"On the fifth day of the second month of the 17th year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty?"

The whole person was half leaning on the porcelain pillow, putting down the bronze mirror, and reaching out to scratch the tight hair. Min Yuanqi sighed deeply.

There seemed to be that mountain torrent in my mind, and sometimes I jumped by chance on my forehead. The heavy blow at that time seemed to still have an unexplainable shadow.

"It's really time traveling..."

From an ordinary person from later generations to a hundred households during the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty, he was the sixth-rank military officer of the Ming Dynasty... This span is really too big.

From clothes, hairstyle, appearance, and people around you, all have changed.

Humans are social animals, separated from everything they have left, and have returned to zero for more than 30 years of struggle, and there is no possibility of meeting family and friends again. Who can accept this immediately?

The strong nerve formed after growing up in the welfare dean after a lot of experience saved Min Yuanqi. He hid for more than ten days and had not seen anyone. Today, he can finally accept his new identity: the Dahewei Yuntiguan Guard Office of the Nanjing Central Army Governor's Office of the Emperor Ming Dynasty, and also took charge of the general flag. This is Min Yuanqi's hereditary military position in Dahewei.

In addition to hereditary official positions, there are two hundred households with deep access to one official hall, with more than 100 acres of thin offshore fields with limited harvest. In name, there is also a salary of seven stones of grain per month.

In Min Yuanqi's memory, the salary and grain had long been paid. It would be good if I delayed for several years, and it would be good to pay a few stones at a time. In the late Ming Dynasty, the country was in a turmoil, and the income of tens of millions of silver and 20 million stones a year was mostly spent on military affairs in the north. No one had any concerns about the garrisons like the Dahewei. Ordinary military households were poor and even military officers were not much better. Min Yuanqi remembered that his family was still wealthy when he was young, but now he had difficulty in feeding and securing food.

Min Yuanqi lifted the bedding on his body, turned over and fell into a pit, grabbed a half-old cotton robe beside him, buttoned it up with buttons, put on a warm hat from black gauze, tied a bronze medal engraved with his name and official position around his waist, stepped on a thick cotton hard-soled official boot, and then tied a knife with a silver-covered waist, and immediately became energetic.

When he grabbed the waist knife, Min Yuanqi felt the weight of the sword, which seemed to weigh six or seven pounds. When he pulled it out and looked, the blade was shining and the blade was extremely sharp. When he held the handle of the knife, his right hand seemed to be connected to the blade. This treasure sword was inherited from the ancestral arts. If sold, he would get more than ten taels of silver. However, Min Yuanqi knew that this was the most precious thing of his ancestors. Over the years, his family had lost a lot of land and things, but this knife was definitely not sold.

Looking at his hands again, he was covered with calluses. Min Yuanqi was only twenty-one years old, but in his mind, he started to work hard at the age of six or seven, and practiced martial arts continuously. Not many ordinary military households are willing to practice, but there are still many children from a martial arts family like Min Yuanqi who are serious about practicing martial arts.

Min Yuanqi stood in the middle of the room and looked around.

There are several sets of severely damaged mahogany tables and chairs in the main hall, with pottery tea sets placed on them, which are not worth the money.

There is a tribute table in the middle of the house, with dusty brass five tributes on it, black tiles on the top, wooden beams, windows with top and bottom, and window frames are all finely made, showing excellent taste, but they are very damaged. The window paper made of mulberry paper has been damaged in many places, but has not been replaced.

Because the windows are covered with paper, the weather is cold and the windows are tight, the room looks a little darker.

In the corner of the inner room are several large cabinets as high as the beams. A table and a bed are all made of valuable elm wood. Add some bits and pieces, and in this way, they form a complete world.

When you push the door open, the courtyard outside is quite large. It is all paved with bluestone slabs and pebbles. There are five main halls and side wings on both sides are much larger than ordinary houses. There are kitchens and thatched rooms on the east and west sides, and there are wood-rooms for piled up miscellaneous items in the backyard. There are three doormen in the south of the courtyard.

There is a row of weapons, including swords, guns, swords and halberds, and there are several recurved bows on the wall, and quivers with arrows and bow bags with bows in the corner of the wall.

Things are serious, and they are carefully created by craftsmen for officers. Like the long sword placed in the main hall, they are all things passed down by ancestors.

On the eaves of the side wing, four black wooden signs were wiping with shiny black wooden signs. The font on them was gold lacquer. In Min Yuanqi's memory, his elders attached great importance to these four couplets, and wiped and repainted them on time.

Min Yuanqi looked at the couplet and whispered: "I remember the words I met in Huaidong. The spring breeze once passed by Taoxuan. The sword danced in front of him and the army looked solemn, and the pot was thrown under the flowers and laughed loudly. The strange bones seemed to be able to divide the title, and the ambition of the ambition was also disgusted with the dust. A bunch of straw was unreasonable to lay down, and the eyes stopped and clouds surrounded the cemetery."

This is actually a poem called "Min Gonghu Hou of Wandahewei". Min Yuanqi knew that this was a poem by Cheng Minzheng, Minister of Rites and Scholar of the Ministry of Rites during the Hongzhi period. The poem was honored by Min Gonghu Hou who was honored by the poem, and should be a senior military officer at the level of commander and the ancestor of Min Yuanqi in this life.

Cheng Minzheng was removed from office because of the Tang Yin case, but after all, he was still a prominent civil servant. The Hongzhi year was more than 200 years ago, and the Min family still hung this couplet before the door of the ancestral spirit plaque, which shows how proud and proud the ancestors of the Min family were after obtaining this poem.

"Sir the sword dance in front of you?" Min Yuanqi shook his head. The situation described in the poem and the reality he is in are completely different from the worlds.

"Brother Yuan Qi!"

Just as Min Yuanqi was smiling bitterly, the outer door of the courtyard was pushed open, and a young man wearing a felt hat and a very dirty mandarin duck battle jacket walked in. There was a mahogany waist sign around the waist of the man, showing his identity as a small flag official.

Searching in my memory, Min Yuanqi knew that this person was named Min Yuanjin, who was a small banner official under his chief and his cousin. He always called the Mao Yingda here at Min Yuanqi.

Min Yuanqi was in a bad mood these past ten days and never got up and went out on the excuse of being sick.

"Brother Yuan Qi," Min Yuan Jin was very surprised when he saw Min Yuan Qi get up, but he didn't dare to say anything more. He just clasped his fists and said, "The salt boiled by the beach is long gone. Please tell me if you want to go and have a look?"

Yuntiguan Guarding Station is close to the seaside and is the entrance to the Huai River. Because it has a large drop from the sea level, you can hear the loud noise of the Huai River water flowing into the sea every day. This place was called Xiangshui in later generations.

The entire Dahewei is widely distributed. Yuntiguan is the easternmost defensive center, which is very far from Huai'an Prefecture, where the guard command yamen is located. Although there are many households in the Qianhu District, they are under the jurisdiction of Shanyang, Yancheng and Guannan counties. They are also far away from the county towns of the three counties, and it is quite inconvenient to travel.

There are many tidal flats and saline-alkali land in the local area, and agriculture is difficult and commerce is underdeveloped. It is a very closed and backward place.

Everything has its pros and cons, and it may also have its advantages. Yuntiguan is located near the sea and eats the sea, and military officers of the ward station rely on boiling salt in the sea to obtain extra money.

At the beginning of each month, each military household will hand over the salt that is respected to the military officers, and then sell it after the number is calculated clearly.

Min Yuanqi immediately understood these things as soon as he searched in his memory.

The salt handover this month has been delayed because Min Yuanqi is sick. The military households under their jurisdiction do not hand over the salt to Min Yuanqi, and they dare not sell it themselves. This is true even Min Yuanjin.

No wonder this person came to visit him several times a day.

"My health is already well, let's go and have a look."

Recalling Min Yuanqi's original tone, he answered without any hindrance.

The two of them left the yard one by one. When the people along the way saw Min Yuanqi coming over, they saluted. These people were all military households under his rule. Of course, they were very respectful when they saw Min Yuanqi coming out.

The weather was very cold, and Min Yuanqi kept nodding to passers-by, and was also sighing in his heart.

Sewage flowed across the short and narrow streets and garbage piled up like mountains. The children playing outside were thin and their faces were blue, and the adults were also ragged, almost like beggars.

Originally, military households were permanent garrison soldiers in the country, and the war jackets on them should be changed every three years as usual, but looking at the war jackets on these military households, they have not been changed for at least ten years.

The houses along the street are all tilted and inconsistent. Most of them are mud walls and grass houses, and only a few are brick and tiles and stone houses.

Min Yuanqi's residence is left over from his ancestral property. Although it is not very good, it is already the best house within a few miles.

After walking east for several miles, the howling sea breeze was already very obvious, and the sound of the water from the Huai River entering the sea was also very obvious. When I smelled a choking smell of smoke, Min Yuanqi knew that it was time to boil salt.

When you climb a small slope, you will see the endless sea. The sea water is grey-brown, not as blue as the southern sea. There are large tidal flats along the coast, and wetlands of all sizes formed by fresh water are covered with water plants and reeds. It is still a declining scene in late winter and early spring.

A little behind the shore where the sea water slapped, dozens of ragged men and women were busy by the sea.

Min Yuanqi felt the sea breeze blowing, and a salty smell came to him.

Looking into the distance, there are five obvious cities along the south bank of the river, without bricks, all of which are rammed earth. Min Yuanqi knew that this was built in the Jiajing period. At that time, a traitor seduced Japanese pirates to go ashore from Haikou, burned, killed, looted and committed all kinds of evil. The court set up a general member here, and built five Tuchengs to guard the south bank of the Huai River. In the 20th year of Wanli, the Japanese were moved to Haizhou. There were only a few Tuchengs and a useless defence station left here.

A hundred years later, the sea water flowed backwards to form a mudflat plain, and the sea outlet moved a hundred miles back, and Yunti Customs only had the ground left, which was far from the sea outlet.

Dahewei is nearly a hundred miles away from Yancheng, close to Shanyang and Dongyang, but the method of cooking salt and selling salt is exactly the same as that in Yancheng area.

First, it was "inviting the tide".

There are many specialties in absorbing tides, "In the sunny drought, the tide is at the beginning, the tide is usually absorbed, the tide is at the end after the rain, and the night tide is received in summer and autumn." The tide is absorbed by the dike, and the tide is built by the seaside to introduce seawater. After about seven days, when the seawater naturally evaporates, the soil at the bottom contains a considerable concentration of salt, and then the soil can be taken for later use.

The next step is to "make braised".

Dry the thatch on the beach, then build a stove with wet soil, and use bamboo slices to build thatch. After laying it, a natural salt leak is formed, which can be made of braised.

Spread the salt mud collected from the tide on the grass, use a large bucket to get sea water, and constantly rinse the salt mud and thatch. After the mud and grass, the available brine is filtered out.

The brine is filtered again to remove impurities, put it in the jar and settle for a period of time, and the last part is decocted.

Use a large stove and a large iron pot, first boil over high heat, then boil the brine and then simmer. After eight hours, boil the water and dry it and the white salt is formed. This is the complete method of cooking salt.
Chapter completed!