Dressed as a widow, raising cubs, farming and building infrastructure in Ming Dynasty

The days of making red bricks are very busy. The men on the grassland have a lot of energy, but they are a little unfamiliar with this kind of handiwork.

In the entire brick production process, there are two processes that take a relatively long time.

One is to dry. After the adobe is finished, it needs to be stacked neatly and air-dried. This process cannot be exposed to the sun and can only be air-dried naturally, which takes a long time.

Another process is firing. The dried brick blanks are loaded into the brick kiln and fired with coal. This process takes half a month from loading to turning off the kiln and starting the kiln.

Qin Liuxian arranged for people to dig out high-purity yellow clay more than one meter below the surface.

The clay is piled up in a flat circular pit, and an appropriate amount of water is put in to allow it to fully penetrate. Then the oxen is led and trampled back and forth in the pit until the loess is fully combined with the water and has enough viscosity to be shaped. The soil kneading process takes about a day.

The next day, after the kneaded loess has absorbed water, gather the loess into a pile to make raw bricks.

Traditional handmade bricks can only make two bricks at a time.

Because Qin Liu had a large number of cattle and horses from herders as labor force, he upgraded the brick-making tools.

She asked herdsmen who knew carpentry to make several large wooden lattice boards for a total of 100 yuan.

The kneaded clay is put into a wooden grating, filled flat, and covered with a large wooden board. The cattle and horses are pulled over to trample on the large wooden board for a while, and then the clay is filled and tamped. The excess clay is scraped off, and the cattle and horses continue to step on and compact it.

After demoulding, stack the bricks, cover them with felt and wait for them to dry.

During this period, manpower was arranged to dig coal and build brick kilns.

By the time the brick kiln and coal are ready, the bricks will be almost dry.

At this time, you can consider installing a kiln.

Installing the kiln is a process that requires manual cooperation, and there are requirements for the placement of bricks.

When stacking, it is required to mix and match horizontally and vertically. There should be gaps for ventilation at a certain distance. The gaps should be filled with coal. A certain number of bricks and tiles should be matched with a certain amount of coal to ensure that the coal can burn the bricks thoroughly.

It was Qin Liu's first time to bake bricks in a primitive earthen kiln, and he could only do it tentatively.

Loading the kiln takes a full day at a time.

Fortunately, Bals, the Bock champion prince, took the lead personally, and the herdsmen were happily busy with the prince and his fiancée, looking forward to them leading them to a new life.

After the kiln installation is completed, the kiln door, skylight, and floor window must be sealed. The kiln door must be built like a stove, with a firepit and observation window inside.

Heat slowly over low temperature and slow fire for the first two days to prevent cracks from occurring if the temperature rises too quickly.

After the temperature reaches a certain height on the third day, start burning with high heat and check the color change through the observation window. In this way, there is no need to add coal after three days of continuous high-temperature calcination.

After the seventh day of firing, seal the skylight, floor window and kiln door with mud, fill the tank on the top of the kiln with water, use an iron drill to insert cuttings from the tank into the kiln, and let the water in the tank slowly flow into the kiln. Achieve the cooling effect under anaerobic conditions.

After the cooling in the kiln is completed, the kiln door can be opened to take out the fired bricks.

Before the kiln door was opened, a large group of people came to Duolun - Prince Urus with a thousand cavalry who planned to go to the right wing.

Ulus frowned when he saw that the still green grassland was dug up, revealing the black soil, loess, sand and coal, and sneered at Bals and Qin Liu who came to greet him.

He waved his riding crop and joked to Bals: "Are you going to listen to this Han woman and abandon the thousands of years of grazing on our grassland? Digging up the grassland we depend on for a living, you are not afraid of being attacked by Tenge The retribution?"

Bals's face turned cold: "Urus, she is my fiancée and should get the respect you deserve. What are you doing here?"

Urus looked at them with a half-smile and waved.A guard next to Urus said proudly: "The Great Khan personally ennobled our prince as a right-wing [-]-household farmer, respectfully called 'Abahai'.

We, Aba Hai Jinong, are about to go to the right wing to rule the tribes of Dimut, Aseb and Ordos. "

Qin Liu knew that Jinong means prince in Mongolian.Bars had told her before that the almsman system was a tradition of the original Mongolian rule, and the almshouse was generally held by the eldest son of the Great Khan.

This confirms the possibility that Urus will inherit the throne in the future.

Bals's face turned gloomy. He frowned and slowly glanced at the elite Urus soldiers not far away, feeling a bad premonition in his heart.

"Urus, Grand Master Yibuza and the others are not sheep. I just refused to marry his daughter, so I was hunted down for thousands of miles.

You want to be their leader, how can he be obedient? "

Urus crouched slightly and leaned on the horse, looking condescendingly at Bars standing in front of his horse, with a hint of ridicule at the corner of his mouth.

"I don't want to assassinate the Grand Master's daughter. No matter how many people want to marry me, they can't get her. Only you, a little fool, refuse to marry me. You want to marry this little widow who has nothing."

Seeing that Urus didn't listen to his words at all, Bals was a little anxious: "The number of your soldiers is a bit small. When you go to the right wing, you must pay attention to safety and don't let the guards stay away from you!"

Ulus was stunned for a moment, a trace of guilt flashing in his eyes.

During the last shaman incident, he promised Bals to send soldiers to the scene to maintain order, but he broke his promise in the end.

Bals ignored the past grudges and still cared about his own safety. It was impossible not to be moved by him.

Now that the dust has settled, Bals is just a small Qianhu, with a lot of mud and dust stuck to his clothes. He looks like an ordinary craftsman, but how can he have the dignity and dignity of a prince?
And he was Abhayjinun, the future heir to the throne of Khan, and his guard against Bals disappeared.

Urus dismounted and patted Bals's thin shoulder, and hugged him again.

"Do you want to go to the right wing with me and bring your two children back?"

Bals looked back at the brick kiln that was still smoking not far away, hesitated and said, "I still have something to do here. I'll go there when I'm done."

Qin Liu is a Han Chinese and a woman. If she comes forward to lead the herdsmen in work, no one may be willing to listen to her.

With him as the prince and Bock champion, he can suppress those unruly and stubborn people.

Urus felt a lot more comfortable.

As a younger brother, he didn't obey women's orders, so he was still saved.

He didn't stay long and immediately continued on his way with his soldiers.

Qin Liu also felt slightly guilty.

For the sake of his son, Bals refused to marry or assassinate the grand master's daughter, which shows that he has great affection for his children.

Now he didn't follow Urus to pick up his son on the right wing, but it was because of the ongoing house building project here.

The cause of building a house was still herself. She had to speed up and complete the important task of building a house as soon as possible.

The brick kiln was cooling down, and Qin Liu led the people to make cement again. (End of chapter)