chsdbacks Chapter 38: The Pit Building
Chapter 38: The Pit Building
Because of the addition of a new low-lying courtyard house, Tang En immediately arranged for his family to move in.
Ron and old Hall both turned a blind eye to this.
After all, the Blackthorn Wasteland is too hot during the day and too cold at night.
Although adobe bricks are much better, they are still far inferior to pit-style courtyard houses.
Late at night, Ron was idling to recover his magic power as usual, while he began to build cave dwellings inside the low pits he had dug. However, these cave dwellings were no longer arched, but rather normal-shaped buildings.
It's simply building the building layer by layer from underground. Because there's no steel reinforcement, it's impossible to build tall buildings, but he was able to lean the lower part of the building against the surrounding cave walls to increase its load-bearing capacity.
In this way, high-rise buildings can be built.
A 15-meter building can be built into a 5-story building. Then, a third floor can be built on top, and the 25-meter height requirement can be easily met.
Early the next morning, Ron dragged Old Hall to build his newly designed pit house.
Tang En woke up early and first went to arrange affairs in the territory, while also checking the condition of the rock potatoes to prevent them from all withering and dying.
Because they did not have any cliffs at the moment, they were temporarily placed on the city wall.
Having served as an agricultural official for so long, Tang En had some experience and breathed a slight sigh of relief: "Thank goodness! Although the height is not high enough, the ground potatoes have not shown any signs of withering or dying. A height of 25 meters should be crucial for the growth of ground potatoes. If the height is insufficient, the yield may be reduced, or they may even wither."
"Thun, you can take care of these rock potatoes for now. You have experience. I'll go report to the lord first."
Thun immediately bowed and said, "Mr. Thun, rest assured, leave it to me! I will not allow anyone to harm these earth potatoes in the slightest."
When Tang En arrived at the large pit he had dug the day before, it was no longer a pit.
At the bottom of the pit, a ring of blue bricks is neatly arranged along the pit wall. Each wall is built against the cave wall and the gaps between the bricks are filled with volcanic ash lime mortar, which gleams with a pale blue luster in the morning light.
What was an empty pit yesterday has now been transformed into a complete circular structure.
He counted them; there were sixteen rooms on the first floor. The walls of each room were attached to the pit wall itself, and there were four stone pillars deeply embedded in the pit wall, which were the beams of the building.
The walls are all load-bearing blue bricks, and the roof is made of huge stone slabs, each slab being at least thirty square meters in size, with each slab being the roof of a room.
Without the profession of Architect Mage, it's hard to imagine how huge a stone would be to cut out such a slab, or even how it could be cut at all.
Ron was squatting on the first floor, the ground floor, pouring volcanic ash lime mortar into the foundation of the second floor.
Old Hall stood beside him, constantly conjuring volcanic ash lime mortar in his hands, his expression somewhere between "I'm used to it" and "I'm not used to it yet."
Leonardo da Vinci, leading several militiamen, hauled sand and gravel down into the pit. His embroidered spring knife dangled from his waist. Seeing Tang En standing there in a daze, he called out, "Mr. Tang En, don't stand there! The lord said to build a three-story structure today!"
The purpose of this is to make it easier for Old Hall to solidify into the materials Ron needs, which will greatly reduce Ron's magic consumption and speed up the construction process.
Tang En snapped out of his daze, went down the low ladder next to him, and quickly walked to Ron's side.
"My lord, is this the building you were referring to?"
Ron didn't even look up.
"Five underground floors and three above ground, totaling twenty-five meters. The top floor is used to grow rock potatoes, which is just high enough to reach the cliff."
"Five underground floors!" Tang En repeated the number, then looked down at his feet. The buildings were being constructed layer by layer up to the surface, and three more floors were to be built above the surface.
His mind was racing. Sixteen rooms per floor, a total of 128 rooms across eight floors. Assuming four people per room, that would accommodate over 500 people.
If each floor is three meters high, eight floors plus the roof would just exceed the 25-meter cliff height requirement.
The main structure of the entire building is constructed entirely of red bricks and volcanic ash lime mortar, with the load-bearing walls resting directly against the pit walls, which serve as natural supports.
Ron smoothed out the last layer of mortar, stood up, and dusted off his hands.
"Old Hall, have Fanta bring over a squad of militia from the East Wall. No training today, just haul sand and gravel. Tell Thun to prepare the seed potatoes for the ground rock potatoes so they can be transplanted as soon as the rooftop is built."
For the next three days, the entire Ashwood territory revolved around this underground building.
On the first day, Ron completed the construction of the fifth and fourth underground levels.
With Old Hall's earthwork combined with Ron's transformation magic, red and blue bricks piled up like mountains at the bottom of the pit.
Each underground floor has a light-transmitting pipe, which is square in shape and made entirely of glass bricks. It does not block the light, but it is impossible to see through it, since this light-transmitting pipe leads directly to each room.
They also need to consider the privacy of the room's occupants.
The light pipes lead directly to the skylight in the first-floor pit courtyard, where sunlight refracts down from the 15-meter-high ceiling and falls directly onto the brick walls of the corridor.
The construction of the third and first underground floors progressed much faster on the second day. After all, Ron had spent a lot of magic power reinforcing the foundation to ensure its hardness when building the fifth floor. Otherwise, an eight-story building would not be able to support such a heavy weight by relying solely on the pit walls.
On the third day, the first and third layers of the earth rose up from the ground.
The above-ground structure differs from the underground structure. The underground structure is a ring-shaped building supported by the pit walls, while the above-ground structure is an independent structure with thinner walls but denser supports, and the walls are mainly made of red bricks.
All the windows face south, so the midday sun shines brightly throughout the corridor.
When building the three-story roof, Ron didn't use wooden beams. Instead, he built a row of low arches with red bricks, which directly and evenly distributed the roof load onto the surrounding walls.
Old Hall filled the spaces between the arches of the roof with gravel and sand, then covered them with a layer of yellow soil and watered them lightly. He then had Tangen bury the seed potatoes of the ground rock potato along the edge of the roof—the seed potatoes hanging downwards, facing the exterior wall of the building.
This rooftop platform is not only the planting area for ground potato, but also the top floor insulation layer of the entire building.
On the morning of the fourth day, Tang En stood on the roof of the pit building, looking at the earth rock potato vines hanging down from the roof. He remained silent for a long time. After checking the growth of the earth rock potatoes and confirming that the height was indeed suitable for their growth, he turned around and went downstairs to report to Ron.
Thun stood aside, quietly watching the rock potatoes being planted.
He suddenly remembered Anson.
Anson said that once he conquers the tribe, he wants to find a wife, have a child, and stop being a slave.
"A talking goblin."
Thun lowered his head and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
"Anson, do you see?" he whispered. "We have houses, we have food, everything you promised we'd have."
Old Hall stood in the courtyard of the pit building and looked up. It had eight floors in total, with a total height of over 25 meters, 128 rooms, nine brick-arched load-bearing beams, and seventeen load-bearing columns reinforced with volcanic ash mortar.
The vertical drop from the top planting area to the underground river at the bottom is exactly twenty-five meters.
The vines of the ground yam hung down from the roof and were already two fingers long.
"The master used to say that the Ashwood family never dug more than one or three meters down when building a house," Old Hall said softly. "Young master, you've buried the Ashwood family motto into the foundation."
Ron stood beside him, watching the vines sway gently in the morning breeze.
"The actual building is beneath the foundation."
News of the completion of the pit building spread faster than the wind.
However, not everyone is qualified to come and see, since ground potatoes are still grown here, which will reduce the future food supply for the territory.
Fanta brought a squad of militia here to claim the houses; this was Ron's latest order.
Those who are militia members or hunting team members of the territory will be given priority in being allocated houses in pit buildings.