The Engineering Command Post unanimously decided to pour the bridge piers. Digging prefabricated wells and piling up dams every day without seeing anything take shape made them feel that the day the project would be completed was still far off—perhaps they would never finish building this bridge in their lifetimes.
This situation was a tremendous blow to the entire Engineering Team, especially the captured slaves. They could not even see any hope of the bridge being completed and themselves being released without charge.
But if they could pour a bridge pier now, having one standing there would at least give everyone a little more confidence and let them know that their efforts had not been in vain.
Jiao Ce agreed with their plan as well, so everyone began preparing for the pouring of the bridge piers.
The first thing needed to pour a bridge pier was a large quantity of sand and gravel. However, there was no suitable source of sand nearby. The sand used to make concrete absolutely could not be sea sand, because sea sand contained salt and was highly alkaline, which would damage the concrete's structure.
Therefore, after everyone discussed the matter, they unanimously decided to pump sand from the two river mouths of the Liuyang River and Clearwater River on Qiongzhou Island.
The mouths of both rivers contained abundant river sand, and they were still freshwater zones. With just two sand-pumping machines, they could pump all the sand in those rivers ashore.
Jiao Ce happened to have brought two high-powered water pumps for pumping sand. They only needed to install them on two ships and send several sand-transport ships along with them. Then they could continuously deliver freshwater river sand to the bridge construction site. The work would also suitably clear the silted-up channels of both