You were made to farm, and now you're the emperor of an empire?

Chapter 286 Now is not the time to rest.
In October, the temperature begins to drop.

A new task has been added to Roman's schedule.

How to get through the winter?

The infrastructure development in Origin City is definitely progressing rapidly.

Roman brought more advanced brick-making technology.

A bricklayer can make nearly a thousand brick blanks a day, which is one of the construction processes.

Other aspects include soil and mud transportation, sun drying, fuel supply, and coal-fired kilns, resulting in a long construction period.

On average, fifty laborers can build a basic brick house every day.

The more labor input, the greater the output.

Because they were building walls every day, the construction team had long been skilled and experienced, with one old man directing two newcomers to move bricks.

The advantage of this type of building is that it is sturdy and durable.

In other towns, the torrential rains and floods this year would have displaced dozens or even hundreds of people, leaving them homeless.

But compared to Origin City, it was just a light breeze and drizzle—at most, a roof that hadn't been properly tiled, resulting in a little leakage.

However, houses can only provide the most basic protection against the cold.

This year, the slaves had no clothes, no bedding, and not even complete furniture. The lumber mill gave priority to providing beds, which were made of straw and thatch.

The 6,000 jin of cotton that was just harvested can only be used by the army.

There isn't enough textile raw material; rather than distributing it only to a portion of the population, it would be better not to distribute it to anyone at all.

If Roman cancels its winter clothing benefits, no one will complain.

The problem is that Roman used to distribute winter clothes to them so that they could work in the winter.

This year……

That's how it has to be!

So what if I'm dressed lightly?

During the day, we raise our dietary standards. When we feel cold, we drink a few bowls of salted meat soup, which is covered with a layer of oil and warms us up.

With enough calories and fat, the body is active and won't freeze to death while working in winter.

But only people who work outside can drink this.

The workers in those workshops weren't allowed to eat fatty meat; they could only eat lean meat.

So, things are fine during the day.
But what about at night?

The temperature drops even further at night, and the wind howls outside. It would be perfectly normal for a number of people with weak constitutions to freeze to death if they weren't careful.

Once it gets cold, the efficiency of working during the day will definitely be greatly reduced.

Roman had no choice but to go to Coal Iron Town.

Honeycomb briquettes and iron stoves helped them get through the long, cold winter nights.

Just like building a brick house.

For production tasks that are not particularly difficult, the amount of manpower invested directly affects the output.

Roman brought five hundred new recruits with him to Coal Iron Town this time.

Another hundred people were arranged to settle next to the coal mine, and their task was to mass-produce honeycomb briquettes.

It didn't even take half a month.

Thousands upon thousands of honeycomb briquettes were transported over from there.

A large number of iron furnaces were also delivered.

The furnace has a sheet metal outer shell, a refractory inner liner, a ventilation opening at the bottom, and the grate and inner ring support are integrated and can be directly fitted inside.

Iron furnaces are easy to manufacture; each component can be made individually, and they can be assembled when needed.

Each brick house receives an iron stove and a pair of fire tongs, and Roman provides four free honeycomb briquettes daily.

This is not a small number.
There are now more than 9,000 brick houses in Origin City—not counting the residential areas that have been dispersed, such as military camps, military compounds, coal and iron towns, salt towns, gold mining towns, meadow pastures, etc.

Not to mention the nine thousand iron furnaces, the honeycomb briquettes alone require more than thirty thousand every day, weighing about one hundred thousand catties, which would take twenty horse-drawn carts to pull.

Some who settled down early were allocated brick houses, with only two or three people sharing five honeycomb briquettes.

Those who weren't assigned houses, or those who had just arrived this year, also lived in brick houses. On average, each brick house could crammed twenty people in, with each person having only four square meters of living space. They slept on straw mats on a large communal bed, huddled together for warmth, and shared five honeycomb briquettes.

With the ventilation vents open, a honeycomb briquette can burn at full speed for about an hour.

If the vent is plugged with a wooden stopper, leaving only a tiny gap, the burning speed of the honeycomb briquettes can be significantly slowed down, extending the burning time to three or four hours.

Nevertheless, the heat provided by four honeycomb briquettes is limited, and it would certainly be difficult to keep twenty people warm.

But in Origin City, this is what slaves without houses are like.

Their only way out was to work hard and not be lazy, otherwise they would be treated the same as prisoners of war.

If things go well, at the current construction speed, the last group of people will be able to get their household registration certificates and have their own houses in about six months.

By then, they will automatically be freed from their status as slaves. Origin City has its own residential rules.

Moreover, the resident affairs department officials will clearly inform others of these rules.

For example, joining the army can directly get you two brick houses. Soldiers have a house in the military compound, and Origin City will also allocate a house to their family members.

It doesn't matter if you don't have family, since you're guaranteed a house in the military compound, and the material conditions are plentiful and the salary is extremely high.

Additionally, if you miss the recruitment window, or fail to recruit any soldiers.

The newly built brick houses will be prioritized for families.

If you don't have any family members, then find one, get a marriage certificate, and then wait in line.

Otherwise, I'll have to share a room with other single people.

This can only be considered a very normal method of converting slaves into residents.

It is a terrible thing for a person to lack ambition.

It's quite scary for an ambitious person to be without a family.

The so-called "taking root" means forming a bond with this land, never abandoning it, and sharing its joys and sorrows.

……

Roman set a target of manufacturing 20,000 iron furnaces.

Although the workload is huge, it's not a problem when spread out among more than a thousand people.

Those blacksmiths are the main force of production. The blacksmith apprentices that Roman trained for more than a year have now become skilled and can use various tools to process metal.

While it's impossible to forge a single piece of plate armor, with forging hammers and rolling mills, most people don't need to master the advanced forging techniques of hand-forging plate armor.

These blacksmiths, now that they have completed their training, can train a new batch of blacksmith apprentices—the five hundred selected by the Ministry of Residents.

Their explosive productivity should not be underestimated.

It is worth mentioning that the sheet metal furnace produced by the rolling mill is itself made of plate armor-grade material.

Roman had no interest in redesigning a new sheet metal material.

The line between military and civilian use is very blurred; whatever is fastest is used.

This winter, the blacksmith sheds in Meitie Town did nothing but do other things.

It's either about breaking open armor plates or building an iron furnace.

Both began to gain widespread popularity.

Not only for home use, but also for public use.

If you place several stoves in each workshop, with a clay pot or earthenware kettle on top, and honeycomb briquettes burning underneath, you can raise the indoor temperature while also boiling water.

The workers would drink hot water whenever they had free time to warm themselves up.

That would increase labor efficiency by at least 30%.

Roman solved the problem of winter heating in half a month.

He made it very clear that iron stoves and honeycomb briquettes had replaced winter clothing as a welfare benefit, and that the residents' department should explain how to use them, maintain adequate ventilation, and avoid carbon monoxide poisoning.

If someone gets infected after being promoted, they're naturally eliminated; if they die, quickly make room for them.

Strictly speaking, this set costs much more than winter clothes.

Moreover, an iron furnace is itself a stove.

When Roman designed the brick house, he never considered that they would be able to cook at home.

However, it must be admitted that this consideration is very inappropriate. There are always some people who need to cook at home for various reasons, otherwise it would be very inconvenient to go to the main kitchen every time.

Iron stoves basically meet all the needs of those families for stoves.

It is portable and an excellent tool.

More importantly, this was given to them for free.

The only downside is the fuel.

Even after winter was over and briquettes were no longer free, they could still buy cheap briquettes from the department store; a quarter of a copper coin could buy twenty briquettes.

Correspondingly, those who received the free iron furnaces, whether slaves or residents, had to work in the winter.

To prepare for next year's situation, several thousand more acres of land need to be reclaimed this winter.

It's not ordinary farmland, but paddy fields.

The swamp is currently in its dry season, which is also a good time to build water conservancy projects.

The transformation of the meadow pasture is not yet complete.

The forests are still being cleared for land reclamation.

So, now is not the time to rest.

(End of this chapter)