Laozi says: Treat the problem before it exists, and cure the disorder before it exists.
Preventing problems before they happen is the best way to solve problems.
Since he knew that the river might bring flood disaster to the royal city at some point in the future, it would be inconsistent with his identity and status for Xu Chen to leave it alone.
The royal city is the core of the Ba Kingdom and the embodiment of power and prestige. If the royal city is destroyed by floods, not only will it cause huge losses, it will also inevitably cause huge impact and damage to his prestige and divine halo.
In this primitive and barbaric era where people believed in gods, disasters that struck were not the force of nature, but the power of the gods, which represented the punishment of the gods' anger.
The royal city was built by him under the pretext of gods, which means that the royal power is blessed and protected by gods.
Once something goes wrong in the royal city, the first thing that everyone, including the witches, will think of is not the disaster caused by the flood, but whether Xu Chen's actions and Wang Cheng's actions have violated the gods.
Unable to contend with the ubiquitous and elusive gods, Xu Chen could only exert his greatest subjective initiative and exert his own strength to safeguard the interests of Ba and the authority of the royal city.
However, to complete such a huge project, it consumes a lot of manpower, material resources, time and other various costs. It cannot be completed quickly just relying on two or three thousand people near the royal city, and it is also difficult to draw people from other remote tribes, because
There are currently only more than 10,000 people in the entire country of Pakistan, and almost a quarter of the population is now gathered near the royal city.
However, no matter how difficult it is, this project must be launched as soon as possible.
Just like the foundation in front of the compound that was filled in the valley of the Ba people. Although it took three years to complete, it is now a huge legacy after completion. The foundation raised by nearly one meter has greatly improved the safety of the living area.
The scope was expanded by thousands of square meters, which provided a spacious and safe area for the expansion of new residences and a large number of houses after the compound was demolished.
The area on both sides of the Jicang River near the Royal City is flooded for tens of meters every year.
River beaches close to flooded areas are almost impossible to develop and can only be left deserted. Apart from herds of horses, they are a paradise for rabbits, wolves and wild birds. They are inhabited by a large number of insects and snakes, which actually poses a huge safety risk.
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Moreover, for the safety of living and living, no settlements or farmland are planned within the several miles long area from the upstream to the downstream of the north gate of the royal city, and within two miles of the river.
If river embankments are built close to both banks of the main river to restrain the summer floods in the river, the large open spaces on both sides of the river can be planned as settlements, and tens of thousands of acres of high-quality farmland can be opened up close to the river.
Although there are now vast and sparsely populated areas everywhere, and people can live and farm everywhere in the Gonghuo Basin, the area on both sides of the Jicang River near the Royal City is still suitable for development and survival.
Moreover, the concentrated residence, production and life will also make the royal city more prosperous and lively, driving industry and commerce to flourish.
In short, if the royal city wants to develop, it must concentrate a large number of people as much as possible.
If the Royal City wants to safely gather more people, it must solve flooding problems and cross-strait traffic.
At the meeting, Xu Chen had explained and discussed this matter carefully.
The four witches, big and small, naturally fully supported Xu Chen's idea, and the group of clan leaders all followed the guidance of their great witch and took the guidance of the great witch as the direction of survival and development, so there was no objection or objection.
What Xu Chen needs to do now is to plan out the embankments and bridges, and then recruit manpower to start construction.
However, in order not to affect the construction and development of each tribe and the construction of the royal city, the river embankment project must not allocate too many manpower and can only relax the time.
Xu Chen plans to complete this huge project in three to five years.
However, in the short half year between this autumn and winter to the beginning of next spring, the bridge and approach berms as the first phase of the project must be completed.
From the end of August to the beginning of September, for nearly ten days, Xu Chen left early every morning and returned home late every day on horseback with a group of hunters and craftsmen, constantly running back and forth on both sides of the Jicang River to check the terrain, pile stones along the way to keep track of the river embankments, and constantly improve the river embankments.
and bridge planning. At night, I would light a pine pottery lamp in my bedroom and constantly design the details and data of river embankments and bridges.
Although there was no measuring pole or horizontal observer, Xu Chen still used his best ability to conduct roughly accurate measurements at some key places with ropes and benchmarks, trying to ensure the accurate position and consistency of the bridge and embankment.
According to Xu Chen's plan, the first phase of the project includes approach bridges on both sides of the bank and a sloping berm at least 100 meters long.
The floods in summer are fierce. Before the embankments on both sides of the upstream bank are completely constructed to restrain the flow of the river, the approach bridge cannot be completely built into a solid road at once. The area close to the river must have bridge holes to allow the flood to pass smoothly.
Therefore, the first phase of this bridge is considered a semi-finished product. More than ten simple bridge piers will be built using stones and wooden piles on the river beaches on both sides.
These bridge piers are exposed on the river beach in autumn and winter, so they are very simple to build.
The most difficult part right now is the several bridge piers located in the main river channel.
Although the water flow is slow and relatively shallow in winter, no more than one person deep, building stable bridge piers in flowing water is an impossible task in this era.
In fact, after ten days of on-the-spot investigation, it took Xu Chen only two days to roughly decide on the construction plan for the river embankments on both sides. The rest of the time was almost spent on how to build the bridge.
The main river is currently about 40 meters wide, and will shrink to about 30 meters in winter. Large areas of pebbles and muddy beaches are already exposed on both sides of the river.
The deepest area in the center is about 1.78 meters, and an adult can barely wade across the river.
According to a bridge pier spaced about ten meters apart, at least five bridge piers with a height of more than five meters must be built in the main river channel to remain basically flush with the approach bridges and river embankments designed on both sides.
In order to cope with possible greater floods, the height of the core bridge piers may be higher, at least six meters.
In other words, five buildings of nearly two stories high must be built in such deep flowing water, and they must be very stable and able to withstand the most violent floods in summer.
In order to complete this almost impossible task, it is not enough to just write down the design drawings and list the data with a pen. It is necessary to conduct more detailed field surveys. In addition, what kind of materials and methods are ultimately used to build the bridge piers are the best.
A problem that urgently needs to be solved.
After issuing the order to build river embankments and bridges, Xu Chen expanded the shipyard near the Gonghuo Tribe's pontoon ferry and set up a project headquarters. At the same time, he ordered the Gonghuo Tribe, Lei Tribe and Five Ghost Tribes to start purchasing large amounts of wood.
Pottery bricks, stones, and dozens of carpenters, masons, and apprentices were also summoned to prepare stones and wood according to Xu Chen's preliminary plan.
Xu Chen himself led a group of hunters with good water skills every day, holding a raft back and forth in the river to measure the water depth and drive piles to explore the depth of sediment at the bottom of the river.
This unprecedented and huge project naturally attracted a large number of people on both sides of the river to watch. As long as they had free time, men, women and children would flock to the river bank to watch. The scene looked very lively.
Everyone is full of excitement and anticipation.
Although the specific plan for building the bridge has not been announced, according to the news circulating, once the wooden bridge is successfully constructed, it will completely solve the traffic situation on both sides of the strait once and for all. Even when the summer floods are the most violent, both sides of the strait will still be able to
Free passage on the bridge.
However, all imaginations are beautiful, but to actually build it would make Xu Chen lose countless hairs.
In just seven or eight days, Xu Chen felt that his hair had become thinner.
But the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait don't know the situation.
They had too much trust and admiration for Xu Chen. As long as His Majesty the Witch King takes action, there is no problem in the world that cannot be solved.
Even the little witch thinks so.
In her eyes, Xu Chen is omnipotent and has super power endowed by the gods. Even if Xu Chen wants to build a glittering golden bridge on the river, she will believe it in every aspect without any blind spots.
So under this kind of all-round trust and pressure, Xu Chen felt that his pressure doubled. Not only did he lose hair, but he also kept losing weight. He lost a lot of weight in just a few days of busy work.
At first, Xu Chen wanted to use big stones to pile stone piers at the bottom of the river, but after two simple tests, this plan was rejected.
The stones are too big to carry, let alone piled up. The stones are too small and are easily washed away by water. Even if they are barely piled up, they probably won't be able to withstand the peak of summer floods.
In this era without reinforced concrete, it was completely impossible to build a bridge pier several meters high with stone.
Therefore, there is only one final solution, and that is to use wood.
Fortunately, due to countless years of water erosion and sedimentation accumulation in the Gonghuo Basin, there are no particularly large stones in the river. They are all pebbles and silt. The river bed is soft, which also brings some convenience to the construction of wooden bridge piers, although it is not certain yet.
It can really be achieved, but at least the method is definitely correct.
In order to verify whether it is really possible to build wooden bridge piers with piles in the middle of the river, Xu Chen asked a group of carpenters to make several three-meter-long giant wooden piles out of giant trees with a diameter of three feet. In addition, he also specially asked a stonemason to build a wooden bridge weighing dozens of meters.
A pound of stone rammer.
But it was not enough to have building materials and tools. We also had to ensure the smooth progress of the construction, so Xu Chen thought of ways to build a floating construction platform in the middle of the river.
First, people pushed several boulders weighing hundreds of kilograms into the center of the river, tied several rafts to the boulders with ropes to ensure that they would not be washed away by the river, and then used wooden boards to connect and fix several rafts together to form a
The giant square floating island has a square hole about two meters in diameter in the middle, which is just right for standing around and operating.
This preparation took five days, and there were only seven days left before the Witch Lord Conference.