According to the time of participating in the conference in the past, tribes such as the Pi tribe and the Youqing tribe should have already set off by this time. As for the farther away Tage tribe, the Cicha tribe had already set off a few days in advance, and if the Moten tribe that had just conquered last spring had
If you want to come, you should have already set off when Xu Chen comes back from the salt mine.
The witchcraft festival in autumn has always been more lively than Mother's Day in spring.
Because the witchcraft conference is mainly for exchange activities such as trading and hunting competitions, it also happens to be in the cool autumn season, when the plants begin to wither and wither, it is neither cold nor hot, and snakes and insects begin to hibernate. There is abundant food in the mountains along the way, so it is the safest and fastest way.
The most convenient time, the most important thing is that it happens to be the autumn harvest season, so traveling long distances will not delay too many production activities of the tribe.
Moreover, autumn is also the time when tribes have the most abundant harvests, and there are more goods for trade.
Traditionally, the trade of animal skins is strongest in autumn.
Therefore, Xu Chen pays special attention to the annual witchcraft ceremony and summons the witches and tribal chiefs, hunters and officers in advance to arrange the venue and some competition celebrations.
But this year, he paid little attention to this matter. He only temporarily summoned four witches and some royal city officials such as Ye, Feng, Ju, Gao, etc., held a brief meeting to discuss it, and then left all the preparations and arrangements for the witchcraft conference to them.
To deal with it, I put almost all my energy on building bridges.
Because this bridge is of great significance, no less than building a palace, and mainly because it is too difficult. Ordinary craftsmen and hunters are completely unable to do it without his command, and they have no idea what to do.
Xu Chen rode horses and was busy in the river all day long.
The little witch also knew the great significance of this bridge, and also understood that Xu Chen did not have much energy to care about the witchcraft conference, so she took full responsibility and kept talking to the two witches of the Gonghuo tribe and the Five Ghost tribe every day.
Discuss the arrangements, and then urge all tribes near the royal city to prepare for the witchcraft conference.
Feng was responsible for the security patrols of the settlements around the royal city and the tribes on both sides of the strait. He convened hunters from each tribe to carry out some unified training. He even followed Xu Chen's suggestion of holding a larger and more lively military parade, carefully drawing from each tribe.
Five 100-man square teams were selected, and they took advantage of their free time in the morning and evening to rehearse and practice back and forth between the Imperial City Avenue and the military camp.
Although Xu Chen was not personally involved in any of this, he still took the time to check it out occasionally.
Overall, he was very satisfied with the situation.
After several large-scale gatherings were held in the royal city, these activities actually had precedents to follow. As long as they were implemented according to past experience, the smooth progress of the conference could basically be guaranteed.
There are still five days left before the Witch Lords Conference, and the first participating tribe has arrived.
It is not the Pi tribe or the poor tribe, but the Moten tribe that is the farthest away. Along with them are more than a dozen tribesmen from the Five Ghost tribe who have migrated to the local area.
There are about three hundred people from the Moteng tribe, led by their great shaman. The main members are young and strong men and women. They use rattan baskets to bring a large amount of animal skins and some bones, horns, teeth, feathers and other goods. Most of them are
Traditional varieties, as well as some local crystal minerals and strange plant fruits and seeds, etc.
Although the Five Ghosts have always followed the guidance of their predecessors and wanted to stay away from the Gonghuo Basin and prevent the devil's curse from bringing disaster to their tribe and other tribes around the Gonghuo Basin, Xu Chen arranged for Lei to lead people to assist them last year.
After conquering the Moteng tribe, it is said that the Mother Goddess will also protect the Five Ghost tribe who are far away. They can also come to Gonghuo Basin or the Ba tribe to attend two large gatherings in the spring and autumn every year.
This news was brought personally by the little witch of the Five Ghost Tribe, which naturally made the men, women, and children of the departed Five Ghost Tribe burst into tears of gratitude.
However, they suffered a lot of losses in the previous battle with the Moteng tribe. More than half of the men were killed and wounded. The population is currently insufficient, and they have only learned how to farm and build houses for a year, so not many people came, only a dozen strong ones came.
hunter.
These hunters now follow Xu Chen's guidance and no longer smear those messy mineral pigments on their bodies. Although they are still ugly, they look much more normal.
Although the return of the Five Ghosts caused some commotion in the royal city, it did not bring much resistance and fear, and it quickly subsided.
In the next three days, participating teams from tribes near the Gonghuo Basin, including the Ba, Pi, Tage, Youqiong and other tribes, arrived one after another. From morning to night, the entire Bagong Avenue and Jicang River Pier were crowded.
People were coming and going, flags and horns were rising one after another, and the festive atmosphere became more and more intense.
Xu Chen did not have much energy to receive the arrival of the participating tribes. He simply met with a few great witches and some tribal leaders. He also asked the little witch to accept some of the gifts sent by these tribes.
Have Ye register and send it to the Royal City Warehouse.
He has been busy these days building the first bridge pier in the middle of the river.
It is not easy to drive a giant wooden pile three feet in diameter into the river bed.
But because of the floating platform, this work has become relatively simple.
A three-meter-long wooden pile was inserted into the bottom of the water, and the road was only a little more than one meter above the water. Four young and strong hunters lifted up a stone hammer of tens of kilograms tied to a wooden stick, and then smashed it down fiercely.
The impact caused the wooden pile to sink continuously, and finally it was slowly hammered into the soft river bed.
This process will start very quickly, especially the first two or three feet, and it will take more than ten hammers to go down. But as the pile is driven deeper, the resistance will become greater. Finally, after driving a wooden pile to a depth of about one meter,
, basically it can’t be beaten.
Although the depth has not reached Xu Chen's expectation, because the river bed is washed by river water all year round, it is actually much stronger than the river beaches on both sides of the river with thick sedimentation. This depth is barely acceptable.
Eight wooden stakes were driven in to form a square structure with an inner diameter of one meter wide and two meters long, just like a square fence standing in the water.
At this time, the top of the wooden pile is almost level with the river water.
The fence alone is not strong enough, so wooden squares with a thickness of more than a foot and copper nails with a length of more than a foot are used to stagger and fix the perimeter, thus forming a strong square wooden cage structure.
Although these things sound simple, they are actually very troublesome and time-consuming to do.
First of all, the floating platform made of wooden rafts is not stable. It will float and shake all the time when working on it. It is not easy to operate when standing on it. It takes two or three hours to drive a wooden stake down.
It took three days just to drive down eight wooden stakes.
In addition, to fix these wooden piles to form a wooden cage, one has to stand in the water or even dive into the water to operate, and two or three people are required to work together. Moreover, it is also very difficult to drive nails into the water with either a copper hammer or a stone.
Just one wooden cage took five days to complete.
But building the wooden cage is only half done. What remains is to sink two stone slabs weighing hundreds of kilograms into the wooden cage as the cornerstones of the bridge pier support columns, and then put two stone slabs with a diameter of five feet and a height of six meters.
Huge wooden piles are inserted into the wooden cage to serve as real bridge pier wooden pillars, and then the middle is filled with stones until the entire wooden cage is completely filled, so that the two wooden pillars, one at the top and one at the bottom, are squeezed and fixed in the wooden cage.
Only in this way can the wooden bridge pier be considered roughly completed.
However, it took countless manpower and time to install these two six-meter-long giant piers.
Because it is too long and heavy, it is not easy to insert it into the wooden cage stably and in place in the river where it is not stable at all.
In order to install these two piers, Xu Chen used hundreds of people, ships, cables, rafts, and almost all the means at his disposal. Finally, before the last day of Mother's Day, the first bridge pier took more than ten years to install.
After days of preparation and construction, the construction was finally completed.
Two thick wooden pillars stood tall in the middle of the river like mainstays, standing still under the wash of the flowing water.
"Yehao..."
Although I don’t understand the purpose of His Majesty the Witch King spending so much manpower and time to erect two thick wooden pillars in the middle of the river, it does not prevent everyone watching from knowing that this is an unparalleled success and pride.
In fact, since Xu Chen started preparing to build the bridge, many people came to watch every day. As the floating platform was built and the piling began, a group of people carried huge stone rams and piling in the middle of the river all day long.
It resounded throughout the entire royal city area, so even more people were attracted to come and watch.
Especially in the last few days, as the teams from various tribes coming to attend the Witch Lord Conference gradually gathered, there were huge crowds of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait almost every day. The crowds cheered and made noises one after another, and the noise was overwhelming.
The first bridge pier was completed. After careful inspection and testing, Xu Chen found that it was very solid and seemed to be better than he imagined. He couldn't help but let out a long sigh of relief.
This bridge pier took nearly half a month to build.
A total of five bridge piers need to be built in the river.
But with this template and construction method, the following ones will be done much faster.
The most important thing is that the two bridge piers in the center of the river are difficult to build, and the closer to the shallow water area, the easier it is to build.
According to the current experimental plan and construction speed, the remaining ones will be started at the same time after the Wu Zhu Conference. About the end of October, all five bridge piers in the river will be completed, leaving three approach bridge piers on each side of the river bank.
Construction is even easier. There is no need to build a wooden cage at all. You only need to drive a few thick logs into the river beach to serve as piers.
Moreover, these approach bridge piers are only transitional. After the construction of the upstream and downstream supporting river embankments is completed, the actual approach bridge will be directly filled with stones, leaving only these few bridge piers in the river channel.
Therefore, these five bridge piers in the river are the top priority.