(Nearly 6,000 words, worth two chapters)

The shipyard is located in the south of Panyu City, Yushui flows into the sea, the original history, more than 2,000 years later, here will also be excavated a Chinese archaeological discovery of the earliest shipbuilding site, but I don't know, that workshop, whether there are footprints of the ink.

Azhong has been here for half a month, this workshop is not big compared with the Central Plains, the land is a wood processing plant, Lingnan has many giant trees, fir wood, mushroom trees, are good materials for shipbuilding. After being cut down by the soldiers with axes and machetes, they can be thrown into the water and can go down the river, saving time and effort.

At the water's edge are ten side-by-side shipbuilding platforms, six small and four large, the small one can build three hundred boats, the large one can build five hundred boats, the shipwrights from Jiaodong and Huiji are busy working non-stop, starting from building the keel to the end of the nailing deck, and it takes more than a month to build a ship. As soon as the ship was launched, it sailed upstream, and the war between the Marquis of Changnan and Ouyue was in full swing.

Ah Zhong asked, most of the craftsmen were recruited from the "Qingdao Port" in Jiaodong, and it was this group of shipwrights who built the sail building ships that could cross the East China Sea and expedition to Haidong, and Xu Fu, a staff member under the Marquis of Changnan, also came to inspect from time to time.

But the ten ships built by the craftsmen at present are not pointed-bottomed seafaring ships, but flat-bottomed riverboats, and there are no tall masts, and the main power is the blades, but in the back third of the boat, there are no oar holes, but on the left and right sides, there are two more things that resemble big wheels......

If you go to the inside of the cabin to take a look, you will find that this is not actually a wheel, but rather a "treadmill" in Nanjun, also known as a keel waterwheel. This thing appeared in Anlu County last year, Chang'an in the field, several people hold on to the wooden pole, step on the pedal, drive the axle, you can use the water wheel to draw water to the field. When Ah Zhong passed through Nanjun, he saw the peasants' wives and daughters treading water, which was different from the big waterwheel, which was turned by human power.

Nowadays, it is just a matter of putting the treadmill on the boat, and then it is a little easier, keeping the pedals and the large and small axles, but replacing the wooden chain scraper with a wheel oar, and entering the water about a foot......

That's why Heifu asked Ah Zhong to help, although the principle is not difficult, but it is by no means as simple as transplanting, making and tuning the huge axle to make it run reasonably, you have to have the ink to outline it.

It was because of the oars that the new ship was called "the steamer", and it was now two-wheeled, with larger four-, six-, and even eight-wheeled ships next to it.

"Your arms can't twist your thighs."

This is the original words of Changnan Hou, and it is also a nonsense, from the difference in the strength of the legs and arms, it can be seen that the pedaling must be more than the hand stroke. From the point of view of physical work efficiency, paddle paddle blades move continuously and have high efficiency, while wooden paddles move intermittently and have low efficiency when paddling.

Ah Zhong understood these words, after all, Mozi had already proposed that "force, the form of the effort", force is the principle of accelerating the motion of objects.

In short, Chang Nanhou hoped that after loading the paddle wheel, the steamer would be faster than the ordinary paddle boat, and it would also be able to go upriver and send the soldiers to the upper reaches of Yushui in this rainy and rapid season, so as to cooperate with the "pillbox tactics" being implemented and pacify Xiou.

Practice is the only criterion for testing theory, today, the first "steamship" was built, Chang Nanhou took his attaché to watch the launching, but no one expected, Jun Hou drove to the shipyard, suddenly rained outside, the river was turbid and turbulent, and the ship did not enter the water for the time being.

"Xu Fu, didn't you say that today is an auspicious day?"

Looking at the torrential rain outside, Heifu looked at Xu Fu with a gloomy face.

Xu Fu said with a smile: "The subordinate is a native of Qidi, left the East China Sea, went to the South China Sea, and the god of prayer is different, this divination and stargazing are not very spiritual." ”

"Heh, you are a Lu man. So next time, when Ben Hou goes out again, he will find a Yue Wu to kill chickens and divination? ”

Heifu said angrily, it seems that Xu Fu's "stargazing technique" still can't be used as a weather forecast.

There was no way, Heifu waited patiently for a while, but found that God didn't give him any face, and the rain became heavier and heavier, as if there were gods pouring down like water on the clouds, and the raindrops the size of beans smashed the tiles crackling, and they were not small at all, not to mention the trial ship, and even the handsome tent couldn't go back!

"This is the rain in Lingnan, it's really fierce!"

Heifu sighed, he didn't want himself and his guards to be drenched in soup, the scorching summer, is the area with a high incidence of disease, maybe a cold and fever, causing complications, can kill people.

"Well, let's spend the night at the shipyard."

Heifu simply let the people live in the shipyard, he was quite aware of the food and clothing with the soldiers, squatted on the ground, ate a little simple fish soup and rice with the boatmen, and asked the soldiers to find wine to reward the people, and taught them to play boxing, and the losers drank to pass the time......

When it was completely dark, the heavy rain still did not get lighter, and Heifu resigned himself to his fate, asked Sangmu to arrange the guards, yawned, and was about to go to sleep, but Ah Zhong came over and waved at him.

"What?"

Heifu still admires Ah Zhong, this group of ink people, although they like BB, they are also group actioners, and they are ingenious, and the most rare thing is that they are sincerely "serving the people".

Ah Zhong said: "I didn't want to disturb the prince, but I just found something and was confused. ”

"Sit down." With the indecent and unhappy inkman, Heifu doesn't have to pay attention to it, and sits on the couch with a big thorn.

After getting permission from Heifu, Ah Zhong also sat down on the side and said, "When I was helping the craftsman to make the ship, I found that the principle of the oars on this boat came from the treadmill. ”

"Well, it's the treadmill."

Heifu nodded, the two are too similar, ordinary people can also see that the treadmill was last year when he went south, and in those days at home, it happened that his sister-in-law also came back, and Heifu instructed him to make it, but it was a common utensil in the southern countryside in later generations.

"And the treadmill, I heard that it is the sister of the prince, Zhanglu, made in Nanjun last year......"

Ah Zhong stared at Heifu, feeling that he had touched the key.

"Recall that the water mills, water mills, water drains, and water wheels made by our ink artists in the past ten years all originated from the water mills made by the princes and the whirls...... As for the water mill, it is transformed by Anlu stepping on the mill. If you think about it carefully, in the past ten years, all those who have made the industry of workers and peasants get twice the result with half the effort have all originated from Anlu and are all related to the monarchs. Junhou, do you have the skills of Zimozi and Gong Losing Class!? ”

"Hahaha, what a smart offspring."

Heifu laughed, and suddenly, he remembered that more than ten years ago, there was a smart old fox who also saw through this flaw at a glance, but it's a pity, there is no inner Shi Teng in the world.

After laughing, he shook his head and said, "You are wrong, Ah Zhong, the source of these hydraulic equipment is not me. ”

"Who's that source?"

Ah Zhong is very smart, he likes to find out the root of things, when he installed a water mill with the division commander in Guanzhong and developed more ideal hydraulic equipment, he once thought about the source of this thing, and was sure that it was done by Changnan Hou.

"Do you have pen and paper?"

Heifu didn't answer directly, but sent Ah Zhong to bring pen and ink, and lay on the desk to draw.

It was still raining outside, and even though the shipyard dormitory was dry-barred, the moisture was still heavy, and a few soldiers gathered outside, blocking the wind and rain through the crack in the door, so that Ah Zhong could keep the lights bright.

But I saw that what Chang Nanhou drew on the paper was a tree, the trunk was very large, full of upwards, and countless branches were divided, and each branch was divided into countless small trees.

"Do you know what kind of tree this is?" Heifu asked, pointing to the paper.

Ah Zhong didn't know why, and shook his head.

Heifu smiled funny, "I call it the 'Tech Tree'!" ”

……

"Dare to ask the prince, what is technology?" Ah Zhong had never heard of this word.

"It's my new coin."

Hefu is not ashamed, but he does have a reasonable explanation, and he talks about it eloquently:

"The medical skills of Chen Wuyi and other medical officers, the skills of Xu Fu and other alchemists, the agricultural skills of the farmer's old garden, the engineering skills that you and other ink masters are good at, and even the bow and crossbow flying stones, the art of war array, these killing skills!"

"All the skills mastered by the world can be collectively called 'technology', and in my mind, its shape is like the legendary building wood as high as the sky!"

"Is that so?"

Ah Zhong's eyes widened, his expression became serious, as if he had returned to Qin Mo's station in Xianyang, and sat in a row with his brothers and sisters to listen to the master's explanation of the "Book of Ink", and the master said before sending him to Lingnan, don't look at Changnanhou's background, but the knowledge in his stomach is no less than Zhang Cang!

He had a hunch that Chang Nanhou was going to teach himself an extremely important lesson today!

After that, Heifu took another piece of paper and wrote the word "Gongji", and then began to draw the tips of several small branches, and wrote down the names of water mill, water mill, water drain, water wheel, water mill, water mill, etc., but at the beginning of the tree, the word "water wheel" was written.

"You're right, first with the water mill, the world discovered that in addition to human and animal power, we can also use water power to scoop rice, grind noodles, blow wind, and draw water. But on the water mill, the most critical part, the water wheel, what does it start from? ”

Ah Zhong thought for a while: "When it starts with the wheel." ”

"Not bad."

Hefu divides the water wheel into a "horizontal water wheel" and a "vertical water wheel", and continues to draw forward, they become a branch, and it turns out that the whole "hydraulic equipment" is just a small branch of engineering technology, and the beginning of the water wheel at its core is the wheel!

So in a game, the front-end technology of the water mill is the wheel......

"Who made the wheel?" Heifu's problem came again, anyway, it was pouring rain outside, and the night was long, he happened to be idle, and seeing that Ah Zhong was more perceptive than his master Cheng Shang, he simply gave some pointers.

In terms of specific hands-on skills, Heifu is not worthy of being an apprentice to Ah Zhong, but in terms of vision, he is enough to be his teacher.

Ah Zhong did not stay in the Mo family for more than ten years, and immediately said: "The wheel is made by Xi Zhong, he is Xia Yu's car, Xi Zhongzhi is the car, the square is straight, and the rules are in the line, so the machine spins and gets together, and the use of it is firm, and the instrument is solid......"

Wait, so what Chang Nanhou means is that all this hydraulic engineering has to come down to the wheels driving on the road?

But Heff was clearly not satisfied with this, and he extended the branch of the "wheel" backwards and continued to ask: "Think again, where did the wheel begin?" ”

After thinking about it for a long time, he suddenly thought that before the unified war destroyed his hometown, his father was a potter who worked with mud all day long, and his hands were covered with white soil......

And it was the ...... that drove the clay to rotate rapidly in that workshop

"It's a potter's wheel!"

He pretended to be sleepy, rubbed his sour eyes, and then said firmly: "This is the earliest wheel, earlier than the wheel, and the first person to make pottery...... It's Shennong's also! “

That's right, Shennong cultivated and made pottery, at the beginning it must have been hand-pinched, but in the era of painted pottery, most of those beautiful pottery were made on potter's wheels, which should be the earliest wheel shafts that human beings learned to use.

Who would have thought? The wheel axle, a small, inconspicuous component, extends nearly half of humanity's technology for thousands of years.

It is no exaggeration to say that the axle, it is one of the most important cornerstones of civilization! Its status is no less than that of writing, metallurgy, and textiles.

Now, in Heifu's pen, from hydraulic equipment to wheels, to potter's wheels, this branch has finally been pulled to the end, all the way to the Neolithic Age, attributed to the legendary Shennong.

Heifu smiled: "Now, everything is understood, it is Shennong who makes this thick branch sprout, and everything behind, as long as the principle is known, it is just logical." ”

He drew a stroke on the branches of the water mill again: "In fact, on this giant tree, the branches can be crossed, if the water wheel is the father of the water mill, then it also has a mother, stepping on the mill, and what does the fork originate from?" ”

"Stone mortars and orange trees." Ah Zhong drew inferences and immediately said the answer.

"That's right." Heifu suddenly felt that the child was teachable, and he deserved to be a high-achieving student from the school closest to science in ancient times.

The orange tree used to lift well water is said to be made by Mozi, which remains to be verified, but Mozi did summarize the lever law of "balance, weight on its side, must be beaten, weight is not similar, balance, then the short standard is long, two additions, the weight is similar, then the standard must be lower, and the right to be bid is also", and then applied to a large number of city defense equipment......

As a result, the branches of craftsmanship began to intersect with the "killing technique".

At this point, Hefu has almost explained the principle of the "technology tree": all human science and technology are usually in a sequence, from simple to complex, from basic to cutting-edge. The new technology that was accidentally opened before will affect the direction and results of people's research in the future.

Those of you who have played Civilization 6 will be familiar with this: the technology you choose will allow you to create specific products, and the polishing of those products will make it easier for you to discover newer technologies, so the cycle continues......

Many technologies are largely related to fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, and brothers: the potter's wheel is the father of the wheel, and the wheel gives birth to the water wheel, and the water wheel in turn breeds many brothers of hydraulic equipment, who should have appeared slowly in the Han and Jin dynasties, but suddenly exploded in the past ten years, because of the seedling of the Heifu, the traverser.

His arrival triggered countless "Eureka"!

But the traverser is not omniscient and omnipotent, and when iron smelting and mining are still in their infancy, they delusionally invent the steam engine, and most of them will not succeed. Only when pre-technology emerges and develops to a certain height, follow-up technology can appear, otherwise even if there is an idea, there is no material basis for realization.

And when this technology tree reaches the point where it can no longer break through, it means that it has come to an end, and if it wants to continue to grow, it needs to wait for another technology to break through...... For example, the paddle steamer, which is being beaten by wind and rain outside and trampled by manpower, will have to wait for a long time before it can evolve into a steamship after the supporting technology is perfected.

There are not many people who can understand these truths, and the short-term guards who are surrounded by a circle outside, this group of illiterate people are in a fog, but Ah Zhong, the ink scholar, looked at the "science and technology tree" drawn on the map, and was fascinated.

"The Master said to me, "Those who know create things, those who are skillful tell them, and those who keep them are the work of the world."

"There are a hundred kinds of crafts in the world, seven kinds of wood-tapping work, six kinds of gold-tapping work, five kinds of tapping work, five kinds of coloring work, five kinds of scraping work, and two kinds of fighting work. In the past, I only knew that the division of labor was meticulous, and people did their best, but now I listened to the words of the prince and the marquis, and I knew that each type of work was a branch on the stem of a technical work, and it was divided into several small branches! ”

For a while, Ah Zhong felt that his eyes were much more transparent, so he bowed to Master Hei:

"Changnanhou, you seem to be a kid, pointing out the truth of this world!"

"What's reasonable, it's just a long chatter on a rainy night."

Heifu smiled and looked outside the house, the rain seemed to be lighter, having said that, he secretly thanked Zhao Gao for sending a good student for himself.

But Ah Zhong was not satisfied with this, he pointed to the whole "technology tree" that Heifu had drawn at the beginning, broke the casserole and asked the end.

"Dare to ask the prince, what will happen if this tree grows to the end!?"

Heifu said lightly: "I said, the technology tree, it is like a building wood, do you know the legend of building a tree?" ”

"Yes."

Ah Zhong said: "The builder of the wood, high hundred, has nine (zhú) on the top and nine wolf, in fact, it is like hemp, and its leaves are like mangs!" Born between heaven and earth, the gods are above the heavens......"

Heifu said with a smile: "Yes, so if this big tree can be persevered from generation to generation, constantly watering and fertilizing, and taking care of it, so that it can grow all the time, maybe one day, it can really go straight to the sky, so that people can climb to the sky!" ”

"Heavens! It's so exciting! This is a metaphor for the tree of all skills in the world, which is appropriate! ”

Ah Zhong's face showed longing, to the sky, in addition to the Yin and Yang Fangshi all day YY, the ink is really tried, it is said that Mozi took three years, made a wooden kite that can fly to the sky, but unfortunately it took three years to become, and it was defeated in one day, and the skill was lost.

But there are still a few ink artists still dreaming of flying......

Seeing the light blooming in Ah Zhong's eyes, Heifu was afraid that he would also learn from Mozi and study how to go to heaven, so he was really exhausted, so he hurriedly said:

"Don't be too ambitious, and look at the things in front of you, you first asked me, the pedal paddle wheel on the steamer originated from the treadmill for irrigation, and then think about it, what new technology can be grown from this branch?"

What's next? Even though Ah Zhong is smart and has a flexible head, for a while, he can't think of the kind of thing that the smartest genius in the human race can invent......

Heifu laughed again, he didn't say that there is another characteristic of the technology tree, that is, "the pear tree bears peaches". The technology was originally developed for the A requirement, but it was not used much for the A requirement, and finally found real use for the B requirement.

Pedals, axles, and wheels, these three technological points, the most useful in later generations, are not in treadmills and ships.

After the three-in-one, what you think of, Heifu thinks of.

Heifu announced the answer to Ah Zhong: "Since you can trample on the water with manpower and drive the wheel axle forward, why not try it on land?" ”

……

This night, Heifu and Ah Zhong talked all night and talked for a long time, planning to sleep in the next round, but ......

"Why is it dawning?"

Looking at the dawn outside the house, Heifu was a little surprised, the last time he had such a good chat, it was a few years ago with Zhang Cang, in Jiaodong University, to talk about "learning to apply" and the origin of grains and animals.

But Zhang Cang's dead fat man is a theoretician, although he is familiar with arts and sciences, can engage in mathematics and compile books and theories, but he has no engineering mind at all, and his hands-on ability is extremely poor.

However, Ah Zhong, who was born in the Mo family, not only has a solid foundation in handicraft, but also likes to use his brain, which can be seen from the fact that he made "angry dead ants" when he first came to Lingnan.

Seeing that Ah Zhong's eyes were red, he wanted to try out the "bicycle" that Heifu said about using wood, and Heifu hurriedly asked the craftsman to drag the kid to sleep. finally instilled it overnight, so that Ah Zhong accepted the setting of the "technology tree", hoping to spread the branches through him, in case Ah Zhong had an accident due to fatigue and died, then the black man would be distressed to death.

When Hefu yawned and walked out of the house, he found that after a night of heavy rain, the water outside had risen by nearly a foot, and it was only a little close to flooding the shipyard......

Seeing this, Heifu suddenly became serious, and at the same time, Xu Fu also hurried over, he left early in the morning.

"Prince...... Here it comes! ”

Heifu knew what Xu Fu was talking about, and took a deep breath: "I've been waiting for a long time, and it's finally here!" ”

Without further ado, Heifu immediately left the shipbuilding workshop until the Panyu city wall, and along the way, there were Qin soldiers and Yue people with nervous expressions.

At the top of the city, Heifu could hear a loud voice.

"So soon, the troops are coming to the city?"

Heifu rubbed his sleepless eyes and stared into the distance......

It was not the Yue people, not the enemy soldiers, but the water, the muddy flood!

He saw that a flood peak was pouring out of the river and rushing straight to Panyu!