Birds are free because they have wings, and tigers are free because they have minions. Freedom is nothing but a delicate balance between the costs of revolt and repression, always relative.

Jian Chen was slightly relieved to know that those slaves had deliberately destroyed the tools, at least they knew how to resist, although the method was wrong. At least not the kind of people who have reached the industrial society and still have a caste system, and would rather commit suicide tens of thousands of times a year than think of resisting.

Without him, perhaps one day when bronze has been successfully smelted, cattle and horses have been domesticated, and the tools of production have progressed, and there is no longer a need for intensive cultivation and labor, the ruler can look at the slaves kneeling on the ground with compassion and tell them that you can have your own land in the future, as long as you pay taxes every year, and usher in gratitude like a saint.

Or maybe one day, these slaves will stand up and chop wood into soldiers, throw stones into arrowheads, and even if the blood is shed, they can change from slaves to subordinate farmers in a few decades, and win their own human status, because the cost of repression has increased, and the ruling class will choose more lenient policies to ease the contradictions.

The latter is liberation, while the former is salvation. Liberation is by one's own hands, and salvation depends on the conscience of others.

Not everyone who sits in a chair has a conscience, but everyone who kneels has a hand.

But he thinks he might be able to change the way and try to transition to the past, but how to go this way?

The biggest difference between him and other traversers is that he does not only live this life, but what he relies on is the hard work, unyielding, resistance, and courage of the entire race. Relying on thousands of people who speak the same language and have the same culture occupy every inch of land suitable for cultivation, instead of pinning their hopes on the future to produce a prosperous emperor.

Even if one person goes against the sky, how big a wave can he make if he creates a group of people full of non-violence and non-cooperation?

Chen Jian stared at a few children who spit into the fish pond in the distance, and felt that he might be able to make a little wave, or even smaller, and there was absolutely no possibility of turning the world upside down - whether it was land rent defeating the aristocracy or capital breaking the crown, it would be bloodshed and resisted.

While she was pondering, Yu Qian'er ran over and shouted, "Brother, what are you doing standing here stupidly? The tribesmen are waiting for the digging, and it will snow in a few days. ”

Jian Chen shook his head, drove away those ridiculous thoughts in his mind, and asked, "Didn't I ask you to calculate how much each person would dig?" Have you done the math? ”

"That's it. We divided a total of eighty steps, and with the two tribes that were rescued, it was a total of one hundred and fifty steps. Both of the tribes were light and strong, and we had captured slaves, who were cut out to leave and burn in the kiln, and each man was exactly one step at a time. Now the tribesmen are helping other tribes build houses, and they take care of the food. Let the tanuki do the work of the kang, and they will build the kiln all day long, and others will not do it. Each kang and flue collects them fifty catties of fish, and slowly returns them later. ”

Jian Chen smiled: "You are very good, our tribe will not have to fish for several months." ”

"Yes! The tanuki was still talking about it just now, he took three people to build a kang in half a day, and it was a hundred catties of fish a day. ”

After finishing speaking, he also whispered mysteriously: "I also saw him ask other tribes for sheep's horns, it belongs to him, and he wants to grind it into a comb for Sister Lancao, I think the child in Sister Lancao's belly must be his." ”

"Then don't talk to Sister Lancao about the comb."

"I won't say it, she must be happy to see the comb."

"Hmm. By the way, you're redividing, I'm going to take a few people out for a few days, I can't dig it anymore, let the clansmen help a few of us dig it out. ”

"Then you can bring a few more people with you, what if you meet those scalping tribes? Twenty? ”

"No, ten will do, we won't go that far."

"Oh."

Yu Qian'er thought for a while, and asked with a headache: "But one hundred and fifty steps, one hundred and forty men, how much is each person?" ”

"Stupid, you're not going to let each of them dig one step, and the remaining ten steps will be dug together?"

Yu Qian'er said happily: "Yes, each person digs more than one step, that is, ten steps are divided into one hundred and forty people......"

But then frowned again, this won't count. Besides, even if it is calculated, how can a one-step long rope be divided into so many parts?

Jian Chen looked at his frowning sister and said with a smile: "You think about it slowly, I have to go out." Don't forget to talk to your mother and grandmother, who likes to remember the past, so ask her how she was in the past, and don't keep saying things she doesn't understand. I remember to boil water for my grandmother, who has a cough all these days. ”

"I know, I'm not a kid anymore, I remember. Brother, do you think my mother will give us a brother or a sister? ”

Jian Chen smiled: "You ask my mother if she wants to drink vinegar?" Still want to eat mustard seeds. Drinking vinegar is a younger brother, and eating mustard seeds is a younger sister. ”

Yu Qian'er rolled her eyes, and thought that when it was time for dinner, she would put vinegar and mustard seeds in front of her sisters and aunts, and secretly see what they were eating. You can tell if they have a boy or a girl in their wombs, and when they are born, they will definitely feel that they are powerful.

With this excited thought, I ran away and got ready.

Chen Jian smiled and watched his sister run away, found the best one among the ten tribes, took a former clansman from Hua, and rode a horned deer out of the village.

"Do you remember where Birch used to find the greenstone?"

"Remember, not far from our old cave, there were some puddles where the water was blue-green, but not drinkable. Some people used to drink it, and the next day their backs hurt, and then they died. ”

"What are you drinking that for?"

"It was blue, the same color as the sky. Some people say that it was the sky that fell to the earth, and they drank it. After he died, none of us dared to drink it. ”

"Take us to the mountain."

Knowing that Jian Chen would never look for something for no reason, Wolf Skin took the horned deer to Chen Jian's side and asked, "What are those green stones for?" It can't be a hairpin for a woman, right? ”

"Of course not, those stones can make spears and axes sharper than stones."

"Impossible! We tried it when we were drilling a few days ago, and the green stone is much softer than the white stone. ”

"You'll find out later."

Two days later, a sleet fell in late autumn, and it was only a dozen miles away from the mountain, so I found a cave to rest, and from a distance it seemed that the top of the mountain was covered with snow, but the bottom of the mountain was still a dusky yellow unique to late autumn.

After the rain cleared, the group came to the bottom of the mountain, because of the rain, some copper salts seeped out of the mountain, dyeing the stones on the mountain with green markings the size of snowflakes.

After going around the mountain and looking at the mottled patina, Chen Jian felt that there should be a lot of copper mines under the mountain.

The man took them to see a small waterhole hidden on the top of the mountain, and sure enough, it was blue-green, and it was like holding the blue sky in his hand.

The neighborhood is full of stones, there are no big trees, and there is a piece of gravel at the bottom of the mountain, where it is said that Birch first picked up the malachite.

Chen Jian led people to search for a long time in the gravel pile, and found a few pieces of malachite that were not in good condition. He took a large piece of granite, and when he saw the black stone, he smashed it a few times, and finally found a few pieces of natural copper.

The black oxide on the outside was revealed, and the yellow metal inside shone brightly in the sunlight, the first metal he had seen since he came to this world.

Iron is easy to rust and oxidize under natural conditions, and meteorite iron can be stored for a long time because it contains nickel and chromium and has a stainless effect, both of which he has not had a chance to see.

There is natural copper in nature, but copper is too soft, and copper can only be used as a blunt weapon when it is used as a weapon, and copper shrinks seriously when it cools, and it is easy to break.

Tin-lead ore or silver ore is generally associated near copper mines, and the smelting alloy is not a big problem, and the smelting temperature of tin is only three or four hundred degrees, so there is no difficulty.

Lead ore is the best to find, and if the scalping tribe has already formed a settlement, it is estimated that it will have a trade with its own tribe.

When the time comes, see what kind of skin it is. If it weren't for the yellow skin, the lead ore would be dissolved into vinegar to make sweet lead sugar, and sold to them together with the sour wine to change horses, and it is estimated that in ten or twenty years at most, the tribe would almost be dead, saving trouble.

It's just that he hasn't seen lead ore, and tin ore is easy to recognize, it is a different crystal, it looks like diamond with edges and corners, and it seems that he can only try it little by little.

After putting the pieces of natural copper away, he asked the guide, "How far can this be from the Grass River?" ”

"It takes more than half a day to walk out along the valley."

"So far?"

Chen Jian climbed to the top of the mountain, looked at the mountains in the distance, and pondered how to mine these copper ores.

This place is too far away from the city of his own tribe, and now it must be mainly farming, and there is not such a large population to mine for the time being, and it is impossible to build a village here to be responsible for smelting. Because the smelting technology must be in the hands of their own tribe, it is impossible for their own tribe to abandon the land and run here.

The only way to do this is to mine the ore and carry it to the edge of the Grass River and take a boat downstream. A village of more than 2,000 people, if all of them are replaced with bronze weapons and farm tools, will need at least one ton of copper, and the ore here is in decent condition, but it also requires twenty tons of ore.

Bronze farming tools and weapons are a top priority, as for ritual sacrifices and the like, you can slow down for a while, once farming tools and weapons are popularized, the speed of integrating the population will be accelerated, and then there will be enough people to mine.

It seems that everyone will have to be mobilized to carry the mine once.

The first bronze was smelted to make a saw axe, and an easy road could be built. With a road, you can think about the wheel, which should be able to meet the daily needs of the tribe.

After thinking about all this, he called out to his people, who were still looking for stones at the bottom of the mountain, and returned along the road.

There is still a lot to be done to go back, to build a copper furnace, to build a few small docks, and to try to get a copper tongs before the children are born, which is not too technical, but can save too many babies and women.

Looking back at the hill full of boulders, the copper flowers leached out after the rain were particularly beautiful.

It seemed to be the dawn of the Bronze Age.