After more than half a month of preparation, the day for gold mining has arrived.

In the early morning, about 400 young and middle-aged people gathered on the south slope of Longshou Peak, all of whom were drawn from ten fortresses, holding sledgehammers, iron chisels, shovels, shoulder poles, baskets... all kinds of tools!

Xue Yu, Grandpa Tartar, Grandpa, Grandpa Lu... and ten officials from all households were all in the crowd, some looked excited, some were a little nervous!

Dozens of young and strong women built several shacks at the foot of the mountain to prepare meals for the men on the mountain. Only when they are full can they have the energy to work!

According to the rules, before mining gold mines, we must worship the mountain god. Thank you for giving everyone a meal!

The altar is ready, with the mountain god on it, and a large wild boar head, a fat river fish, and a small incense burner are also enshrined!

"The sacrifice begins, please burn incense!"

More than 400 people present arranged their formation according to their identities. Grandpa Baihu stood in front. He was dressed very neatly and held three pillars of fragrance in his hands.

As the saying goes: A snake cannot do without a head, and a bird cannot fly without a head.

Gold mining is not a small matter. How to allocate personnel, distribute interests, and arrange daily affairs, one person must be the master of the family. After ten hundred households' discussions, the grandfather of the households was publicly recommended to be the leader of the alliance.

In other words, the grandfather of the hundred households is upright and trusted by people.

Second, the gold mine was discovered by people from the White Sand Castle, and it is reasonable to have hundreds of families in the White Sand Castle become the leader!

Unexpectedly, Grandpa Baihu held the incense in his hand, but did not go forward to worship. After a little thought, he handed the incense in his hand to Xue Yu who was beside him. He took a few steps back and gave up his position as the leader!

In other words, Grandpa Baihu gave up the position of leader to Xue Yu, but can a teenage child command ten fortresses and thousands of military households?

“What’s the situation?”

"Can he do it?"

The people around were in an uproar, and most of them looked suspiciously?

Xue Yu did not give in, took the three fragrant scents, raised them high, so that everyone could see clearly, and then inserted them into the incense burner, knelt on the ground and bowed!

"Blessing of the Mountain God--Good luck and wealth!"

"Bless the Lord of Mountain!"

...

People from Baisha Castle were the first to kneel down, and then people from Yongxing Castle. As for the people from other fortresses, after hesitating, they also knelt down one after another under the leadership of the officials of Baihu, which was equivalent to acknowledging Xue Yu's identity as the leader.

After worshiping Grandpa Mountain God, the next step is to start mining gold.

Under Xue Yu's command, the military households first cut down the surrounding trees, created a large open space, and then transported the floating soil away, revealing the mountain rocks.

Doghead gold is very rare in nature. Most of the gold is hidden among these rocks. If you want to mine it, you have to dig a mine first.

When digging a mining cave, it is best to use yellow explosives, which can cause landslides and cracks in one go. Unfortunately, there is no explosive in this era. Although Xue Yu knows the formula, unfortunately, the technical conditions do not allow it and there is insufficient raw materials. It is hard for a good cook to cook without rice!

As for black gunpowder, the power of the explosion is insufficient, and the storage capacity of each fortress is very small, so it is impossible to afford it.

In desperation, I had to use the most primitive method: boiling water!

First, dry firewood is installed on it, burn the stones with a blazing fire, and when the temperature reaches a certain level, then pour cold water on it. Using the principle of thermal expansion and contraction, the rocks will break themselves.

The military households used iron chisels and sledgehammers to dig them. When they could not be chiseled, they would burn the water and stir up again. After repeated cycles, a mine cave gradually appeared, with a square side length of about six feet!

Every time the mine cave penetrates into the mountain, Xue Yu will jump down, hold a torch to check the trend of the golden veins, and adjust the direction of the military households to dig it!

In ancient times, the earth's crust moved. As the volcano erupted, the surging magma brought the gold element to the ground. The temperature of the gold was high and the cooling speed was slow. When the magma solidified into rocks, the gold still ran back and forth in the cracks of the rocks in the form of liquid, and where it flowed was the golden veins!

When flowing gold encounters substances such as quartz, silver, lead, zinc, etc., it will stay and form a composite ore layer, which looks very similar to a chicken coop, so it is called the "chicken coop trough!"

To make a metaphor: the golden vein is the vine spreading everywhere.

The chicken coop is a big watermelon growing on the vines!

The so-called gold-picking means first finding the vines with your eyesight, then searching along the vines bit by bit, and picking the big watermelon on it!

"Well, a big chicken coop!"

"Finished gold!"

Xue Yu had a very toxic eye and good luck. He dug about seven or eight feet into the mine and found a chicken coop trough. According to the professional term of the gold digger, he called it: See the trough, let it go!

On the first day when I entered the mountain to mine gold, I saw the harvest. Cheers sounded inside and outside the mine!

Next, the military households worked hard to dig and took out all the ore in the "chicken coop trough". It was about 2,000 kilograms, which could be called a big chicken coop trough.

But, it takes some effort to extract gold from these ores, and the process is also very complicated:

The first step was to select dozens of military households with big arms and round waists and strong waists, and smash the ore with huge hammers in hand, all of which were smashed into soybean-sized particles.

Then put these small particles on a large stone mill and crush them into powder!

To explain, this stone mill was not pushed by people or pulled by cows. Instead, Xue Yu made a water stone mill in the rushing place of the stream and used the water flow to make it rotate, which saved a lot of effort.

The second step is to place a large wooden trough next to the stream, one twelve feet long and more than four feet wide. It must be made of elm, because when the elm encounters water, many small barbs will be rolled up on the surface.

Put the ore powder in the wooden trough and constantly wash it with stream water. The density of the stone powder is light and will be washed away by the water soon. The density of the ore powder is heavy and will sink below and be blocked by small wooden thorns.

After washing the ore many times, only a few dozen kilograms of concentrate powder were left, and the gold was hidden here, but in addition to the gold, there were also silver, copper, lead, zinc and other companion ores!

Step 3: Pour the concentrate powder into the mercury and stir it vigorously. The density of the gold is high and it will sink to the bottom of the mercury, while the density of other metals is light and it will float on the mercury, which will separate.

Someone must have asked, where did the mercury they got from a group of poor military households?

It's very simple. Xue Yu had found cinnabar gravel in the mountains before, scientifically called "mercury sulfide". It can produce mercury by heating and calcining.

However, mercury is highly toxic, so during the operation, Xue Yuyan ordered all military households to wear masks and gloves. After work every day, they had to go to the stream to clean their bodies, so that they would not be allowed to come out without rubbing their skin red.

As for masks, they are sewn with multi-layer cotton cloth, and gloves are made of animal skins in the mountains. These things are all left to the women of the fortresses. Needlework is their strengths.

Step 4: Pour the mixture of mercury and gold powder onto the cotton cloth. The former will penetrate, while the latter will remain on the cotton cloth!

Finally, carefully scrape the gold powder, put it in a crucible, calcined it with a strong fire, let it melt into gold and water, and then pour it into the mold for the gold to slowly cool and form.

"It's done, it's done!"

"Brother Xue is so amazing. He extracted the gold so quickly."

Generally, gold ingots are in the shape of a boat, but Xue Yu doesn't like it, so he made a small round cake-shaped mold himself. After the gold is cooled and formed, he clamped it out with iron pliers and put it in a basin of cold water.

As a burst of white smoke rose, a beautiful little golden cake appeared, showing a yellow luster under the sunshine!

As the saying goes: Seven greens, eight yellows, nine purples, ten reds!

The small golden cake is yellow, which means that the gold content is about 80%. With the existing technical conditions, it is not easy to refine it to this point.

"Take the scale over quickly and weigh it."

"I'm so stupid. I'm not a big scale for pigs. I need to be smaller and more accurate!"

...

"Yes, Lord Baihu!"

(The squad, also known as the squad, is a special tool called gold, silver, medicinal materials and other valuables in ancient China. It is small in size and has high accuracy.)

Soon, someone brought the slaughter, ebony as a pole, bronze tray, and white copper weight. The three-husband grandfather personally operated it, and the weight of the small gold cake was quickly measured... one or two, one or five cents!

"Gold, the best gold, we have refined gold, haha!"

"I've made a fortune this time, haha!"

...

Crazy, military households are crazy, small flags, general flags, and officials of all households are crazy happy. Some are whistling to the sky, some are jumping and jumping, and some are even rolling all over the ground, happy like a three-year-old baby!

As for the little golden cake, it was passed back and forth in people's hands. Some people were afraid that they were dreaming during the day, so they bit them with their teeth. After biting one person, the next person then bite them, and soon they were covered with tooth marks and saliva!

(Xiao Jinbing: You are afraid you are dreaming and biting your fingers, why do you want to bite me?)

Some people must have thought about it. Only more than 2,000 kilograms of ore can extract more than one or two taels of gold. With such a little gold content, are you happy to be so happy?

To be honest, I'm really a lot more hearted.

You should know that gold is a rare heavy metal. As long as the quality of gold ore reaches 0.5 grams/ton, it will have mining value.

Most of the gold mines in China are of less than 5 grams per ton. A ton of ore contains more than ten grams of gold and dozens of grams of rich mines, but there are very few.

The ore vein found by Xue Yu can extract one or two cents of gold from more than two thousand kilograms of ore (converted to the weight of the Ming Dynasty, about 43 grams). This is definitely a first-class Dafu ore. It is not surprising that the military households are so happy.

More importantly, the military households are poor, and a regular servant only has half a tael of silver per month. The key is that they still cannot receive the military salary.

After working on the mountain for a while, everyone mined one or two cents of gold, which was about nine cents of silver. And as time went by, the operation became more and more skillful, and the amount of gold was greatly increased.

And so on, how much gold is a month, and how much gold is a year?

In addition to gold, there are also a lot of silver, copper, lead, and zinc in the concentrate powder... After being extracted, it is also a considerable asset!

To be honest, relying on this gold mine is enough to allow thousands of military households in ten fortresses to live a good life of having food and food and food every day.

"Roar!Roar!"

"Yu Lang, Yu Lang... Xue Yulang!"

The military households were happy that the madman first beat his chest with his fists, roared to the sky, and then lifted Xue Yu up, threw it into the air again and again, and caught it, shouting the word "Yu Lang"!

(Xue Yu: I can't handle it, I'm worried about you!)

In ancient China, Jade Lang was a woman's love name for her husband or lover. Later, she also referred to a beautiful man or a person she loved!

Military households called Xue Yu Yu Lang, and they treated him as a treasure.
Chapter completed!