Perhaps it had just been an illusion.
The prince did not pay much attention to the lighthouse. Castel had too many things that interested him, such as the cathedral before them.
"Before coming here, I had heard of this cathedral's grandeur, but seeing it in person still left me amazed." The prince sighed as he looked toward Castel Cathedral.
"It does not actually have any particularly praiseworthy design. It is purely a functional structure. During the deep-sea war, we urgently needed permanent fortifications, so we hastily built this. The whole thing was poured from reinforced concrete—um, something similar to cement. At this thickness, it could withstand bombardment from a battleship's main guns—though we currently have neither battleships nor main guns."
The prince nodded.
It was just cement. He had seen it before.
Rhine's architects often liked using this easily moldable material to decorate buildings.
It was simple to prepare and convenient to pour, but its drawback was that it was too brittle. Forget using it for construction—even as decoration, it was rather unsuitable, easily unable to endure sun and rain.
This stuff could be used to build structures?
What the prince did not know was that the cement he had seen in Rhine and the concrete Theus spoke of were practically two entirely different things.
The cement found in Rhine was still quite primitive. It was used more as a bonding agent between stones, somewhat like the mortar used by the Romans, mainly composed of limestone, sand, volcanic ash, and the like.
Other than being fairly moldable, its strength and every other property were completely incomparable to modern cement.
The process used by Theus's side, on the other hand, was quite mature. Limestone treated through firing and other processes underwent chemical reactions as it hardened, while concrete took this a