NOVEL WEB Chapter 42
They understood building houses, but what on earth was cement?
Was this thing used for building houses?
Why had they never heard of it?
Upon seeing their expressions, Lin Beifan knew what puzzled them and chuckled, “Cement is indeed used for building houses! It’s a product synthesized by mixing iron slag, quicklime, and clay after calcination!”
“Using cement to build a house, if done quickly, can take only three to four days to harden, and its sturdiness is no less than that of our imperial palace compound. Understand?”
The two of them gasped in astonishment.
“A house can be built in three to four days, and its sturdiness is comparable to the imperial palace compound?”
“How is that possible? Stop joking around.”
“I know you don’t believe it, but soon you will understand!”
Lin Beifan handed over the freshly written paper to Heshen, instructing him, “Follow the method outlined here and immediately organize manpower to produce cement, the more the better! Once the cement is made, I will teach you how to build houses!”“Yes, Your Majesty!” Heshen respectfully received the paper filled with writing.
Although he still had many questions in his mind, seeing that the emperor did not wish to elaborate, he refrained from asking further.
The tasks commanded by the emperor, no matter how trivial, were of great importance.
After returning, Heshen quickly gathered his people and, following the instructions on the paper, produced cement.
Additionally, in accordance with Lin Beifan’s requests, he also made many brick molds.
……
Three days later, Heshen entered the palace once again: “Your Majesty, the cement and molds have been made!”
Lin Beifan put down the fruit in his hand, clapped his hands, and said, “Good, then let’s start building the house now! Call some craftsmen over, I will teach them how to use cement to build houses!”
Half an hour later, Lin Beifan and the others arrived at an open space outside the city.
“Watch carefully, I will only teach this once!”
“Yes, Your Majesty!”
Everyone bowed and obeyed.
“First, mix the sand and cement together, it must be thoroughly mixed!”
“After the sand, stone, and cement are fully mixed, pour in water and stir until even! The ratio of sand, stone, cement, and water is…”
“The resulting slurry is poured into molds to form mud bricks!”
“After these mud bricks are dried, they become as hard as our common red bricks and green bricks and can be used for building houses!”
Of course, during this process, Lin Beifan was mainly just talking while the people below were busy working.
……
A day passed, and the main task of the day was the production of mud bricks.
“Once they are dried, they can be used for building houses! The sun has been shining brightly these past two days, so they should be ready to use the day after tomorrow!”
……
On the third day, Lin Beifan came again.
“The mud bricks have dried and can be used to build houses! You are all skilled craftsmen, so you should know how to build, right?”
“The only thing to mention is that this mud can be used as an adhesive between the bricks, and it’s very strong…”
Under Lin Beifan’s guidance, the craftsmen began to build the house with the mud bricks.
In about a day’s time, they had finished laying the four walls.
“Let it dry for a day, and once the cement is completely dry, we can start constructing the roof!”
Two days later, Lin Beifan came again and found that the cement in the walls had completely dried, becoming extremely hard.
“Now we can put up the roof! Install the beams, and after the beams, lay the cement boards…”
The workers carried several long and thick wooden beams, placing them into the notches above the walls to form the horizontal beams.
Then, they laid the pre-dried cement boards on top of the beams.
“Look, isn’t this a big and sturdy house that’s been well-built?” Lin Beifan said with a smile.
Everyone was very astonished.
“Really… it’s been built!”
“And it only took 5 days! Such a fast construction speed!”
“Yes, the usual construction time takes about 10 days to half a month, but now it’s done in 5 days!”
“A miracle! No… it should be called a divine feat!”
Lin Beifan laughed and said, “Actually, it could be even faster because we spent two days making cement bricks! If we had the cement bricks ready to build the house, we could have built the walls on the first day, let them dry on the second day, and put up the roof on the third day. It could have been completely built in just three days!”
Everyone nodded repeatedly, utterly astonished in their hearts.
At that moment, Heshen arrived in front of the cement house, pulled out a knife, and chopped down with a bit of force.
The result was that the structure remained unscathed.
Then he exerted twice as much strength, only to find that it still could not be penetrated.
Next, he used three-tenths, four-tenths, five-tenths of his strength…
It wasn’t until he used six-tenths of his strength that he managed to leave some marks.
But his knife had already become notched.
Heshen exclaimed in amazement, “Such a hard wall! This humble servant had to exert 60% of my strength just to leave some marks! The robustness of this wall is no less than that of the walls of the imperial palace courtyard!”
“Really? Is it that sturdy?”
“Then I, too, shall give it a try!”
Everyone took turns trying and found that, indeed, as Heshen had said, the house was extremely sturdy.
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