From Chief to Ball

The food problem in the next ten years will be very serious. Relying entirely on slaves will lead to structural deformities. There are too many slaves and too concentrated.

Therefore, if you want to break the situation, you can only use intensive farming and the agricultural revolution of cattle and horse plowing to avoid this situation, disintegrate into families as soon as possible, and divide the tribe and all non-public slaves for family use, and avoid the centralized use of slaves. Perhaps it can be avoided.

The compost and nitrate fields have the same raw materials, so they can be done at once. This is also the last batch of people that can be recruited before the autumn freeze.

After reading the drawing, the masons made sure there was nothing they didn't understand. They nodded and said, "We basically understand it. Ji Xia, go and do your work. We can do what's here."

"The project will be completed within 30 days. After the completion of the inspection, I will pass the inspection. You guys will go directly to the city to collect the three sheep. They are your own. You can eat them separately or replace them with others. Do it well. I have recruited the civet cats to the new The army is gone, and the mason still needs an official, so I chose one of you."

Chapter 34 Fire Nitrate

Abandoning the big pie of material rewards and spiritual rewards, Chen Jian no longer cares about the affairs here.Whether it is good or bad, you have to try it out. The projects in these cities will give the clansmen a chance to show themselves. Chen Jian doesn't need to do everything by himself, as long as he chooses the right people to manage it.

Good clerks are not necessarily good bureaucrats, but at least they know some technology and don't make decisions all at once.

The nitrate field can be effective at least until the winter is over, but the nitrate in the corner of the toilet can't be wasted now, just use the winter time when there is nothing to do to conduct a ratio test.

According to Chen Jian's request, someone had already used various tools to scrape off the nitrate oozing from the sunny side of the toilet due to the cold weather.

I lit a pile of wood, found a half-burned charcoal, grabbed a small pinch of nitrate and threw it on the charcoal fire and blew it vigorously. With a whistling sound, the stick that was left with only red charcoal fire exploded violently. Not purple, because the yellow flame of the sodium salt will overwhelm the purple, just make sure there is enough nitrate to support the combustion.

These nitrates should be good. The clansmen scraped five baskets, found a large pottery basin, poured these nitrates into it, and then poured in some plant ash. After stirring, add warm water to dissolve and stir.

After stirring, filter with sackcloth, and then use the fired bricks and tiles to make the shape of dripping eaves, and drip the filtered solution on the bricks and tiles little by little.

After the bricks and tiles are soaked, the water droplets will fall layer by layer, which acts as a filter. Under several layers of bricks and tiles, clay pots are used to connect them, revealing red and dirty water.

Then use thatch to filter out the sand and some insoluble impurities inside, set up a pottery basin on the open space outside the city, light a fire under it, and pour the solution of fire nitrate into it.

There are quite a few weird minerals in it, but they are not high-purity fire nitrates, and it is very troublesome to purify them.

There's salt, magnesium chloride, magnesium sulfate, and all that mess.It’s easy to say that the solubility of salt will not increase much with the increase of temperature, but the solubility of fire salt will increase greatly with the increase of temperature. If you understand this, boil the water and pour the water on it when there are precipitates and crystals below. Cool in another basin.

After the temperature drops, the solubility of fire nitrate drops rapidly, but the solubility of salt does not change. The crystals precipitated after cooling in the basin are fire nitrate, while the salt is still in the solution. Chen Jian has used this when boiling salt, and now it is considered Familiar with the road, just go in the opposite direction.

But other minerals are more troublesome. Magnesium sulfate, magnesium chloride, sodium sulfate, etc. are easy to deliquesce. Even if the content is not much, if mixed with gunpowder, it will easily absorb moisture in the air and become crystal hydrate, resulting in damp gunpowder.

The effect of adding plant ash is to generate insoluble substances such as magnesium carbonate and calcium carbonate, but they cannot be completely precipitated.

The way the ancients used to purify the nitrate was to cut a few pieces of carrots and throw them into the nitrate, so that these impurities could be adsorbed on it, so as to purify the nitrate. This is an amazing invention and very practical.In the Ming Dynasty, it was purified by this method. Until the end of the Qing Dynasty, those who boiled salt were still using carrots.

However, Chen Jian has never seen a radish in his life, so he had to use mustard greens instead. Although they are all cruciferous plants, the effect is definitely not good.

Chen Jian couldn't understand the principle of using radish to absorb the easily deliquescent salt, so he had to follow the example.

I cut a few pieces of freshly harvested mustard greens and threw them into the solution, and boiled them over high heat. After boiling, I found half a bucket of soy milk and poured them into it.

Soy milk needs heavy metal salts to be denatured into tofu. Tofu can absorb some impurities and heavy metal salts. After the soy milk turns into bean curd, it can be fished out with a cloth.

When it boils to a certain degree and white crystals are precipitated at the bottom of the clay pot, pour the upper layer of water into another pot to cool.

As the temperature decreases, the solubility of potassium nitrate is saturated, and the fire nitrate begins to slowly precipitate at the bottom of the pot.

After cooling down completely, put away the upper liquid. This waste liquid is also a good thing for the city. It is rich in potassium salts and minerals, which can be used to fertilize the fields.

The cooled fire salt is dissolved in water again. After dissolving, take some melted isinglass and pigskin glue, throw it into water and boil, the glue dissolves, and the impurities such as sand and gravel are adsorbed and precipitated.

Filter it one last time, and after drying, it will be almost pure white fire nitrate.

Finally, five baskets of nitrate soil boiled out a basket of fire nitrate, which weighed about seventy to eighty catties. At least before the summer, Chen Jian had no other way to get new fire nitrate, so he could only use this kind of fire nitrate to mix gunpowder.

The high-quality willow charcoal and natural sulfur have been prepared, and rollers are installed in the new army's barracks, and the news is strictly sealed. Chen Jian only brought a few trustworthy clansmen to start configuring this era-changing thing.

It is said that gunpowder changed the times not only because of its power, but because of its extensive influence.

Even if there are no copper cannons and heavy muskets now, with the intensive use of grenades and the spread of crude gunpowder weapons such as pine shotguns, these things will appear sooner or later.

The emergence of gunpowder weapons, in a short period of time: the phalanx spearmen are unlikely to appear in the Bronze Age of this cultural circle, and may choose to use a more sparse formation to prevent huge casualties and instant collapse; because of the sparse formation, chariots and the like Shock arms will dominate the battlefield for a long time, and the status of military aristocrats who have been trained for a long time will be further improved; correspondingly, the proportion of projectile arms such as archers and crossbowmen in the army in Chen Jian's cultural circle will greatly increase.

In order to fight against chariots and other shocking units, the infantry may use strict discipline to revive the phalanx after experiencing depression, so as to fight against shocking units and instant casualties. Discipline will be the focus of various cities and princes for a long time Things; with the improvement of infantry discipline and the emergence of new weapons, military nobles who have received military training since childhood will gradually play down their role on the battlefield. After more than ten years of training, they will become proficient in bows and horses. If things happen, the interests of the entire class will be affected.

Hundreds of years later, the old-fashioned people will have two possibilities, either unite to completely ban gunpowder, or be completely blown up by the new gunpowder weapons. The roar of the bronze cannon will be the death knell of this class.

With the emergence of new gunpowder weapons and the rapid training of recruits, the practical significance of military aristocracy has disappeared, leaving only the last struggle... Obviously, no matter how the historical trend is changed, at least after the unification of the war-torn cultural circle, there is no need For the class of military aristocrats, such things as feudalism and cultural division will naturally not happen. When the industrial age comes, the population will be the largest heritage of a country, and a unified country will have great advantages.

Of course, history is full of accidents, and the general direction is the same, but there may be many unexpected changes in the details.

Chen Jian just speculated about the possibility and chose the tomb in advance for the military aristocratic class he had just created that was still in its infancy.

From the very beginning, he was constantly creating new classes, and then destroying them with his own hands.

The times are progressing, and the progress of the times is the destruction of classes and the birth of new classes.

For example, the destruction of the clan does not mean killing the patriarch, but because of the use of slaves and tools, the disintegration of the clan is inevitable, and the private system will inevitably appear. When marriage and family become the mainstream, the patriarch of the clan is still alive, but the clan is dead. up.

For example, the destruction of slave owners does not mean killing all the slave owners, but because of the innovation of production tools, these slave owners either died because they could not keep up with the times, or they became a new rentier class.The person who is the slave owner is not dead, but the class of slave owners is dead.

As for the wailing of those nostalgics, recalling the beauty of the past era, trying to solve the new contradictions in the new era that they have never seen before by completely restoring the old era, it is just a joke in the face of the torrent of the times.

Chapter 35 Thunder

The Xia City, which grew from nothing, experienced the changes of the times in the shortest time. The towering city walls, the newly built gunpowder workshop, the piled up fermented compost piles, and the people who began to think about themselves... All these are the times that Chen Jian feels. The changes have crushed too many old things.

It can be said that there are almost no traces of a year ago on the [-] square meters of land enclosed by the entire city wall, except for a huge boulder on the bank of the Caohe River in the south of the city.

That stone was very big. On the eve of the expedition against the Red Fish tribe more than a year ago, Tanuki, Ji Song, and Langpi had a long chat on this stone. Tanuki still remembered that Langpi was playing for nothing at that time. Song sits on a stone, touches his mother's bones, and fantasizes about revenge.

After Xiacheng was built, this stone was too big to be shaken, so it finally stayed here and became a good washing stone with white soap residue on it.The stone seems unchanged, but the white powder on it proves that even though it is as heavy as it is, it is quietly changing.

The three people who were chatting on the rock at the beginning went their separate ways.Song almost became the kind of person that Chen Jian said was trying to restore the old era in order to escape the new contradictions, so Chen Jian sent him to visit other cities; Haven't come back yet.

The only civet cat who stayed in the city didn't have so many emotions. He was running around for his life, working for his own house and the three people living in it.

Half a month ago, Chen Jian dismissed him as a masonry officer and was recruited into the new army's barracks; five days ago, he boiled nitrate with Chen Jian; It is said that it is called fire rope.

Yesterday afternoon was the second ten-day break of the new army, and also the second ten-day break in October. After living in the new army barracks for eight days, he returned to his hut, and naturally slept very late, even making noise After waking up the sleeping son, he and Lancao lost interest, and sat on the kang in the middle of the night, giggling at each other, staring at the crystallization of their blood.

Even though he slept very late, he still got up early today, went to the military camp to get freshly cooked tofu, and instead of exchanging for food, brought it back to give the bluegrass a taste. Seeing the mother and son sleeping soundly, he smiled and put Fresh tofu was placed in an earthen pot that belonged to the family, and they snuck out of the house with their own mason's tools.

Even though he is no longer a mason official, his mason skills are considered the best in the city. Naturally, other tribes will ask him to help repair the house and wipe the cracked walls in autumn.

These things are done during his own rest time, and the rules of the city are also acquiesced and even encouraged. Naturally, he can't do it for nothing. He needs some food from other tribes to invite him, and the food belongs to that house and the three people living in the house. personal.

Walking out of the house, I turned around and glanced at the hut, and said to myself: "Because it doesn't rain in autumn, and there are still four days off before snowing, do more work. When it snows, the food is enough to go to the market to exchange for an ewe." Now, the wolf fur is in charge of animal husbandry. When mating, he must choose the strongest one... that is, the horns of the ram are like knives, so don't be poked by the lamb when feeding the orchid grass ..."

Weighing the tools in his hands, he thought that when his son grows up, he must teach him the work of a mason, and he will live better than others.On the night of the last ten-day break, he discussed with Lancao, and felt that the tribes would be separated one day. In the future, there will always be some who eat meat and some who can't even eat bran. Everything will change.

When passing by the stone by the river, he was still thinking about these questions, staring at the stone and muttering: "I'm afraid you will never change. You see, Xiacheng is still the same as you are, even if you want to You can’t even break it and move it.”