Work Prophet
Chapter 93 - 9 Red Brick

Chapter 93: Chapter 9 Red Brick

Compared to forging steel, making bricks was much simpler, almost a case of just needing hands to do the job.

Civilizations that touched upon pottery technology generally learned how to fire bricks, and going a step further, they could unlock the production of glazes or glassware.

Contrary to what many might think, glass has a very long history.

Not counting the natural glass columns formed when lightning strikes sand in the desert, melting it into what’s known as fulgurite or lightning lava—this type of glass, being full of impurities, looks dark and dull like charcoal, only cool to play with but seemingly good for nothing else—

the earliest history of humans making manmade glass can probably be traced back to Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece around BC; of course, it was Rome that eventually came to excel in glasswork.

The Romans invented the glass mirror by backing glass with metal, and they mastered more complex glass techniques such as blowing, mold blowing, cutting, carving, threading, and even making exquisite thin-walled glassware (though it contained quite a few bubbles).

However, after the fall of Rome, their glassmaking techniques gradually got lost, and medieval Europe was left with only the craft of stained glass at one point.

In contrast, around the same time, the technological development of materials in the Eastern Empire was a thousand years ahead of the world. However, perhaps because of their fervent passion for porcelain, glass technology in China failed to take off.

Until the nineteenth century, glass was nearly invisible in the everyday life of Easterners, causing them to miss the invention of the telescope and the microscope.

Meanwhile, on the Bratis Continent, the situation was a little more complicated; it was said that the secret of glassmaking was tightly held in the hands of the elves.

The elves claimed the skill was a gift from the forest and the Mother Goddess of Life to their race, allowing them to create various stunningly beautiful vessels from this transparent, thin material.

There were even rumors of a transparent glass palace hidden deep in the forest, entirely constructed from glass.

Li Yu was personally skeptical of this claim because glass was too poor in impact resistance; not even a sunroom made of glass was safe, let alone an entire palace.

However, this also showed that the glassmaking techniques held by the elves must not have been too inferior, perhaps comparable to those of the Ancient Romans.

But I digress; back to brick firing.

The Red Lion Empire, although unclear about the elves’ secret of glass production, was still able to make bricks; however, Li Yu found out that only a few scattered brick kilns existed in certain coastal areas to the south.

After all, brick houses weren’t favored by the nobles of the Empire who generally preferred more defensively robust and majestic-looking stone castles, even though the cost of building one was far greater than that of a brick house—from quarrying and processing the stones to transporting them, it consumed a huge amount of Gold Coins.

The common folk, although they favored it, couldn’t afford to live in brick houses.

Even though the cost of firing bricks was not high and the raw material, clay, was readily available everywhere.

For most nobles, whether free citizens or serfs were merely tools for production, only necessitating the bare minimum living conditions to ensure they didn’t starve or freeze to death, thus taxes on the lands were often set very high.

Add to that various feudal obligations, such as each person needing to cultivate certain land for their lord every year, construct or repair castles, serve in the military, and other miscellaneous charges like the fees for using a communal oven and well, fees for a stud pig, special fees for weddings and funerals, among others.

In the end, very little money was left in the hands of the farmers.

Aside from warfare, the presence of bandits was also a factor that could not be ignored; the loss would be even greater if a brick house that had been so hard to build were to be set on fire or pushed over.

On the contrary, it was much more convenient to rebuild ordinary thatched longhouses.

Therefore, brick houses naturally became difficult to popularize in the Red Lion Empire. In fact, if Li Yu remembered correctly, in the universe he belonged to, brick and tile houses only gradually became more common in Europe around the twelfth century.

Li Yu, of course, was not interested in waiting that long.

At the current stage, the cost of reinforced concrete structures was still too high for him, and Li Yu had to give up on them; however, building a few brick kilns was still entirely within his means.

Moreover, though Miss Rabbit’s family territory was a bit remote, it was not without its advantages; at least it was less likely that the flames of war would reach there on ordinary days.

After all, wars should have a reason, and Green Field was nothing special, really not worth deploying a large army for; even if one were to win, they could only take some carrots back home.

Celebrating such a victory would likely make one blush first.

In the past, the biggest trouble in this land were the bandit lizard people living in the marshes, and now these lizard people had been placated by Li Yu. It was already good enough that they did not rob others, and no one around dared to provoke them.

In this light, the cost of reconstruction no longer needed to be considered.

The only problem was that Li Yu could not directly recruit ready-made bricklayers on this side of the West.

Since the South was too far away, even if those craftsmen were willing to come over to build brick kilns for him, it would still take at least two months for them to arrive. That would still only be under the condition that Li Yu offered them an irresistible high price, for them to be willing to leave their homes and trek all the way to the territory of the Arias family.

Although Li Yu was wealthy, there were still many other places where he would need to spend his money, so he did not wish to be so wasteful and also did not want to wait that long; he simply decided to start building brick kilns himself.

Unlike in the games where technology can be unlocked easily with a click of the mouse.

In reality, inventing a technology, even just an existing one, was not an easy task to develop it to a usable extent.

Fortunately, Li Yu was somewhat mentally prepared for this. After setting up the construction plan, he adopted the spirit he had when writing academic papers, began to collect literature online, learn and summarize the technical points, and even borrowed several books related to the field from the library.

When it actually came time to get started, Li Yu also purchased some tools and equipment from 1688, including but not limited to temperature gauges to measure the temperature of the brick kilns, standardized molds for making bricks, and so forth.

He even found a way to bring a manual miniature brick-making machine to Bratis through dismantled and batched transportation, significantly increasing the speed of brick production.

Nevertheless, it still took three weeks in real time to produce bricks that Li Yu was barely satisfied with, which equated to a full two months in the Bratis Continent.

However, looking at the whole row of uniformly sized, perfectly square red bricks, Li Yu still felt that the effort during this period was worthwhile.

The next step was to expand the scale of the brick kiln. Li Yu planned to gradually increase the brick output to fifty thousand a day, which should be enough to meet the upcoming construction needs.