Elven settlers

Chapter 391 Cementitious Materials
When they were about to exit the tunnel, Rock suddenly stopped the team.

"just?"

The Abo monster who was leading the way turned back to look at him with some doubts.

"Don't rush out now, let Geranium come in and take a hide."

It's one thing to break through the shadows in your heart, it's another to act cautiously.

Before his strength surpassed that giant beast, Rock felt it was better to proceed with caution.

After listening to Rock's instructions, the Arbo monster called Geranium into the tunnel. Sure enough, a moment later, a deafening roar could be clearly heard on this side of the hills.

But the more the beast roared, the less Rock feared it.

The white reef stolen by Rock and the elves was obviously not enough to anger the giant beast. There was only one reason why the other party was so angry, and that was because it regarded them as provocateurs.

In nature, the owner of a territory only becomes angry when he perceives a threatening rival intruding.

It was obvious that Rock's strength had reached a level that the giant beast could not ignore.

"Let it roar. Time is on our side. I have a hunch that this guy will be dealt with next year."

In the dark tunnel, Rock and the elves were hiding motionless, but their words did not fall behind at all.

The roar did not last long, and it seemed that the giant beast also felt that such behavior slightly damaged its power.

Rock and the elves waited for a while, when no sound was heard at all.

He sent the Abo monster with the best concealment ability to go out and investigate to make sure that the giant beast had indeed left, and then came out of the tunnel with the elves.

Of course, they didn't forget to bring the huge white reef.

Taking advantage of the cover of night, Nidoking and Nidoqueen carried the white reef to a cart specially modified by Rock before setting off, and worked together with Geranium to pull it back to the camp.

When they saw the lights flickering on the tails of the sleeping Meli sheep and Rongrong sheep as they breathed, Rock and the others were completely relieved.

"Everyone has worked hard. Please rest quickly. We can get up later tomorrow."

Although tonight's theft operation was very exciting, it actually didn't take too much time. It was just a little delayed when encountering the giant creature in the bay.

There were still nearly four hours until dawn, so Rock asked Nidoking and Nidoqueen to throw the stolen white rocks into the river to soak, and then continued to rest with the elves.

Although he acted calmly at the time, this trip actually took a lot of concentration and energy, so Rock and the elves all needed a good night's sleep.

He slept until dawn. Hei Lujia, who had always liked to lick Rock's cheek while he was sleeping, rarely woke him up this time.

When he opened his eyes, he looked at his watch and found that it was already 09:30 in the morning.

"Well, everyone is up."

Feeling that his body was full of strength again, Rock stretched greatly, and then his stomach suddenly growled.

He rubbed his belly, looked up, and found that the elves had already caught the prey, and they were all looking at him eagerly, so he quickly got up to wash and cook.After breakfast, Rock couldn't wait to take Abo and the others out and fish out the white rocks that had been soaked in the Jingkong River all night.

This white reef that took him and the elves a lot of effort to obtain is the cementing material he has been planning for a long time.

The so-called cementitious material is a substance that can harden from a plastic state into a hard solid and can also bind other building materials. It is an essential building material in construction.

The most typical cementing material is cement. In fact, Roque initially considered using finished cement.

But because of the geographical location of his ranch, the cost of buying cement from outside and transporting it in is really high.

Maybe the cement he needs to build a greenhouse can be bought from outside, but his ranch will definitely not just build a greenhouse, and there will definitely be a lot of construction projects in the future.

If all these projects were to purchase cement from outside and then come back, the cost of doing so would indeed be huge.

Therefore, Rock planned to find a way to make a cementitious material by using local materials.

And coincidentally, he had seen a related video before traveling through time.The video talks about how in ancient times, people in coastal areas would burn shells to make a building material called "oyster ash".

The general principle is not difficult to understand, which is to prepare calcium hydroxide from calcium oxide. There may be some other substances that play a role.

It is said that the performance of this building material is superior to lime, so Rock is going to take this opportunity to build a greenhouse to try it.

When he thought of this method, Rock immediately recalled the white reefs composed of oyster shells he found on the coast the last time he stole sea water.

This prompted him and the elves to commit theft last night.

"It's just a shell reef anyway. At worst, if it fails, just go to Sunshine Town to buy cement. And these shells are the shells of the giant tongue oyster. The elf materials should be better. Maybe the materials produced have better performance than cement. It’s superior.”

After making up his mind, Rock took the elves into action.

After soaking this huge shell reef overnight, the salt on the surface has been basically removed.

However, just to be on the safe side, Rock asked Chenglong to wash it again with a water gun to ensure that every tiny ravine on the reef was washed in place.

Next it’s time to calcine, but you can’t just burn it in one piece.

Geranium used a chopper to cut the shell reef into pieces the size of basketballs, and then Rock dug a shallow pit in the ground.

He spread a layer of charcoal on the bottom of the pit, then placed broken reef blocks on top of the charcoal, covered the reef blocks with charcoal again, and finally let Heiluga ignite all the charcoal with jet flames.

However, the main function of these charcoals is to heat the reef blocks more evenly and maintain the temperature. In fact, the main force of the calcination is the jet flame of Heiluga.

Under high temperatures, the gray-white reef blocks quickly dry out and become brittle, and a large amount of white smoke emerges from the surface.

After burning for a full three hours, all the charcoal was burned to ashes, and the rocks of different sizes inside were completely reduced to powder.

Rock took a small shovel and carefully shoveled away the charcoal ash on the surface of the reef powder, and then used an empty bucket to collect the burned reef powder.

These reef powder residues cannot be used immediately and need to be processed in the final step.

(End of this chapter)