Chapter 437 - 6: What Are You Going to Do With This Reward?
Due to inadequate sleep, on the way to the beach, Chen Zhou's mind remained a bit groggy.
In the early morning of the 30th, the dark clouds began to slowly disperse.
The mountain path after the rain was bathed in sunshine, the heat steaming the puddles, making the accompanying indigenous people feel waves of humidity.
Lai Fu was excitedly leading the way in front, wagging its broom-like tail.
Saturday and Sunday followed beside Chen Zhou, occasionally answering the questions he posed.
Such as the condition of the hypothermic indigenous person.
The indigenous person rescued from grazing yesterday had spent another night by the fire in the log cabin. When able to move on his own, he ate some rice and lean meat porridge. Although still very weak now, his life should not be in danger for the time being.
However, having been drenched by such a heavy rain, though he was lucky to pull through with his life, he inevitably developed symptoms of a cold.
A cold, unlike hypothermia, is an ailment that lasts a long time and could potentially worsen to a life-threatening degree in the later stages.
It is often said that blessings do not come in pairs, but disasters never come alone. This indigenous person managed to survive severe hypothermia, but without medication, he might not conquer the virus, making full recovery indeed an unknown factor.
...
Saturday and Sunday, in turn, analyzed the situation of the grazing indigenous person clearly.
Chen Zhou could not help but feel a bit of regret as he nodded continuously.
It was hard to cultivate someone capable of handling livestock independently, only to risk losing such a competent workforce due to not clarifying beforehand whether livestock or human lives were more important.
In this regard, it was indeed due to his insufficient consideration as a leader and lack of detailed instructions.
On the other hand, it was also because the indigenous person was too bullheaded—
Working hard all day just to fill your stomach, at most rewarded with a piece of chocolate, what's the point of putting your life at stake?
...
"Observe his condition over the next few days. If the high fever persists, get some tobacco leaves from me and brew them into tea for him.
Also, give him a few cloves of garlic, let him sweat it out under the covers, maybe he'll recover."
Even though Chen Zhou very much wanted to use reliable methods to cure the indigenous person, being without medicine, he was helpless and could only try these possibly unreliable folk remedies.
"Let him rest well at home these days, don't go out to work, and try not to be exposed to the wind.
If he's bored with nothing to do, he can help others cook at home, learn some weaving, learn some vocabulary, or read more books.
For the grazing, Sunday, when you get back, find someone to accompany you, and by the way, look for the missing sheep.
If you find the sheep carcass, skin it and drag it back to the cave as soon as possible, it can still provide a couple of meals..."
...
Walking along, tasks were being assigned to Saturday and Sunday.
They deftly navigated through the forest filled with puddles after the rain, bypassed the camp at the foot of the mountain, and headed straight to the beach.
Suspecting that the anniversary bundle had been released early, Chen Zhou had some uncertainties about this mysterious reward.
This anxious state persisted until he saw the wooden stone wall from afar, then dissolved the moment the massive pile of rewards came into view.
...
Since arriving on the island, including this mysterious reward, Chen Zhou has received seventy-three mysterious rewards in total.
These items delivered every 15 days from modern times, whether expensive, cheap, utterly useless, or immensely practical, left a deep impression on him, regardless of their form—
Being in another world, even if there were complaints about these "compatriots," they would never be forgotten.
Among all these rewards, the seventy-first mysterious reward, specifically the enormous thin metal box, was the largest in size, followed by the iron cage with two cows, the small container with Damascus Steel billets, and the cement.
And these rewards were not part of the anniversary bundle.
In Chen Zhou's memory, the anniversary gift bundle always came in a delicate gift box, filled with small yet useful things.
Whether it was a book, precious plant seeds, or metal arrowheads...
But this anniversary bundle turned his understanding upside down.
What most overturned Chen Zhou's usual understanding was not the massive size of the rewards, but the extent of the space-time transfer, which did not match the area he had consistently defined—
In March 1660, Chen Zhou discovered a loophole in the challenge rules while moving cement, which led to the bold idea of exploiting the space-time cut for personal gain.
In order to cut wood and stone more accurately, he measured the approximate range of the space-time cut by arranging tree trunks and ropes.
A field roughly five meters in length, three meters in width, height unknown.
Since then, until the previous reward, this cutting area had never changed. Even the shipping container delivered the time before did not exceed the cut area limits.
But this time, Chen Zhou clearly saw that the occupied area of the rewards in the sand far exceeded the once-measured cutting range.
...
The wooden and stone walls piled at the edge of the original "cutting line" seemed to have been pushed open by invisible massive hands from the center, scattering everywhere on the beach, with no trace of cutting on the surface of any timber or stones.
Looking from dozens of meters away, in the center of the area cleared by this unknown force, the first thing that filled Chen Zhou's eyes was various building materials.
Rigid H-beams and I-beams, all painted a coat of black, neatly piled into a small hill according to their length and model, with the shortest being 1.5m and longest exceeding 6m, extending more than a full meter past the original cutting range.
Various square and round steel rods, arranged beside the I-beams, without paint, revealing the shiny metallic essence.
Closer inspection shows a line of clear specification steel stamps on the steel surface—
Standard GB/T1591-2008, Model Q345D, a high-quality low-alloy steel with tensile strength between 490-675MPa and yield strength ≥345MPa.
Walking past the mound of steel, further in, large gray plastic boxes can be seen.
Unlatching and lifting the box cover reveals various models of rivets and bolts.
A rough count reveals nearly a hundred of these gray plastic boxes filled with rivets and bolts alone.
Further on, Chen Zhou saw a familiar item—cement.
But this time, the cement delivered was not the ordinary stuff produced at his workplace cement factory. Not only did the packing seem exceptionally refined, exuding a unique "national-grade" aura, but it also came in different models.
Among them was engineering cement model PI 62.5, suitable for ultra-high-rise buildings;
PS 52.5 engineering cement, resistant to seawater corrosion with a long lifespan, often used in building cross-sea bridges;
Medium-heat 42.5 engineering cement, not prone to cracking, low heat of hydration suitable for large volume concrete, for constructing hydro dams or steel mills;
PC 52.5 cement, suitable for geological tunnels, resistant to seepage and cracking, with strong adaptability;
Chen Zhou even found over two hundred bags of quick-setting 52.5R silicate cement, which sets extremely fast, matching the strength of ordinary cement in just three days instead of the usual 28 days, often used for emergency road repairs and military engineering.
This special cement was not manufactured by their factory equipment, usually only seen in training materials sent by the factory.
Who could have imagined that such specialty cement would appear in this anniversary reward.
Moreover, the cement delivered not only is of good quality, meeting demands in various fields, but the quantity is also remarkably generous.
The medium-heat 42.5 engineering cement, with the highest demand, piles up over 4m high, weighing over 20 tons by estimate.
Other types of cement are not lacking either, wrapped in thick pale gray packaging bags, resembling solemn little giant statues, even the emergency-use quick-setting 52.5R exceeds a ton.
Passing through the "cement little giant" formation, onward, is the end of this side of the reward, where tons of rebar are piled.
...
"Damn, is this a survival challenge or a reality show about raising a civil engineer?"
Even before finishing the exploration of this reward, Chen Zhou was already blissfully happy inside, yet outwardly making a playful complaint.
With such a vast quantity of building materials and cement, it could be said that as long as he uses them properly, optimizes the building structure, and minimizes waste, he could entirely build an unassailable fortress near the shore.
In the 17th century, the most powerful conventional siege cannon could shoot 24-pound shells filled with gunpowder, with destructive force mainly relying on solid shot impact, having weak penetration.
The explosive shells of the era had no choice but to use gunpowder as propellant.
Gunpowder's energy density was 3MJ/kg, only 60% of TNT, and the sealing of the 17th-century explosive shell was poor, with extremely low explosion efficiency.
When using gunpowder to carve caves, Chen Zhou had once calculated that the destruction radius of gunpowder-explosive shells on ordinary walls couldn't exceed 2m.
Under this premise, facing reinforced concrete structures, 17th-century shells could at most crack the shallow walls of concrete, unable to cause structural damage to rebar.
And this is calculated using 17th-century heavy siege cannons.
Ship cannons need to reduce weight and caliber, much less powerful than contemporary siege cannons.
If anyone wanted to bite into this hard bone of reinforced concrete, they'd need at least dozens of 24-pound heavy artillery, conducting intensive bombardment on the concrete walls many times, focused on the same area.
However, the accuracy and firing rate of cannons in this era couldn't achieve this goal.
Chen Zhou was even certain—
Even if 17th-century Spain concentrated all of its national power to manufacture cannons and sailed across the ocean to attack the fortress designed for resisting cannon attacks, it would take at least a year and a half to seize it.
Several centuries of technological level differences could completely overturn human cognition of this era.
...
Thinking about the optimal use of these building materials, unconsciously, Chen Zhou had already moved from the rebar pile to the other side.
In normal times, receiving a batch of such precious resources would make him enjoy it so much he'd bubble with snot.
But the visual effect of this reward was simply too shocking.
After the initial disbelief and even ecstatic joy, Chen Zhou's mentality has become somewhat numb, falling into a state similar to "sage mode".
Although emotionally he should be delighted, his physical state hasn't fluctuated much, remaining no different from usual.