Chapter 81: Building Materials

Just as the Committee's professional groups were locked in heated debate over priority access to labor, Xiao Zishan received another call from Ran Yao: interrogations had uncovered Li minority prisoners among the captives.

"Really?" Xiao Zishan's surprise was genuine. On Hainan Island, the Li people had always been a formidable presence. Every county's historical annals devoted entire sections to "Li affairs," and from the Yuan Dynasty onward, scarcely a year had passed without uprisings. Han-Li tensions ran deep, and defending against Li incursions had long been a primary concern of local government. Their resistance had prevented Han migration from ever truly penetrating Hainan's heartland. For transmigrators hoping to develop the island, the Li question demanded extreme caution.

"What's the situation?"

"According to their testimony, the county conscripted them as crossbowmen. Thirty came with the expedition; we captured eight." Ran Yao paused. "Also, remember that family caught up in all this by accident?"

"Yes, the woman's a cop. I assigned her to assist you with interrogations."

"Well, she's Li herself—and her ancestral home is right here on Hainan. Wonderful coincidence, isn't it? I believe we can leverage this connection."

"Doesn't she speak Sichuan Mandarin? Many modern minorities have become so assimilated they're practically indistinguishable. Besides, she left the area long ago. What could she possibly know about them?"

"More than you'd expect. She knows a great deal about her people. The Li prisoners are already prostrating themselves before her." Laughter crackled through the PHS. "You see, talent sometimes appears from the most unexpected places."

Guo Yi had largely completed his screening of the captives. The vast majority were farmers—even the small landlords among them worked their own fields. A handful were craftsmen, though really they straddled both worlds: burning pottery in the slack seasons, or doing bricklaying and house repairs between harvests. The most skilled among them was an older rough carpenter. Only one prisoner was literate: Zhang Xingjiao. He was called out separately and assigned to study Mandarin under Xiong Buyou, becoming the labor team's clerk, responsible for recording work points and the like.

Wu De pulled the craftsmen into their own team. The remainder, minus twenty-odd wounded, were divided into five labor squads with the original five prisoners serving as captains. During this reorganization, he followed the interrogation records carefully, mixing Lingao natives with Fujian migrants and other settlers—scrambling any existing bonds and continuing the policy of divide-and-rule. Unity among them was not to be tolerated. Lin Xing and his fellow captains, now elevated above their peers, quickly forgot their own half-prisoner, half-slave status and began to feel rather pleased with themselves. Without waiting for orders from Wu De, they had already fashioned themselves into eager enforcers, ready to zealously drive these new wretches.

Wu De understood such dynamics intimately. Years of work in military and judicial organs had taught him that strict hierarchy, the absolute power of superiors over subordinates, and the benefits that flowed from such power were immensely seductive forces in human groups. He deliberately deepened these distinctions. Each of the five captains received an ugly rattan safety helmet—failed prototypes from the Industrial Committee that had originally been destined for the fire. Wu De claimed them all, using the visible marker of "has helmet" versus "no helmet" to reinforce status differences among the prisoners.

Due to urgent construction needs, all labor teams were assigned to the Building Group to produce building materials. The priority: bricks.

Modern construction had gradually shifted from bricks and tiles to reinforced concrete, but fired clay bricks remained the most economical and widespread material available. The Building Engineering Group naturally had no intention of abandoning them.

According to scouts, three kilometers from Bairren Rapids lay a brick-and-tile works—a typical traditional operation with three earthen round kilns. The workers had fled, but everything else remained: fired bricks and tiles, air-dried blanks, and substantial quantities of aged clay.

Brick-and-tile production was an elaborate process. First came excavation of raw clay, which had to be free of organic matter. The raw clay was sun-dried and crushed, then water was added, and the mixture was repeatedly crushed and treaded into aged clay before being formed into blanks. But blanks could not go directly into kilns—too much moisture would cause cracking or deformation. They required air-drying for ten days to two weeks, protected from direct sun, strong wind, and cold. By convention, winter was unsuitable for brick production. Only after proper air-drying could blanks be loaded into kilns for firing.

If the transmigrators had been forced to make and fire bricks entirely by hand, their efficiency would have been laughable. Fortunately, they possessed a combined brick-making machine driven by a locomobile. Blank-making efficiency now depended solely on how much raw clay they could excavate.

Mei Wan found the earthen round kilns hopelessly inefficient. Worse, proper loading required skilled masters—not the sort of thing manual-reading greenhorns could manage. Fortunately, plenty of ready bricks were available from the existing stock. He began building a sixteen-chamber Hoffmann kiln.

Hoffmann kilns were "Western kilns," already considered outdated compared to modern tunnel kilns, but in this era they represented absolutely advanced technology.

A Hoffmann kiln was designed for continuous production, capable of simultaneously loading blanks, unloading finished bricks, and cleaning—all at once. It comprised many interconnected small chambers arranged in a ring-shaped tunnel, with kiln doors spaced around the perimeter. All flues connected to a central main flue, and fuel was fed through loading holes in the roof. During operation, the working zones rotated through the chambers: drying, preheating, firing, and cooling. In a sixteen-chamber kiln, while Chamber One was being unloaded, Chamber Sixteen was already being cleaned and Chamber Fifteen loaded with new blanks. Then Chamber Two could be unloaded while Chamber One was cleaned and Chamber Sixteen loaded. Once ignited, the kiln ran continuously around the clock, far surpassing traditional kilns in both efficiency and heat utilization. An ordinary Hoffmann kiln could produce over fifty million bricks annually.

To save time, Mei Wan decided to fire the already air-dried blanks while the machinery was being installed and the Hoffmann kiln constructed. But loading traditional kilns was skilled work—neither the transmigrators nor the laborers had any experience with it. Word of the problem reached the Committee. Intelligence Group's Luo Duo once again played his role as the "walking encyclopedia," quickly locating on a computer hard drive an electronic copy of a 1958 pamphlet titled Traditional Methods for Making Bricks and Tiles. Within an hour, a printed copy was rushed to the kiln site. The laborers stared in amazement as this "pirate craftsman" used a mere book to teach them kiln-loading techniques—secrets that normally only old masters possessed.

Near the kilns stretched large fields of thatch. Mei Wan asked the laborers who had once done casual work at the brick yard, and they confirmed this was fuel deliberately planted for the kilns. Earthen kilns worked better with such "soft fuel"; hardwood burned too fiercely and was difficult to control. The transmigrators naturally appropriated this ready supply.

While the earthen kilns were firing, Mei Wan directed the labor teams in continuous grass-cutting and clay-digging. Bundles of grass and mounds of clay accumulated in impressive quantities. Some prisoners convinced themselves the pirates intended to work them to death. So much clay—you couldn't use it all even if you labored without eating or sleeping.

Then the locomobile was adjusted and started up, chugging black smoke as its flywheel spun to life, driving the combined brick-making machine. The prisoners watched, transfixed, as heaps of aged clay were poured into its steel maw. Iron parts rose and fell in a bewildering, clattering rhythm, and then smooth blanks emerged as if by magic, neatly cut into whole boards of brick shapes. Even the most skilled traditional brick-makers could never work at such speed. Everyone stood stupefied. These pirates can do anything! Their building capability defied human limits. Some prisoners simply fell to their knees before the roaring machine, kowtowing repeatedly.

"Stop that kowtowing and get moving! Bring more material!" Mei Wan shouted at the dazed Lin Xing.

"Understood, Chief!" Someone with too much free time had taught him this term, and now he called every transmigrator Chief.

"Work! Work!" Lin Xing waved his stick with zealous authority. "Move that clay—quick now! Slowpokes get thrown into that iron mouth!"

The threat proved far more effective than his stick. Every prisoner developed a superstitious terror of the machine, laboring with frantic energy for fear that lagging behind meant being fed to its maw. Surely this thing required human sacrifices?

The formed blanks were carted to the stacking yard. The original drying sheds had been emptied, providing perfect space for the new production. All bricks followed the old "85 brick" standard dimensions.

The machine's production speed clearly exceeded anything this era could match. Before evening fell, all the aged clay that Lingao's brickmakers had spent months preparing was exhausted. The machine had to stop temporarily.

Beyond building the Hoffmann kiln, Mei Wan's other critical task was producing cement. For him, cement had always been something you called in for delivery. Even the cement used after D-Day had come from the original timespace. Making it from scratch was another matter entirely—he had no idea where to begin. He knew "crude cement" existed in some form, but how to produce it and what performance to expect remained mysteries.

In modern society, the cement industry had become highly specialized, involving mechanized large-scale production and an array of specialized heavy equipment: crushers, rotary kilns, ball mills. Replicating such machinery was far too extravagant for the transmigrators' current capabilities. Even buying ready-made equipment and installing it was beyond them—such massive industrial apparatus exceeded anything they could presently manage.

(End of Chapter)