Ant United Kingdom, on the north bank of Qinghe River, [Chitie City].
A sturdy medium-sized dung beetle is crawling quietly in a tunnel. There is a covered basket made of thin rattan on its back. The pores are fine. At this time, the lid of the rattan basket is open, and the mouth of the basket is just right. flush with the ground.
On the ground, there are tall piles of hematite sand piled up on both sides of the tunnel, each piled into a pyramid shape. Behind the tunnel, ants and small beetles are constantly bringing new ore sand.
Some other slave ants were using their mandibles to throw the ore directly into the rattan basket on the back of the dung beetle. Sand and gravel flew for a while, and some of the ore was accidentally thrown outside, but other slave ants would come to clean it up later.
Although they could use gravity to save some energy, these burrowing ant slaves soon became overheated after working hard for a long time at noon in early summer, and had to go to a cool place to drink some water and take a rest. .
When the basket on the dung beetle's back was filled with hematite sand, an overseer, a big-headed ant and a worker ant, directed the slaves to close the lid, tie it with ant silk fibers, and then climbed down the tunnel and met the worker ants on the dung beetle's head. The driver's tentacles touch.
The driver received the order, and when the overseer left the dung beetle's head, he pulled the reins, pulled the dung beetle's tentacles, and guided the beast to set off.
Although the very strong dung beetle was carrying hematite sand that was several times its body weight, it was able to lift the weight with ease. With six limbs spread out, it quickly climbed up the slope of the tunnel to the ground and joined the transport team assembled here. middle.
In the afternoon, more than 20 dung beetles filled with hematite sand had gathered in the transportation team. After a team leader from the Ministry of Transport took inventory, he signaled the team to set off.
Large and small dung beetles or scarab beetles walked in the middle carrying goods on their backs. On each of them were two drivers holding the reins. The leader of the magical worker ants sat on the head of a beetle at the front to guide the direction. On both sides of the team, there were others. Dozens of escorts composed of veterans or retired local garrison soldiers protected along the way.
This batch of hematite ore did not go to [Xinyang City] via the canal on the north bank of Qinghe River, but was intended to be transported to [Tuohuang City].
Nowadays, the division of labor in the metallurgical industry of the Ant Alliance has been clearly defined. The blast furnaces in [Xinyang City] mainly supply the needs of the north bank of Qinghe River, while [Tuohuang City] and [Hardware City] supply the south bank of the larger territory. Today, the blast furnaces in [Hardware City] The ironware workshop has just been put into production, and it mainly produces ironware with simple craftsmanship. The weapons manufacturing center on the south bank is still [Pioneer City]
The beetle transport team crossed the rope bridge that was constantly swinging in the wind and arrived at the [Hardware City] on the south bank of Qinghe River the next day.
Outside the nest of [Hardware City], the canal leading to [Pioneer City] has been completed, filled with water and put into use. The canal that continues to extend westward is still a busy construction site.
The journey of the beetle transport team ended here. At the canal, the baskets filled with ore were unloaded at the pier outside the nest, and then lifted onto a raft in the canal using a simple crane driven by both beetles and ants.
The raft is pulled by the beetle handlers on the shore. Because it flows down the river, there are 8 rattan baskets installed on such a raft, but only 2 beetle handlers and more than 10 ants on the raft can be controlled. It is more efficient than simply being controlled by the beetle handlers. The beetle-powered pack transport is much higher. If the beetle-powered beast transports the same amount of goods, it would take 8 medium-sized beetles to travel for 3 days.
After two days of canal navigation, with a night's rest in a nest along the river, the ore was transported by raft to the destination [Pioneering City] in the morning.
An official from the Strategic Materials Division of the Ministry of Finance was responsible for counting and receiving the goods at the dock, and then handed them over to officials from the Metallurgical Division of the Ministry of Industry.
On normal days, this batch of ore would first be piled outdoors in the open-air warehouse of the Ministry of Finance until the Ministry of Industry needed it before completing the procedures for extraction. But now it is during the war. The front-line artillery troops are firing majestic cannons, and the production departments behind them have to be very busy. Especially the blast furnace in [Pioneer City], which mainly supplies battlefield weapons, has been fully operational, and the demand for iron ore has increased significantly. The inventory has long since been exhausted.
This batch of iron ore was transported by slave ants in a continuous stream and directly to the underground blast furnace, where blast furnace management officials led metallurgical worker ants to remove unqualified impurities.
There is a blast furnace being loaded. In an environment with a temperature exceeding 40 degrees (the heat mainly comes from the heat transmitted from other nearby blast furnaces), a layer of charcoal or coal, and then a layer of selected iron ore, are stacked repeatedly in this way. The code has been coded to the designated location of the blast furnace.
At the discharge port of the blast furnace, molds have already been built at the end of the pipe. These are molds of huge and narrow tubes with sharp tops, which are exactly the bodies of rockets. Such a large mold cannot be reused. Each time, metallurgical workers and pottery workshop workers use clay and water to shape it on site. After several days of drying in the shade and then baking, it can be used.
After the blast furnace is ignited, in order to prevent the mold from being cracked by the high temperature, slave ants need to come in and apply some wet mud from time to time to repair small cracks.
Half a day after the blast furnace was ignited, the metallurgical worker ants used a long iron rod to poke open the discharge opening, and bright molten iron rushed out and poured into the mold along the pipe.
Some metallurgical worker ants ignore the scorching temperature and just tie some fibers to their heads to block their single eyes to prevent excessively bright light from hurting their sensitive eyes. These metallurgical worker ants constantly stir the molten iron with iron rods so that it flows evenly into the entire mold.
Each ant can only work in such an environment for half a minute, and a rotating ant must take over, otherwise it may faint from the heat and be life-threatening.
The molten iron slowly solidifies in the mold. When the solidification process is halfway through, the slave ants begin to bring water droplets in, smear it on the indoor walls and floors, and open the valve connected to the vent to speed up the cooling process.
One day later, metallurgical worker ants came in and broke the mold bit by bit. The rough appearance of the 16 rocket shells was revealed bit by bit. They looked gray and gray, with small pits or rough burrs in many places.
Each of these rockets needs to be carried onto a simple wooden cart with pottery wheels, dragged or pushed by dozens of slave ants, through a dedicated spacious underground passage, and sent to the nest of the iron finishing workshop.
Here, craftsmen ants are responsible for polishing and polishing, and then place the separately cast bottom shell next to it, leaving it unbuttoned for the time being, and then transport it to the next workshop.
This workshop is no longer under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry, but a workshop of the Ammunition Division of the Ministry of Military Affairs. Here, the hollow body of the rocket will be filled with ammunition whose formula is a first-class military secret!
