The Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty was extremely rebellious

Chapter 259 What a Big Pit
Wanli now does whatever he wants without consulting the court officials at all.

He inexplicably issued an order to move all the people in a county to Neitao!
He didn't know what the court officials would think, but the people who were ordered to migrate were overjoyed.

The land here is indeed too barren, otherwise there wouldn't be only about ten thousand households in one county.

There is no way, if I have too many children, I won’t be able to support them.

This time, the Emperor not only ordered them to move to the fertile land of Outer, but also gave each of their households fifty mu of land, fifty stone of grain, five pieces of cloth, as well as a small mirror, coal, a coal stove and other items.

Their lives will be better now. For most ordinary people, having enough food and clothing is already a good life.

If Wanli gave them silver, they would still have to buy food and cloth. Now that they have received the silver, they don’t have to buy them at all. It is better than anything else.

The rich are also happy because there is really no money to be made here, and they have to go outside to make money. It is different in Neitao, where the border soldiers are all rich.

Moreover, ordinary people will gradually become rich if they own fifty acres of land, and they will make a lot of money.

The people of Yanchang County were excited as they rode the grain carts of the Shenjiying Camp to the dock to catch the boat. The craftsmen also came one after another on the navy's speedboats.

Wanli followed the old rules and directly brought the imperial guards and the Jinyiwei into the county town. He lived in the county government office, while the imperial guards and the Jinyiwei were stationed in the city and on the city walls.

Yongnianbo Wang Wei's estimate was still conservative. It took them more than ten days just to transport the craftsmen and the people back and forth, not five days at all.

Fortunately, they originally brought 10,000 craftsmen, and the nearby craftsmen came quickly by boat, bringing 20,000 to 30,000 in five days. Digging a pit is not a difficult job, and any craftsman can do it.

They dug quite quickly, and in about ten days they had dug a depth of five or six feet.

However, the pit becomes harder to dig as you go further back. A depth of five or six zhang means more than fifteen meters, and it is very difficult to pull up a basket of soil.

After digging about five or six feet deep, we can continue drilling.

So, will oil come out?
Early in the morning at about noon, Wanli led the elite imperial guards and the Embroidered Uniform Guards to the side of the huge pit on horseback.

Even though he had been here several times, he couldn't help but secretly admire that it was such a big pit.

It is two or three miles long and hundreds of meters wide. The excavated soil has already filled up the entire area and evenly distributed around the county town.

At this moment, the area around the big pit was densely packed with craftsmen, and there were only about a hundred people inside the pit. All of them set up hand drills and started drilling.

Wanli raised the telescope and saw that six or seven of the ten groups of people scattered around had drilled into them.

The loess here is not very compact, and there are no big rocks underneath. They drilled very quickly. After about two quarters of an hour, the ten groups of people had almost drilled all the drill bits down.

The next step is to see if it emits oil.

The craftsmen pulled out the drill bits even faster. In less than a quarter of an hour, all ten sets of drill bits were pulled out.

As a result, no, the bottom drill bit was still covered with yellow soil, without a trace of black.

Wang Wei, the Yongnian Earl standing beside the huge pit, couldn't help but sigh when he saw this and said, "Your Majesty, are you still digging?"

Wanli looked at the large oil pond over a hundred meters away, gritted his teeth and nodded, saying, "Keep digging until you dig about twenty meters."

I just don't believe it, there would be nothing at such a close distance.

It’s not a big problem if there isn’t one. There is one in the valley to the northwest. Although it’s a mountain hollow, the terrain where the oil is produced is much lower than here, so it doesn’t matter much.

As long as the pit dug here is deep enough, if no oil can be dug here, we can just dig a ditch several meters deep to divert the oil here.

Black oil is gushing out of the valley next to us, so it should be no problem to fill up the huge pit here.

However, Wanli just couldn't believe that there was nothing at such a close distance.

Anyway, the deeper the pit is dug, the more crude oil it will store, so he decided to dig twenty feet deep to see if that would work.

Seeing this, Yongnian Earl Wang Wei could only wave his hand and give orders.

The craftsmen around immediately threw down their hoes, shovels, bamboo baskets and other tools, then quickly slid down the more than ten-meter-long rope and continued digging.

Wanli saw how fast the craftsmen were pulling the soil up, and he couldn't help but frown and said, "Father-in-law, this is too slow. It would be much faster to just use horses to pull it up."

Uh, this.

Yongnianbo Wang Wei said in embarrassment: "Your Majesty, we only brought a thousand carriages, and these carriages are all used to carry soil. We really don't have any extra horses."

Upon hearing this, Wanli said without hesitation: "Then let the Imperial Guards and the Embroidered Uniform Guards take turns. Each group of 5,000 men and horses, each group will take half a day to pull, is that enough?"

Five thousand men and horses are enough. The speed of horse pulling is definitely much faster than the speed of people digging below.

Yongnian Earl Wang Wei nodded repeatedly and said, "That's enough, that's enough." Wanli pondered again and said, "You should install wooden wheels on it, so it can be pulled faster."

Who knows how many days it will take to dig, so the time spent installing the wooden wheel won’t waste time.

Yongnianbo Wang Wei nodded repeatedly and said, "Your Majesty is wise."

There was no other way to think about it, so I had to dig it out.

Fifty to sixty thousand craftsmen dug more than ten to twenty feet a day. After three days, the huge pit was ten feet deep.

Early in the morning at about noon that day, Wanli rode his horse to the side of the huge pit with a hopeful look on his face.

As a result, still nothing.

The depth of this huge pit is already quite scary. Even though there is basically all yellow soil underneath, if you fall from it accidentally, you will definitely die.

In fact, it was already possible to dig a ditch from the mountain valley on the other side to bring the oil over, but Wanli was still a little skeptical.

He gritted his teeth and gave the order to continue digging. This time he waited for four days before digging to a depth of about fifteen feet.

Early in the morning around noon, he came to the edge of the pit and felt a little dizzy. It was fifteen meters deep and as high as eight or nine stories. Anyone who was afraid of heights would probably faint if he stood there and looked at it.

He was not afraid of heights, but he was afraid that there was still no oil.

If this is not there yet, should we still dig?

If we continue digging, there is a high possibility that someone will die.

It’s so high that a large piece of soil falling down could kill someone.

He was just thinking about it when suddenly cheers came from below.

It turned out that after one set of drill bits had drilled only eight threads, black oil began to seep out from below.

This time we finally found the oil field.

Sure enough, the other nine groups had oil seeping from underneath before they had finished drilling all ten threads.

As soon as the drill bit was pulled out, the black oil really gushed up like a spring.

Seeing this, Yongnian Earl Wang Wei couldn't help but say excitedly, "Your Majesty, we've finally found it. That's great. No need to dig any further. How about I order them to come up now?"

Wanli scanned the area carefully with a telescope, but shook his head slightly and said, "These ten holes are too slow. It may take a month or so to fill such a huge pit. Let them continue drilling, drill more holes, at least a hundred.

Send some craftsmen down there to dig a pit next to each hole, and let the oil flow into the pit first, so that it won't flow everywhere in a short time."

Upon hearing this, Yongnian Earl Wang Wei nodded repeatedly and said, "Your Majesty is wise. I will send someone down right away."

After that, he began to make arrangements.

Now that the oil has been extracted, we can start building the refinery.

They had prepared for this in advance. They had shipped over a hundred sets of boilers, as well as hundreds of sets of pipes, iron frames, oil drums, water tanks, bricks, tiles, etc. They even had hundreds of sets of cast iron roof components.

Wanli even chose a location for building the oil refinery, and built a row of them just outside the valley, so that they would not be too far from Yau Pond and would not pollute the river water.

He pondered for a while. Yongnianbo Wang Wei had already arranged everything. He turned around and said excitedly, "Your Majesty, how about we start building the oil refinery now?"

Wanli nodded slightly and said, "Well, let's build a row of them horizontally outside this valley. One hundred craftsmen should be enough for an oil refinery, so we only need 10,000 people.

Also, have people build a circle of wooden railings around the oil pond to prevent people from falling in. Also use iron chains to block the oil production area on the south side to prevent the craftsmen who are transporting oil from falling in.

You can ask the remaining 40,000-odd craftsmen to build the road first. They should dig soil from the riverbank and fill a road about ten feet wide. Then we will transport stones over, mix them with asphalt, and flatten them with large iron pillars.

Upon hearing this, Yongnian Earl Wang Wei nodded repeatedly and said, "I understand."

The craftsmen built the refinery quite quickly, especially since all the materials were ready.

Those hundreds of oil refineries were rising at a speed visible to the naked eye. In less than ten days, they had reached the top.

At this time, the water level of Yau Tong had already risen to almost the same level as that of Yau Tong in the nearby valley.

Judging from the consistent height of the liquid level at the bottom, there is a lot of oil in this oil field. So much oil has gushed out, but the oil in the oil pond next to it has not dropped at all.

Now Wanli was completely relieved. With so much oil, it would be no problem to refine it for decades.

(End of this chapter)