The big man has a living father

Chapter 98: Steel Behemoth ( words updated)
Time flies by quickly.

It has been two months since winter began.

The city of Chang'an is also changing rapidly.

Liu Che recently discovered something strange.

Or it could be said that Liu Che's Embroidered Uniform Censor discovered something strange and reported it to Liu Che.

The translation team formed by Ying Gong has not bought any paper recently.

In Chang'an City, there are now seventeen translation teams, some openly and some secretly, all of which are monitored by Emperor Liu Che's Embroidered Uniform Censors. These people are really easy to investigate.

A large number of literati gathered for a long time and purchased a large amount of paper.

But recently, the Yingong team has not purchased any paper.

At first, Liu Che thought that Ying Gong's team had given up and would not translate the scriptures anymore, but soon the Embroidered Uniform Censor brought back a message that Ying Gong's team was still gathered together and waste paper was thrown away every day.

So Liu Che asked the Embroidered Uniform Censor to allocate more manpower to secretly investigate Ying Gong's team.

In the Prince's Palace, Liu Che and Liu Ju were playing the game of pitching pots.

A masked imperial censor in embroidered robes came quickly and said, "Your Majesty."

Because of the floor heating, the temperature in the Prince's Palace was very high. Liu Che was sweating a little from playing. He put his hands on his waist and breathed heavily: "Ah! Speak."

The Imperial Censor in Embroidered Uniform bowed his head and said: "I have already found out that the paper for the translation team of Lord Ying was sent by Lord Huo Hai, the Prince's attendant."

When he heard his second cousin mentioned, Liu Ju stopped playing tossing pots and turned around to watch.

Liu Che: "Oh? How much did you give?"

The Embroidered Uniform Censor was a little hesitant to say anything and just made a gesture.

Liu Che picked up the water and asked, "One pile?"

The Imperial Censor in Embroidered Robes shook his head.

Liu Che was puzzled: "First base?"

The Imperial Censor in Embroidered Robes shook his head.

Liu Che didn't care: "One box? Just give it as a gift."

While talking, he drank water.

The masked censor in embroidered robes said: "One cart."

"Puff!" Liu Che spat out a mouthful of water, forming a uniform mist of water.

"Cough cough cough~"

"How many?"

The masked censor in embroidered robes said: "One carriage, one new-style carriage!"

Liu Che put down the bowl, thought for a moment, and was still a little angry: "Didn't I tell him that even if we expand production, we can't let the translators get too much white paper?!!!"

"He actually gave Mr. Ying a car?"

"Has he forgotten my order?"

Liu Ju tilted his head and thought for a moment: "Father."

Liu Che looked down at Liu Ju.

Liu Ju tilted his head and said, "Is it possible that Brother Hai's view of not being too much is not the same as your view of not being too much, Father?"

Because Liu Che often lived in the Prince's Palace recently, Huo Guang also often stayed in the Prince's Palace.

In order to distinguish them, Liu Ju called Huo Hai "Brother Hai" and Huo Guang "Brother Guang".

"Brother Hai told me that for the nobles, a million coins is just a small amount of money, not much. But for the good family men in Chang'an who are not soldiers, it is already a lot. And for the people in the border areas of the empire, even if all the people in a village are combined, they can't raise 100,000 coins."

Liu Che: "You mean, Huo Hai still remembers my will, but what he thinks is different from what I think?"

"I think a cart of paper is a lot, but for him, a cart of paper is very little?"

This is what Liu Ju meant.

Liu Che thought for a while and said: "Let's go to the paper mill and take a look."

……

At the paper mill, the manager sent by the princess stood aside and watched obediently.

Everything he saw left Liu Che dumbfounded.

It’s not like Liu Che had not been to the paper mill before.

Not long before the paper mill was built, a group of officials were inspecting Chang'an County together, and someone wanted to visit the paper mill.

At that time, Liu Che didn't want the officials to see it.

At that time Huo Hai said to let them watch it casually.

After that visit, the paper mill has been recruiting staff.

Every time Liu Che listened to the staffing report of a paper mill, he would estimate the scale of the paper mill in his mind.

In Liu Che's mind, a paper mill was a group of people peeling tree bark and then soaking the bark in a pool.

After soaking for many days, take out the bark and steam it, then pound it in a stone mortar and then cook it again.

Until a lot of wood residue, which Huo Hai called fibers, was integrated into the water.

Then, it is brewed in another pool with specially prepared water.

Finally, in a pool, a group of people carried a wooden frame with a piece of cloth stretched tautly, and swung the fibers in the water, evenly dropping them onto the cloth.

Then drain the water and it becomes a piece of paper.

After taking out this piece of paper, stick it on a flat wall and let it dry slowly, and it becomes a piece of paper.

But at this moment, this is not the case at all!

At this time the area of ​​the paper mill was very huge!
There was a rumbling sound everywhere.

Liu Che saw someone peeling the bark of a tree, but instead of leaving the bark, he left the wood!

In the past, people used tree bark to soak the tenderest layer of bark to make paper.

And now, it's wood!
An iron shaft was connected to a large gear, and the gear was passed through another gear and another shaft. After a series of mechanisms, it passed through a high brick-concrete wall.

On the other side of the wall is a huge waterwheel, which is located on the Wei River and is driven by the river.

The waterwheel drives the shaft to rotate, the shaft drives the gears, the gears drive a series of mechanisms, and finally fall on an iron platform.

The hard, huge tree, as thick as an embrace, was squeezed into pieces by the blunt-edged knife driven by the rotating shaft.

Because the platform was not flat, the wooden wheel that was broken by the gate rolled down.

Landed on a platform below.

It is still the same linkage system, and the power is also derived from the waterwheel shaft.

The wooden wheel was directly chopped into sixteen pieces.

After each gate, an iron rod would sweep along the platform to sweep the wood chips into the frame on the ground, and then the iron rod would bounce back.

At this time, a new wooden wheel rolled down and was chopped into pieces again.

The iron rod swept out again, sweeping the wood chips into the frame.

Liu Che still remembers that when he was a child, he would also clamor to play when he saw eunuchs chopping wood.

Then I spent an afternoon splitting half of the frame.

And now, with a loud bang, a huge tree was cut into firewood that could not be thinner!

All of this is just child's play in the industrial age and can be considered small workshop machinery.

But for people of this era, these huge and powerful monsters are too shocking!
At this time, the baskets were full, and a large group of people came, two people each, pulling the wood from the baskets. They walked up different steps to reach the top of the ten-foot-high barrel, and then poured the wood chips into the barrel.

Liu Che looked in the direction they were going and saw thousands of barrels that were several feet high. It seemed that all of these barrels came out of iron gates.

Liu Che felt that if the iron from these barrels could be stripped off and made into weapons, he could arm the entire Yulin Guard.

Liu Che walked up to the stage and took a look. There was no water in the bucket, but some kind of black-gray potion that had been diluted with something. It looked a bit like Chinese medicine and was a bit pungent. The wood chips were in it.

In the distance, iron barrels containing soaked wood chips were being pulled to a farther area by a group of workers.

Only then did Liu Che discover that there were rollers under all the wooden barrels, and the rollers were stuck in special tracks. It turned out that the tracks were made of cement and bricks.

These iron barrels are so big that even with rollers, it takes eight people to drag them.

In that place, a large number of stoves were burning, and on top of them were iron barrels that were pulled over.

There are hundreds of such stoves.

The person who burns charcoal is always burning charcoal, the person who gives orders is always giving orders, and the person who pulls the bucket is always pulling the bucket.

Further away, there was a huge iron barrel where the food had already been cooked.

The contents of the iron barrels were poured into a large pool with a water filtration device. The boiled wood chips remained in place while the water flowed to another place.

Liu Che could tell at a glance that those people were collecting the boiled water. The water should be useful, otherwise it would be directly drained away through the sewer.

That place was too far away, and Liu Che had to go forward to see it clearly.

When he got closer, Liu Che saw that the wood chips from the cooking were rolling from the iron barrel wheels to a lower position in front and below because of the height difference.

As it rolls, wood chips roll away on top and water flows away from the bottom.

The wood chips rolled onto a thick iron platform, above which was suspended an iron block that looked to weigh a thousand pounds.

"boom!"

"boom!"

"boom!"

The iron block fell with a bang, hit the wood chips, then naturally rose up, and then fell with a bang again.

The shock these things brought to Liu Che was just as great as the shock this sound brought to his ears.

Liu Che looked back and saw through the wall and the window that the other end of the shaft was on the Wei River. As expected, these suspended iron blocks were also driven by the shaft and the waterwheel, but it was a different waterwheel.

Liu Che went forward again.

Keep watching.

The wood residue produced by steaming had long been beaten into a pulpy fiber mass, or paste, by hammers.

A group of workers used spades to spread paste onto a piece of black leather that was ten feet wide.

This thing is like a jade belt around the waist, wrapping around the entire iron platform.

Liu Che looked over there and discovered that the pitch-black skin was actually moving forward.

This simple woven net made of thread dyed with eucommia gum and covered with a tape wrapped in fine cloth and eucommia gum is a conveyor belt that cannot be any simpler.

But it left Liu Che and Liu Ju dumbfounded.

However, this one was finally not driven by a waterwheel, but by horses.

The reason is that after the goods are laid out, the workers whip the horses, and the horses pull, driving the wooden beams, turning the iron shafts and rolling the iron barrels, which can drive the black belts.

The belt turns, carrying the paste forward.

In front, two large iron wheels were also turning.

The paste was squeezed into a thin, even layer.

The end of this belt does not mean the end, there is another one, but the bottom one is not made of belt, but iron.

Below the iron belt is the stove, which is heating the rotating iron.

Smoke was coming out of the paper and it was quickly drying up.

When the paper is about to deform due to drying, there is another pressing table in front. The rolling belt and the pressing table above press the paper flatter and drier.

These equipments were very large, and Liu Che had to walk a mile along the river before he could see the entire production process.

There is no way. This thing needs to be made simple and large. To make it miniaturized, the current technology is not enough.

If someone else comes, there may not be enough land to open a factory.

But Princess Wei Chang doesn’t need this little land.
The shock that these huge equipment gave to Liu Che was difficult to erase.

It was not until Liu Che saw that the finished paper was cut into small sheets by a guillotine instead of being cut by hand that he was certain that the amount of paper produced in this place was far beyond his imagination.

Liu Che: "Did Huo Hai come up with all this?"

The paper mill manager lowered his head and said, "This... Lord Huo doesn't usually come here. This was done by Dean Yang and Tang Si'er."

"It's still in trial operation. The paper mill has updated a lot of new things in the past two months. New things are delivered every day, and the process will be improved accordingly. But I heard that this set of things is too bulky. They are trying to make them smaller and more practical."

Liu Che thought for a moment: "President Yang? Could it be the vice president of the research institute that Huo Hai mentioned to establish?"

"Tang Si'er, who is it?"

Steward: "Tang Si'er is a blacksmith... I heard that he is actually a Mohist, and that Dean Yang is a great scholar."

Liu Che didn't care about these things at all, but was concerned about where the paper went: "I don't care whether he is a giant or a dwarf, what about the extra paper you produce?"

Soon, Liu Che saw the warehouse as he wished.

In the warehouse, all the cut papers were wrapped into sizes of ten centimeters thick, sixty centimeters wide and forty centimeters long.

Such paper packages are stacked one after another, with ten making a bundle.

Ten bundles are stacked into a pile.

One hundred stacks make up a rectangular storage area, ten in length and ten in width.

There are aisles between the storage areas, and other than that, the entire warehouse is filled with such storage areas.

Liu Che pointed at the papers and said, "These are all papers? So many?!!!"

Manager: “Still…”

Liu Che: "What else?"

Manager: "There are ten more warehouses like this..."

Looking at the paper, Liu Che was still thinking, isn't it funny that he asked his Imperial College translation team to save paper?

This paper is used to cover the entire road, and there is plenty of it!
But on second thought, it makes sense.

I originally thought that paper was made from the thin inner bark of the tree.

Turns out, it’s the tree trunks that are made of paper!

There was hardly any waste of the tree trunks, all of it turned into paper.

Considering the level of tree consumption here, how can there be less paper? !
"There is so much paper that we can use it to wipe our butts," Liu Che sighed.

----

It seems that many people don’t like the crosstalk written earlier.

Later in the plot the fight begins, the situation becomes more and more tense, the conflict becomes stronger and more intense, and it becomes less funny.

I originally wanted to write something specifically to make everyone laugh, but it seems these chapters were not written well.

The story later on is more of a happy one, and the jokes will be less funny.

By the way, I want to try updating to 10,000 words, because the number of collections hasn't increased much after it was put on the shelves. Can I give it a try starting today? If the subscription rate is lowered, I will change it back.

Please vote for monthly support!
(End of this chapter)