Chapter 42: The Comprehensive Rollout of Construction

  More than half a month later, all the stone materials were ready, and the largest construction among these five families also started vigorously. At this time, there was still no activity of worship or sacrifice, which made Feng Bo somewhat puzzled. How could it be that there were no activities on this side? Whether it was harvesting or construction, everything was quiet and deserted.

  It's no wonder that Feng Bo was puzzled, and Yang Heng himself was also puzzled. In the atheistic era of later generations, before any activity unfolded, there were always a series of divine worship activities. However, from this we can also see how great the harm of war was in this era, and some important inheritances have disappeared.

  Shaking off these unnecessary thoughts, Yang Heng began to take command of the construction. The specific construction would rely on his uncles' own efforts, but some major design aspects still required Yang Heng's direction.

  "Come on, uncles, here at our home's main entrance, let's pull out a road. This road will be four meters wide and straight from east to west. In front of the road, dig a ditch that is a bit deep, and throw the soil dug up from the ditch onto the road surface. Then, also dig another ditch behind it, but this one should be shallower. The purpose of this ditch is to separate our home's courtyard from the road surface. This temporary road will be designed like this for now, and when we have some free time later, we'll go dig up stones and use them to pave the road on both sides."

  A very simple design, Yang Heng's plan is to build only these five houses in this area, and make them a villa district, distinct from the village. On the north side of the road, after a short distance, a family will be built, and these five families will be evenly distributed on the north side of the road. In the courtyards between each house, Yang Heng plans to use them as vegetable gardens, which will look very neat. Also, behind the five houses, there is an irrigation canal, formed by water brought up by a waterwheel. This canal, except in winter, will have constantly flowing water at other times, and currently one waterwheel is enough. However, Yang Heng plans to install another waterwheel next year or the following year, so that if one waterwheel breaks down, the other can still guarantee the task of supplying water to the fields. If there's too much water, in normal weather, it will flow back into the river through the canal. On rainy days, at the inlet, Yang Heng will install a diversion channel, allowing the water to enter the channel and then flow into the river. The waterwheel won't stop running.

  Furthermore, Yang Heng also plans to set up a powered waterwheel on this artificial river, which will provide power for grinding grain and even drive large-scale threshing machines to separate grains, eliminating the need for manual operation of the threshing machine.

  The warehouse is located on the south side of the road, right next to the ditch on the south side of the road. The reason for setting up the power waterwheel is that it needs to be set up over this ditch, and the axle of the waterwheel will extend a long way towards one end of the warehouse. Even under the axle, there will be a stone pavement laid out, but that's something for next year. This year, some equipment is still better off being operated manually.

  Whether it's a warehouse or the courtyard of the four uncles' house, they all chose to build a square wall with logs protruding from the wall, just like Yang Heng's family. This way of building can speed up the progress. In fact, according to Yang Heng's idea, this wall should be built entirely with stone, but if it were built with stone, there wouldn't be enough stones, even if they were mined for another month. Moreover, neither Yang Heng's family nor his uncles could afford to spend that much time now. So wood is still the best choice. Besides, from the wooden wall next to Yang Heng's house, this wall is very useful and doesn't need to consider the problem of rotting at all, because most of it has sprouted this year, which means these woods have come back to life. However, every year they need to cut off the branches that grow on the wall.

  In the construction of these houses, the warehouse's library building is the most complicated. First, in order to prevent mice, Yang Heng's design was to pave the ground and foundation tightly with stone materials, unless there were mice as small as ants, otherwise it would be impossible to enter the warehouse. Moreover, the door of the warehouse was also built high up, so if the mouse didn't have good jumping ability, it wouldn't be able to enter the warehouse. Under this condition, if the mouse could drill holes from the wall and go up, then there's really nothing that can be done about it, but this possibility is already very small. However, this way, the workload of the uncles has increased a lot. First, they need to choose suitable stone materials, and if there are no suitable stone materials, they also need to trim the stone materials to make them suitable. This way, not many people are needed here, only letting Second Uncle and Third Uncle work here is enough.

  What are others doing, they started to build walls around the yard, after the walls were built, they began to construct the main halls of each household. The aunts were digging ditches along the roadside, and if human labor was needed at the construction site, the aunts would rush over to help.

  The old mother and the younger aunt were completely restricted from entering the construction site, just to prevent them from bumping into each other. They would take a walk, but Yang Heng would restrict them to their own courtyard. Even when the adults and children ate meals, Yang Heng would set up a shed outside and not allow the uncles and children to enter the courtyard to eat. The uncles were very understanding, and even the aunts would voluntarily go outside to eat. If they entered the courtyard, they would tidy themselves up before coming in to chat with the old mother and younger aunt. None of them felt jealous because they all wanted to have more children. With this idea in mind, when they became pregnant again, Yang Heng would also design activities, rest, and care for them, and at that time, they would be treated the same as the old mother and younger aunt.

  As the work unfolded, the children's learning also came in handy. The Thousand Character Classic they had learned earlier was almost complete, and Yang Heng had already recognized most of it. However, for the characters he didn't recognize, he wouldn't replace them with simplified characters used in later generations. To let his younger siblings continue their studies, Yang Heng brought out arithmetic, even introducing Arabic numerals. This time, however, Egg's ability was the strongest. His learning and comprehension abilities in arithmetic were so impressive that Yang Heng couldn't help but feel inferior, as he hadn't possessed such strong abilities at this age in his past life.

  In this way, the counting of wood was left to Dan Dan. He led several other children to count the trees and mark them. In this way, Yang Heng and Xiao Shu could easily sort out the trees according to their needs, without having to calculate every few pieces of wood, which would waste a lot of time.