After lunch, Li Zicheng took Tang Ruowang and his four students, left Lanzhou, and went to Gongchang Mansion in the southeast, and in the afternoon of the second day, the group finally arrived at Gongchang Mansion, but Gongchang Mansion was not the goal of Li Zicheng's trip, they had a hot meal in the city, and then hurried out of the city, along the right bank of Weishui, and went to Ningyuan County downstream.

After traveling for more than 30 miles, the road in front of him suddenly became lively, almost crowded, Tang Ruowang put up his eyelids, still couldn't see clearly, and said: "Dadudu, is there a market here, why are there so many pedestrians?" ”

"Mr. Tang doesn't know, although this is an avenue, but due to disrepair, pedestrians and horses can pass, but it is more difficult to transport heavy vehicles, so I asked the strong men to clean up the roadbed, not only to level the land, but also to widen the road appropriately," Li Zicheng took the reins, "Let's go, let's go and see, how is the new roadbed!" ”

Li Zicheng took the lead, and everyone rushed to the crowd, two or three miles away, and the cavalry only had half a time to pee, and then rushed to the periphery of the strong men.

The strong men who were repairing the road suddenly encountered so many cavalry, and they first became nervous as a reflex, and when they saw that it was the Grand Governor, someone had already informed their leader.

The leader separated everyone and stepped forward, and there was still a distance of more than ten steps from Li Zicheng, so he bent his knees and bowed to the ground, "Subordinate Liu Taiqing, knock to see the metropolitan governor!" At the same time, he moved his hand back, and all the strong men followed his example and bowed to the ground.

Li Zicheng saw that the person who came was indeed Liu Taiqing, he looked behind Liu Taiqing, and frowned, "Liu Taiqing, don't you have more than 700 households under your subordinates, even if you assist Liu Zhuang in producing cement, the number of people will not be so small, right?" ”

Liu Taiqing stood up and arched his hand: "Metropolitan Governor, the section of the road from Ningyuan County to Gongchang Mansion, both sides are not enough, if all the soldiers are concentrated in one place, there will be many people who interfere with each other, and the subordinates will divide the personnel into two groups, starting from both sides of Zhangshui and repairing along Weishui to Gongchang Mansion and Ningyuan County. ”

"Oh!" Li Zicheng looked at the number of prisoners of war, it still didn't seem right, the section from Zhangshui to Gongchang Mansion was much longer than the other section, and the prisoners of war who repaired the road should account for most of them, but the current prisoners of war were only about 100 people, what the hell is this Liu Taiqing doing?

Liu Taiqing obviously found the dissatisfaction in Li Zicheng's eyes, and hurriedly said: "The governor of the capital, the subordinate group, is divided into two groups, the subordinate personally took a hundred soldiers to level and widen the land in front, and the rest of the soldiers are all tailed behind, they are mainly ramming the roadbed and repairing it again, and after the second repair, the roadbed is really repaired!" ”

"Sectional construction, assembly line operation!" Li Zicheng was overjoyed, hurriedly jumped off the war horse, and asked Liu Taiqing and the prisoners of war to get up, and said: "Taiqing, who taught you this construction method?" ”

"Teach?" Liu Taiqing was stunned and said: "Governor, what you said, the subordinates don't understand, and no one teaches them, the subordinates just feel that it's late autumn now, and it's winter in a blink of an eye...... So, the subordinates just want to finish it as soon as possible......"

Talent! Li Zicheng was a secret agent in his heart, such a character, let him be an official of a thousand households, no wonder he was defeated and captured, why didn't he find out earlier?

Li Zicheng patted him on the shoulder and said, "Do a good job, the Heavenly Mandate Army needs you!" ”

"Ah...... The Metropolitan Governor ......" Liu Taiqing was stunned, not understanding what Li Zicheng meant by this.

"When you were in Guangwu Mountain, I told you that the subordinates of the Heavenly Mandate Army are all men, as long as you are willing to use your brains and can make meritorious contributions to the Heavenly Mandate Army, you will be rewarded accordingly, and you will be able to live a better life than others," Li Zicheng turned around and said: "Millet, five taels of silver!" ”

"Yes, Grand Duke!" Although He Xiaomi didn't know why, how could he dare to disobey the words of the Metropolitan Governor? Hurriedly took out five taels of broken silver from his arms and handed them to Liu Taiqing.

"The Metropolitan Governor ......" Liu Taiqing looked at Li Zicheng, but he didn't dare to accept the silver.

"Take it, this is the reward you deserve," Li Zicheng said with a smile on his face: "Because of your arrangement, under the condition that the number of people remains the same, you can save time and speed up the completion of the roadbed!" ”

Li Zicheng saw that He Xiaomi had stuffed the silver into Liu Taiqing's pocket, so he stepped on the war horse, drove away, and when he left, he said: "Taiqing, do a good job!" ”

"Subordinate...... Thank you, Governor! ”

Li Zicheng had already gone far, but Liu Taiqing still bowed to the ground, and it wasn't until all the personal soldiers passed by him that he slowly got up, and muttered to himself: "Is this true?" ”

Although he only has five taels of silver, he is still a prisoner of war, and the governor has made it clear that all of them only eat and work, without any remuneration, and now, he can get the silver just by making up his mind.

Although the silver is not much, it represents an attitude, a distribution system that is different from before.

Looking at the prisoners of war who were stunned beside him, Liu Taiqing suddenly came to his senses and shouted: "Don't work quickly, everything you do, most of the governors are watching," and stroked the silver in his arms, and said: "When you have saved enough silver, I invite you to go to Fucheng to drink!" ”

"Woo ......" the prisoners shouted, and then returned to their respective posts and continued to level the road.

Li Zicheng walked more than ten miles, only then met more prisoners of war, they almost discharged two or three miles long team, is in groups to tamp the roadbed, the original roadbed basically does not need to be tamped, mainly the newly widened part, Rao is so, the speed of tamping the roadbed, is still much slower than the construction of the roadbed, although they occupy several times the advantage in numbers, but still lag behind.

Only then did he understand Liu Taiqing's painstaking efforts, the speed of the roadbed tamping is slow, and it has to be filled and leveled twice, and the workload is large, so more manpower is needed.

It seems that these five taels of silver are still too little!

Li Zicheng continued to ride his horse, and on a wider road, the marching speed was also much faster, and within an hour, he had already arrived in Zhangshui.

This is the confluence of Zhangshui into Weishui, the river is much wider than the upstream, Li Zicheng visually measured, it is dozens of meters, in order to get an accurate figure, he asked Lu Rongda and Yu Xiao to go to the field to measure.

Lu Rongda and Yu Xiao, with the assistance of their own soldiers, personally boarded a small boat by the river and measured little by little with a long rope.

Li Zicheng called John Tang to stop by the river, "Mr. Tang, such a river is much narrower than the Yellow River, can a permanent bridge be built on this river?" ”

"Permanent?" Tang Ruowang observed carefully for a while, and said: "Governor, this is really a bit difficult, the river is too wide, the river will naturally not be too shallow, the key is that it cannot be supported in the middle of the river!" ”

Li Zicheng didn't embarrass him, and said with a smile: "Let's see how wide Lu Rongda and Yu Xiao measure, let's take care of it." ”

But by the time of a bag of cigarettes, the two of them had already returned to the shore, "Governor, we have measured the results, in the most downstream of here, where the roads on both sides of the river are connected, the river is twenty-eight meters wide and three meters deep!" ”

"Twenty-eight meters? Three meters? Li Zicheng was taken aback, how could they use "rice" as a unit? Could it be that John Tong gave it?

Tang Ruowang was like a roundworm in his stomach, and immediately understood Li Zicheng's question, and hurriedly said: "Dadu, in our Holy Rome, the main unit of length is 'meter', when I was teaching, I taught them unconsciously, if Dadu is not used to it, or use 'step' or 'zhang' as a unit, it is okay!" ”

Why change it back?

Li Zicheng said in his heart: This is a good thing that can't be found with a lantern, I knew that John Tang knew the concept of "rice", and when he was developing a rifle, he should have asked him for a meter ruler, but I don't know if there is a difference between the "rice" of this era and later generations, and he must have a standard number in his heart.

He asked Lu Rongda and Yu Xiao to take out the measuring rope and gesture it with their hands, the distance of a handful is still about twenty-five centimeters, whether it is accurate or not, it is not much different from the future generations, and his heart is stable, "No need to change it, this is good!" ”

Although Tang Ruowang didn't know why Li Zicheng accepted the unit of "rice", Li Zicheng had always been unpredictable, and he was very familiar with Europe, which was tens of thousands of miles away, so he no longer bothered, "Metropolitan Governor, such a long distance...... It's the dry season, and the depth of the water is only three meters, and if it is the rainy season, I have observed the water stains on both sides, and I am afraid that it will reach seven or eight meters......"

Li Zicheng clearly remembers that the cement bridges built in later generations basically needed a pier every 25 meters, and the river width here has exceeded 25 meters.

Today's materials, whether cement or steel, are certainly much worse than those of later generations, and even with arches, the span cannot reach twenty-eight meters.

The clear width of the river was already 28 meters, and with the approach bridge, it was about 30 to 40 meters, and it seemed necessary to erect a pier in the middle of the river.

But how can the bridge piers be erected in this endless river?

In Li Zicheng's mind, it is still necessary to build a cement bridge, which can not only be connected with the cement avenues on both sides as a whole, but also convenient for vehicles and horses, and has a long service life.

The most important thing is that the Zhangshui Bridge only needs one pier, and the bridge deck is not long, which is just to accumulate experience and reserve technology for the future construction of the Lanzhou Yellow River Bridge.

This time, let Tang Ruowang graduate from Xining Science and Technology College, bring a few high-quality students, is to train them into professionals in all aspects, after visual inspection, Lu Rongda, Yu Xiao was initially selected as bridges, road experts, and Gong Mingguang, Ji Jie will be cement technology experts.

Li Zicheng poured the cement avenue and built the cement bridge, and he told Tang Ruowang that the road was already under construction in the depths of Guanshan, and there was no need to discuss it, and what they were concerned about was the cement bridge.

Concrete has been used in Guanshan Post Road, rebar is not difficult, as long as the pig iron is smelted into steel, when it is baked, pour into a specific formwork, the key is how to build bridge piers in the river.

The discussion lasted for a long time, but there was no result, Tang Ruowang They even heard of cement for the first time, where did they know the properties of cement, and finally they had to set their eyes on Li Zicheng.