Diversion River Completed

Chapter 46: Diversion River Completed (Spring Festival Bonus 25)

Having identified the problem, development of the improved model began immediately. The main changes were lengthening the wheel hub and being more precise when drilling the axle holes. The smaller the error, the more stable the cart would be, preventing it from wobbling.

Another issue was increasing the number of spokes. It wasn't that Luo Chong didn't want to add more spokes, but without a lathe, making spokes relied solely on chopping and carving with knives and axes. This was too slow and became the bottleneck in wheel production, and it was impossible to guarantee consistent quality for each spoke.

Later, Luo Chong simply gave up on making his own spokes and directly used the sharp thorns of the Man-eating Tree, essentially using arrow shafts as spokes.

However, those things were quite thin, so they had to increase the number to improve support capacity. He got this idea from bicycle wheels. Bicycle spokes are even thinner, similar to skewers for roasting meat, but a single bicycle wheel has at least several hundred such thin spokes and can support two people without a problem.

So, the production speed of the second cart was much faster. Although the number of spokes increased to 32, they were all natural wooden rods that just needed to be cut to the same length before installation.

While the speed increased, the support force wasn't enough. The arrow shafts were only about 1 cm in diameter. Using them to support the cart's structure was fine when empty, but it didn't work when loaded with heavy objects. It appeared thin and not sturdy enough. However, the wheel hub of the second cart was very successful; it no longer wobbled.

By the time they got to the third cart, the wheels had double-layer spokes. The number of spokes on one wheel directly changed from 32 to 64, arranged in a double-layer structure connecting the hub and the outer rim. The effect was naturally as good as it could get.

Thus, the third cart was designated as the mass-production model and they began making them in batches. The first batch would consist of 30 carts. Combining the men and women, there were certainly dozens of adult laborers available. These wheelbarrows were specifically for hauling dirt and would definitely be used extensively in the future, especially when building the city walls. Making more now was better safe than sorry, and it also served to accumulate experience for making larger carts.

The sharp thorns of the Man-eating Tree were simply inexhaustible. Just walking around under a Man-eating Tree with a Straw Target on your head would cause many to fall off.

The carpentry work was still done by three people for the time being, but having eliminated the most troublesome spoke step, the cart-building speed was still very fast. They were equipping the Engineering Team at a rate of three small carts every two days.

With the Wheelbarrows, Bronze Shovels, Giant Plows, and two adorable babies who loved stomping in mud, the first phase of the Diversion River project was also progressing rapidly. The brick-making work, which had previously slowed down the progress, also sped up thanks to the Wheelbarrows.

It wasn't until the 18th day of construction that a long trench, 700 meters long and at least 4 meters deep, appeared before Luo Chong.

Luo Chong was naturally overjoyed. He hadn't expected the project to progress so quickly. However, the tribesmen didn't understand why they were digging this long trench. Most of them just thought Luo Chong was digging for the mud bricks, but they didn't understand Luo Chong's true purpose.

After all, there were still two meters of the Diversion River that hadn't been dug through to connect with the small river, so there was no water in it yet. In the eyes of most people, it was just a deep trench.

Although the Han Tribe didn't lack food at the moment, the tribesmen still had quite a few complaints about Luo Chong's arrangement of not gathering food and digging dirt to make mud bricks every day. The former Baldy Tribe members were the most vocal, and although they didn't dare to openly oppose it, they couldn't stop discussing it privately.

The Han Tribe members naturally listened to Luo Chong unconditionally. They were already used to Luo Chong's frequent strange actions, and no matter what Luo Chong did, it would ultimately benefit the tribe.

Luo Chong didn't care about this at all. He believed that any explanation was futile. Could you explain farming to a group of primitives? They only cared about whether there was food; they wouldn't think about anything else. If it wasn't related to food, then forget it.

This was indeed the case. Luo Chong was forcefully accelerating this evolutionary process. Without him, who knows how many years it would have taken for them to develop to the agricultural era on their own.

The normal history of human development should start with mastering the use of fire. Eating cooked food can promote brain development. Later, humans mastered stone weapons and learned the method of cooperative hunting, leading to the mass extinction of wild animals. As edible things became scarcer, humans had to find new food sources.

During this period, humans learned to cultivate crops or raise animals to obtain a large and stable food supply.

Humans who did not learn cultivation and raising animals were swallowed by the long river of human evolutionary history. They either starved to death and were eliminated by nature, or they were annexed by agricultural and nomadic tribes and thus became members of them.

And Luo Chong's tribe was still in an era without stone weapons and without knowing how to hunt cooperatively. When he first arrived, the Hunting Team was still chasing after prey with wooden sticks.

But this doesn't mean that the humans here are stupid and can't do farming and raising livestock. They just lacked a catalyst for change, and Luo Chong was that catalyst. That's why, after only two months here, he directly accelerated the process to the livestock farming model. By next year, they will even be planting Rice.

Although the tribesmen don't understand Luo Chong's methods yet, they can't be blamed. They will see the results later. Next year, they will all be wearing rabbit fur clothes, eating Rice and fish, and rabbit meat every day, holding Bronze weapons, and going out in Sable Antelope carts. At that time, he doesn't believe they will still say Luo Chong is bad.

The river digging work has completely stopped, and the tribesmen have returned to their normal routines. The men have gone back to logging. There's no such thing as too much wood. Whether it's for building the city, making carts, building boats, or building houses in the future, a large amount of wood will be needed. Moreover, freshly cut wet wood cannot be used; it needs to be dried.

The women have gone back to gathering food, and they even went fishing. There's nothing Luo Chong can do to stop them. They believe it's okay to have leftover food, but it's absolutely unacceptable to have too little.

If they insist on finding something to do, then let them. At most, they'll just eat like crazy in the winter.

The 30 Wheelbarrows have also been completed. Now, Mutong and Wooden Porpoise are building larger carts under Luo Chong's guidance, carts that can be pulled by Sable Antelope, in preparation for large-scale copper mining in the future.

The design of the new carts is based on European four-wheeled carts. Both ancient Chinese and Western carts in the early days were two-wheeled, with two long shafts attached to the horse's back. The ride was very bumpy, and it put a great burden on the animals.

With two-wheeled carts, the animal had to bear not only the forward pulling force but also the weight of the entire cart. Four-wheeled carts are different. Even without a horse, the cart can bear the load itself, and the horse pulling the cart only needs to provide the forward force, directly reducing the burden by more than half.

Furthermore, the new carts will have a large number of Bronze parts added to key areas, considering the load capacity and service life.

Speaking of Bronze, the ore Luo Chong brought back this time has been smelted. There is now a reserve of over 400 Jin of copper and tin, not including the weight of items already cast. These four hundred-plus Jin are all in gold and silver plates.

These days, Luo Chong is also making Bronze alloys and attempting to forge Plows for normal farming.

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