When he returned to the Hou Mansion, he found that Shui Qingrou was not at home. Chen Xu asked. It turned out that the two little girls Xing'er and Yu Ji were yelling that the weather was too hot. Shui Qingrou took the two little girls out of the city to play in the water. Looking at the scorching sun outside and the cicadas screaming loudly in the yard, Chen Xu decided to take this time to take a nap.

Washing his face, washing his hands, changing into a vest and big shorts, he lay down on the bamboo bed. Two little maids were shaking his palm-shaped fan to drive away mosquitoes. As soon as he lay down and fell into a state of confusion, he heard a burst of rapid footsteps and a surprise call from outside.

"Marty~Marty~"

"Qiuxiang, go and see who it is. Don't bother me if you have no hurry!" Chen Xu murmured in a daze, and a little maid quickly went out with her skirt.

Outside the door, a middle-aged man was wearing a burlap jacket and shorts, and a pair of straw sandals. His hair was covered with dust. Because it was too hot, the rolling sweat rushed out of the ravines on his cheeks and body. However, this little maid knew that Gongshusheng, an iron smelter from a factory outside the city.

"Shh~, Master Gongshu whispers, Master Gongshu is sleeping in the afternoon!" The little maid quickly whispered.

"Oh, OK!" Gongshusheng nodded repeatedly, then lowered his voice and said, "Can you tell the Marquis that the cement we developed has been successful!"

"Master Gongshu wait!" The little maid Fu Shi saluted and entered the house.

"Qiuxiang, who is it? What's the matter?" Chen Xu never fell asleep, and asked weakly with his eyes closed.

"Mr. Marquis is Gongshu. He said that the water developed by the factory... What kind of mud has been successful..."

"Really?" Chen Xu, who had originally closed his eyes, sat up suddenly, then jumped off the bamboo bed and shoes and jumped out of the door without wearing them for a few steps. Sure enough, he saw Gongshusheng, who was sweating all over his head and sweaty clothes.

"Has the cement really been burned out?" Chen Xu asked anxiously.

"Yes~" Gongshusheng nodded repeatedly, and said excitedly, "Mr. Marquis, we released a furnace yesterday. We mixed it with water according to the sand and gravel ratio and poured it into the wooden mold. It solidified into a hard stone in two or three hours. This morning, it turned into a stone completely. It could be smashed with a sledgehammer. The hardness was no different from that of bluestone. So we burned a furnace overnight with the same proportion. This morning, we went out to the kiln to grind it, stirred it into mud and poured it into the mold. Just after going to the mold, it found that it solidified into a stone again, which was also extremely strong..."

"Let's go and have a look!" Before Gongshusheng could finish his words, Chen Xu couldn't wait to urge Gongshusheng to leave quickly.

"Mr. Marquis, you haven't brought a hat yet!"

"Mr. Marquis, you are not wearing shoes yet!"

"Mr. Marquis, bring the water cup~"

Chen Xu left in a hurry, and a group of little maids were suddenly panicked. Some were holding hats, some carried shoes, and some followed behind with water cups. They shouted and immediately alarmed the housekeepers and guards who were resting in various houses. They all rushed out from all directions, some were still wearing hats, and some were still wearing clothes. In an instant, the entire marquis' mansion was in chaos.

"Prepare the car quickly and go to the factory!" Chen Xu shouted as he put on his shoes. After he put on his hat and prepared, the groom also drove the carriage over, and a group of guards were also packed up and then protected Chen Xu out together.

The weather was hot and the sun was exposed. After the rain last night, a suffocating wave of air gushed up on the wet ground, but Chen Xu didn't feel hot at all. He sat in the carriage and kept urging to speed up. So the luxurious carriage he was pulled by four horses ran wildly on the almost empty street, leaving the carriage he pulled by Gongshu Win and Shuangmae behind far behind. So Gongshu Wins were shouting behind him and shouting slowly.

Chen Xu didn't know much about the formula and production methods of cement. He only knew the general ingredients. Ordinary cement with the label 325 commonly used in rural buildings is called silicate cement. It has low strength and its main ingredient is calcium silicate. The roughly used raw materials are limestone, clay, iron ore and coal, and then grind it into a closed furnace and calcined. After it is fryed together, it is enough to add a certain proportion of gypsum to grind it into powder.

But Chen Xu didn't know the ratio of these materials, so he could only write down the raw materials, of which the main components were naturally the most limestone and clay, but the proportion was exactly what was the final result to successfully burn cement was not a good idea, and he could only let Gongshusheng and some craftsmen continue to experiment.

But this is roughly the role of the so-called wise man. He just needs to tell others to use these materials and this method to make cement. There are so many people in factories and the Academy of Sciences, and Chen Xu doesn’t spend money on his own. If he continues to experiment according to different proportions, there will always be a day of success.

Sure enough, it has only been more than two months since the cement project was launched, and there has finally been good news.

Nowadays, there are many factories. Although there is no grinding machine, Gongshusheng and craftsmen still have a way to pour several huge iron mortars and a pair of iron mills with steel. First, smash the limestone into gravel, then put them into the iron mortar and pound them into fine particles, and then throw them into the iron mill and grind them into coarse sand. This is the so-called raw materials, iron ore crushed materials, and the remaining crushed coal is also treated in the same way. Different raw materials are sieved and mixed in different proportions, then placed in the kiln to calcin, melted and cooled out of the oven, and then ground into powder with an iron mill.

As for Chen Xu's request, Gong Shusheng and others naturally followed the imperial edict as an imperial edict. What is the milling stone? Even if he was asked to grind a few people every day, he would not hesitate. He followed the Marquis to Xianyang and then became the Iron Official of the Ministry of Works. In March, he followed the Marquis back to his hometown in glory. Naturally, his identities were very different. Officials of all sizes and officials of Wancheng and the county magistrate of Zhixian had to salute respectfully when they saw him. This was his identity. Moreover, now he and Ma Gan and others bought houses in Xianyang City. This time, they brought the woman with a big belly to Xianyang together and bought several servants and maids to take care of her. It was already a standard family of officials. They were picked up by carriages in and out. In about two months, the woman would have to give birth to a child. From a slave who was thrown away from the wild to her current status, Chen Xu gave him all.

Therefore, Gongshusheng never asked what Chen Xu wanted to burn these things. He buried his head all day long in the factory and urged craftsmen to repeatedly test, burning furnace after furnace, grinding over and over again, and hard work paid off. He was finally about to succeed. Several formulas of grinding ash materials and sand and stone were mixed with water and stirred into mud. After solidification, it was very strong. However, because Princess Qingning passed away, Gongshusheng never dared to disturb him, and still urged the factory's craftsmen to continue to improve the cement formula.

Next to the iron smelting workshop, there is another workshop now, and a large number of work slaves are busy. Some use iron hammers to smash pieces of bluestone fragments, and some pour the materials into huge iron mortars. Seven or eight work slaves pull the huge iron pestle and keep pounding them. The pounded materials are transported into iron mills, and under the push of several oxen cows, they are ground into fine particles as fine as sand.

Therefore, after entering the workshop, I saw busy scenes of work slaves and craftsmen pushing wheelbarrows with buckets to transport sand, gravel, clay, coal ash and iron ore crushed materials back and forth.

The three-necked coal mine looks similar to the coal mine in the porcelain workshop. It is neatly arranged on the edge of the wall. Two of them are burning with black smoke. There is a pungent smell of dust floating in the air. The work slaves and craftsmen are all over the body, and their hair and eyebrows are dyed grayish white.

Environmental pollution is an inevitable pain and price in industrial development.

But in this primitive agricultural era, no one cares about these coal mines emitting black smoke except for adding a touch of lively scenery between the beautiful mountains, waters and clear sky. Chen Xu doesn't care. The earth is so big, so a little air pollution is nothing. Thinking about the urban haze I experienced at the beginning, it is called environmental pollution.

"Mr. Marquis, this is the cement fired yesterday and today!" He took Chen Xu to the shed next to the big iron mill, and Gong Shusheng pointed to the gray powder in several vine baskets and said.

Chen Xu squatted down and grabbed a handful of hands and observed it carefully. He felt that it was not much different from the cement seen in later generations. It was just that the particles were rougher, which means that they were not fine enough, but Chen Xu didn't care whether it was fine or not. He was concerned about the solidification speed and strength after the cement mortar was formed.

Under Gongshusheng's command, two craftsmen in the cement workshop stirred together with sand, gravel and cement in a certain proportion. After mixing, poured them into a mold made of wooden boards, then slapped it with an iron spatula, smoothed the surface, then retreated to the side to wash your hands and waited.

"Where are the cement products you tested before?" Chen Xu knew that the solidification process would take at least one hour, and it was in the initial solidification state. If it was to completely solidify, it would take about one day. As for reaching the highest strength, it would take half a month for ordinary cement, so he couldn't hurry.

"It's there!" Gongshusheng said, pointing to a pile of messy things piled up against the wall outside the shed.

Chen Xu walked to the base of the wall with his straw hat. The piles of products made of sand and gravel mixed solidified. Some of them were very loose and they broke by pinching them gently with their hands. Some looked OK, but they had been smashed. It can be seen that the strength was not high enough. However, some of them looked no different from those of the concrete products after solidified in later generations. Although they were also broken, it was obvious that they were smashed by heavy hammers. Two of them were intact, square, like a cement brick, and there were traces of hammers smashing on them. There were cracks on the surface but obviously they did not break.

Chen Xu raised one of the pieces and looked at them, and found that they were very heavy and strong.
Chapter completed!