After meeting up with the people who were guarding the horned deer, it was time to prepare to return. The pieces of acorns that I carried to feed the horned deer were almost eaten.

You don't need to think about footprints when you go back, it's much faster.

To paraphrase a popular theory in the previous life, the current world is like a dark forest, and whoever shows up first will be exposed.

There are two situations of exposure, one is weak, anyone can step on it, be caught as a slave or kill it.

The other is to run rampant, come to the court from all directions, and whoever doesn't come will have an excuse for conquest.

Of course, Jian Chen wanted to be the second type, and seeing that the heavy snow had not yet melted, he asked ten people to go back to get some tools first, and the remaining twenty people went to the copper mine, and agreed to meet in two days.

After parting, Jian Chen led twenty people to the copper mine, which was already covered with snow, found the place where the gravel was piled up, and temporarily settled in the nearby stone crevice.

Take advantage of the snow to transport some ore back. Since he decided not to move south and live here for a long time, bronze is his biggest reliance.

Twenty men split up and went to the nearby woods to collect dry branches and transport them back with climbing plows.

There are many branches, it is easy to burn, and it is effortless to prepare enough firewood in winter without the need for tools.

They put all the firewood on the mountain wall near the gravel pile, and piled it up more than one person high.

When the sulfur mine was not found and the manure in the nitrate field was not enough, there was no way to use black powder to explode the mine, so we could only use this "hot method" of thermal expansion and cold contraction, and water it after heating to loosen the ore.

He had to mine the first mines himself to determine the course of the veins, and he needed to beneficiate the ore when he returned.

This method of open-pit mining depends on whether the vein is in the mountains or underground.

If it is underground, the theoretically most labor-saving way is to dig a pit with a small diameter and not very easy to collapse, and use a boy slave of twelve or thirteen years old to mine it, which is the lowest cost and the bloodiest.

The mine mouth is large, it costs more manpower, and you have to worry about collapse, you need to fix it with wood, make a good vent, etc., which all require costs. Most of the underground veins in the early human race were excavated by children, and basically these children died before they could reach maturity, saving costs and being easy to manage without fear of resistance.

It's much easier in the open air, just burn and fry and dig. There is an extinct volcano nearby, and there should be sulfur, and you can make nitrate fields next summer, and there is no problem with exploding mines.

A few days later, the ten men finally returned, carrying all the tools that Jian Jian needed, and told Jian Jian that everything was okay in his village.

A pile of firewood was burned nearby, and thirty people dug a pit. Carrying water from a pond in the distance, clay pots, pots and other clay pots and other stupid methods took a day to fill the puddle.

The firewood on the mountain wall not far away has also been lit, and the firewood is constantly added, and the fire burns for a whole day, and a few birch trees nearby think that spring has arrived, and some buds have come out, and it seems that they will not survive this winter.

After burning the mountain walls, thirty people poured water from the puddle on the fiery stones, making a crackling sound, turning into a white mist, which became unusually soft in the cold winter air.

There are constantly stones that cannot withstand the extreme temperature changes, and they are falling one after another, and there are many cracks in the remainder, which will fall when smashed with a stone hammer and stone drill, revealing the stones in the mountain wall.

After staring at the exposed stone for a while, the inside of the mountain wall is divided into many interlayers, which should be a vein, but I don't know if the direction of extension is up or down.

Luckily, this vein is an associated mine, and in addition to copper ore, there are some other ores, which are well enriched because no one has ever mined them.

The people put the ore in wicker baskets so that they could be transported back.

When loading ore, I will also be curious to look for some strange stones.

The wolfskin crouched on the ground, staring at a black stone.

The stone had a layer of small gray beans on top of it, which shattered when smashed with the stone, revealing the glittering sections inside, but some of them shattered into powder with just a pinch of the hand.

He took the stone to Jian Chen, who looked at the particles that had melted outside the ore with a metallic luster, and thought it should be tin.

He lit a charcoal fire and threw the stone into it, and soon some tiny silvery luster beads formed on the outside of the stone, and the people were very curious, and it was the first time they had seen this luster.

The melting point of tin is very low, it can be melted in less than 300 degrees, probably when the stone is burned, some of the tin ore reacts with the charcoal and is reduced.

The melting point of lead is also very low, but before the wolf skin said that there was some gray powder, which shattered when touched, and it did not seem to be lead.

Tin is a very strange metal, in the weather of minus 13 degrees Celsius, it will get "tin plague", the internal crystal structure changes, and it will shatter when touched. By analogy, diamond has become charcoal, which is still charcoal, but its properties have changed.

Chen Jian had heard a similar story in his previous life, the kerosene barrels brought by an Antarctic expedition were soldered, but as a result, he got tin plague, all the kerosene ran out, and the expedition team was completely wiped out, I don't know whether it is true or not.

Tin plague is very miraculous, it can be contagious, even if the temperature is normal, normal tin will get sick after coming into contact with tin plague gray tin, and even the whole tin in the warehouse may turn into powder overnight.

Now that it is determined that this is tin, it is only one step away from bronze.

I searched for the place where the gray stone was found in the wolf skin, and smashed some gray ore with a stone hammer, which looked different from the copper ore in the mezzanine in the distance, maybe this is tin ore, go back and smelt it.

Copper ore and possibly tin ore were packed separately in baskets, and thirty horned deer climbing plows, each of which could hold two hundred pounds, was not too strenuous to glide in the snow, and it was nearly two or three tons to be counted.

When he returned, he did not immediately begin smelting, but called all the adult slaves owned by the two clans together.

It's been a few months since they were captured, and now the language is not rich, there is not so much grammar, and the number of vocabulary is pitiful, so they should be able to communicate with these people simply.

This was one of the few times the 100 slaves had gathered, guarded by men with weapons to prevent them from moving.

"I need sixteen men and two women to dig the stones and carry the stones. Dig for sixty months, or bring back five thousand baskets of stones each, and you will no longer be slaves. You can be like those villages outside the city, farming and becoming wild people. ”

He shouted, but unfortunately the slaves stood numbly one by one, perhaps understanding or not, not knowing what he meant.

When Jian Chen said this, he just drew a big pie. It has nothing to do with Our Lady, it's just a matter of cost and efficiency.

Slaves were called Xu Mi in the Spring and Autumn Period of the previous life, which is a common and false word for 縃縻, not a person who has nothing, but a person who is strung together by a rope.

It is conceivable that the labor efficiency of stringing them together is extremely low, let alone the motivation, and even the tools are often damaged, and drawing a big pie can at least give them a little hope. It is unknown whether you can survive to five years after five years of mining, but it will definitely improve your motivation a little.

In addition, the organization of the miners is too high, it is impossible for them to mine empty-handed, and there will definitely be stone tools. If all 50 male slaves are thrown away as mine slaves, more than a dozen clansmen will be overseers, and the work of those 50 slaves may not be more than 16 people.

Five years in prison was not enough to grind out utter despair, and Jian Chen felt that they would aspire to live as a wild people.

As for the question of blood, it is even more unfounded, even if they become wild people and reopen the land with nothing, which woman of the ruling class will marry them? Nominally equal barbarns, under the legal power of private ownership, there is no money, no land, no means of production, and the tax rate, power, and obligation are not equal. The women of the savages will surely burrow into the city, who will burrow into their arms?

Five years is also a set goal. Within five years, horses, bronze farming implements, ploughshares, and the like could be produced, and the clan farming system could basically be disintegrated into a family mutual aid group, and the slaves would be much less efficient than family farming because they could not give them good tools, and more slaves could be used for mining.

Sixteen men worked in the mines, two women cooked and fetched water, gave them four horned deer in the winter, transported them in sleighs, food had to be taken from the village, and after spring they were transported in wooden boats.

This is not enough people to run out and form a settlement on their own, and leaving the village for food in winter is a dead end. It is impossible for people to work together, some want to escape, and some want to become wild people in five years, and the joint sitting system can save the overseer.

Under the condition of copper and stone combined, three people can safely drive one slave, a hundred people can control fifty slaves, and one hundred thousand people can control two hundred thousand slaves. At this time, the number of people in the basic market was scarce, and he had to be careful with his calculations.

However, his careful calculation did not cause the slaves to cheer and excited, on the contrary, they just stared blankly at everything in front of them, and none of them made a sound.

Jian Chen said again, gesturing with his hands and feet, and only then did a woman in the crowd stand up and ask, "Is what you said true?" ”

"Yes."

"Can you engrave it on a clay tablet?"