"Keep running analyses on the soil and bricks!"
"After clay is fired into bricks, why haven't you taken the changes in its chemical properties into account?"
"Pick up the pace! If we still haven't gotten results by the time they've built the kiln over there, your papers will be worthless!"
Professor Zhang drove the students—and the researchers from the Xing Kiln archaeological team—into such a frantic state that they wished they could work eighteen hours a day.
Even so, they could barely keep up with Shen Le's pace. Whenever Professor Zhang saw Shen Le wandering around the construction site, he would glare at him in displeasure, grab him, and drag him over to reinforce the experimental team.
Even then, they only just managed to keep pace with the work. On the very day the experiments were completed, they finally settled on the design of the dragon kiln and found suitable brickmaking clay and a clay slurry formula—
Yes, after the bricks of a porcelain kiln had been laid, the interior of the brick kiln still needed to be plastered with a thick layer of specially prepared clay slurry to seal it and prevent air leaks.
Different types of refractory bricks required different types of slurry. Even with the same soil, how much water to add, what steps to use in mixing it, and what exactly counted as "fine-grained and highly adhesive"...
Every detail had to be tested by hand, step by step. Even if they had done it before in Ganzhou, a different region meant different soil.
Fortunately, Shen Le's side had experienced masons who had personally built traditional dragon kilns.
They also had porcelain-firing masters deeply familiar with ancient kilns, capable of serving as the soul of an entire firing team—the kiln-firing masters.
And, more importantly, they had the