At night, the Shigongshan Quarry in the south of Xishan Island finally became quiet.

On the three-mile-long stone pier below the quarry, torches were still lighting the sky.

Those were the laborers pushing carts and loading the ship overnight.

Liang and Mi Wa waited until this moment before it was their turn to row the boat to the dock.

At this time, the manager of the quarry asked them to show their red-headed lots.

It was received from the county the day before departure, and it had the unique number and the size of the boat on it.

The manager used a torch to write down the number, stamped it, handed it back to Liang, and also gave her four meal tickets.

The steward shouted, "One ingredient!"

The laborers then carried the stones in baskets onto the mother and daughter's boat. They stopped after filling six baskets in total.

The waterline immediately reached the side of the ship, but fortunately, after two laborers went down, it rose a little bit.

"Drive the boat away and don't block the road." The manager waved his hand and told them to leave quickly.

The mother and daughter carefully steered the boat, avoiding the densely packed ships of all sizes at the dock, and looked for a berth outside.

Fortunately, their boat was small, and they found a space to stop less than a mile away from the dock.

Then the mother and daughter got off the boat and walked to the large canteen not far away. With two meal tickets, each of them received a large bowl of brown rice, a pickled herring, and a bowl of bitter melon soup with egg drops floating in it.

Mi Wa ate a bowl and a half of rice with a half-salted fish and ate so much that he burped.

"It's so delicious!" The boy was so happy that he was bubbling with joy. "Just for this salted fish, I will pull stones every day."

"Look at what you have accomplished. I think you are no different from salted fish." Liang smiled and rolled her eyes at him. However, this Jiangnan Company was really wealthy and powerful, and they could actually pickle the fish so salty.

I heard that there is a big salt merchant among the shareholders, so it must be true that he is so willing to add salt.

After dinner, the mother and daughter went back to the boat to take a nap. When it was dawn, Liang got up and used the remaining two meal tickets to get four steamed buns, two salted duck eggs, and some boiled water.

They took it back to the boat and called Mi Wa. The mother and daughter ate steamed buns with salted duck eggs, and then hurried back.

~~

The return trip was smooth sailing. Although fully loaded, it saved a lot of time and effort.

Before noon, the boat returned to Kunshan. On the back of the sign was written the section number "22". Although Liang was illiterate, he knew the numbers from one to ten.

The mother and daughter rowed the boat to the 22nd section. After the sign was lit, someone came up quickly, hooked the baskets with iron hooks, and hoisted them onto the levee one by one.

After the last basket was lifted up, Liang breathed a sigh of relief. This mission was finally completed.

The mother and daughter rowed a long way back to the county town from Xiajia River because Li Hua was repairing a sluice gate there.

There are many rivers in the south of the Yangtze River. There are six tributaries flowing north on the 62-li Wusong River in Kunshan.

These six parallel rivers provide drinking water, irrigation and travel convenience for the people of Kunbei, and it is impossible to block them.

It is necessary to set up gates, open them for ships to pass in normal times, and close them to prevent flooding when floods come. This is also the difficulty of the entire embankment project.

Fortunately, there is Pan Jixun.

Pan Zhongcheng and Zheng Ruozeng braved wind and rain and traveled to all the rivers. After repeated deliberation, they designed different sluices tailored for the six rivers.

For example, the 10-zhang-wide Xiajia River was designed with two gates on the left and right, with each gate having a gate in front and behind. A water scale was also engraved on the side of the gate, so that one could tell at a glance when to open one gate or both gates.

In the past, it would have taken more than half a year to build the river gate on the Xiajia River alone. But now with concrete and precast slabs, the project has become much simpler.

The gate is made of prefabricated bamboo-reinforced panels and cast elsewhere.

The gate chamber and gate piers are built using the paving method and concrete is poured directly.

The so-called rammed earth method is an ancient construction technique. Simply put, it is to build a frame with wooden boards, support it with wooden stakes and sticks, tie it firmly with ropes to ensure its firmness, and then fill it with soil and tamp it.

Most city walls, and even the Great Wall, use this technique.

In fact, skyscrapers four hundred years later were also built using the same method.

Zhao Hao originally planned to teach the craftsmen the method of pouring, but when he saw that they already had a ready-made method, he decided not to teach them how to do it.

In the end, he only reminded Pan Jixun of two points. First, concrete will release heat when solidifying, so pay attention to watering to cool it down. Second, when pouring, let the workers use sticks to tamp it to eliminate gaps and make the concrete dense.

In fact, these are the things that need to be paid attention to in large-scale projects of dozens or hundreds of meters in the future. At present, it is just pouring a sluice gate several meters high, so these two points are not a big problem.

One hundred years after the invention of concrete, who knew these things?

But this dam was too important, so Mr. Zhao would rather be cautious than have any hidden dangers.

This made Mr. Pan look at him with admiration, and he felt that this idle boy also had some good qualities.

~~

The mother and daughter maneuvered the boat into the gate of the earthen embankment, where they saw a group of craftsmen busy at work on a bamboo scaffolding.

Miwa had sharp eyes and immediately saw his father working at the highest point.

"Dad, Dad!" He waved and shouted excitedly.

"Hey! Good son!" Many craftsmen responded in unison: "Where's your mother!"

"Fuck your mother, die happily!" Li Hua cursed with a smile, and threw a tile knife to dot the mud to reward those bad mouths.

He waved to his son, grinned at his wife, and then accurately threw a grass carp weighing more than three pounds from a high altitude into the cabin.

"It burned at night."

In the morning, the sluice gates were closed to clear the silt and a lot of big fish were caught. This was one of the ones he got.

Liang also smiled sweetly at her husband, then slowly rowed back.

~~

In the evening, the mother and daughter finally returned to the county town, handed in their application at the dock, and received the "subsidy" for the voyage - four catties of rice, two ounces of oil, and three ounces of salt.

If they were on a two-ton ship, they could get twice as much supplies. The mother and daughter saw with their own eyes that a fifty-ton ship ahead of them took away two bags of rice, a large barrel of oil, and a large bag of salt.

Although it takes more than ten people to operate such a large boat, it is still much more cost-effective than their small boat.

Oh, I shouldn't think like that. We didn't go out to make money from the county.

Liang was deeply ashamed of her selfishness. In fact, to a large extent, she just saw that the boats could earn more than weaving baskets...

The mother and daughter packed the fish, grain and oil into baskets and happily returned to their home in Sibaoliqijiajia, Xin'anminshe.

Liang asked her son to quickly pick up his younger brothers and sisters and fetch another load of water.

She quickly opened the door, put down the basket, and started to deal with the big grass carp.

After a busy period, it was already dark.

The fire in the fire pit was bright and warm, and the fish soup in the pot smelled tempting, making the child next door cry again.

The children gathered around the fire pit, sniffing hard and swallowing their saliva.

At this time, the door opened and Li Hua came in carrying a shoulder pole.

"Dad is back!" The youngest son and daughter cheered, jumping up to greet him and throwing themselves into his arms. "We can finally have dinner."

"You're back. Wash up and have an meal." Liang also stood up and took the carrying pole from her husband.

"Well, you've worked hard too." Li Hua reached out and touched his wife's face.

In the reflection of the fire in the pond, her face was red.

ps. The first of four consecutive updates. Actually, I only have one eye working properly these days. I am writing a book with one eye. Please give me a monthly vote!