This traveler only wants to choose the lowest difficulty

Chapter 220
Just as Wang Dong and He Luo came to the front of the tent area together, several women saw him and came up with a smile. When they saw Wang Dong was also there, the women were stunned, and the women still walked forward. One of the young women turned her head immediately, as if she wanted to go back to the tent.

At this time, He Luo hurriedly called her to stop, and after a few calls, the woman walked over awkwardly.

He Luo supported the young woman, who was a little shy when she saw Wang Dong, He Luo took her hand and introduced to Wang Dong, "This is from my family, originally from Liangzhou."

Wang Dong nodded with a smile. He knew that the Qiang people like He Luo didn’t have as many rules as the Han people, so it didn’t matter to introduce his wife and children to him. However, He Luo’s wife is from Liangzhou, and most of them were fleeing. The Han woman who came here was a little shy when she saw him.

Wang Dong nodded to her, and He Luo also had a smile on his face. The other women were probably He Luo's sisters. Their big eyes were staring at Wang Dong and looking up and down. Only He Luo's wife blushed, and her eyes were red. Looking at the ground and not daring to raise his head.

He Luo, his wife and sisters were walking towards the tent area together, when several bare-bottomed children ran up the road, He Luo yelled a few times in Qiang language, and then caught one of the little boys.He introduced to Wang Dong that it was his eldest son.

Don't look at He Luo who is only in his early twenties, but his son is also six or seven years old. However, under the nutritional conditions these days, the child is inevitably short, and in the eyes of future generations, he will look like a kindergarten middle class , Wang Dong didn't care about his dirty body, he picked up the child and walked to the tent area with He Luo, He Luo looked happy.

Walking all the way to the tent area, I went to Wangdong to observe the surroundings carefully and found that these Qiang people did not live in a single tribe. In their residential area, there were still some obviously Han-style houses, and some houses even had wine flags in front of them. It seems that because of the convenient location, there are still people in this Qiang tribe who open hotels and other businesses to entertain businessmen, but the business of those hotels does not seem to be very good at this time.

The tribe He Luo belongs to has about 200 people. Because it has been stationed near Shanzhou for many years, it is also under the control of Shanzhou city. Like ordinary villages outside Shanzhou city, there are also three old and four young.I heard that the chief official of He Luo, a senior official from the Tang Dynasty, came to the tribe, and the elders of the tribe rushed out to greet him. After Wang Dong sat in the tent of He Luo's house for only a few minutes, there were three or four old men dressed neatly. Come and meet him in the tent.

Wang Dong is very accommodating to people, calling each other old man and Zhang Zhang. Those old Qiang people are often discriminated against in front of the Han people, not to mention that Wang Dong is still an official of the Tang Dynasty, and he found that Wang Dong is so polite to them , several old people are quite excited.

Then Wang Dong took out some snacks he bought on the road and distributed them to everyone. The people who received the gifts were even more happy, and their impression of Wang Dong became even better.

He Luo stood aside with his son in his arms and said with a smile: "Sir, all the elders in our tribe are here. If you have anything to ask, they probably know something."

Wang Dong nodded and asked one of the old men whom He Luo introduced as the patriarch: "My father-in-law, you have lived around here for a long time. Do you know what mineral deposits are in the valleys nearby?"

After hearing He Luo's translation, the patriarch turned to Wang Dong and thought about it for a while, and said, "We Qiang people don't know much about mining. How do we know any mineral deposits? Besides, most of the valuable minerals have been mined by the Han people, so where can we get them?" What about us?"

Wang Dong was not angry when he heard the words, and said with a smile: "It doesn't need to be a gold and silver mine, but if there are any strange stones or landforms nearby, Zhang Zhang can introduce them to me."

Xining is an area with very rich mineral reserves in the future market. With the development capabilities at this time, although in the eyes of the Qiang people, the Han people have already extracted all the minerals that can be mined, but by the standards of later generations, the land in Xining Absolutely not one percent of the mineral deposits on the land have been developed. This is not because the ancients could not open these mines, but simply because the population density of this place is too low, so the ancients did not know what mineral deposits were nearby.

After all, for the ancients, it was theoretically possible to search for mines far away, but it was not practical in practice. Therefore, the scope of activities that the ancients could search for mines was limited to the surrounding areas of large-scale population gathering places.

Under such circumstances, it is normal for the aborigines who are familiar with the local terrain to know more about the location of the mine veins than the Han people with higher technology.

The clan leader thought for a while after hearing this, and said: "If we talk about weird terrain, there are really a lot of weird terrains in our place. You Han people have rarely seen it, so you often think it's strange, but we Qiang people who live here have become accustomed to it. Yes. If my lord wants to hear it, I can tell you about it."

"There is a valley behind us. The stones in the valley are black, and they can be turned into powder when you touch them, and your hands are covered with blackness. However, those stones are not as usable as the coal sold here by the Han people. It is very difficult to light a fire, and I don't know what it is useful for. There is another flat ground. When I dig down, sometimes I can dig some big white stones, which are so soft that they become powder when touched. , but neither can engrave anything, nor can it be practiced to produce any valuable gadgets, and businessmen don't care, so it's just a curiosity."

Wang Dong listened and nodded. The black minerals must be graphite, and the white minerals are probably gypsum ores. These minerals are not useless, but he does not open pencil factories and chalk factories now. Among the primary processed industrial products, these The profit of the mine is really not high.

Holding He La's youngest son in his arms, Wang Dong continued to ask the patriarch, "Is there anything else?"

The old patriarch thought for a while and said: "There is a very novel stone. There are some big stones in the valley more than ten miles away from here. If you knock them open, they will turn out to be hairy."

What the old patriarch himself said was also novel, so he couldn't help laughing, while the interpreter, He Luo, had a strange expression on his face. After asking again and again, he was sure that he heard it right, and translated it to Wang Dong truthfully, then frowned and said: "This kind of I have never seen a stone."

When Wang Dong heard this, he suddenly felt his eyes light up. There are hairs in the stone, asbestos?

In my impression, Xining is indeed one of the largest asbestos producing areas in China.But when Wang Dong heard asbestos, his first reaction was that it was poisonous. In later generations, asbestos was a chemical material banned by various countries, because asbestos fibers would cause irreversible damage to the human body after being inhaled into the lungs. So everyone respects this kind of thing at a respectful distance.

Thinking of this, Wang Dong couldn't help showing a weird expression on his face, but this momentary change of expression was captured by He Luo and others. After the old patriarch saw that the Tang official heard the existence of this stone, His complexion changed drastically, and he became interested all of a sudden.

"Excuse me, my lord, can this kind of stone be mined into a mine?"

(End of this chapter)