From Chief to Ball

Some people looked thoughtfully at the hoe in their hands and the end point that was bound to fail, and suddenly realized that the tool is not just the hoe in their hands, the weird number and shape problems that those children learned in school seem to be a tool ...

Chapter 20 Gold has six equals

The result of the competition is self-explanatory. The two people joined forces to win the first prize. What surprised them even more was that when the two were about to win, the small wooden plow pulled by the two people left behind on the flat ground at an even more surprising speed. indelible scars.

It's just that the ridges created by the small wooden plow are not up to standard, they are very narrow, and can't meet the requirements of Xiacheng's regulations of two feet apart and three ridges as the wheelbase, but the speed is several times faster than that of people.

When those who were sweating profusely went to the wine shop to enjoy the food, Yu Qian'er started the exchange of these farm tools.

"This is a farm tool. My brother was not allowed to exchange it for copper, because it can be forged into a weapon."

The itchy people next to him shouted: "No, Xiacheng and Echeng are brothers, and they will never fight each other. Jixia and Eyue have already made an oath."

Yu Qian'er smiled and said: "In the past, when our tribe didn't have bows and arrows, we could only look for the thinnest deer when we saw a herd of deer. At that time, even if we didn't pledge to kill the fastest deer, we couldn't kill the fastest deer. But after we have bows and arrows, even if we make an oath, we can still kill the fastest deer inside, and whether the fastest deer will become our food depends only on whether we abide by the oath."

The people next to him couldn't refute, some were not used to the way people like Xia Cheng spoke, and were a little embarrassed.

"However, my elder brother trusts the oath with Eyue very much. He said that since it is an alliance of brothers, he also hopes that you can grow more corn and not starve, because our tribe knows what it is like to be hungry in the past. What you planted Very early on, maybe you have forgotten the feeling of catching maggots from the wood and eating grasshoppers, right?"

"How can it be? We also suffered disasters when we migrated. It's okay to have a lot of corn, but those families with little food have to eat these things. One day, half of the elm bark on the mountain was stripped off by us..."

Some people recalled what happened many years ago with lingering fear, and couldn't help but feel a little disgusted. The fishy mucus from elm bark seemed to come out of their stomachs after so many years.

"Since this is the case, let's make an agreement. These can only be farm tools. If they are stained with brother's blood in the future, then..."

The people around shouted: "We swear to heaven and earth, if that happens, let us go back to the life of eating elm bark all day long!"

This is a very important oath in the hearts of the people in Echeng. After Yuqian'er and the other party made an oath, they exchanged these farm tools.

She only took out half of it, because she had been in charge of Fangshi for so long and found a very interesting thing, the less you have, the more you will get.The remaining half is planned to be replaced later, anyway, there is still a long time before the spring corn planting, and my brother also said that it will not be transported back until winter.

Because the harvest has just been harvested, and the newly plundered slaves from Eyue have not yet returned, and Yuqian'er in the wine shop "accidentally" mentioned that the tribes kept the city from starving by eating acorns last year. There is an extra method: let those slaves eat acorns, and it is said that after soaking in lime water, it is not easy to die.

Because of the scarcity of the two wooden plows, six hundred catties of corn were exchanged, and those who could have enough slaves to pull the wooden plows would also have enough corn in exchange.As for the rest of the bronze farm tools, each piece was exchanged for about fifty or sixty catties of corn, all of which were newly harvested.

Yu Qian'er didn't know the standard for changing things before, but Chen Jian told her a very simple method, which is to calculate the average working hours.

More than 100 pieces of bronze farming tools required [-] to [-] people to mine, and [-] people to burn charcoal, blast and smelt for ten days.However, copper mines are buried in the ground, and it is meaningless when no one digs them out. Therefore, since the exchange is decided, the issue of copper mines will not be considered for the time being, and only human labor will be considered.

After estimation, these more than 100 pieces of bronze farm tools require one person to work for [-] days on average, which happens to be a harvest cycle, and one person can only cultivate more than ten acres of land at most, which can harvest two thousand catties of grain.

The two thousand jin and the [-] jin in exchange were a profit no matter what, and they doubled by five times.

Yuqian'er knew that such an exchange would be cost-effective, but she sometimes thought that what her brother said was not completely right, because it didn't count what was in her mind. If her brother didn't figure out how to smelt, then she wouldn't be able to exchange it... just , How much food should the things my brother think of be counted into?

It was just a little distressed for a moment, and she stopped thinking about this problem. She thought that her brother probably couldn't understand it. The things in her head were invisible and intangible, and it was not suitable to use corn as a measure.

"This is what my brother thinks. Of course he doesn't have to think about these things, but if someone else thinks of it in the future, how much should be counted when rewarding them? Should the things that come up in his head be counted?" What about the average working hours that my brother mentioned? Oh, it’s really hard to think..."

She tugged at her braids a little irritably, and finally saw the corn that was transported and piled together, which made her happy. Her eyes bent into crescent moons looked at the counted numbers on the bark, and she felt like a chicken and an egg. The chicken is endlessly figuring out...

In Xiacheng, three hundred miles away, Chen Jian didn't know the distress that his words had brought to his sister, he still had his own distress.

The autumn planting is over, and it looks like it will rain, and soon the wheat will germinate.

However, there are still many things to do in the city. Spring planting and autumn harvest are the top priority. Besides the time for fighting, there are not many free people and time.

More than half of the things he planned a year ago have not been completed, the most important thing is to build the road from the mine to the grass river.

Now those ores are all carried by slaves, and they have cattle, horses and carts for harvesting, but they can't convert these into efficiency.

A road of [-] to [-] miles is too troublesome to build, and it may take the talents of the entire city. This is why he considered exporting bronze farm tools. Large-scale production requires road construction.

Some news came from the mine one after another. In the past month, more than 30 slaves died in the collapse of the mine. The guards of the mine thought of digging smaller holes and let the children among the slaves go down to carry the ore.

The smaller the hole, the less likely it is to collapse. People from several tribes even hoped to exchange more than 100 eleven or twelve-year-old boys in batches during the slave trade with those tribes in the northeast.

Chen Jian had already started the slave trade with other tribes. Knowing that this was the rule of this era, he didn't think about whether it was inhumane to use children as slaves, but was thinking about the inefficiency.

Compared with the bad news brought by the mines, those who smelted the bronze brought some good news, a news that was obtained by chance and accumulated experience in labor.

Chen Jian told those who smelted bronze according to what Jin Youliuqi said, but the smelted bronze was very brittle.

They had never seen other bronzes, so they thought that Chen Jian's words must have been guided by their ancestors. Although they were brittle and easy to break, they were very sharp.

The smelting of copper and tin is not a big problem for those craftsmen who have been working for more than half a year. They can even infer the amount of charcoal needed by observing the ore.

However, the process of melting copper and tin into alloys is still being explored. This is a very long process that requires experienced people to judge with their eyes.

The method of smelting bronze is to use a small crucible, fill it with copper and tin according to the proportion, add charcoal and burn it with leather sticks.

However, the amount of charcoal is a very important measure. Sometimes even if a sufficient amount is added, there is a problem with the blast during smelting, which will cause the alloy to not completely melt, and the fluidity is very low, making it impossible to smelt directly.

At this time, these semi-melted alloys need to be taken out and melted as tin material when the next feeding is made.

It happened here by chance this time, when a clansman who had been working for a long time mistakenly took these bronze scraps that were not fully melted and were about to be melted into Jiansui bronze mirrors as tin when adding materials, according to the calculation of the copper official The ratio is added.

After the melting started, a problem was discovered when the quantity was counted, but a batch of new bronze wares had been cast, just because the copper-tin alloy was regarded as tin, so the copper-tin ratio of this batch of weapons was higher than that given by Chen Jian. The saying that Jin has Liuqi is much lower!

The new clansman knew that he had made a mistake, but Tongguan held those spears and scolded for a long time, saying that the time of the five people for several hours was wasted, and the extremely angry Tongguan smashed those spears In the stone again.

The result surprised these people. These bronzes that did not follow the ratio of copper to tin provided by Chen Jian were tougher than before and not as brittle as before.

Tongguan was a little surprised by this accidental discovery during work.After smelting today's quota according to the requirements of the city, I didn't stop working immediately, but tried again in my free time, and found that the smelted batch was the same as the batch that made a mistake before, and it was not so brittle.

"Could it be that Ji Xia was wrong?"

Tongguan shuddered. He wasn't afraid that he would be punished if he told Chen Jian about these things, but he wondered if Jixia was killed by those ancestors' enemies?

With a feeling of anxiety, he showed Chen Jian the forged weapon.

"Ji Xia, look, this was cast by mistake. The ratio of copper and tin is not according to your six-qi ratio, but the tin in the six-qi is regarded as copper and tin."

Chen Jian took the newly cast spear and tried it, and was also a little surprised.It is said that it is better to have no books than to have no books, but so far he has always believed in books, especially the very simple statement of Jin Youliuqi. He feels that since it was summed up by the ancestors, it must not be wrong.

He thought that the reason for the brittleness before was because the smelting technology was not good enough, and he didn't consider the problem of the ratio, but now that this thing is in front of him, he realized that it was not a problem with the smelting technology at all, but that from the very beginning, the copper-tin The ratio is wrong!

"Gold has six equalities... The theory of six equalities does not refer to the ratio of copper to tin? It refers to the ratio of copper to copper-tin alloy that has been melted?"

Chapter 21 Real knowledge comes from practice

"It seems that you are right and I am wrong."

The copper official asked with some concern: "Can the guidance of the ancestors be wrong?"

There are hundreds of pieces of bronze cast by his hands. After this batch of "defective products" formed and cooled, he knew the result, and what he was worried about was not who was right or who was wrong.

At least before today, Chen Jian's words seemed to be correct and there was no need to change them, but now something was wrong, and he couldn't help worrying about the future of the city.