Volume 1 Chushan Bandits Chapter 71 New Village
When he took the throne at Xiema Mountain, it was agreed that Xu Wukun, Xu Wuliang and Xu Huai would all obey Liu Qiong'er's orders in the future, and Xu Wufu was forced by Liu Qiong'er to the point where he had no way to refuse, so it was decided that Liu Qiong'er would take her men to Jinshagou to set up another village.
The main task in Jinshagou in the early stage is to build a simple village and a blacksmith furnace. Xu Wujiang also promised to send the eliminated bandits to Jinshagou as soon as possible.
However, Liu Qiong'er was worried that the night would be too long and that more trouble would arise, so the next day she took Xu Wuliang, Xu Wukun's families and Xu Huai to Jinshagou.
Although there was a small path trampled by people carrying food, it could be used by people, but not by mules and horses.
Xu Wuliang, Xu Wukun and Xu Huai carried some daily necessities on their shoulders and backs, bringing their families with them.
Xu Wuliang married into the Huaiyuan Town and married Ge, who had a daughter, Xiaohuan; Xu Wukun got married later and married a woman from Shangliuzhai who had suffered the disaster.
Mrs. Kun was originally married, but after several years of not giving birth, she was driven out by her husband's family; she was very beautiful, but after being married to Xu Wukun for almost ten years she still had no children.
In recent years, many people in the village have often ridiculed Xu Wukun for this matter.
Xu Wukun didn't care at all. He was thinking that after two years when there would be no more children, he would pick one of Xu Wuqi's three sons to adopt and take care of him in his old age. However, he didn't expect that the friendship of more than 40 years would collapse in an instant.
It’s been several days since this happened, but Xu Wukun still feels aggrieved about it.
Compared to Ge's fierceness in the past, Xu Wukun's wife was much more docile. She usually didn't talk much and never stopped Xu Wukun from using his meager income to support Xu Huai's family.
Xu Wujiang and his men had never thought that they could take Xiema Mountain without any effort. They wanted to gain a foothold in Jinshagou. More than 20 strong men hid for more than a month and found a valley beside a stream and cut down trees to build seven or eight wooden houses.
This valley is not big. It is a fracture in the mountains on the east bank of Jinshagou. It is more than 100 meters long from east to west and only more than 20 meters wide from north to south. However, it faces Jinshagou to the east and is sandwiched between mountains from north to south. There is a shallow slope on the east side for walking out.
The place is a little small, but it is easy to defend and difficult to attack!
Xu Wujiang and his men chose to settle here because they and the most important thing was to struggle to survive.
In addition to building wooden houses in the valley, simple fences were built on the east and west sides by felling trees, laying the foundation for the prototype of the village.
Otherwise, Xu Huai, Liu Qiong'er and others would have no place to stay if they walked into Jinshagou.
Even so, Jinshagou Village is not accessible by car or horse from the outside world, and it takes more than two hours to walk to the new village on the east slope of Shituoling, which is seven or eight miles away.
If Liu Qiong'er had not insisted on coming here to set up another camp, Xu Wujiang and Xu Wufu would at most set up a sentry post here, or even abandon it directly. It would not be a pity, after all, the terrain is steeper and more dangerous from the north and west.
Looking at the simple wooden houses in the valley, Liu Qiong'er felt desolate and said to Xu Huai:
"You've tricked us all into coming here. Tell me, how are we going to gain a foothold here and build the forge?"
Xu Huai had previously thought over the chute method that flashed through his memory, and was now confident of it. Seeing the wooden boards that Xu Wujiang and his men had sawed in the village, he took the longest piece and asked Liu Qiong'er, Xu Wukun, Xu Wuliang and others to bring pottery jars and other items and follow him down to the valley.
Liu Qiong'er held up her skirt and sat lazily on a rock by the stream, watching Xu Huai put the long wooden board down by the stream. He rolled up his trousers and walked into the shallow water. He used a pottery jar to scoop out some soft mud and smeared it on one end of the long board. She couldn't help laughing:
"You are such a fool - you need a sandalwood pan to pan for gold. You just picked up a piece of wood and worked hard for half a month. What can you buy with the gold foam you pan for a few wheat cakes to fill your stomach?"
Xu Huai looked back at the gloating Liu Qiong'er and just smiled. He tilted the wooden board slightly and took the pottery jar to get water to flush.
The traditional panning method is to take some soft mud containing gold sand and put it in a sandalwood tray. Then people stand in the stream and use the stream water to wash away the mud and sand over and over again. A very small amount of gold foam will remain in the sandalwood tray and accumulate over time - the whole work requires great patience.
Mrs. Ge and Madam Kun stood by the stream and watched for a while, then took Xiaohuan to clean up the house; Liu Qiong'er still thought that Xu Huai had not even learned the traditional washing method, so she sat lazily in the shade to rest, planning to laugh at him after Xu Huai had been busy for a long time and got nothing.
Mrs. Ge and Mrs. Kun took Xiaohuan to clean up the wooden house, prepared lunch with what they had, and ran to the stream to call everyone to return to the village first.
Liu Qiong'er stretched lazily, and was about to ridicule Xu Huai, but she saw Xu Wuliang took the pottery jar from Xu Huai and said, "You go back to the village first, and come back in the afternoon to replace me!"
"Do you really think that Xu Huai, this fool, can have any magic tricks?" Liu Qiong'er walked over and smiled indifferently, but when she got closer, she saw a thin layer of gold foam on the wooden board, and her beautiful eyes widened.
Although the gold foam attached to the wooden board is still very trace, it cannot be said that nothing was gained.
"Come on, continue to ridicule me!" Although Xu Huai had strong muscles and bones, his back and waist ached from bending over to get water to pour on the wooden board. Now he straightened up and smiled at Liu Qiong'er.
"What's so subtle here?" Liu Qiong'er widened her beautiful eyes, not caring about her manners, and leaned over to look at the details of the wooden board with her hips raised.
In fact, there is nothing mysterious about it. If you look closely, you can see that the particles of gold sand are smaller and heavier, while the particles of sand in the stream mud are larger. By taking water and flushing it again and again, the foam-like gold sand will drill into the rough saw grains, while the larger particles of mud and sand will be washed away, completing the separation.
All you have to do next is wait until enough gold sand is attached to the saw grain, then turn the wooden board over and hit it to collect the gold sand.
It is also obvious that the longer the board , the more complete the separation.
When sawing a wooden board, choosing different saw teeth will result in different roughness of the saw grain and the resulting separation effect.
Although this method is very primitive, it is many times better than the traditional wooden pan washing method.
Xu Huai did not expect to make a fortune by relying on this stream, but if he gathered thirty or fifty people, the annual income could be equivalent to one or two thousand acres of mountain fields, which was enough for the initial construction of Jinshagou.
"How about it, now you know who the fool is?" Xu Huai laughed at Liu Qiong'er when he saw her tie her skirt around her waist and was about to scoop water to rinse the wooden board himself.
"How could you have such a weird idea in your mind?" Liu Qiong'er asked in surprise. "Xu's family has built ponds in Yuhuangling for more than a hundred years. It's not surprising that you can think of building multi-level rolling dams to store water, but this method of extracting gold is unheard of in Tongbai Mountain. How did you come up with it?"
"What's so mysterious about this method? You can figure it out by eating a few more bowls of rice!" Xu Huai said with a smile.
"So what you said means that it's not just one person who eats rice for free." Liu Qiong'er said.
"The gold we have collected in this short while is enough for two or three people to stand in the stream and wash for a whole day," Xu Wukun stood up straight, not caring about Xu Huai and Liu Qiong'er's bickering, and couldn't help but admire, "Although the terrain of the seven or eight miles of Jinshagou is extremely dangerous and there is not much place to stay, if we gather thirty or fifty people to wash the gold sand in this way, we can get three or five strings of money and food in a day, there will be no problem!"
When Xu Wukun and Xu Wuliang were young, their families were poor, and after returning home from the Jingsheng Army, they had no way to make a living. They all went to Jinshagou to pan for gold, so they knew best how big the difference was between the new law and the old law.
"It's better to rob!" Xu Huai sighed.
He once stole a sheep from Deng Gui and earned gold and silver worth thousands of strings of cash. However, here, thirty or fifty people gathered to pan for gold using the new method, but they could only earn a thousand strings of cash a year, which didn't seem like much.
"You have such a big heart!" Xu Wukun couldn't help but glare at Xu Huai.
They work hard to make a living all year round, and may not even have three or five strings of cash left at the end of the year. If thirty or fifty people gather here, they can earn three or five strings of cash in a day. What else can they be dissatisfied with?
A village of thirty to fifty people could earn three to five strings of cash a day, which was enough for expenses, including building a new iron furnace and opening two small paths to the east slope of Lion Camel Ridge and Xiema Mountain.
Xu Huai laughed and said, "Uncle Seventeen should send people here before dusk to prevent others from coveting us. These people must be strictly controlled and this method cannot be leaked out in a short time. The master family has connections with this side and will probably find out the source of money and grain soon. There is no need to hide it deliberately, and it is difficult to hide it. So we can say that these are all methods thought up by Miss Liu. As for Uncle Seventeen, let's keep it a secret for the time being..."
Xu Wuliang and Xu Wukun looked at each other.
From the assassination of Guo Caoling, they have deeply felt that Xu Huai's opinions are becoming stronger and stronger.
However, in addition to the fact that Xu Huai was too young, the more important thing was that they could feel that Xu Huaizhi was not in Tongbai Mountain, so it was inevitable that they would have disagreements with the majority of the Xu family who were only seeking self-preservation.
In the past, it was easy to deal with the disagreements with Xu Guanshan, Su Laochang and others. After all, everyone was united in the general direction.
Now, under the pressure of the situation, he had to make peace with Xu Wufu, Xu Bosong, Xu Zhongyu and others. If there was a disagreement, how could Xu Huai win over them? Or how could they give in to Xu Huai?
Managing the village alone, keeping everything secret for the time being, or pushing everything onto Liu Qiong'er, are the only options to avoid unnecessary disagreements in the short term.
In the past, they were more or less worried about Xu Huai's actions. When they heard yesterday that Guo Caoling was assassinated and Xu Huai could not be found in the mountains, they were almost going crazy.
However, after enduring such a strong stimulation and seeing Liu Qiong'er being pushed out by Xu Huai, Xu Wufu, Xu Wuqi and others were speechless and forced to come over to ask for peace. They also deeply realized that at this time Xu Huai had even far surpassed his father, which was beyond their imagination.
