Chapter 2621: Nitre Field
At that moment, Chen Wuren's respect for the two Senators grew considerably. In Ming Dynasty society, clan power reigned supreme. The yamen's reach extended only to the county level—imperial authority, as the saying went, did not penetrate the countryside. Rural order was maintained primarily through clan rules, and even when matters were reported to officials, County Magistrates typically refused to involve themselves in "domestic affairs."
Still, Chen Wuren felt compelled to offer a gentle warning. "The Chiefs are kind-hearted, but this humble subordinate has a concern—if I may be permitted to voice it."
"Speak freely."
"Since ancient times, even the most upright officials have struggled to adjudicate family disputes. Should this case be handled poorly, I fear it may tarnish the Senate's reputation."
Zhang Xiao understood Chen Wuren's worry. He turned to Zhang Jiayu, deciding to test the young man. "Jiayu, what's your opinion on this matter?"
"I accompanied Hening to the countryside and witnessed the situation firsthand," Zhang Jiayu replied. "Huang Shi and her son are truly pitiable—their story would move anyone to tears. However, Section Chief Chen raises a valid point about the difficulty of judging family matters. I believe the two Chiefs should not intervene directly."
"Oh? So you're suggesting we ignore it entirely?" Zhang Xiao asked.
"No, not at all," Zhang Jiayu clarified. "What I mean is that it would be better to let Hening handle this matter."
"Now that's a fine idea. Let me think..." Zhang Xiao smiled. "Hening, you're now a member of the Women's Federation. First, we'll grant you the title of Special Commissioner of the Guangzhou Municipal Women's Federation. Later, I'll have Prefect Liu issue you an official appointment letter—complete with the official seal. We won't merely involve ourselves in this case; we'll do so with full legal authority."
Zhao Hening could barely contain her excitement, though she affected reluctance. "For the sake of justice, I suppose I can make this small sacrifice."
"We have our athlete, but we still need a referee," Li Yao'er added. "The Guangzhou Circuit Court officials are currently at Dagang Market in Longshan, not far from here. Tomorrow morning, send a messenger to Dagang Market at once—have Yuchi Gang and Wu Yixuan of the Circuit Court come to Jiujiang immediately."
Jiujiang's Qiaonan Village lay roughly two kilometers northwest of Jiujiang Great Market. This was the home of the Jiujiang Zhu Clan. During the Xianchun period of the Southern Song Dynasty, the clan patriarch Zhu Yuanlong had led his kinsmen on an arduous migration from Nanxiong to settle here. Over three hundred years had passed since then, and the clan had become deeply rooted in the region. Throughout the generations, the family had produced many distinguished figures. Chen Zizhuang's maternal grandfather, Zhu Rang, had risen to the rank of Prefect of Kuizhou and been awarded the honorific title of "Grand Master of the Palace." A memorial arch bearing the inscription "Good Two Thousand Shi" still stood in the countryside in his honor.
Fish ponds encircled the village. Behind a Zhu clan property within the village walls, a large expanse of land had been enclosed. Within this enclosure, numerous dried fish-fry ponds had been subdivided into smaller pits by newly constructed earthen dikes. The entire compound was surrounded by tall walls, and inside, the scene was one of bustling activity. All the workers were members of the Zhu clan. Some poured water and quickite into the pits, the chemical reaction generating heat to maintain the soil at a specific temperature. Others emptied buckets of human and livestock urine along with silkworm excrement into the matured pits, then waited quietly for harvest time. Still others dug mature soil from older pits, mixed it with plant ash, and transported it to the processing room.
Had European arms dealers of that era witnessed this scene, they would have been astonished to discover that someone in the distant East had independently developed the "Nitre Field Method" invented by the French. The earliest records of this technique dated to the fourteenth century. By the mid-fifteenth century, nitre fields had become a common sight across Europe, serving as the continent's primary source of potassium nitrate. The method freed Europeans from dependence on natural nitre ore while simultaneously yielding potassium nitrate of far greater purity.
The principle behind the Nitre Field Method was elegantly simple: it essentially replicated, on a massive scale, the natural phenomenon of potassium nitrate crystallizing on the earthen walls of latrines and pig pens—creating an artificial deep-layer environment for batch production.
The technology itself was not complex, yet it had never developed in China. The reason was straightforward: it required enormous quantities of farmyard manure. Unlike European agriculture, with its well-developed animal husbandry, Chinese traditional farming was dominated by intensive crop cultivation that occupied nearly all arable land, leaving livestock breeding rates extremely low. Nitre fields demanding vast amounts of animal fertilizer simply could not take root.
When the Senate had first established itself in Hainan, they had considered using the Nitre Field Method to produce their own potassium nitrate. But after calculating the input-output ratio, they discovered they could never collect enough raw materials to sustain operations. The plan was quietly abandoned once they secured access to natural nitre from India through the Portuguese.
Who could have imagined that such a substantial nitre field operation would spring up here? As for the Portuguese who had taught this method to the Zhu clan—presumably he had long since merged with the very nitre field he helped create, disposed of without witness by gods or ghosts.
The Zhu residence was a sprawling compound of deep courtyards and winding corridors. Past the artificial mountain in the main courtyard lay the study. Zhu Shilian set down the thread-bound volume he had been reading, his expression contemplative.
"He Rubin was truly a hero of his generation," he said to his guest. "He governed his army with strict discipline tempered by compassion, never seeking a hair's worth of private profit. He synthesized the wisdom of countless military treatises, distilling their mysteries and essentials into his Binglu. His analysis of gunpowder and firearms was particularly incisive, and his tactical insights were genuinely original. What a pity..." He shook his head. "If Brother Shimin had been there to assist him, they could have crushed those Lingao bandits in a single stroke. We would never have arrived at today's disaster."
Zhu Shilian was approaching forty. He was a grandson of Zhu Rang, younger brother of Zhu Bolian, and a cousin of Chen Zizhuang. Chen Zizhuang had grown up in the Jiujiang Zhu household since childhood, and he and Zhu Shilian, being close in age, had studied and matured together. Their bond ran deep. The Binglu Zhu Shilian mentioned was He Rubin's masterwork, completed in the thirty-fourth year of the Wanli reign. Chen Zizhuang, Liu Feng, and three others had written prefaces for it. Naturally, the Zhu clan library possessed a copy.
The man Zhu Shilian addressed as "Brother Shimin" was none other than Mao Yuanyi. He had once served under Sun Chengzong, supervising armies in Liaodong and fighting alongside Yuan Chonghuan, Sun Yuanhua, and others against the Later Jin on the Liaodong battlefields. His monumental Wubei Zhi, published in the first year of the Tianqi reign, was the culmination of fifteen years spent studying military texts from successive dynasties and gathering materials. Later, he was pushed out by the Eunuch Party and endured the turbulent rise and fall of court politics. In the second year of the Chongzhen reign, when the Later Jin attacked the capital, he had guarded Sun Chengzong's breakout from Dongbian Gate to Tongzhou and helped repel the enemy assault. For this, he was promoted to Vice General and given command of the Juehua Island navy. But jealousy from the Minister of War, Liang Tingdong, led to his dismissal, and he was further implicated in a Liaodong soldier mutiny, resulting in exile to Zhangpu in Fujian to serve garrison duty. As the Liaodong situation grew ever more desperate, he petitioned repeatedly to serve his sovereign—but political enemies blocked him at every turn. He had no recourse but to drown his grief and indignation in wine.
Mao Yuanyi covered his mouth and coughed several times before speaking. "He Rubin was descended from a military family and possessed both civil scholarship and martial strategy. His Binglu contains many pioneering insights. My own Wubei Zhi, in its section on firearms, drew heavily on his achievements. I heard about the Great Battle of Chengmai as well. The army under He Rubin's command fought fiercely against the bandits for several days without breaking—a force truly worthy of being called an Iron Army, not inferior to the Guanning Iron Cavalry. Yet the bandits' military prowess proved a grade higher still. That was something no one could have anticipated."
"Now that Governor Xiong Wencan has been defeated, there is no standing Imperial army left in the Two Guangs," Zhu Shilian replied. "The great mansion of our dynasty tilts toward collapse. Brother Shimin, despite your illness, you have risked danger to venture deep into the tiger's den. You are truly a solitary loyalist of the Great Ming. As the saying goes of you: 'In youth he emerged from West Wu; his name became famous at the Northern Palace. Behind the curtain he summons scholars; mounted on horseback he becomes a general.' With your assistance, our chances of success have improved considerably."
Mao Yuanyi waved away the praise. "I dare not accept such words. Zijie, your clan has sacrificed its fortune to relieve the nation in this time of crisis—it is I who admire you from the bottom of my heart. I am a man with crimes on his record, one who longed to serve his country but found no door open to him. Worry and depression brought on this wasting illness; I know my days are numbered. It was only through the aid of noble patrons at court that I was finally able to come to Yue territory and serve. I will die without regret. But the bandits' power is formidable—they cannot be overcome by force alone. Raising troops will require us to wait patiently for the right opportunity."
In history, years of depression and heavy drinking would claim Mao Yuanyi's life in the thirteenth year of the Chongzhen reign, at only forty-six years of age. Adding insult to tragedy, the Wubei Zhi—the work into which he had poured fifteen years of exhaustive research, cataloguing generations of military texts—was banned and destroyed during the Qing Dynasty. It would not be republished until the Daoguang era.
Zhu Shilian nodded with understanding. "Troops and horses cannot move until provisions and fodder are in place. The matter of gunpowder production—I must trouble Brother to oversee it."
After discussing their plans a while longer, the two men walked together to the workshop.
By the Ming Dynasty, black gunpowder production technology had already reached maturity. In the early Ming, the court had maintained strict control over gunpowder and firearm manufacturing, with rigorous secrecy measures in place. By the mid-to-late period, however, the pressing demands of the Liaodong campaigns had sparked widespread discussion of military affairs among both officials and commoners. Secrecy measures relaxed accordingly. Fire attack manuals proliferated in unprecedented numbers, spreading gunpowder knowledge throughout the scholar class. Foshan's iron-smelting industry was highly developed, and the region served as an important production center for Imperial cannons. Consequently, the Pearl River Delta boasted many artisans well-versed in gunpowder and firearm manufacture. Now, with the addition of an expert like Mao Yuanyi and the household soldiers he had brought with him, the operation had truly gained wings.
Ming Dynasty gunpowder theory still followed traditional Chinese medicine's framework of "Monarch, Minister, Assistant, and Guide." In black gunpowder, nitre served as the Monarch Medicine. The time-honored simple formula ran: "One Nitre, Two Sulfur, Three Charcoal"—meaning the combined proportion of sulfur and charcoal did not exceed one quarter of the mixture. For the Jiujiang region, obtaining sulfur and charcoal posed no difficulty. Local sericulture was well-developed, and sulfur and lime were commonly used to repel insects and vermin. The humid climate of the Pearl River Delta also meant that silkworm cocooning required an additional step of baking the cocoons compared to Jiangnan methods, making charcoal a readily available commodity as well. Only nitre proved difficult to obtain—and it had always been a substance under strict Imperial control.
Natural nitre deposits were exceedingly rare in the wild. China's nitre supply came primarily from three sources: Sichuan produced "Chuan Nitre," Shanxi yielded "Salt Nitre," and Shandong contributed "Earth Nitre." None of these production areas currently fell within the Senate's controlled territory. With the land ravaged by war, foreign nitre imports had dwindled to almost nothing. After the Senate occupied the Two Guangs, they imposed equally strict controls on nitre sales to meet their own military demands.
To acquire large quantities of nitre without attracting unwanted attention, the Zhu clan had racked their brains. Their solution came through a Portuguese trader from Macau, who taught them the European "Nitre Field Method." Since nitre fields required as long as eight months to mature, substantial numbers of fish ponds had to be converted—and not just in one location. Only the Zhu family's deep roots and vast property holdings, combined with funding from local gentry led by Chen Zizhuang and Daoist Mu Shi, made the undertaking barely possible.
Gunpowder production was dangerous work requiring considerable technical expertise. After Mao Yuanyi's arrival, he established a complete operational system modeled on Ming Dynasty official gunpowder factory standards. Clear rewards and punishments were implemented, elevating operations well beyond the clan's previous amateur attempts. Production accidents decreased, and the risk of exposure diminished accordingly.
(End of Chapter)