Hand over the jade seal first [Infrastructure]

In fact, Xiao Xuexing really didn't plan to go back this year. Emperor Xiao Xuan sent him a letter every now and then, and the content of the letter was summed up in one sentence, asking him when he would go back.

At first, Xiao Xuexing just said that he would go back after he found the clues and found the person. At first he thought it would not take long, but he did not expect that almost two months had passed after all this trouble.

Although he was a little annoyed by not being able to catch the opponent's tail during this period of time, he had to say that he, or his soldiers, had learned something in the process of fighting with the opponent.

Lu Liu and the others learned from experience, but Xiao Xuexing summed up some methods that he had never seen before, especially when the other party never spoke in the process of action. At first he thought those little ladies were dumb, but very occasionally Once, his subordinates saw Lu Liu and the others using hand gestures to communicate.

It's a pity that I only saw a little bit, and I still don't understand what the other party's gestures mean, but this made Xiao Xuexing have some guesses.

And the opponent is not only unique in terms of gestures, but also the opponent's training seems to be very special. These little ladies are very capable in individual combat, and they cooperate well when they are together. Presumably they have been specially trained.

But to cooperate with this kind of thing is probably the most difficult thing to train in the world, and it is difficult to master.

Xiao Xuexing's goal has long since changed from saving his younger brother to saving his younger brother and subduing the person who can come up with these methods.

By the time the No. 30 letter was sent, Xiao Xuexing's reasons had been exhausted. In the end, he wrote a sentence very carelessly: The weather here is good, and I decided to rest here for a while until next spring. go back again.

Well, he should be able to catch the other party next spring, if he still can't catch him after being entangled for so long, Xiao Xuexing himself can't stand it.

After Xiao Xuan received the letter, he almost vomited blood - he was so angry.

Although Southern Yanzhou has the word Nan, it is because the original Yanzhou was divided into two. Northern Yanzhou is now in the hands of the Northern Wei Dynasty, so there is no way to call it that. The more warm and humid it is to go south, it is more suitable for recuperation. Where does anyone go north?

As for Xiao Xuexing's claim that he found Xiao Zirong's whereabouts, and that he was trapped by others, Xiao Xuan didn't believe it at all. Who is Xiao Xuexing, and now there are not many people in Qi who are stronger than him in terms of strategy and martial arts. There are even limited people in this world who can be stronger than him. Who can make him unable to catch even a bit of tail for such a long time?

It must be Xiao Xuexing's excuse!

Xiao Xuan wished he could go there and arrest Xiao Xuexing himself, but later the court minister persuaded him, saying that the regent's health is not good, and the long journey in the winter is not good for him, so if he doesn't come back, he won't come back.

It sounded like it was for Xiao Xuexing's sake, but actually Xiao Xuan knew very well that these people were simply afraid of Xiao Xuexing, and when Xiao Xuexing was around, each of these people became more honest.

Even though Xiao Xuexing needs to recuperate from his illness and doesn't often go to court, he is a deterrent in Jiankang. Those who are cautious don't dare to stretch their claws, but it's different now, without Xiao Xuexing, they are even more arrogant.

Xiao Xuan has been struggling to suppress these people these days, otherwise he would not insist on letting Xiao Xuexing come back, after all, the existence of Xiao Xuexing, the regent, made him a little embarrassed.

For an adult emperor, there is still a regent in the court, which only shows that he does not have enough control over the court, nor does he have enough power.

But there is no way, Xiao Xuan has no relationship with the throne since he was born, and he has never studied hard. How is it so easy to become an emperor?

Xiao Xuan wished he could take someone directly to find Xiao Xuexing, but fortunately he held back in the end, and said helplessly that Xiao Xuexing must come back before the summer solstice next year!

Festivals like the winter solstice and summer solstice seem to be more important than Zhengdan.

When Xiao Xue was able to do it, Xiao Xuan's letter was conveniently put aside, and he said with a chuckle: "Your Majesty is in a hurry, it seems that during my absence, there have been many monsters and ghosts in Jiankang."

Ling Fu stood beside him and asked, "Your Highness, do you want to go back?"

Xiao Xue drank the last bit of herbal food in the bowl in one gulp, wiped the corner of her mouth and said, "Go back? What are you going back for?"

Ling Fu scratched his head: "Go and deal with them, those people think you will be unscrupulous after you leave Jiankang, and your subordinates think it's not enough to deal with them."

Xiao Xuexing shook his head and said, "Don't worry, the ones jumping on the table are just pawns to explore the way, the real chess players are hiding behind, just wait a little longer, I don't have time to mess with them."

It would be a waste of time and effort to clean up one by one by the tail. It is better to wait for them all to emerge, but... Maybe their Majesty will work harder recently.

Xiao Xuexing felt a little guilty in his heart, but quickly put it behind him.

If Xiao Zirong was sitting on the throne, he would definitely do his best to settle those people even if he was a little tired, but for Xiao Xuan, he didn't want to watch the fire from the other side, it's just that he was not in such a hurry.

Xiao Zirong, who was still waiting for Xiao Xuexing to leave, didn't know that he would stay here for Zhengdan. Xiao Zirong now pays attention to the city's infrastructure every day, hoping that Xiao Xuexing will leave early, pay attention to winter heating, and look forward to Xiao Xuexing's early arrival Let's go, pay attention to the spring plowing in the coming year, and hope that Xiao Xuexing will leave soon.

Yes, even in the process he didn't delay things.

He didn't even let others know his worries. After the little ladies built all the houses they needed to live in, Xiao Zirong didn't worry about the remaining houses. Instead, he asked everyone to start preparing to build the city wall.

Liu Cainiang said with some puzzlement: "Build the city wall? What's the rush? What's more, we don't need the city wall, do we?"

The city wall is a defense system. They can't even find the current regent here. Why is there a need to build a city wall?

Xiao Zirong nodded and said, "This city wall is not for defending against enemies, but mainly for preventing mudslides."

Although they are located in a small plain in the middle of the valley, it looks safe, but natural disasters and man-made disasters are unpredictable at any time, and once they encounter mudslides, they are close to death.

Xiao Zirong has no way to prevent mudslides. He can't do it by setting up some nets at the foot of the mountain like later generations, because there is no such light and strong material as later generations. layers of insurance.

Then build a city wall around it, and there must be a moat outside the city wall, so that when mudslides come, if they are small-scale, they can be directly filled into the moat, or they will be washed away along the water, or they will stay in the river. It's dangerous to clean up the river.

If the scale is larger and the moat can't stop it, then the city wall can still stop it.

The city wall designed by Xiao Zirong is different from ordinary city walls. The outer surface of the wall is straight up and down, but the inside is trapezoidal. Viewed from the cross section, it is equivalent to a right triangle shape, which can give the city wall better support.

For this reason, Xiao Zirong also worked hard on the construction of the city wall. Instead of using mud bricks and bamboo as internal support like building a house, he chose the most stupid method, using stone and lime mortar to build the city wall. This is definitely more troublesome than using mud bricks. First of all, stones are not so easy to find. They have to find a suitable quarry for quarrying, and secondly, there is the problem of transportation.

But Xiao Zirong didn't plan to change the method even if it was troublesome. At worst, don't worry about the front and rear walls, and build the two sides first.

Look at how strong the Great Wall was built with the same method, and the lime mortar in their hands is much more advanced than at that time. If there is a huge mudslide, they will always be given a chance to escape.

If there is no chance to run out...then the sky will destroy them, so give up struggling, Xiao Zirong has no other choice.

After hearing this, Liu Cainiang's expression became a little more serious. The issue of mudslides must be taken seriously. In years with abundant rain, mudslides come almost immediately. It is not that there were no villages around the bandit village before, and even the ancestors of the bandit village were all nearby. The people in the village, as a result, lost their homes due to the mudslide, lost their land and had no other means of livelihood.

At that time, the imperial court had been fighting for years and the mountains and rivers were in turmoil, and they had no time to take care of these small people, so the ancestors of those people simply turned into bandits, at least they could survive.

Liu Cainiang made some calculations and said, "In this case, the work may not be completed before Zhengdan."

Xiao Zirong smiled and said: "Whoever wants to finish the project before Zhengdan, as long as the spring plowing is not delayed, even if it is not completed by the time of spring plowing, spring plowing will be given priority."

Liu Cainiang cheered up and said, "Don't worry, the city lord, I will definitely urge everyone to go out early and return late to try to build the city wall as soon as possible."

Xiao Zirong said without even raising his eyelids: "Don't think that you don't need to study for building a city wall. You are about to finish your studies. When you finish your studies, take a final exam."

Liu Cainiang was silent for a moment, and looked at Xiao Zirong very sadly. After finding out that their city lord was very ruthless and did not intend to change her mind, she had no choice but to go over and inform everyone.

Now that he decided to build the city, Xiao Zirong led people to start looking for suitable rocks in the surrounding area. Rocks are not easy to find. First of all, in order to hide people's eyes and ears, try to be in the mountains as much as possible. Secondly, the rocks must be hard enough, too fragile.

In the end, a mountain with mostly blue stones was selected, but if you want to quarry these days, you can only cut a crack in the stone, and then dig a row of wedges into it, and then split the stone.

This matter is purely based on coolies, let alone now, even in later generations, this method of quarrying has continued for a long time.

So the problem for Xiao Zirong and the others now is that they don't have tools for quarrying.

Most of the utensils they used before were stone tools, even kitchen utensils. Recently, the kitchen utensils have been gradually replaced by bronze utensils. This is because they have money and travel to the state capital to buy them. During the process, they had to avoid the investigation of Xiao Xuexing's subordinates, so now all the people who go out to buy are members of the guards, which can be said to be very hard work.

But if stone tools are used to quarry stones, the stones used as stone tools must be harder than the stones that need to be quarried.

But the stone tools they make are all selected from less hard stones. Those that are too hard are either not easy to shape or will become too brittle to a certain extent, as the saying goes.

And the bluestone they found can be regarded as the hardest stone recently.

Xiao Zirong rubbed his chin and said, "We still need metal."

Of course, what he wants is not only metal, but also iron.

Fortunately, when it was time to trade with Yuan Jia, Xiao Zirong sent someone out to carefully finish the deal with Yuan Jia and brought back some iron ore and bronze utensils.

Xiao Zirong came back from the selected quarry and looked at the iron ore with a slight smile: "Finally, we are about to leave the era of primitive society, um, let's get some iron alloy utensils first."

He clapped his hands and turned to Liu Cainiang and said, "It's time to build an iron workshop."