I've been transported to the orc continent.

Chapter 118 Preparations for Building a House

Yue gently patted Bai Ling's shoulder: "Ling, don't think too much. Take it one step at a time. You've already brought a lot of changes to the tribe."

Bai Ling smiled and then said, "Yue, when the fired bricks are ready to be used to build houses, let's build houses together."

Bai Ling counted on her fingers one by one: "Bricks need to be fired, tiles need to be fired, glass needs to be fired, doors and windows need to be made, and lime and cement need to be produced. Only after all these are done can we build a house."

"Sigh, when I think about it this way, there's just too much to do."

After thinking for a moment, Yue said, "Then when it's time to build the house, I won't go out hunting anymore; I'll help you build the house."

Bai Ling nodded and smiled, "Mm."

*

When the weather started to get warmer, a huge brick kiln appeared in the Gaoshu tribe.

This is the biggest project Bai Ling has undertaken since arriving in this world.

This brick kiln can fire about seven or eight thousand bricks at a time. To make the bricks fire faster, Bai Ling left four fire holes on the kiln. These four fire holes are evenly distributed on the oval-shaped kiln, like four big mouths.

It's not eating food with its mouth, but charcoal.

After the brick kiln was allowed to dry slightly, Bai Ling and the clansmen he had shown him immediately began firing bricks.

The adobe kiln didn't stop either; it started firing tiles.

Making tiles isn't difficult; all you need are molds and simple tools. Now that the tribe has iron, making molds and tools is no big deal.

Tiles are much easier to fire than bricks because they are smaller and can be fired in about two days.

Perhaps due to their experience in firing kilns, most of the tiles fired this time met the requirements, with very few damaged ones. Bai Ling put several tiles together, and well, they fit perfectly.

For the rest of the time, Bai Ling stayed by the brick kiln. He didn't need to add charcoal to the kiln himself; he just needed to stay there.

However, Bai Ling didn't sit idle; he started making doors and windows.

Making doors and windows is a technical job. Doors are relatively easy to make, but windows require many wooden strips to be spliced ​​together, and there are also requirements for dimensions.

Tools are essential for making doors and windows, and Bai Ling even specially made a ruler for this purpose.

To be honest, Bai Ling went to great lengths to get a ruler. He first roughly made a wooden strip by eye, then tied an iron block to it with silk thread and hung it on a tree. Because of the iron block, the silk thread naturally hung down in a straight line. After the silk thread stopped swaying, Bai Ling put the wooden strip close to the silk thread and used a tool to slowly smooth out the excess part.

After making a straight wooden strip, Bai Ling used the second knuckle of her index finger as a reference to create a one-centimeter mark.

With one centimeter, ten centimeters, and one meter, it was gradually made. With a ruler and other tools, doors and windows could be made.

Bai Ling had never done this before, so he had to figure it out slowly. He used a twig to draw shapes on the ground, starting with the simplest window partition. Once he got a feel for it, he would slowly draw the second and third types.

Winters here are cold, so Bai Ling plans to install double-glazed doors and windows, which is more complicated than ordinary doors and windows.

*

With the bricks and tiles ready, Bai Ling planned to produce lime and cement. Burning lime was relatively simple: he would break up the limestone and throw it into the calcining furnace, layering lime powder and charcoal to cover the entire furnace, and then light the fire to begin the burning process.

Bai Ling was lucky; she obtained quicklime after only two experiments.

Cement is not complicated either. Just burn quicklime, clay, fragments of various pottery and waste residue from iron smelting furnaces together, dry them, and then grind them.

At first, Bai Ling couldn't get the proportions right. After more than ten days of continuous experimentation, she finally found the right proportions and made a kind of "cement" that wasn't actually cement.

It's not cement because its stickiness is not as good as the cement Bai Ling has seen on Earth. But it is cement because it has some stickiness. When mixed with quicklime, it also has good adhesion and can be used as an adhesive for gaps between bricks and stones.

After the cement and lime were made, Bai Ling began to make glass.

To make glass, clean and fine sand, crushed limestone powder, and alkali are all essential. The clean and fine sand was obtained by Bai Ling and her people from the riverbank, and they sifted it several times. Limestone powder is relatively easy to obtain, but the most difficult part is the alkali.

The alkali was obtained by white alkali from wood ash, a process that is somewhat complicated.

Grind the wood ash and sift it. Then add water and stir. Do this step many times until the wood ash is completely dissolved. Then filter the wood ash water and put the filtered water into an earthenware pot and heat it slowly. When the water is about to boil, take the earthenware pot off the fire pit and use the heat of the earthenware pot to slowly dry the wood ash.

The dried wood ash needs to be burned again to obtain alkali.

Making alkali is a very time-consuming task. Bai Ling spent two whole days working on it before she finally obtained some alkali.

Clean sand, limestone powder, and alkali are put into a calcining furnace and fired to make glass. Bai Ling made several different ratios to see if he could make glass in one go.

Perhaps he was too lucky when burning cement and lime, but he was a bit unlucky when making glass. Bai Ling burned for more than ten days before he was able to produce a piece of glass that was both green and blue.

This piece of glass is semi-transparent, with a green and blue color. It looks quite nice and would be fine as a decoration, but it's not really suitable as window glass.

However, being able to fire such a piece of glass was already a huge improvement. Inspired by this, Bai Ling finally fired a qualified piece of glass on the third day after firing this piece.

This piece of glass is light green, and its transparency is already quite good; it's almost acceptable for use as window glass.

Now all the building materials have been gathered. Once the doors and windows are made, we can officially start building the house.

*

While Bai Ling was engrossed in studying various building materials, gifts from other tribes arrived for her.

The Great River Tribe gave Bai Ling two sheep, four horned beasts, and four croaking beasts, for a total of ten wild animals.

The Great River tribe is the largest tribe in the vicinity, but even for the Great River tribe, it is not easy to produce so many live wild animals at once.

Orcs are accustomed to attacking the vital parts of wild animals when hunting, meaning they go all out to kill them. For orcs, capturing a live animal is much more difficult than capturing a dead one.

It was for this reason that the Great River Tribe sent these live wild animals to Bai Ling nearly two months after they returned.