In mid-November, Lei led his people back to the royal city from Tung Forest Lake.
This time they returned with a full load.
The six rafts not only brought back more than ten large bamboo barrels of tung oil, but also more than ten ginkgo and tung berries filled with animal skin bags.
But what caused a sensation in the entire royal city was the five white-haired men and women brought back with them.
In order to catch a glimpse of this legendary white-haired barbarian with four eyes and four hands, thousands of men, women, and children near the royal city abandoned their work and rushed to the Jicang River dock, surrounding both sides of the river beach with almost no water.
Even a group of witches, big and small, couldn't restrain their curiosity. Under the leadership of the little witch, they formed a group to check their faces to see the strange things.
However, the white-haired monster that appears in everyone's eyes now, apart from the fact that its white skin and white hair makes people feel a bit scary, does not have four eyes and four hands at all.
These five white-haired people were brought back together by Xu Chen when he asked Lei to come back when they broke up.
There are two purposes. One is to let all tribes come into contact with and get to know this new tribe and reduce panic. The other is to let these white-haired tribes see the prosperity of the royal city to shock their souls and make them more docile in the future.
The five white-haired tribesmen who came this time were all adult men and women, and they all gave up their weird ancestral costumes. They were all wearing simple animal skin clothes that Lei arranged for people to help sew, so although they looked a little out of place,
But the appearance is still acceptable.
And the result was just as Xu Chen expected.
After all the onlookers competed to witness these five white-haired weirdos, they did cause a lot of panic and commotion, but the excitement soon resumed.
After all, the residents of the royal city are people who have seen the big world.
At first, the situation of the Five Ghost Clan seemed more terrifying than that of the White-haired Clan, but now they are all used to it.
Moreover, all kinds of news about the Baimao Tribe have already spread around the royal city, and even all the tribes who came to participate in the Witch Lords Conference to build bridges and river embankments are all aware of it.
With these sufficient psychological preparations, the White-haired Tribe naturally does not seem so scary.
While being watched by thousands of residents of the royal city, the five white-haired tribesmen were actually even more frightened, and their minds were almost blank from the beginning to the end.
We couldn't communicate in language, and there were huge racial differences. It was the first time to take a raft and walk on a waterway that was hundreds of miles long. I was already extremely scared all the way, but when I saw the royal city standing in the Gonghuo Basin, I was almost frightened.
I was completely shocked.
Everything in the Royal City has gone far beyond their understanding of this world.
Therefore, before they even got close to the dock, the five white-haired tribesmen were already lying on the raft collectively, trembling with fear and weak. Finally, they were dragged ashore by a group of hunters.
Xu Chen was not very interested in these Baimao people. He simply asked Lei about the construction of the Baimao camp and the collection and extraction of tung oil, and then asked people to quickly move the more than ten barrels of tung oil brought back to the shipyard.
, and asked people to repackage and store them in clay pots.
The remaining ten bags of ginkgo and cinnabar fruits were sent to the palace.
After everything was arranged, Xu Chen was in the mood to deal with the five white-haired tribesmen.
Since we are here to open their eyes, we naturally have to arrange for them to have a good tour of the royal city.
However, the five white-haired men and women were still in a state of unconsciousness after being ashore for a full hour. Xu Chen's plan to briefly communicate with them failed to come to fruition, so they could only be temporarily sent to the palace to find a house to settle down first.
Xu Chen was very excited.
The tung oil sent back this time weighed more than two hundred kilograms.
And this is only the first batch.
According to his estimate and Lei's confirmation, at least two batches can be brought back before and after spring.
And this first batch of tung oil will all be used on the bridge across the river.
Xu Chen believes that after painting it with tung oil, the service life of the newly built wooden bridge will be greatly extended.
So Xu Chen rolled up his sleeves, dove into the shipyard, and decided to officially start the bridge construction project.
The entire bridge across the river is nearly 60 meters wide, which is twice as wide as the river when the water level is at its lowest.
The five bridge piers in the river have been completed at the end of October, and the extended bridge piers on both sides of the river have also been completed one after another. At present, dozens of craftsmen and apprentices have been preparing a large amount of bridge materials, and the shipyard is busy all day long.
With the sound of chopping and chopping, the open spaces on both sides of the river beach were filled with piles of thick wooden cubes and various lengths of wood.
After two months of construction, the approach bridges on both sides of the bank have been completed. The berm part is currently being intensified, and nearly half of the berm is completed. A neat river embankment can now be seen on both sides of the bank rising opposite each other.
The scale is huge and exciting.
Originally, Xu Chen only planned to extend the witchcraft conference for one month, but as the progress of the project continued to advance, the difficulty of building the berm continued to increase.
Because the stones and soil used to build the river embankment are all excavated and transported from the river, but as the scale of excavation continues to expand and the height of the river embankment continues to increase, it becomes more and more difficult to transport the mud and rocks, and the progress slowly slows down.
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In order to complete this arduous task, seriously correct their mistakes, and prevent the gods from destroying the royal city, all the witches and tribal leaders said they would not leave until the river embankment was repaired, so the project continued.
So far, two full months have passed.
The height of the berms on both sides of the bank has reached two meters.
As you go up, the river embankment continues to narrow, and the demand for stone and soil becomes less and less. Although the difficulty continues to increase, the construction speed does not slow down much.
According to the current progress, the one-mile-long river embankments on both sides of the river will be basically completed by the beginning of December, and by then all the tribes who came to attend the Witch Lord Conference will be able to rush back to complete spring plowing and sowing.
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The remaining finishing work can be left until after the spring sowing is over, and some manpower can be recruited from near the royal city to continue completing it.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! The river embankment and approach bridge project is huge, requiring nearly 10,000 cubic meters of earth and rock work to be completed.
There are currently about two thousand people participating in the construction. In fact, in two and a half months, each person only needs to move five cubic meters of earth and stone.
If it weren't for the poor quality of the tools and vehicles, this amount of work wouldn't be a big deal at all.
And this is a simple earth and stone work, there is no skill at all.
The only job is to excavate soil, sand and gravel from the river beach and transport it to the planned river embankment section for stacking.
Some are responsible for digging, some are responsible for transporting it with wheelbarrows, carts, and horse-drawn carriages, some are responsible for carrying rattan baskets up the river embankment, and some are responsible for building and compacting with stone rams.
These tasks are actually already familiar to various tribes in the process of road construction.
The only difference is the height, which needs to be accumulated layer by layer.
The nine-story platform rises from tired soil.
Precisely because of his lack of skills, Xu Chen never participated in the construction of approach bridges and berms from the beginning to the end. At most, he rode back and forth on both sides of the strait from time to time to conduct brief inspections and provide some guidance on some areas that seemed to have problems.
In addition, there were officials from the Industrial Construction Department and the Forbidden Army conducting constant patrols. Xu Chen would also summon the heads of all engineering teams for questioning every few days, so that the construction of the river embankments and approach bridges was progressing smoothly.
Xu Chen's main focus was on building bridges.
Repairing the bridge piers only completes the most basic task of building a bridge.
Of course, the most difficult part of the bridge project has been completed. The rest is the bridge project, which involves a lot of repetitive work, that is, processing and shaping a large amount of suitable wood as needed, and then erecting it section by section.
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At present, more than ten carpenters and more than forty apprentice helpers in the entire shipyard are working on the components needed to build bridges every day.
First, the two giant wooden support columns of each bridge pier must be connected and reinforced with wooden squares to prevent the bridge piers from being displaced and deformed due to continuous erosion and shaking by running water.
Secondly, the bridge piers need to be connected with five-meter-long main beams. Because there are no bolts and rivets, they can only be connected with each other by simple tenons. This is also quite difficult because these main beams are all
Giant wood with a diameter of at least three feet, even if it is dried, weighs hundreds of kilograms each. Not only is it difficult to handle, but it is also very difficult to install.
The last step is the wooden planks used to lay the bridge deck.
It is said to be a wooden board, but in fact it is a wooden square. It is also directly cut with an ax from a log of at least one foot in diameter into a thick wooden square that is three meters long and half a foot thick.
Such a piece of wood weighs at least fifty kilograms.
Although Xu Chen has not calculated the total weight of all the bridge wood, according to the situation, the final weight of the entire wooden bridge should be very terrifying.
And this was actually done intentionally by Xu Chen.
Because only if the bridge is heavy enough, it will not be easily destroyed by floods.
In fact, Xu Chen planned to place pressure stones at the load-bearing positions on both sides of the bridge deck above each pier after the wooden bridge was erected.
Xu Chen has been paying close attention to the processing of these bridge components, especially the main beams. He has to personally measure and design each one before handing it over to a few of the most capable Ba craftsmen to lead a team.
As for the wooden squares used to lay the bridge deck, the requirements are relatively low and are left to carpenters from other tribes and a group of italic helpers.
In the past month or so, the main job of a group of carpenters has been to process the wood according to Xu Chen's requirements. Now a lot of it has been prepared. Most of the wooden beams have been completed. Hundreds of wooden boards for laying the bridge deck have also been prepared and piled up.
The banks of the river look spectacular.
If he had not discovered that there were a large number of tung trees in the tung forest, Xu Chen would have started building the bridge while processing the components as early as after completing the five bridge piers in the middle of the river.
But now, he has been waiting for the tung oil to be delivered.
This bridge was extremely difficult to erect. In order to extend the life of the bridge as much as possible, Xu Chen decided to treat the entire bridge with tung oil.
Now that the tung oil has been delivered, the preparation work can officially begin.
Of course, more than two hundred kilograms of tung oil was definitely not enough. Xu Chen didn't want to apply it three times as carefully as he did on a wooden boat, but only planned to apply it once.
But even this time, he believes it will also have a great protective effect on the wooden bridge.
In addition, two batches of tung oil will be shipped back in the future. If there is not enough, you can reapply it.
Moreover, more tung oil will be transported to the Royal City every year, and the wooden bridge will be painted and maintained every year. As long as the bridge piers do not collapse, this wooden bridge should not have any big problems for more than ten years.