Mu Qingcheng was discussing tomorrow's matters with Fang He when another young man hurried in from outside the door.

"Erlang, Erlang, look what I found..." The person who came was Fang Qingyun, the eldest grandson of Village Chief Fang.

"Erlang, why are you sitting here? Has your brother's poison been cured? ... I'm telling you, I found something good. Come with me!"

Fang Qingyun was holding two books in his hands, a stack of papers under his arm, chattering non-stop, his steps not slowing down. When he reached Fang He, he saw Mu Qingcheng beside him and quickly bowed to her, "Mu, Miss Mu is here too...!"

The stack of papers he had tucked under his arm fell to the ground with a rustling sound as he moved.

"oops!"

Fang He and Fang Qingyun exclaimed at the same time, and both of them quickly squatted down to pick up the paper. Mu Qingcheng looked at the two teenagers who were frantically picking up the paper. She felt embarrassed to just stand there and reach out to pick it up as well.

Fang Bo: "Why are you so panicked?"

Fang Qingyun: "Here, take a look for yourself, they are really good things. I borrowed them with great difficulty. These are really two wonderful books, don't you think?"

Fang He took the book and started flipping through it immediately.

Mu Qingcheng picked up two pieces of paper on the ground and was about to return them to the boy, but she was attracted by the picture on one of the papers.

"This is a keel waterwheel!"

The two young men who were reading together looked up at Mu Qingcheng at the same time.

Fang Qingyun's face was full of surprise: "Mu, Miss Mu, do you recognize this waterwheel? Have you seen this waterwheel somewhere?"

Mu Qingcheng studied the painting carefully and offered them a simple suggestion: "This is just an image, too simple. Besides, it's already outdated. A real keel waterwheel should be adapted to local conditions and can be large or small. Yours still needs manual pedaling, which is too tiring! I suggest you design a powered waterwheel next to the keel, using the water flow to make the waterwheel move itself."

The two were stunned and didn't come back to their senses for a long time.

Fang He: "Hey, this, Miss Mu, where did you see this waterwheel?"

Mu Qingcheng returned the two pieces of paper to them and began to think about the dynasty of this space. Which dynasty should they correspond to here?

After pondering for a long time, she still couldn't come up with a definite answer. She didn't know much about this place. But this space was definitely not the one she had lived in.

Since there were already simple keel water wheels in this era, even if she improved the water wheels to make them more advanced, it would not disrupt the future course of history.

"You want to build a waterwheel? Why?"

"Why else? If it doesn't rain, we'll have trouble getting drinking water here." It was Fang Shuli who answered Mu Qingcheng.

Village Chief Fang, hands behind his back, returned from outside and overheard several people discussing the waterwheel. "Why hasn't it rained in this area since the beginning of last autumn? The Nanchuan River has dried up, and now the village wells are almost dry. We're having trouble even getting water, let alone irrigating our fields."

"Luckily, there's a spring on our mountain. The water there is sweet and delicious. During the off-season, the villagers like to go into the mountains and fetch a couple of buckets of spring water to drink back home. Now, this spring water has become our village's life-saving water."

Mu Qingcheng remembered the dry steamed buns she had eaten that morning and realized that there was a drought here. "What about the spring plowing?"

Village Chief Fang: "What else can we do? Let's not plant any more seeds for now! Without water, it would be a waste to plant them. Without water, they will wither and die sooner or later."

Mu Qingcheng was worried after hearing this. This was no small matter. Food is the most important thing for the people. If farmers don't farm, what will they eat?

She thought back to the movies about escaping famine that she had watched as a child. In order to survive, people had to move to other places with their families to make a living. There were starving people everywhere on the road, and then there was a rampant plague... The scene was really tragic.

"Uncle Village Chief, do you have a map? I want to see where the nearest water source to your village is."

Village Chief Fang's eyes lit up when he heard this: "Miss Mu, do you have any idea to bring water to our fields?"

Mu Qingcheng didn't dare to boast. She didn't know much about this place. What if it was too far from the water source? Who would do such a laborious and laborious task? And who would pay for such a large project? These were all problems, so she didn't dare to say it would definitely work.

"I need to look at the map first to know if I can do it!"

Village Chief Fang's face froze, and he looked a little embarrassed: "How can we ordinary people get a map?"

Indeed, in this era, topographic maps were military secrets, and ordinary people who privately kept topographic maps were guilty of a serious crime punishable by beheading.

Just when Mu Qingcheng was feeling a little regretful, Fang Qingyun suddenly stood up and said, "I can draw a simple topographic map. The teacher in our academy wants to write a county annals. He borrowed a topographic map from the government office. I've seen it!"

Mu Qingcheng: "Okay, draw one for me!"

So, everyone went to the study together. Fang Qingyun immediately picked up her pen to draw, but was stopped by Mu Qingcheng. She pulled out a wooden hairpin from her head. This hairpin was a pencil specially designed by Mu Qingcheng.

Fang Qingyun was shocked again. He had never seen or heard of such a pen before. Mu Qingcheng taught him how to use it. After trying it a few times, Fang Qingyun quickly mastered the technique.

In the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, Fang Qingyun drew a simple topographic map. This map was really simple, with just a few lines with place names marked on them, and Fang's explanation.

Mu Qingcheng soon understood the terrain here. It turned out that there was a river here called Chuanhe River, which connected more than a dozen nearby villages, and these villages relied on this river for irrigation.

The Chuan River is divided into South Chuan and North Chuan. Fangjia Village is on the South Chuan River. The upper reaches of the Chuan River are the Jiuqu River, which is located 30 miles north of Qingle County and is one of the important trade rivers in the south.

I heard that due to the drought, the water level of Jiuqu River dropped, so the river dried up.

Mu Qingcheng was in trouble. It was impossible to build a canal to divert the water.

What should I do?

Mu Qingcheng turned her attention to the spring on the mountain again: "Uncle Village Chief, tomorrow morning, I want to go up the mountain to see the spring water."

Village Chief Fang's hopeful eyes made Mu Qingcheng feel pressured: "Okay, okay, I will take the girl up the mountain myself tomorrow."

Fang He: "I'll go too."

Fang Qingyun: "I'm going too!"

"What are you two doing? Qingyun, go to school, and Erlang, take good care of your brother. I'll accompany you up the mountain."

Mu Qingcheng smiled and said, "Let them go too! They need to do some field research if they want to build a waterwheel."

"Alas!" the village chief sighed. "They are the only two educated people in Fangjia Village. I wanted them to build a waterwheel for the village to bring water from the Nanchuan River to the fields. Who knew the river would dry up so quickly? What's the point of building a waterwheel?"

Mu Qingcheng: "Maybe it can be used! But, I'm curious, where did you get the pattern for this waterwheel?"

Fang Qingyun: "We had a hard time finding this waterwheel diagram. We looked through so many books. Today I found two more books."

He took out the book he had just shown you, Fang He. Mu Qingcheng took it and saw that the cover was written "Qimin Yaoshu" and the other one was "Tiangong Kaiwu". She opened it and saw that it was not printed, but a handwritten version. She couldn't understand the characters either, they were all traditional Chinese characters.

Mu Qingcheng found it strange that these two books appeared at the same time.

"Where did these two books come from?"

Fang Qingyun was so excited when she heard this: "These two books are incredible. They came from overseas and have only recently spread here. They are very rare."

"What? It's spread from overseas?" Mu Qingcheng was a little amused. Since when did "Qimin Yaoshu" and "Tiangong Kaiwu" become foreign books?

"Do you know who the authors of these two books are?"

Fang Qingyun smiled awkwardly, "No one knows about this. It's said that a sailor found it on a merchant ship. He couldn't read, but he thought it was a valuable book. He sold it to a bookstore, and the owner discovered that they were two rare books, so they became popular. Among them is the dragon bone waterwheel diagram."

Mu Qingcheng had read it. Although she couldn't understand the words, she could still understand the pictures.

The drawings in it were not detailed and were rather crude. Mu Qingcheng felt that these two books might have been written by some time-traveling god out of boredom.

The content of this book needs to be verified.

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like