From the beginning of October to December, this year's weather in Nanyang is getting colder and colder, and snow has begun to fall.

The construction of the surface of the village has been largely completed.

In ancient times, villagers were good at farming and building houses, which were basic life skills that everyone had to learn.

Every household began to be busy, and Shen Chen also guided at this time, from the foundation to the construction work, the population of the whole clan in their early 1,000s, about more than 200 households, had to build two or three hundred houses.

Seeing that the cold winter was coming, Wang Yi and Deng Qi also helped organize the villagers around Xinye to help them work, and Huangmenting specially gave them some wages in order to thank them.

Originally, it was organized by the county government and the township, and the surrounding villagers thought it was like serving as a conscription, but they didn't expect that there would be wages, which greatly increased their enthusiasm, and the construction speed was also very fast, and the house was built in a month.

The next step is to dig cellars, tunnels, farmland and canals, and now the villagers are still in the stage of sitting and eating empty mountains, that is, Shen Chen got a lot of grain and grass materials from Mi Zhu at the beginning, and resold some of them at a high price when he passed through Peiguo, otherwise they would be so poor that they would only have food for the winter.

In addition to the construction of the village, Shen Chen also began to prepare for the construction of the Qiong cage, and the tunnel was actually very easy to dig.

Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, if the siege is not smooth when the army is marching and fighting, it is often digging tunnels, and a passage can be dug out within two or three days.

However, the design of Qionglong is in the hills and cols, and how to design, construction materials, area size, etc. are all problems.

Although there was this thing in the Han Dynasty, whether the soil quality of Xiliang was the same as that of Kanto, and whether it could be built according to the gourd and the Qiong cage that Shen Chen had seen in his previous life, was a problem.

After thinking about it for a long time, Shen Chen decided to make a cave, burn paper bricks, build them with bricks, and then paste the walls with rammed earth on the outside and cover them with lime mortar to increase the viscosity.

This was the technology for making city walls at that time, and even the general county city walls were inferior, because ordinary city walls were rammed earth and there were no bricks.

The so-called Qin bricks and Han tiles, although bricks have appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.

But the firing technology is not very good, Shen Chen will do design work in the future, what kind of buildings have been seen, the original caves and blast furnaces in the early years of the founding of our country in later generations, he has also found relics in some rural places.

Although it cannot be compared with the industrial civilization of the new era in later generations, these technologies are all products of the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, representing the peak level of the feudal period.

At least in the Han Dynasty, the bricks and porcelain produced in the caves designed by Shen Chen were more delicate and durable, and the iron fired in the blast furnace was of very good quality, which could remove more impurities.

However, this is only an idea, because the most important thing now is the survival of the village and the guarantee of infrastructure.

So now it's time to finish the surface work of the villages, build the houses, repair the thatched houses, and then dig the canals and reclaim the fields, and every household has to redistribute the land.

If you look up the hillside, you'll see hundreds of brand-new houses scattered for miles.

This design work is not a simple matter, because the land must be close to the house, otherwise it is inconvenient to cultivate, and it also needs to take into account other functions such as vegetable planting and breeding.

If all the villagers were to be gathered together, it would be difficult to divide the land.

The fields are far and near, and the villagers who are assigned to the fields must have complaints, so they can only be scattered and constructed.

Fortunately, there is nothing else in the plains, that is, the land is large, and although the villagers live separately, they have also carried out unified planning and resettlement work one by one.

It was not until the spring of January of the following year, after the completion of the local capital construction, that Shen Chen began to plan to cast the cave and build a blast furnace.

According to the agreement between him and Liu Biao, he will not go to Xiangyang until the clan is completely settled, and now he has just begun to reclaim the fields, and he still needs a lot of farm tools, seeds and other materials, so there is plenty of time.

Deng Hong went to Xiangyang again, tried to buy some production tools, but it was not enough, and finally found Liu Biao for help.

These things are all strategic materials, which are too expensive on the market, and only Liu Biao's treasury has a lot of them, so he can only be cheeky to find him.

Liu Biao was quite generous and sent some supplies to them, so that the elders of Huangmenting Township could finally start production.

Shen Chen asked the villagers to collect animal dung, bones, human dung, burnt plant ash, bellflower ash, and pull the excrement produced by humans and animals into the thatched house, and add a certain proportion of water to make dung water.

After two or three months of fermentation, to be honest, the villagers actually have a hard time putting up with the taste.

Since the Southern Song Dynasty did not have manure technology before, they used to do their feces and urine in the wild, but now they put the thatched house at home, which really makes them a little uncomfortable.

However, Shen Chen said that using such fertilizer can increase soil fertility and increase grain production. Therefore, when the villagers were suspicious, they could only obey his orders, and every household dug thatched huts and irrigated the land with dung.

By the spring, the elders of Huangmenting Township had reclaimed more than 10,000 acres of land, dug out some fish ponds, purchased some pigs, cattle, sheep and livestock, and finally started a new life.

At the same time, Shen Chen summoned the village strong, and after everyone finished their work every evening, they continued to work overtime, digging caves according to the mountain behind the col and building a blast furnace.

With caves and blast furnaces, you can fire bricks, porcelain, and steel, and make better farming tools and weapons.

Fortunately, coal is widely distributed in any province in China, but Shanxi, Henan, and Shandong are the provinces with the most output, not that other provinces do not have it.

There are also coal mines in the Nanyang Basin, near the Shahe River where the elders of Huangmenting Township live, which are not big mines, but they are enough.

During the day, Shen Chen asked everyone to continue to reclaim the farmland and irrigate the millet seedlings with manure. In the evening, the kiln bricks and porcelain are fired in the cave, and then the iron tools of the entire clan are collected and re-refined for the blacksmith to make.

However, the ones created are just ordinary farm tools, and no curved plows, water drum cars, and keel waterwheels have been invented.

Because it is used for paddy fields, the planting method in the Nanyang Basin is similar to that of the Yellow River Basin, mainly dry fields, spring millet and autumn wheat, too much water will waterlog millet seedlings and wheat seedlings to death.

After more than three months, the millet seedlings finally grown, and after careful cultivation and irrigation, the millet seedlings planted in Huangmenting are full and large, and the yield has increased by 40%, which is higher than any period in previous years.

This news immediately made the villagers cheer up and rejoice, and some of the original dissatisfaction with Shen Chen's request also disappeared completely, and the rest began to blindly worship and believe in him like heavenly beings.

However, Shen Chen knew that the production could be increased by 40% this time because the soil power was sufficient and the fertilizer technology was used for the first time, and the output in the future would decline year by year, and eventually tend to stabilize.

According to what he learned when he was collecting wind before, if he didn't use chemical fertilizer, the 20% increase in crop yield by light fertilizer technology was the sky, usually between 10% and 20%, and only chemical fertilizer was the real revolutionary product.

By April, the entire village was basically in shape. The villagers have also settled down, and the tunnels, hidden forts, and cages are also being built in an orderly manner, and everything is on the right track.

Liu Biao said before that after their clan was settled, Deng Hong would go to Xiangyang to take up his post, and now is the time.

Before leaving, Shen Chen convened a meeting again.

This time it was not in the shack at the bottom of the mountain, but in the newly built ancestral hall of the Deng family, and this time he even sat on the main seat, and several uncles and ancestors next to him sat under him.

Shen Chen looked around and spoke first: "Uncles, now that the clan has settled down, I and the Sixth Uncles will also go to Xiangyang. However, Nanyang is not very peaceful, if you want the clan to gain a foothold in the world and not let your life be in the hands of others, you have to grow stronger. ”

Deng Mao asked, "Ah Chen, are you going to do so?" ”

"I'm going to train the troops."

Shen Chen said: "I built tunnels, hidden forts, and cages to prevent anyone from attacking our village. Now that there are bandits everywhere in Nanyang, we are rich in production, and we may be plundered, how can we not have the power to protect ourselves? ”

Deng Mao said: "The village leaders have to practice all day long for military training, but everyone has to take care of the farmland, where is the time?" ”

That's a big problem.

There are more than 1,000 people in Huangmen Pavilion, especially after Cao Ren's night attack, more than 200 people were killed and injured, in addition to more than 100 people in Zhangyang, the other more than 100 people are young village strong, which is a huge blow to the clan.

At present, 80 percent of the working population of the entire clan is between the ages of 15 and 50, and only 40 percent if women are excluded, and even fewer are suitable for military training, accounting for only 20 percent, that is, more than 200 people.

These people were clansmen before, and when they migrated, they trained briefly to protect the clansmen and moved south. But after settling down, he has to become the main labor force in the village.

If they are trained to be soldiers, who will farm the land?

Shen Chen had already thought about this problem, and said in a deep voice: "So I don't plan to raise all the soldiers, only train fifty people, raise one soldier for every twenty people, fully armed, carefully trained, and must be brave people who dare to die and dare to fight, in order to have the strength to fight." ”

Deng Mao hesitated: "Fifty people? What good can this be? What's more, now that we have been entrusted with Liu Jingzhou's rule to train the township soldiers, is there still a need for this? ”

"If you want to develop, you have to do that."

Shen Chen said firmly: "There are many remnants of the Yellow Turban hiding in the mountainous areas near Nanyang, we can accept the displaced people, first attack from small forces, relocate their people, promote it in our mode, and gradually occupy the surrounding land, gather the people into a city, and grow step by step." Now it's fifty, it's five hundred, five thousand, and then we'll see who dares to do it! ”

Deng Mao and the others glanced at each other.

Their grandson is not small, but now that he is comfortable, he suddenly wants everyone to train soldiers, and I don't know if the villagers will be willing.

However, unlike the villagers who are small and rich, they have read a few books and have some insight.

also understood that in this troubled era, if they didn't control their own strength, just one prince could send one or two thousand soldiers to slaughter their entire clan, so seeing that Shen Chen had a lot of ideas and ambitions, he didn't dissuade him, and they all agreed to it and handed it over to him to do.