seeing all this, he went to see the stream again. He had discussed with the craftsmen before and decided to clean up the stream and build a dam in a suitable location so that both drinking water and water needs could be solved.

When he arrived at the dam, he made a rough estimate. The dam was twenty meters long and four meters high. It was built in a low-lying area, forming a small pool of water over a thousand square meters.

Judging from the water storage capacity, it should be enough for these 400 people to drink.

At this time, a soldier came to report that the craftsmen living in Youlin Town had arrived and they asked when they could start work.

After inspecting the dam, he returned to the mountain, said a few words of encouragement to the workers who had been waiting for a long time, and then let them make their beds and familiarize themselves with the environment.

As for starting work, he gave up the idea after looking at the sky. It was already past three o'clock in the afternoon and he wouldn't be able to work for long. It would be better to familiarize himself with the environment and equipment, have a good meal and start work tomorrow.

Seeing that more than a hundred workers had dispersed, he ordered people to slaughter pigs and sheep and start cooking, so that they could have a good meal tonight and start work happily tomorrow.

...

The next morning, the furnace was lit. The coal was transported by water to Renjia Town by a merchant that Jiang Li specially asked Ren Fa to contact. It was then transported by horse carriage after several twists and turns before it arrived at Wuzhu Mountain.

Originally, he wanted to use wood to make charcoal to smelt copper, but after several attempts, he found that the output of charcoal was too low and the cost was too high, making it difficult to achieve large-scale production. He had no choice but to buy coal instead.

After seeing the first batch of molten copper being poured into bullet heads and cartridge cases, and then polished and loaded with gunpowder bullets to make the first batch of bullets, he happily took these bullets to test the guns.

When they reached the foot of the mountain, Jiang Li had just loaded the bullets when Ah San grabbed the gun in his hand and said, "Master, let me do it. After all, this bullet has not been tested yet. It would be bad if there is any problem!"