Tie Lanshan ignored the teasing from the others.
The military order was issued.
But he felt unsure.
Xu Qinghuan sat behind the desk, looking at Tie Lanshan's expression, sensing he had something to say.
"Does the Commander-in-Chief have a difficulty?"
Tie Lanshan sighed, pulled over a bench, and sat down.
"Lord Xu, I dare to issue this order, and the soldiers below dare to obey it. But to actually carry it out, it's difficult."
"Where does the difficulty lie?"
"Firewood." Tie Lanshan spat out one word.
He started counting on his fingers.
"The Northern Garrison has 30,000 regular troops, plus auxiliary soldiers, civilian laborers, and the thousands in the wounded soldiers' camp. Twelve double-hours a day, people eat and horses chew."
"Just cooking meals every day burns up hundreds of carts of firewood."
Tie Lanshan pointed out the door.
"In this godforsaken place in the Northern Frontier, the wind cuts like a knife, and even the tree bark has been gnawed bare."
"The firewood in the military supply depot all relies on being transported from the south before autumn."
"With that little bit of inventory, we even have to be stingy when distributing it for winter heating."
"Now, with one word from you, tens of thousands of people in the entire camp are going to drink boiled water."
"Boiling this water will double the consumption of firewood."
The more Tie Lanshan spoke, the tighter his brows knitted.
"In less than ten days, not even a single wooden stick will be found in the military supply depot! At that time, the water won't boil, the food won't be cooked, and the soldiers can't just chew raw rice to fight a war."
Xu Qinghuan pondered in her heart, and immediately realized this was indeed a fatal problem.
Even a clever housewife cannot cook a meal without rice. Boiled water can sterilize, but without firewood, everything is empty talk.
Even with that water filter, it probably wouldn't be enough.
"Are there any other ways out in the surrounding areas?" Xu Qinghuan asked.
Tie Lanshan shook his head repeatedly.
"If there's not enough firewood, we can only burn turf and cow dung. But those things don't produce a strong fire. It takes half a double-hour to boil a large pot of water, which simply can't supply tens of thousands of people to drink."
Xu Qinghuan tapped her fingers on the desk twice.
"What about minerals? Things dug out from the ground."
Tie Lanshan was taken aback.
"Things dug out from the ground... Lord Xu, are you talking about black stone?"
"Black stone?"
"It's coal," Tie Lanshan explained. "Over in the capital, there are rich families who burn this stuff for heating. In the area around Yanzhou, occasionally poor commoners go into the ravines to dig it up and burn it."
"That stone can catch fire, and the fire is quite strong."
Tie Lanshan changed the subject, his tone becoming heavier.
"But we don't dare to use that stuff on a large scale in the army."
"Why?"
"The smoke is too heavy, it chokes people! And it's poisonous!"
Tie Lanshan slapped his thigh.
"A few years ago, a centurion was greedy for cheapness and got a batch of black stone back to the camp for heating."
"As a result, overnight, over a dozen soldiers in the tent were all smoked to death, their faces suffocated purple."
"Since then, a rule has been set in the army that no one is allowed to touch that black stone. Sometimes we'd rather freeze than lose our lives in our sleep."
Coal poisoning.
Isn't that just carbon monoxide.
Xu Qinghuan immediately had a clear idea in her mind.
The historical background of the Great Qian is similar to the Song Dynasty. Coal has actually begun to be widely used, even supporting the operation of handicraft industries.
But the Northern Frontier is remote, mining technology is backward, and combined with not knowing how to ventilate and exhaust the poison, they treated coal as a poisonous stone.
Xu Qinghuan stood up.
"Li Sheng, go and bring the topographical map of the Northern Frontier."
Li Sheng responded and turned to run outside.
Tie Lanshan didn't understand.
"Lord Xu, what do you want the topographical map for? That black stone really can't be used."
"It won't poison anyone to death, as long as the stove is modified and an iron pipe for exhausting smoke is added."
Xu Qinghuan turned to look at Jenny Huang.
"Manager Huang, forging a few hollow iron pipes shouldn't be difficult for you, right?"
Jenny Huang was holding a rag to wipe her hands, and rolled her eyes upon hearing this.
"Lord Xu, you look down on the blacksmith shop too much. Let alone iron pipes, even if you wanted an iron turtle, this old lady could hammer it out for you."
Xu Qinghuan smiled and didn't say more.
After a while, Li Sheng ran back panting, holding a roll of sheepskin map in his arms.
"Miss, the map is here."
Xu Qinghuan asked Li Sheng to spread the map on the wide stone table in the blacksmith shop.
The sheepskin roll unfolded, and Xu Qinghuan looked down.
Densely packed ancient place names, mountains and rivers drawn extremely abstractly, lines twisted like earthworms.
No scale, no contour lines.
Xu Qinghuan only felt her head buzzing.
What kind of ghost drawing is this?
She cursed crazily in her heart.
In her previous life, in geography class, she always sat in the last row by the window.
The teacher was talking about crustal movement and mineral distribution on the podium, while she was reading novels and sleeping below.
Who would have thought that God would play such a joke.
Throwing her into this ancient time where she couldn't even get enough to eat, and she had to rely on those geographical knowledge that had long been forgotten to save her life.
If she had known there would be today, even if she pinched her thighs black and blue, she would have engraved the map of China's mineral distribution in her mind!
Xu Qinghuan closed her eyes, forcing herself to calm down.
There was no other way, she could only rely on the residual memory of rote memorization to piece it together.
Undoubtedly, the Northern Frontier of the Great Qian corresponds to northern China in her previous life.
The location of Zhenbei City is probably around northern Shaanxi.
Yanzhou has coal, which means there must be a large coalfield nearby.
The Ordos Loop of the Yellow River.
The direction of the Great Wall.
The border of northern Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia...
The Ordos Basin?
That was a famous "sea of coal" in her previous life, with countless open-pit coal mines, where any shovel dug would yield black gold.
Xu Qinghuan opened her eyes, her fingers sliding quickly across the sheepskin map.
Tie Lanshan, Jenny Huang, Li Sheng, and Su Mu, who had just pulled his head away from the microscope, all gathered around the stone table.
Everyone didn't dare to breathe loudly.
They watched Xu Qinghuan gesturing on the map, thinking that this Imperial Envoy was deducing some earth-shattering mystical formation.
Xu Qinghuan's finger crossed Zhenbei City, crossed Yanmen Wasteland.
Finally, it stabbed heavily on a place marked "Black Wind Ridge".
"Here."
Xu Qinghuan tapped her fingertip on the sheepskin parchment.
"Send someone to this area to investigate."
Tie Lanshan leaned in and looked at that location.
"Black Wind Ridge? That place is full of barren mountains and bald ridges, not even a blade of grass grows. What is there to investigate?"
"Investigate black stone."
Xu Qinghuan's tone was certain.
"Underground here, there is definitely an open-pit black stone mine! No need to dig deep, just scrape away the top layer of yellow earth and you can see it."
Tie Lanshan showed hesitation.
"Lord Xu, I understand fighting wars, but this searching for mines and exploring veins is the job of the Topography Department of the Ministry of Works."
"But you haven't even left Zhenbei City, how can you be sure that there is black stone in Black Wind Ridge?"
Not only was Tie Lanshan suspicious, but even Su Mu leaned over.
Su Mu's eye sockets were red from staying up late.
"Lord Xu, regarding searching for mines and exploring veins, the Sunset Valley has a few incomplete scrolls. It is written on them that if the earth is yellowish-red, there must be iron below; if the vegetation is withered and yellow, there must be sulfur below."
"You haven't even been to the site and just pointed it out directly on the map, it doesn't conform to the rules."
Xu Qinghuan glanced at Su Mu.
"Rules are also made by people."
"The place I pointed out, there is black stone underground."
"Commander-in-Chief."
Xu Qinghuan curled up the corners of her lips.
"When have I ever made a mistake?"
A light and airy rhetorical question.
Tie Lanshan was stunned.
A series of events that had happened since Xu Qinghuan arrived in Zhenbei City instantly flashed through his mind.
The dried vegetable leaves sent from Jiangning, which could cure scurvy when soaked in water.
That brass tube in the blacksmith shop, which could see the deadly live bugs in the water.
Every single thing this young imperial envoy did was inconceivable, yet every time she managed to turn the tide.
Now, she was pointing at a barren mountain on the map, claiming there was black stone beneath the ground.
Tie Lanshan's chest heaved.
He stood up abruptly.
"Alright!"
Tie Lanshan slammed his palm onto the stone table.
"I will dispatch the scouts right now. They will take pickaxes and sacks, and rush to Black Wind Ridge overnight!"
"If we can truly dig up open-pit black stone, the army's firewood crisis will be solved!"
Xu Qinghuan nodded.
"Not only do we need to dig, but we must also be quick."
"The Helian people's autumn hunt is fast approaching. We don't have much time left."
Tie Lanshan grabbed his helmet and strode out of the blacksmith shop.
Li Sheng watched Tie Lanshan's departing figure, then turned to ask Xu Qinghuan.
"Miss, is there really black stone at Black Wind Ridge?"
Xu Qinghuan rolled up the parchment map and tossed it to Li Sheng.
"There is."
"And what if there isn't?"
"If there isn't, I'll bury you in there and burn you as black stone."
Li Sheng shrank his neck and scurried off, hugging the map.
Jenny Huang walked over, swatting the dust off the anvil with a rag.
"Lord Xu, you mentioned earlier that you wanted iron pipes forged for exhaust. How thick? How long?"
Xu Qinghuan took a piece of charcoal and drew a simple sketch of a coal stove on the wall.
"The furnace chamber needs to be deep, with a ventilation hole at the bottom and the exhaust pipe connected to the top. The pipes must fit together seamlessly; not a single trace of smoke can be allowed to leak into the room."
Jenny Huang glanced at the sketch and scoffed.
"That's hardly difficult. I could hammer that out with my eyes closed."
Xu Qinghuan dusted the charcoal ash from her hands.
Everything was ready; all they needed now was the east wind.
