Chapter 308: Chapter 0306: New Fire Dragon Brick Factory (Fourth update, additional chapter for 4000 monthly votes)
“For instance, if Mbappé made a mistake, wouldn’t directly bringing him to Fresh Flower Town suffice? As long as it’s not murder, rebellion, rape, or other heinous acts, I should be able to save him,”

Liszt thought to himself.

Still, he was puzzled, what kind of error would cause Coral Island’s renowned architect, who continues to build large structures for the Tulip Family, to be cast away?

He even considered some unsavory possibilities, but given Mbappé’s advanced age, he likely couldn’t do anything too terrible.

“Therefore, I’ll first have Abagon use the eyes of the Fresh Flower Caravan to pay more attention to Mbappé and see what unfolds.”

One hand on the brick factory, the other waiting for a mistake.

Liszt quickly arranged it.

He himself also cut back on his recent degenerate lifestyle and began to dive into his ambitious endeavors.

He now had several research topics in hand, for instance, how to write annals like “Dragons Fight in the Wild”, how to scientifically consume Magic Potions, as well as the analysis of rubber properties, plus the technical research of Fire Dragon brick-burning.

Analysis of rubber properties.

It had him writing content of over a dozen thick parchments.

From all aspects, the new type of rubber produced by the Rubber Tree, except for lacking the softness and elasticity of Earth’s rubber, was in all other respects a perfect adhesive—lightweight, sturdy, quick-setting, fire-resistant, cold-resistant, waterproof, insect-proof, non-toxic, odorless, shape-retaining, and impermeable to water and air.

Buckets bonded with rubber worked surprisingly well, eliminating worries about poor cooperage leading to leaks.

Liszt had also tested items bonded with rubber against Magic Power Attacks and discovered a very pleasant fact—that rubber wasn’t significantly reactive to Magic Power.

Against Magic and Dou Qi attacks, it only bore the brunt of the physical impact.

A frenzied Dou Qi Flame known as “Great Fire Wave,” when used against a damaged Shield bonded with rubber, inflicted damage that was uniformly distributed and did not cause the rubber-bonded area any greater harm.

“That is to say, rubber could be an excellent material for repairing weapons… I could recycle some of the damaged weapons from the battlefield and repair them with rubber. They should be able to regain 90% of their quality,”

After discovering this secret,

Liszt ranked rubber alongside Black Blood Treasured Horse as a material of strategic importance.

Recently, he began experimenting with additives to rubber—that is, using rubber as an additive to test various physical effects.

First was water. The rubber in its liquid state could dissolve in water, and after stirring, it became a turbid white liquid—rubber water.

Rubber water wouldn’t solidify, but after sitting for half an hour, it would gradually clarify and a layer of rubber solid would precipitate at the bottom of the container. He had also tried adding sand to rubber water, or rather, stirring sand into rubber water.

The miraculous result quickly appeared before his eyes.

A large lump of sand solidified.

It solidified like rock into one piece, and even hammering it with an Iron Hammer would not break it. Its hardness was already comparable to the granite used in constructing Castles, far surpassing the effect of concrete after it set.

“So, have I now obtained the long-desired… new-type lightweight effective quick-setting concrete?”

The follow-up experiments hadn’t started yet.

But he had already thought about what would happen if he mixed rubber water with metals, gravel, sawdust, earth, and so on. Maybe the era of bricks was not yet upon us, and the era of reinforced concrete had already arrived—the only downside was that the output of rubber was too low to be used as casually as cement.

Expanding the scale of Rubber Tree cultivation was imperative.

For now, he set aside the experiments with rubber water and began to prepare for the Fire Dragon brick-burning experiment.

…

He ordered the serfs to collect soil from different parts of Fresh Flower Town, including the yellow clay from the seaside, the red sandy soil beside the river channel, the brownish soil from the wasteland, and the black slag soil from the Thorn Ridge area. After mixing with water, he began to shape the mixture into brick blanks, and then handed them over to the Magic Little Fire Dragon for firing.

Unlike normal furnace fire, the Magic Little Fire Dragon’s trajectory could directly calcine from the inside.

So the speed and effectiveness of brick firing were significantly enhanced.

Half an hour later, the bricks had been fired into shape. Li Si Te first tried quenching them with water to cool them down. Then, the black slag soil bricks from Thorn Ridge snapped and broke apart; although the red sandy soil bricks from beside the river channel did not break, they showed several cracks.

Faced with this situation, Li Si Te didn’t immediately declare the failure of the black slag soil and the red sandy soil. He continued to fire a second batch.

This time, he opted for natural cooling.

After cooling, the four types of bricks showed varied results. The seaside yellow clay bricks were somewhat distorted in shape; the Thorn Ridge black slag soil bricks did not break again but were full of cracks and crumbled when tapped.

He tested the hardness of the other three types of bricks and found that the red sandy soil bricks were also not usable, crumbling with a firm tap.

The brownish soil from the wasteland performed the best, with shapes largely intact and the hardness almost reaching that of common rocks.

“So, brownish soil should be the main raw material for brick-making, but I still need to experiment with the firing of mixed soils.”

After two days of exploration.

He finally settled on using four-fifths brownish soil mixed with one-fifth yellow clay. The blended soil that came out had a nice viscosity and could be used as the clay for brick-making. The fired bricks were grayish-brown and slightly less hard than rocks.

But they were also lighter in weight.

Since the Magic Little Fire Dragon fired them from the inside out, bricks could be shaped into various forms, not only for making bricks but also for producing tiles, and even stone slabs and culverts.

With the raw materials sorted out, the next step was how to build a kiln.

He couldn’t remember what a red brick kiln looked like or understood the working principle, but it all came down to using fire. Kilns on Earth burned coal, but he would use the Magic Little Fire Dragon directly, so the structure and design of the kiln should be redesigned.

“Once the Magic Little Fire Dragon is released, it’s difficult to recall it… And it’s not easy to get the bricks out of the furnace after they are fired; maybe I’ll need to enlist stonemasons to construct a stone wheel cart that can be pushed.”

The rough shape of the new-style kiln was already forming in his mind.

A single kiln could be designed to be the size of a room, with several rows of kilns lined up next to each other. Inside the kiln, place the Magic Little Fire Dragon, and at the bottom of the dragon’s activity area, design a stone wheel cart that can be pushed back and forth. After loading the cart with brick blanks, the serfs would push the cart into the kiln with force.

Once the bricks were fired, they would pull the cart out with force, quench it with water to cool it down, unload the bricks, and restack the blanks.

A simple and fast cycle.

The stone wheel cart would have to be very large.

“Fortunately, I have rubber water, otherwise it would be impossible to manufacture a satisfactory stone wheel cart… Without iron, industrial development is indeed severely restricted.”

With enough iron, one could simply weld together iron carts, which would be more convenient and faster.

But without it, stone had to suffice.

His thoughts were all clarified.

He also began drawing the design blueprints.

Finally, Li Si Te had time to look up at the white clouds in the sky, “The brick factory should be built on Black Horse Island… It doesn’t use fuel for brick firing, and since the scale will be quite large, it could easily expose the secret of the Fire Dragon Magic Power. Fresh Flower Town doesn’t really need bricks, but the construction on Black Horse Island does.”