Chapter 12 Moving Creek 1

In the past few days, in addition to arranging more people to patrol the city in military uniforms, they also used the night to transport the people and materials of the city to a place called a stream.

I took time to visit that place in person, about 40 miles southeast of Juzhang City. The mountain there is higher than Yu Qiujin described. In addition to the stream, there are several lakes at the bottom of the mountain. Surrounded by mountains and rivers is a good choice for building fortifications. What's better is that there was originally a cottage on the mountain, and I don't know which strong local bully has occupied it.

This cottage was not abandoned after the war, but for many years. The wall was somewhat damaged, and many houses were in disrepair. However, the storage, defense and other facilities that ordinary cottages should have are quite perfect.

After selecting this place as a place to hoard troops, Yu Qiujin led the soldiers and the people to cut down the surrounding forests and built a new camp according to the mountain situation. Based on the camp built of wood and bamboo, the wall is being built with rammed earth day and night.

rammed earth is a wall-building technology handed down from ancient times. It is said that the early walls were built of masonry or soil. Masonry is rare and laborious to build; soil is easy to build, but the walls are not strong.

The rammed soil method is to put the soil with high viscosity in a fixed mold, continuously hit it with heavy objects, squeeze away the cracks and air in the soil, and make the soil firmly join together. The hardness and strength of the soil made in this way are comparable to masonry.

It is not difficult to build a wall with rammed earth. Because we have a lot of wood in the stream, which can make all kinds of ramsoil tools. From molds to pestle, everything is available. The most difficult thing is the material of the soil.

Ordinary soil cannot be used as raw material for ramm soil, only loess with high viscosity. However, there will be several major problems when rammed with loess alone: first, the dried soil wall is easy to crack; second, although the newly rammed soil wall is strong, the rammed soil is easy to be washed away by rain layer by rain; third, not all loess has sufficient viscosity.

In order to prevent exposure after drying, a certain amount of fine sand can be mixed into the soil; in order to improve the viscosity, it is necessary to mix some of the soil accumulated under the rice fields, vegetable fields and other fields.

These two things are easy to find. Under the wall of Xiaoxizhai is the river bank, which is easy to collect enough fine sand; there are a large number of abandoned fields outside the city, so there is no problem with the source of clay. It only takes a lot of manpower to transport soil from every sentence to the stream. After all, Xiaoxi is just a temporary camp, and the labor-consuming work is economical. So there are only a dozen donkey carts in total.

But there is one thing we lack the most - rice. Rice is one of the most important raw materials for rammed soil. Rice pulp or rice soup can improve the viscosity of rammed soil. More importantly, after the rice pulp or rice soup solidifies in the rammed soil, it can make the earth wall extremely hard, and ordinary knives and axes can't help it.

The grain we currently hoard is not enough to eat. How can we pour our precious grain into the soil? Although the stream is a temporary camp, it is not clear how long it will last here. Can a wall that is not strong withstand the continuous siege of thieves?

The contradiction between the two is difficult to reconcile. When I proposed that I needed a large amount of rice to ram the wall, I was first opposed by Yu Qiujin.

"Sima, the people who work in the stream still feed on fruit picking, fishing and hunting beasts. There is not much grain hoarding in the city. If they know how to pour rice into the earth, how can the soldiers explain it to the people?

"I have also thought about this. According to the current sentence and the situation of the stream, you can't find other materials without rice. I have built a wall, and rice is an excellent material to make the earth wall stronger. After the rice soup solidifies, it turns into rice. You can understand whether the rice is hard or not. If you don't use rice, it's hard to say how long this wall can last.

Yu Qiujin said, "However, there is not enough food now... Moreover, if you are surrounded by the thief army and the wall is not firmly broken, everyone in the village will fight to protect the village; but if the food does not last, the soldiers and the people will lose the courage to fight."

What Yu Qiujin said is indeed true. The thief army broke through the camp, and at worst we fought with them. There are few soldiers, but there are still thousands of people. If they really want to fight to the death, the victory is unpredictable. But if there is no food, how can they fight with the thief?

However, in my opinion, the importance of the city wall and food are inseparable, but the time requirement for building the city is more urgent. Although there is not enough food, if it can be saved, it can last for some time. At that time, maybe we can find other sources of food, maybe we can find a chance to defeat the enemy.

In a word, I prefer to exchange food for time.

Although Yu Qiujin didn't agree, he didn't say anything anymore. Because at this moment, it is impossible to determine what the future will be, so we can only make a quick decision to solve the problem as soon as possible. After all, the military situation cannot be considered over and over again.

After I repeatedly affirmed to the people in Juzhang City, most of them also converged with my ideas and understood that the time to build the city was more precious than grain.

Although the rice we collected is far from the requirements of ramm soil, this is the only way. I just hope to build a wall in the stream as soon as possible. Although the fortress is not as strong as Juzhang City, at least it is much taller than Juzhang City, and it is not easy for thieves to land in the city with bare hands or flying hooks.

After Mi's problem was solved, the pressure in my heart was much easier, because the rest of the things were easier to do.

The required wall tendons in the wall can be cut from bamboo to form the spine of the earth wall to fix the wall frame. In addition, the ramble wall is put into the reed leaves taken from the river bank every other foot to fix the wall shape.

The bottom wall foundation cannot be rambed, because although the rambed soil is strong, it is in moisture and will soften over time. Pebbles must be taken by the river to build the foundation of the wall.

The reason why I repeatedly confirmed whether there were rivers and lakes in this hoarding place is not only because the river itself can be used as a fortification, but also because the materials for building the city can be taken from there. At present, it seems that my previous calculation is relatively smooth.

On the foundation of the wall made of pebbles and rammed soil, it was rammed layer by layer in the mold, and soon a tall and strong wall stood around the cottage.

Yu Qiujin was entrusted with the task of building the stream, and I continued to return to Juzhang City to place suspects. In order to win more time to build the small stream wall, I will take the death squad out from Juzhang City every other day. Although the sneak attack of hundreds of people could not cause substantial damage to the thief soldiers and the thieves' camp, at least the thief soldiers mistakenly thought that the sentence was not damaged. In addition to being able to continue to defend, they still retain the strength of active attack.

Compared with the lack of food in the city, the food shortage of the thief army is more serious. The thief army knew that it was not a day's success to capture the city, but it was still urgent to solve the urgent matter, so they only exercised the task of guarding the sentence and focused on finding and transporting grain.

When the thief soldiers finally found that the situation in the city was abnormal one day, Juzhang had become an empty city.

In the end, more than 100 soldiers led by En were left in the sentence.