With the continuous increase of the population in the Dapan pier, at this time more than 100 people gathered in the pier, it is no longer possible to live, and even the ground nest outside the pier has also built a lot, so that when the military households are busy with farming, in order to seize the time to catch up with the farming, most of the military households even sleep directly in the field, and are not willing to rush back to the pier to live in the crowded and simple nest.

At this time, the Dapan pier was relatively empty, so Liu Yan was ready to start building the tun fort, and renamed the Dapan pier Dapan Fort.

At the end of April, Liu Yan ordered Chen Xun to take people to Wangjiazhuang and Xiahezhai Qianqianhu, and recruit some mud and water civil engineering craftsmen as soon as possible to prepare to build a fort.

Three days later, in the evening, Chen Xun and the others returned, bringing back seven or eight ragged craftsmen. Chen Xun had already negotiated with these craftsmen, and in terms of wages, in addition to daily food and lodging, he needed to give one cent of silver every day, and Liu Yan agreed to them.

When these craftsmen saw Liu Yan agree, they were all overjoyed, and the food for this period of time finally had a whereabouts.

Liu Yan talked with these craftsmen and learned that they were all generations of craftsmen, who had participated in the construction of many castles, and were all very experienced craftsmen. The construction and planning of Dapanbao is actually a familiar thing for them.

So Liu Yan called Zhang Yi and asked Zhang Yi to be responsible for docking with these craftsmen. After a few days of walking around the perimeter of Dapan Fort, these craftsmen quickly came up with a plan for the design of the fort, including the division of the streets in the fort, the location of the wells, the location of the temples and the location of the various houses, as well as the future fort wall, fort gate, battlements, firing ports and other defensive facilities on the fort wall.

Liu Yan took a look at it and saw that the plane drawing was a little simple, not the style of the architectural drawings of later generations, but it was clear enough, and the specific dimensions everywhere were also indicated, which could be regarded as rigorous.

In the selection of the site of the Tun Fort, the opinions of these craftsmen also coincided with Liu Yan, and they all decided to build the fortress along the south side of the Dapan Fort, firstly, it was more reliable for this defense, and secondly, the Dapan Fort was originally built on a raised hillock, and the terrain was from high to low, which was conducive to the drainage of the castle to prevent the trouble of rain and waterlogging in the future.

After the drawings are drawn, the location is not a problem, the key is the cost of building the castle.

Liu Yan once read a historical material of the late Ming Dynasty, which contains records of the construction of castles and cities in various parts of the Ming Dynasty.

The data includes Lu Xiangsheng's calculation data: in the Ming Dynasty, it took 200 taels of silver to build a fire pier, 600 taels of silver to build a tower, and more than 700 taels of silver and more than 600 stones of grain to build a small castle with a circumference of more than a mile. The same is true of the calculations of the craftsmen.

Liu Yan's future Dapan Fort, the circumference of the plan is more than one mile, although Liu Yan now has the support of the soap workshop, he can take out seven or eight hundred taels of silver, but he can't put all the funds on the fort, Liu Yan's next plan There are still many places to use money and food, such as expanding the strength of the dun army, training men and horses, building weapons, etc., these are extremely money-consuming matters.

Therefore, even if Liu Yan has some silver at this time, he can only build some of the main facilities of the castle first, and the details will be simple and simple, and the future will be slowly considered and improved, and the money and grain saved will be invested elsewhere.

Liu Yan actually really wanted to build Dapan Fort into a fortress style, so that the defense would be stronger, but unfortunately this kind of cost was amazing, and Liu Yan didn't have the financial resources for the time being, so he could only look at it in the future. Fortunately, it didn't cost money to build a fort land, so it saved a lot.

At this time, the main body of the general military fort of the Ming Dynasty is the barracks, granaries, forage fields, arsenals, and horse farms in the city, and these facilities are now available in the piers, but when the fort is built, it must be pushed back again, after all, these original facilities are not in the right location, and they are too old and narrow.

The facilities for building a fort should also be added to the outer fort wall, city gate, urn city, corner tower, moat, etc., and the same is basically true for the forts in various places. However, judging from the funds allocated by Liu Yanneng to build the fort, the barracks and the fort wall can only be built first, and the rest will speak slowly. After Liu Yan decided, soon, those craftsmen were busy.

First of all, in the dozens of acres of land in the south of Dapanbao, these craftsmen skillfully carved out dozens of homesteads, and divided the travel road and three main streets.

After Liu Yan's observation, Liu Yan found that the area of each homestead is not small, enough to accommodate two or three families to live, and when the time comes to build the fort, it is good to build more houses and denser, which can completely accommodate all the existing military households.

Subsequently, at the end of the central axis of due west, the craftsmen also drew out the location of a temple for the first time, and the local soldiers and civilians of the Qianhu in front of Xiahe Village generally called the temple in this position "Zhengwang Temple". Then a place is drawn at the intersection of the street, where the "Mawang Temple" will be built in the future, a high stage will also be built here, and the "Lao Ye Temple" will be built opposite the stage, and a "Niangniang Temple" will also be built at the southern end of the city.

In addition, in the east of the Tunpu, it is necessary to set aside a few pieces of land to build temples and temples that show military merits in the future, such as Qishou Temple, Xianzhong Temple, Baozhong Temple, etc., which are also the practice of Weisuo Tunbao at this time. In addition, in the center of the main street of each street, there will also be space for the construction of various market squares and torii gates.

This kind of planning was the conventional layout of military forts and civil forts in the Ming Dynasty at that time, Liu Yan naturally could not change it without permission, and he couldn't change it, to be honest, Liu Yan didn't know anything about architecture in his later generations.

As for the first time that these craftsmen set aside the places for the construction of various temples, Liu Yan also expressed his understanding, after all, these temples are the spiritual food of the military households at this time. In this world, entertainment is poor, and ordinary people and military households can have entertainment other than visiting temples and watching plays? Of course, those dignitaries and royal gentry are not counted, and those big men have their own colorful entertainment activities, but they have nothing to do with Liu Yan and the military households.

This is the general pattern of Dapanbao, and the following craftsmen started to work. Liu Yan gave an order, all the residents of Dapanbao, except for the children, and the young and strong women who needed to work on the tun army, all the remaining dun soldiers, men and women went into battle together, and everyone must build their homes diligently.

For a time, the military households of Dapanbao, both men and women, were holding hoes, dustpans and baskets, but they went to the periphery of Dapanbao to dig and pick up soil. Even the children are sensible and helpful.

However, the construction of fort walls and barracks can be rammed with loess, and the soil can be taken on the spot, which does not require any material money, only needs to spend some food and labor, but some money is unavoidable.

For example, the foundation of the house in Tunpu and the foundation of the fort wall need stones, and these stones also require the stone to be hard and not easy to weather, and bluestone is the best. In particular, the foundation of the masonry fortress wall needs to be five feet deep and four feet wide.

There is also a well, this is the first priority to build a fort, one hundred and ten households can not live with only one well, a small fort needs at least three wells of water, Xiahe Zhai is rich in underground water sources in the former thousand households of the state, so the well is generally more than ten or twenty zhang can produce water, and the water quality is mostly clear and sweet. Liu Yan heard that in some places in Shanxi and Shaanxi, it is necessary to drill wells as deep as thirty or forty zhang, or even fifty or sixty zhang to see the water, and it is already a great luck that he can live here.

However, even if the well is only more than ten or twenty zhang deep, in order to avoid collapse, it is also necessary to use bricks and stones to repair, so the amount of stone used in the deep well is also a lot. An example of this is the well that was dug in the pier, and if the stone used was used to build a house, at least two houses could have been built.

The land around Dapanbao is empty, and there is nowhere to quarry, so you can only go to the mountains around the Qianhu House in front of Xiahe Village to quarry.

The quarry there is far away from Dapanbao Road, and the cost of mining and transportation must be very large, and in addition to the stone, the roof beams of the barracks and warehouses in various places also need wood, which is also a large expense.

After Liu Yan thought about it, he still transferred more than 20 men, some of whom were transferred back from the military camp. In order to make up for the labor of the army, Liu Yan had to let some old men or half-grown children go to work in the army.

Then Liu Yan asked Wang Bo to lead these 20 or so men to the mountains in front of Xiahe Village to quarry stones, in order to facilitate the transportation of stones, he also sent people to Wangjiazhuang to hire a few mules, horses and ox carts.

Before leaving, Liu Yan asked Wang Bo to try to extract some stones for the foundation of the barracks and the stones needed for drilling wells, as for the paving of the street and the foundation of the fort wall outside, let's talk about it slowly in the future, after all, the human and financial resources are limited now, and it is impossible to achieve it overnight.

At the same time, Liu Yan went to Wangjiazhuang again and asked Wang Weizhen, the officer of the management team, to support him with some wood, Wang Weizhen said that it was very difficult to support without taste, but he happened to have a batch of free wood in his hand, which could be sold to Liu Yan cheaper.

Liu Yan smiled, Wang Weizhen is good at everything, he just likes money, so he had to agree.

A few days later, Yue Ming, the chief flag officer of Wangjiazhuang, led dozens of military households in the village, and let them carry the wood on their shoulders.

At the scene of the fort building, Liu Yan looked at the Wangjiazhuang military households who were so tired that they were about to lie down, Liu Yan was speechless, everything in this world is worth anything, but manpower is not valuable!

Yue Ming is a rough man, in his early thirties, full of beard, but Liu Yan heard that this person is proficient in arithmetic, and he is also the number one person in Wangjiazhuang.

At this time, Yue Ming looked at the busy scene inside and outside Dapan Fort, patted Liu Yan's shoulder, and said with emotion: "Liu Zongqi, brother, I really obeyed you, I actually built the fort independently, this courage and courage are rare in our entire Lingshanwei!" ”

Liu Yan could only smile bitterly, it was easy to say that building a fort independently, but the hard work in it was not enough for outsiders to hear. If it weren't for the fact that he could develop his strength with peace of mind here in Dapanbao, Liu Yan would not have bothered to spend this effort.

After Yue Ming received Liu Yan's timber money, he didn't say anything else, even the five coins of hard silver that Liu Yan handed over, but just asked Liu Yan to give his military households a full meal.

Liu Yan was also emotionally moved when he heard this, everyone is a poor ghost now, but who is the rich man?

So Liu Yan patted Yue Ming on the shoulder, and asked Yue Ming to go to dinner with those military households, and immediately those military households were in high spirits like tigers descending from the mountain, seeing this situation, Liu Yan didn't know whether he should laugh or cry.