There are dark clouds in the sky filling the valley.
Although the rain in June gradually decreases, once the heavy rain comes, it is still very scary.
Not long after the thunder started, people who were busy working in various places in the valley rushed home.
From the direction of the valley entrance, more than a dozen fast horses came galloping.
On the horseback, the wind led a group of hands to swing the riding whip desperately along with the howling wind. Behind him were the dark clouds rolling in. The wind was mixed with raindrops as big as peas, which were already crackling down.
However, no matter how fast the horse is, it cannot move faster than the heavy rain and strong wind.
Before the group of people could reach the entrance of the compound, thunder, lightning, and strong winds howled. The sky above the valley, which had been clear and clear just now, was already as dark as ink, and heavy rain poured down like a pouring bucket.
"咴"
The violent lightning tore through the heavy rain and darkness, and several horses were frightened and neighed continuously amid the thunder.
"drive"
Amid the torrential rain, a group of people finally rushed to the entrance of the compound, rushed straight to the pergola and cursed loudly.
"How many dogs? It's raining heavily!"
"I told you to go back to me earlier. If you didn't want to, you deserve to go back to me!"
"Hey sister, if we hadn't seen Lang Er, we wouldn't have been caught in the rain!"
"Hey, you're blind, that's not Wolf Er!"
"Absolutely, I saw it clearly!"
"Hey, Wolf Er is not that fat!"
A group of people cursed and quarreled with each other, and then watched Xu Chen and Gu Ju running wildly from the direction of the hillside holding several large leaves.
In the face of such a heavy rain, no matter how big the leaves were, they could not cover it. Therefore, when Xu Chen and the others rushed into the pavilion to pass by, they were still soaked like a drowned rat.
Xu Chen wiped his face and shook the water while also cursing God for giving birth to a son without an asshole.
The weather was so bad that heavy rains came at any time, leaving no room for respite.
Although he has become accustomed to this violent climate, he still can't help but curse a few words to relieve his hatred.
There was only a small difference, a minute or two later, and they would reach home safely, but they still did not escape.
A group of carpenters and masons were well inside the pergola, and they were no longer busy at the moment. Instead, they gathered around to help Feng and others tie up their horses to prevent them from being frightened and running away.
Xu Chen took off the linen clothes and short sleeves and hung them on the wooden frame. He looked at the few small and large beasts tied up on the horse. They were just a few rabbits and a yellow sheep. The harvest didn't look big, but he heard
As a group of people wiped their faces with water and kept complaining to each other, they couldn't help but said curiously:
"You guys went out for a day and this is all you gained?"
A group of people instantly blushed and lowered their heads in coquettish ways, daring not to answer. Another young and strong man who had just joined the tribe this year, Digu, said:
"I was chasing a group of sheep, but a wild wolf ran out to grab food and scared the sheep away. The wind said what kind of wolf the wolf was, so the sheep stopped chasing the wolf."
"Wolf Er?" Xu Chen turned around and looked at Feng, "Are you sure it's Wolf Er?"
Feng's Adam's apple shrugged slightly, and he nodded as if he was a little ashamed and said, "Like Ga!"
A veteran player of the Ba tribe shook his head: "Don't listen to his nonsense. He is not Wolf Er at all. It's just that the fur looks similar, and his belly is very big!"
Xu Chen was a little surprised and asked a few more questions. As a result, Feng was not sure whether it was Lang Er. Some others said yes and some said no. No one was sure anyway.
There was a quarrel among everyone, and Xu Chen felt that this matter was unreliable, so he stopped asking about it. Instead, he asked about the recent changes near the river.
Every year after summer, the water in large rivers and small rivers will surge, submerging large areas of river beaches on both sides, and even the mountains and forests at the foot of the mountains will be submerged.
In previous years, tribes basically stayed away from the valley after the rainy season.
However, as the Ba tribe grows in size and has more and more frequent contacts with foreign tribes, the lack of contact for several months will inevitably affect the development of the tribe.
Therefore, Xu Chen planned to build a road leading to the Uzu along the mountains and forests near the river bank to inspect the flooding situation.
The two tribes have been together for more than 30 miles, with a combined population of nearly 700 people. As the accommodation environment improved, simple technical labor divisions such as farming, textiles, construction, and smelting began to appear. With the continuous accumulation of wealth, there was a relationship between the tribes.
More active communication needs.
In particular, the emergence of horses and carriages will greatly shorten the time and space distance between the two tribes, from the original one day to only two or three hours.
And two or three hours was just the time it took for the two tribes to hunt back and forth between the cave and the entrance of the valley.
The most important thing is that Xu Chen needs more copper now to promote the faster development of all tribes.
An ax weighs five, six, seven or eight pounds, a kitchen knife weighs three or four pounds, hoes, pickaxes, plowshares, swords, etc. all consume the same several pounds of copper and tin.
Last year in Kaichun, the Uzbek tribe sent a total of nearly 3,000 kilograms of copper, which seemed like a lot, but it was actually not much that was actually smelted and cast into utensils. There were only a few hundred items of various sizes.
There are nearly two hundred bronze swords and daggers distributed to officers and a group of elites on Mother's Day alone.
In addition, each tribe also presented one or two axes and hatchets, totaling dozens of pieces.
In addition, in order to solve the marriage problem of the Five Ghosts, he sent out thirty more.
The biggest consumer is undoubtedly the Ba people, who have made a lot of axle rings, plows, rakes, hoes and picks and other messy things. Now almost everyone in the Ba people has one or two bronze tools.
Although these are huge wealth of the Ba people, the three thousand kilograms of copper have been basically consumed and there is not much left.
Therefore, he needed the Uzbek people to increase copper smelting, and of course, he also needed to get more tin from the distant poor people.
In addition, felling wood and burning charcoal was very labor-intensive and time-consuming. Since other tribes had no more ways to make money, he decided to outsource the charcoal-burning and let other tribes complete this hard work. Of course, they could exchange the charcoal for bronzes.
In this way, he can not only obtain charcoal, but also promote bronzeware.
Of course, if that tribe could dig coal, he would be more willing to exchange it.
In order to continuously transport these metal charcoals back, and transport pottery, bronzes and other items out, we need better transportation conditions. Running on two legs in the wild land without roads is definitely not enough.
Especially now that almost all tribes have horses, carriages can maximize the role of horses.
Therefore, road construction has become a top priority.
Xu Chen's idea was to unite several alliances belonging to the Ba tribe to launch a road construction campaign this winter to try to open up land transportation routes between the tribes.
Xu Chen has roughly planned these routes on the map.
Taking the Wu tribe as the center, it is more than thirty miles to the Ba tribe, more than twenty miles to the Hu tribe, more than thirty miles to the Muya tribe, fifty miles to the Ji tribe, and twenty miles from the Ji tribe to the Cang tribe.
There are also some paths that people walk between these tribes on a daily basis, such as from the Wu tribe to the Hu tribe to the Muya tribe and then to the Ji tribe. This road was the one Xu Chen took when he first visited the six tribes.
, although the mountain road is difficult to navigate in rugged areas, it is still relatively smooth and there are no particularly difficult places such as cliffs and deep gorges.
Therefore, according to Xu Chen's plan, within the next two to three years, we will strive to build simple roads between the Ba tribe alliance tribes to the point where they can walk horse-drawn carriages.
Of course, this also depends on the enthusiasm and determination of all tribes to participate.
But there is one main road that he must build, and that is the main transportation line from the Ba tribe to the Wu tribe, and then to the Ji and Cang tribes.
Once this road is opened, the land route will form a transportation artery that passes through the entire Ba tribe alliance, connecting the four tribes along the way. When it comes to the Cang tribe, fifty miles downstream is the Qia tribe, even if they have officially entered the territory of the Gonghuo tribe.
Xu Chen is very clear about the situation of the Jicang River. There is a good amount of water all year round, and boats can be sailed all year round. Therefore, after arriving at the Cang tribe, they can use boats and Gonghuo Basin to form a waterway transportation.
The Qia tribe is the node for exchanges between the three major tribes: the Gonghuo Alliance, the Ba Tribe Alliance and the Qingqi Alliance, and can play a transit or even central role.
If necessary, a road can be built from the Cang Clan down the Jicang River to the Qia Clan and the Youqing Clan. This will make the travel between the three alliances more convenient and the connection closer.
As for the Yu Gong Alliance hanging alone on the south bank of Wulong River, Xu Chen can't do much for the time being.
First, their development is already lagging behind that of the Gonghuo Tribe. They need some time to digest a large amount of advanced technology and experience. Whether it is building houses or burning wasteland for farming, they will have to wait until this autumn and winter to officially start. There is no more manpower and energy in a short time.
Come build the road.
In addition, it is not convenient to travel across the river, relying on rafts, but Xu Chen still planned a road from the Yugong tribe to the Mongolian tribe, connecting the four tribes in the middle, and then built a larger dock at the mouth of the Yugong tribe.
This will solve the problem of salt transportation and strengthen the exchanges and exchanges between tribes on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
However, this time may not start until three years later.
Horse-drawn carriages are still a new thing, unknown to all other tribes except the Kaiba tribe, including the Wu tribe who live close to Chichi.
Because since the rainy season in summer, heavy rains have continued and the rivers have swelled and flooded the river beaches, the communication between the two tribes has been completely cut off.
Xu Chen planned to unite with the Wu tribe to build a road between the two tribes before the Witch Lords Conference, and then let the tribes who came to attend the Witch Lords Conference see the benefits of roads and carriages.
With this road, the two ethnic groups of Ba and Wu will no longer be cut off from communication due to rising floods in summer.
Therefore, in recent times, Feng and others followed Xu Chen's arrangements and searched for the fastest path to the Uzbek people along the gentle slopes of the mountains and forests at the foot of the river bank to prepare for the construction of this road.