Chapter 418: The Loom

The person who truly helped Wang Ziyong make up his mind was not Liu Chengzong, but Zhang Tianlin.

Liu the Lion painted a picture with words of the Marshal's headquarters controlling the Western Regions and Beiting through two protectorates; Wang Ziyong still hesitated, yet it filled Zhang Tianlin, who sat drinking to the side, with passion.

The man slammed the table and said, "Grand Marshal, if Monk Wang won't go, then send me — have him get me settlers!"

Zhang Tianlin was willing to go to the Tianshan Mountains and serve as the Beiting Protector.

Never mind that after eight hundred years, Beiting's rivers and mountains would be reclaimed, and the first protector would be nailed into the history books without question.

The key point was that the job carried almost no danger. Liu the Lion had already laid out the entire strategy plainly: the Western Regions and Beiting were linked as one piece. If either protectorate stood alone, any minor rebellion would see it swallowed by the wind and sand.

If trouble broke out, the distance was vast, separated by a thousand li of desert. The Marshal's headquarters could never send support in time, and even if support arrived, the army would have exhausted its provisions and worn itself out on the march. Halted at the foot of the mountains for half a month, the army would collapse on its own.

But as long as Beiting could stabilize the Oirats from the start and use Beiting as a springboard to advance into the Western Regions, then the two sides of the Tianshan Mountains could support each other in turn. If Beiting fell into chaos, the Western Regions would be there; if the Western Regions fell into chaos, Beiting would be there.

After the situation stabilized, they could even establish a foothold in Turpan and Hami, with support from three directions, making the Marshal's northwestern territory as solid as gold.

Besides, what did it mean to be a protector? It meant serving as the Son of Heaven's chief overseer on the frontier.

Zhang Tianlin pictured himself standing on the frontier, every single chieftain within his jurisdiction raising their saber and swearing eternal loyalty to the Grand Marshal. What reason was there not to go?

Wang Ziyong himself had been unwilling when it came to the Tianshan assignment, but once Zhang Tianlin jumped out to snatch the job, Wang Ziyong grew anxious about gain and loss.

Because if Zhang Tianlin went, Liu Chengzong would only be asking him to recruit the Gansu border troops — a request he could not possibly refuse.

Under those conditions, it seemed as if he would be the one bustling about inside and out, only to make a wedding dress for Zhang Tianlin to become the Beiting Protector.

On what grounds!

Once he figured this out, Wang Ziyong stopped dithering, and the question they were discussing turned directly into when to set out.

Liu the Lion was extremely satisfied with this outcome. The candidate for commander of the Tianshan Guard was thus settled. Once the Tianshan Guard was truly established and formed among the Oirats, his elder brother would lead the garrison south to take the Western Regions, and then two protectorates could be set up north and south of the Tianshan Mountains.

Liu Chengzong drank his fill in Haixi County, stayed two days, and talked with Wang Ziyong about the specific responsibilities and points of caution for the Tianshan Guard.

Afterward, he received word that Shi Chengwo had already arrived at the naval headquarters with a full set of equipment produced by the Marshal's headquarters, so he bid farewell to Wang Ziyong and set off to return to the naval headquarters.

Upon his return, he first met with Shi Chengwo and inspected the various equipment transported from the arsenal.

Waist sabers, short swords, long spears, mail armor, cotton coats, leather coats, and cloth-faced iron armor for officers — some of these weapons and armor plates were captured old equipment that had been refurbished, while others were brand-new gear currently in service with the Marshal's headquarters. The quality was all guaranteed to pass muster.

What Liu Chengzong mainly wanted to inspect were the firearms, but Shi Chengwo had not brought the fifteen-hundred-jin cannon.

The firearms were three-mace matchlock arquebuses transferred directly from Xining Guard. Because the ammunition was lighter, their power and range were slightly weaker than the Oirats' native firearms, but the advantage was that they were more portable.

What he brought was a three-hundred-jin iron cannon. In fact, the Marshal's headquarters had cast both the three-hundred-jin light cannon and the fifteen-hundred-jin heavy cannon; these two cannon specifications were themselves adapted to the most standard one-jin and seven-jin cannonballs.

They were completely identical to the Marshal's headquarters' currently serving two-hundred-jin light cannon and thousand-jin heavy cannon in terms of barrel length, caliber, ammunition weight, range, and power.

The weight difference between the two specifications of cannon was not a matter of craftsmanship, but of material and thickness.

The two lighter cannons used by the Marshal's headquarters were cast bronze cannons. They looked thinner in appearance and were designed to fire eight hundred times without the barrel bursting.

The two heavier cannons were cast iron cannons. They looked thicker and more solid in appearance and were designed to fire six hundred times without the barrel bursting.

The Marshal's headquarters' arsenal had also cast two batches of iron cannons before, because at the time copper material was insufficient, so iron was used instead. Thus, they were very familiar with these techniques.

Shi Chengwo also brought Liu Chengzong a piece of good news: after a year of preparation, the arsenal in the new city had not wasted its earlier efforts in restructuring and building lathes and machinery. The output of every type of weapon had greatly increased.

In fact, the entire arsenal under the Bureau of Armaments was now completely different from before. It now followed a structure where the Bureau of Armaments administered the various armament factories, and each armament factory administered its various workshops — management had become more detailed.

Among them, each workshop had also built a large number of waterwheels to operate, as per Liu Chengzong's request. Of course, not every workshop could benefit from this; out of the more than one hundred workshops under the Bureau of Armaments, over half had no need for water-powered machinery.

Shi Chengwo's reaction to the water-powered machinery was not as positive as Liu Chengzong had imagined. He said, "Grand Marshal, we built seventeen waterwheels on the Huangshui River, but they don't mean much to the Bureau of Armaments. They can, however, irrigate three thousand four hundred mu of land."

Liu Chengzong did not believe it and shook his head. "They don't mean much, yet you say the Bureau of Armaments has greatly increased the output of every type of military equipment?"

"Grand Marshal, you may not know, but water power is useful for blast furnaces, grinding blades, and crushing ore. For fine processing, you can barely make it work if you force it, but it's a loss. I still think, if the Grand Marshal wants to promote water power, it's better suited to the Bureau of Works."

Shi Chengwo shook his head and said, "The Bureau of Armaments has fixed quotas for monthly output. The water flow of the Huangshui River is not constant; if output changes with the seasons because of it, how can that be acceptable? Besides, the craftsmen have their concerns too."

"Who knows when Xining might also suffer a drought. If the water stops flowing, the water hammers and waterwheels built at great cost would all be wasted. Therefore, the water-powered equipment currently used by the Bureau of Armaments can all connect to two sets of shafts — one set driven by the waterwheel, the other by a big mule."

Drought was indeed a lingering fear. Liu Chengzong did not oppose this view. When he heard about the animal power Shi Chengwo was using, he smiled and said, "Spinning all day just costs some fodder — that's not bad either. So tell me, where does this increase in output come from?"

"Reporting to the Grand Marshal, it mainly comes from the division of labor among the workshops. Firearms, armor, helmets — the more parts something has, the greater the increase in output."

As Shi Chengwo spoke, he counted off these items in order and said, "Waist saber output is about the same as before, but the output of heavy muskets and wall guns has increased. Take the flintlock heavy musket, for example — one gun takes forty-five man-days, and just drilling and polishing the barrel alone takes thirty man-days."

When the assembly line was mentioned, Shi Chengwo's face lit up with irrepressible excitement. He emphasized, "Now that the workshops are divided, one man making bronze locks or triggers can produce twenty pieces a day, which is enough for the entire firearms factory. The extra manpower then goes to drill barrels."

"The most crucial point is that the work in each workshop can be done by junior and senior laborers. One master craftsman can oversee three or four workshops. Over seventy senior master craftsmen can focus on figuring out how to make weapons better and faster. Now, three hundred and forty junior and senior laborers drilling barrels can produce ten heavy muskets and one wall gun every day."

Liu Chengzong blinked. "Every day?"

"Yes, every day — more, never less. The firearm assembly workshop has just two people, bored out of their minds, assembling those ten-odd guns a day."

Shi Chengwo nodded heavily and said, "And this is without the arsenal recruiting anyone — still the same seventy-two senior master craftsmen and three hundred twenty master craftsmen from before. In fact, any of the fewer than eight hundred junior and senior laborers working in the workshops for three months would all become skilled craftsmen."

Shi Chengwo said, "Grand Marshal, never mind the other factories — the firearms factory can definitely be expanded. Copper and iron from Hehuang are now flowing in continuously; there is no shortage of materials at all."

"Build new workshops over there, and with plenty of master craftsmen here, recruit another eight hundred junior and senior laborers. Have the craftsmen lead them for three to six months, then move them to the new workshops. We could produce thirty guns and three wall guns a day — one month would surpass an entire year in the past."

Wouldn't that mean… Liu Chengzong calculated in his head. "We could produce ten thousand firearms a year?"

Ten thousand firearms. Liu Chengzong remembered Cao Yao telling him that Zhang Daojun in Shanxi, during the Tianqi era, spent a year and a half and thirty thousand taels of silver to cast over two thousand Frankish cannons and over ten thousand three-eyed guns — but that was in Shanxi.

Zezhou in Lu'an Prefecture, Shanxi, was a critically important iron and steel production base for the whole country, with a mature iron industry and a large number of skilled craftsmen.

With power and silver in hand, getting weapons there was almost as easy as picking them up off the ground.

In his own Xining Prefecture, the production capacity of Xining Guard itself had only been one hundred fifty sets of arms and armor per year. Reaching ten thousand firearms was an immense step forward, built from nothing.

Before, Liu Chengzong would have had some reservations about a massive increase in weapon output. After all, for him, the manual arms industry only needed to produce enough; making more held little significance.

But now things were different. Now, Liu the Lion had met the forthright Batur Khong Tayiji.

"Expand," Liu the Lion said lightly. "Don't just expand firearms — the cannon foundry, the sword factory, the armor factory, and the clothing factory that makes cotton and leather coats. Expand them all. How many people need to be recruited, and how much silver will it take?"

This, however, frightened the enthusiastic Shi Chengwo. He hesitated, wanting to speak but stopping. "G-Grand Marshal?"

He thought Liu Chengzong was being sarcastic.

He never expected Liu Chengzong to be completely unconcerned. "What is it? How many people, how much silver?"

"If we expand everything on this scale, we'll need to recruit at least another sixteen hundred junior and senior laborers. And the clothing work is under the Bureau of Works, so they'll need to recruit another four hundred there. Calculated as two thousand people, the annual cost for wages and food would increase by twenty-one thousand nine hundred taels."

"And if the scale doubles across the board, our own ironworks' output won't be enough again. We can purchase from Hehuang, but the cost is higher than our own ironworks after all. The annual expenditure alone would likely increase by sixty thousand taels."

After finishing his calculations, Shi Chengwo paused, then urged, "On this, Marshal, perhaps we should take it step by step?"

Liu Chengzong pondered carefully for a moment, sighed softly, and still shook his head. "Don't take it step by step. Go ahead with the full expansion. We still need to train more skilled craftsmen, and this management system must keep improving."

An increase of sixty thousand taels in annual expenditure was no small sum — for the Marshal Manor's unstable finances, it was even extremely dangerous.

Because their income was high, but so were their expenses. Of the Marshal Manor's thirteen battalions now, seven were combat battalions that received both grain and pay.

This military payroll alone amounted to over three hundred thousand taels each year.

And their tax policy in He-Huang was grain-equalizing purchase — the Marshal Manor bought grain at official rates. To maintain credibility, they had to purchase at a fair price, at least one tael per shi. This could raise vast amounts of fodder and provisions for them, but it also required temporarily investing large sums of silver.

Even if they flooded the market with commodities — goods from the Hundred Crafts Bureau, or salt — to pull the silver back in, the Marshal Manor still had to be able to produce the silver in the first place.

After all, he couldn't have the common folk bring in their grain while Liu Chengzong, brazen-faced, handed them IOUs.

But from another angle, Liu Chengzong believed this risk was worth taking, because their precious window for development was closing fast.

If everything unfolded as his father had predicted, once the border armies from Yulin, Ningxia, and elsewhere freed up their hands, the rebel forces in the Central Plains would sink into a low ebb — and the second war between Liu Chengzong and the Great Ming court would begin.

By then, he did not know whether he would have another chance at a short-term peace.

"The arsenal craftsmen aren't just for now. They'll also go to Lanzhou, to Hanzhong, to Xi'an."

Liu Chengzong said, "They are the seeds of future military industry. Once war breaks out again, stopping will be extremely difficult. We can't keep counting on weapons being shipped from New City to Lanzhou, or even to Xi'an. When the time comes, we'll certainly have to pull people away to establish new arsenals."

Shi Chengwo had also followed him into battle and traveled widely; he could understand Liu Chengzong's words. Nodding at this, he said gravely, "Since the Marshal has decided, I'll go back and start recruiting craftsmen… Ah, Marshal, there's also some good news."

"Oh? What is it?"

"Although the waterwheel isn't very useful for arms manufacturing, the Hundred Crafts Bureau has put it to use. The head craftsmen of every trade in the Bureau all hail from Pingliang — they were master artisans of the Prince's estate. They've used and built many kinds of machinery."

Shi Chengwo said, "This time, when the Marshal ordered water-powered machinery, they first built a complete set of machines for producing cotton cloth — from the seed-removing gin, the cotton gin, the fluffing machine, the three-spindle spinning frame, all the way to the cotton loom. But these things aren't very useful to the Hundred Crafts Bureau."

This was within Liu Chengzong's expectations. With a perfectly calm expression, he nodded. "Still, it's a good thing they built them. They can be promoted to the five towns of He-Huang. Every village and bao can make these looms, and the government can purchase the cotton cloth."

In the next few years, no matter how much the cotton loom advanced, it would mean little to Liu Shizi.

He simply didn't have that much cotton.

Shi Chengwo nodded, then immediately waved his hand. "It's not just that — that part isn't very useful for He-Huang. But they also first built a six-spindle spinning wheel for wool yarn, and then went on to build a twelve-spindle great spinning wheel. It can run on animal power or water power, and it can spin camel wool and goat cashmere. Six women in six two-hour periods can spin sixteen jin of wool yarn."

"Sixteen jin?"

Liu Chengzong's eyes went wide; his expression changed completely.

Cashmere yarn was nothing like cotton cloth. Liu Chengzong was the man who controlled the most pastureland in all of China in this era.

Goat cashmere was an exceedingly precious material, especially in this age — fine, dense, light, soft, and warm, it was the finest textile material there was.

Herders used their fingernails to comb it out along the direction the goat's cashmere grew. Camel wool was even more precious than goat cashmere. For this kind of down, a person working from dawn to dusk spinning thread could produce no more than one qian of cashmere thread.

One jin of white goat cashmere was worth three qian of silver; one jin of fine cashmere and camel wool was worth seven qian of silver; one jin of cashmere yarn was worth nine qian of silver.

A single garment made of cashmere was worth at least one tael of silver. This stuff was practically wealth itself.

"Heh, heh heh, well done!"

Liu Chengzong couldn't help but let out a silly laugh, treating Shi Chengwo to a display of fly-rubbing hands.

In that moment, he could no longer care about his bearing. His mind was filled with only one question: Who was about to become the man with the most goat cashmere in the world?

Batur Hongtaiji!

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Good afternoon!