Once the temperature had dropped slightly, Luo Chong eagerly smashed open the casting mold with Stone. Amid the broken clay, a large, pale-gold axe shimmering with light lay there quietly.
The axe head was slightly larger than that of a fire axe, with a socket reserved for the handle. Lame was put in charge of sharpening the blade, while Luo Chong began preparing the second furnace for casting.
A 4-to-1.5 ruler and Board Saw, a 5-to-2 Carving Knife, a 4-to-1 chisel, a 3-to-1 Planing Knife, a 4-to-1.5 Hand Drill, and a 4-to-1 four-edged spearhead.
The Hand Drill was first cast as a T-shaped bronze strip. Then the drill section was heated in the fire. Once it glowed red, two square bricks were used to clamp the drill, and the copper strip was twisted into a spiral drill bit like wringing a hemp rope. After it cooled, its edge was sharpened, and a wooden handle was fitted on so it could bore holes in wood.
By the time the tribespeople returned in the evening, all the work had stopped. There were four small earthen furnaces—two for smelting and two for purification—but production was extremely low. After a full day, more than half the charcoal had been consumed, while the copper and tin plates produced amounted to only about forty pounds. However, Luo Chong had not brought back much ore either, so for the time being, they could make do.
The golden axe had a blade polished to a brilliant gleam. Once a handle made from a Man-eating Tree sapling was fitted and the joint glued tight with fish bladder, a large golden fire axe—no, a golden Tree Cutting Axe—was complete.
There were also two Board Saws with wooden handles attached, one large and one small: one for two people and one for a single person.
Luo Chong summoned the exhausted logging team. Their Stone Axes had broken four more times that day. Those axes had been seized from the Cannibal Tribe, and now only a few remained.
When Dashu and the others saw the great axe flashing with golden light, they immediately crowded around it. They saw the Board Saws too, but had no idea how to use them.
"W-what is this made of? What a beautiful axe." Dashu's eyes were practically glued to it.
"Hehe, there's this too." Luo Chong chuckled and took out a long spear with a white shaft and golden head. The bronze spearhead was a flat, four-sided pyramid thirty centimeters long, with a round, tubular socket at the end. Fitted with a white wooden shaft coated in fish bladder, it was two and a half meters long and looked murderously imposing.
The tribespeople stared until their eyes went straight. Was this still a spear? It was far too beautiful. Beast Tooth and One-Ear in particular had grown accustomed to using wooden spears lately. Now that they saw this long spear with its golden head, they were practically drooling.
"Chieftain, what is this made of? Are there any more? Do we get one?"
The tribespeople began asking eagerly, though they also knew that if there was only one, it certainly would not be their turn to use it.
Luo Chong smiled and handed Dashu a chunk of brass ore. "It's made from this kind of stone. There isn't much yet. You know we didn't bring back much."
The former members of the Tree Tribe were stunned. They had dug up this kind of stone before, but the finished object looked nothing like the stone. No matter how they looked at it, it didn't seem to have been made from stone.
Wooden Porpoise was the most honest and straightforward. Since there wasn't much, they could simply dig up more. "Chieftain, let's go dig up some more stone. We know where it is."
Luo Chong nodded, but told them that digging this way yielded too little. He first had to make a few things. Once winter had passed, they would be able to dig back a great deal—enough for everyone to have a spear like this. For now, they should just work hard.
The tribespeople calmed down. The Chieftain's word could be trusted. Since he said everyone would have one, then everyone would definitely have one.
Then Luo Chong took them to the wood they had cut down and taught them how to use the Board Saw and Hand Saw.
The two-person Board Saw was set against the end of a log and pulled back and forth. Sawdust drifted down like powder. Before long, they had sawn off a round wooden disk, leaving everyone clicking their tongues in wonder.
They also used the one-handed Hand Saw to clear away branches. A side branch as thick as a wrist came off in less than a minute, and the cut was smooth, unlike the jagged surface left by hacking with a Stone Axe. This greatly increased the wood's utilization, while saving labor and effort and working much faster.
The one-meter-long axe was also very easy to use. Swinging it allowed the user to put their whole body's strength behind it. If Big Strength from the Han Tribe wielded it, a tree as thick as a man's leg could be felled in only a few chops.
Luo Chong inspected the blade. Since it was fairly thick, there was no sign of it chipping.
Once everyone had learned how to use the tools, Luo Chong sent them off to eat and rest.
After the meal, the tribespeople gathered together to listen to Lame talk about smelting copper, while Luo Chong began establishing various units of measurement.
Only with units of measurement could civilization slowly develop in the future and advance toward industrialization—no, toward agricultural development. Otherwise, once they planted rice next year, how would they calculate the area of one mu of land? How would they know how many pounds of grain one mu could produce?
Of course, this was simple enough. As long as they first established a standard of length, everything else would pose no problem.
Luo Chong carved graduations onto the Copper Ruler with the Carving Knife. Taking the width of a little finger's nail as one centimeter, he marked out a one-meter straight ruler. He brushed Molten Tin into the engraved lines, then polished it once more. Thus, he had a Golden Ruler with silver-colored graduations.
Based on the unit of length, the units of area were established as square centimeters, square decimeters, square meters, and 667 square meters to one mu. Anything larger was not needed for now and could wait until later.
With a standard unit of length, volume could be measured and units of capacity established: a liter, or one cubic decimeter; and 125 liters to one dou, or one-eighth of a cubic meter.
Units of weight were even easier. Middle-school physics textbooks had said that one cubic centimeter of fresh water weighed exactly one gram. Half a liter of water was 500 grams, or one jin. One liter of water was one kilogram, and 1,000 kilograms made one ton.
Finding units of angle was easy too. A circle had 360 degrees; all they needed was a standard right angle. Take a Water Jar, tie a Stone to a Hemp String to make a Plumb Bob, and lower the Stone into the water. The angle formed by the vertical Hemp String and the horizontal surface was the perfect right angle. With that right angle, they could use the formula for the sum of a triangle's interior angles to calculate every kind of angle.
Luo Chong had always felt that, as a transmigrator, he already possessed a mature and scientific measurement system, yet still choosing to mess around with obsolete units like cun, chi, and zhang would be nothing but making life miserable for himself.
And as fact had proven, the decimal system of length units was the most conducive to the development of science.
In any case, he was the boss now. He was the one setting the standards of this world, so why make things difficult for himself?
The women's gathering work had stopped. Their Insect Wax was sufficient for now, and all the sisal had been collected. They were now concentrating on weaving rope.
The children were all lying outside the Rabbit Enclosure, watching the rabbits give birth. All three pregnant does had delivered, and they had produced plenty: six or seven kits in each litter. Another twenty little lives had entered the world, nearly doubling the rabbit colony of more than thirty. Luo Chong could not help marveling at the rabbits' reproductive ability.
Lame had a great deal of experience shaping pottery, so he was capable of carving Wax Molds for Luo Chong as well. The round-headed Iron Shovel—or Copper Shovel—was meant to be cast in batches. Whether digging canals or planting fields, it could be used for all sorts of tasks. With Luo Chong's sample sitting there before him, Lame had no trouble copying it.
As for Luo Chong himself, he was studying the most crucial item: the plow. He had had very little contact with one and could only puzzle it out from his limited memories. He also planned to make two sizes: a large one for the Dinophants and a small one for the horses. The one for the horses would be for plowing fields, while the one for the Dinophants would be for digging canals.
They definitely needed the two of them for digging canals. Otherwise, Luo Chong was unwilling to let them eat so much grass for nothing every day.
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Yesterday, I received notice that the trial period would begin on the third, so I'm adjusting the update schedule. Starting tomorrow, updates will be at ten in the morning and six in the evening. (That's what I heard from others—apparently, daytime updates get more readers following the story.)
For now, there will still be two updates a day. During the new-book period, it really isn't possible to update much more than that. However, there will be an extra update on the day of the Spring Festival.
Thank you all for your support over such a long time. The trial period starts tomorrow, so the book's results will depend on all of you. If you have recommendation tickets, remember to save one for me. Qing Shu humbly thanks you!!!
Before you continue