The Great Drainage Project (Time to Use Our Heads!)
Ugh... it reeks of poop...
The population had grown large enough that the time had come for a special solution. This city kept developing, but one final obstacle remained—sanitation. Solve that, and building ancient cities of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, would no longer be a dream on this land.
I went looking for the building called the government office.
"Garungda!"
"Hmm? Haneul, what is it this time?"
Did I sound too stern? He seemed to be wondering what was wrong with me today.
"Something dangerous could happen to the city. We need to prepare."
"What's the matter?"
I hurriedly explained the connection between sanitation and infectious disease—the causes behind all sorts of illnesses and how they spread.
"So that's why you keep telling us to wash?"
"That's right. And yet people still don't wash."
"How am I supposed to explain this to everyone..."
Exactly. That's the big hurdle. These primitive people, whenever they got sick, went looking for a god to blame.
"Let's use Haneul!"
"Me?"
"Just trust me."
And with that, a strange rumor began to spread through the city: a wretched thing that loved filth and spread sickness had entered the village, but Haneul had defeated it—so let us all keep clean, lest it ever return.
"Haneul-nim, thank you!"
"Thank you!"
People thanking me without knowing a single detail of what actually happened. Haha. You little rascal. You're running a con, aren't you?
"Garungda, you're a real piece of work, you know that?"
"Kwahaha. Didn't they believe you wonderfully?"
They believe you too wonderfully—that's the problem. Still, before the city grew any bigger, we needed to establish the concepts of running water and sewage.
"The city reeks. What do you all do with the filth?"
"We gather it in jars and dump it in the river."
I'm sorry, what? Isn't the saltern downstream from there?
"That's bad. Contaminated water is the most dangerous thing there is. And don't forget the saltern? Filth could get mixed into the salt."
Come to think of it, some characters upstream were probably just dumping whatever they pleased. Ugh. My stomach turns.
"Then what do we do?"
"Let's build settling tanks and drainage channels."
Cement would be perfect for construction, but there was absolutely no way to get volcanic ash around here... Was that why Rome's architecture flourished?
No help for it, then. Time to put the people to work.
"Garungda, gather the people. We need to find yellow earth and white clay in the mountains and fields."
"What are those?"
"Mix them with lime, and you can build incredibly sturdy structures."
The only things around here capable of a pozzolanic reaction were yellow earth or white clay (kaolin). With this many mountains, there had to be at least kaolin, right?
Once we found the deposits, I could just scoop it up myself. At first we'd only need it as mortar between stones, so it didn't have to be much.
"Yellow earth and kaolin look like this... (continued)... you take them, mix them with lime, and fire them... (continued)... then blend in sand and small stones... (continued)... and that's what you're looking for."
"That sounds difficult..."
Garungda was scribbling away earnestly on something that barely qualified as paper, crackling as he wrote. I wondered how much paper we were even producing. Would be nice to start keeping records, too.
"Tell the woodcutters first, then the hunters."
"Yes, thank you for your work. With this, the hard days are over."
From here, culture would develop on its own, and all I'd have to do is play around and watch it happen. Probably.
Waiting for my friends to arrive, I had built a large drainage channel far off, leveled to match the sea's waterline. If only we could make cement, we'd be able to build structures that would stand for a thousand, two thousand years, just like Rome.
The decree ordering the collection of yellow earth and white clay had gone out, and—how many years had already passed? Yeesh.
"Hmm, the soil keeps caving in..."
I'd dug too early, apparently. The edges of the channel kept collapsing.
Maybe I should just punch a road through to China? China has plenty of yellow earth, but it's way too far to go fetch it...
"Haneul!"
「CRASH-BANG」
Ah... the door to my house just broke.
"Oh? It broke. Sorry about that."
"It's fine... we can just build another one."
It had served us a long time anyway. The animals had smashed it plenty of times too.
"More importantly—we made it! It's harder than stone."
"Huh? You didn't find it, you made it?"
Ah, right. Of course. To verify it, I'd need to run experiments.
"Ooh! Is there a lot of it somewhere?"
"The mountains are full of stone. Don't worry."
I figured as much—of course there'd be plenty in all these mountains. I had a feeling the region between old Manchuria and the northern peninsula had always been packed with resources.
"Now we can build houses comfortably with this."
Roman concrete, my foot—we're ahead of them.
"Making something harder than stone out of sand and gravel—that's amazing."
「BANG-BANG」
Garungda was slamming his test piece against stone. Only a little dust flew off. It really did look solid.
Cement? Way too disconnected from Hangul. It's a bit yellowish, so should we call it hwanghoe—yellow lime? A Sino-Korean compound would be easier to manage, at least...
"Do you think we can make a lot of hwanghoe?"
"Hwanghoe?"
"Yeah. I just named the thing you're holding."
"Mm. As much as you want. The mountains are full of it."
Knew it. This land is overflowing with resources. Add Siberia to our territory on top of this, and it'd be a jackpot.
At last, construction began on the channels I had dug. Our patented invention—yellowish concrete, hwanghoe!
Workers laid the foundation first, then stacked walls of stone and brick, carefully pouring hwanghoe into the interior as they went.
"Ooh~ look at you, figuring it out on your own! Clever as ever!"
「CRACK—RUMBLE.」
Huh? No no no. Guys? If you do the ceiling like that, it's going to snap!
"Garungda!"
"Hm? What's wrong?"
"Who's in charge of construction?"
"Nobody?"
Oh, for goodness' sake... you need engineers for this too!
"This is a skill as well. Turu would probably be good at it. Anyone else like him? Or do you want to do it, Garungda?"
"Hold on a moment."
I don't know what he was thinking, but Garungda's face went pale, and he dashed off to find someone.
A long while later, he returned with a hulking, muscular fellow who stood at least three heads taller than me.
Wow, his thigh is as thick as my whole torso! What on earth do you eat to get that big? Sure, our staple food is potatoes, but even growing up on nothing but meat wouldn't get you there.
Is he smart, though? Well, he's certainly strong—and when someone's that strong, life is easier, so it'll work out somehow.
"This is Muntu."
"Uh... uh, nice to meet you."
Up close, the man was overwhelmingly intimidating. Someone like me could be folded in half with one hand.
"A pleasure to meet you."
Oh? A hidden charm point? What a gentle voice. You really can't judge by appearances.
"Likewise. You're doing well with the foundations, the walls, and filling them with hwanghoe. Do you know what a rainbow is?"
"Yes. The nine-colored bridge that appears in the sky on rainy days, isn't it?"
Huh? Wow. Smart and articulate. So they see the rainbow as nine colors. Learn something new every day.
"Exactly. Build the ceiling like that rainbow—stack stone or brick in an arch and bind it with hwanghoe. Then it won't collapse."
"So a rainbow-shaped ceiling makes it sturdy."
Right? No need to bother with fancy words like "arch," is there?
"Mm. We'll need to run experiments to figure out just how much curvature it needs."
"Understood. Let's begin at once."
And off went Muntu, wearing not his usual hearty grin but a small, composed smile.
What is he? He's practically a modern gentleman. Where on earth did someone like that come from in the Stone Age?
Out in the open lot, Muntu called workers over and began building a test ceiling.
"Alright, first stone, forward!"
The first worker lifted a well-carved stone and set it beside its partner—a slightly diamond-shaped block, apparently from his own rough calculations.
"Good. Second stone, forward!"
The second stone went up in turn. Wow, this is actually looking convincing.
"Next, the third!"
The third slotted neatly into place as well.
But wait? The arms of the man holding up the first stone are trembling. Don't tell me you're going to hold these up the whole time?
Wow. They were holding the entire thing up by hand, all the way to the keystone.
"Alright, everyone, let go and step back!"
"Huff... huff..."
"Nnngh."
Thankfully, even after the workers stepped aside, the structure didn't collapse. Now that I looked at it, that could have ended very badly.
No wonder the crew was nothing but muscle. As omnipotent as strength might seem, you'll wreck your backs doing this, friends.
"Muntu!"
"Ah! Were you watching?"
I'd been observing from the sky and then floated down to the ground. Apparently he hadn't noticed I was overhead.
Up close, the human pillars were soaked in sweat.
"Holding it up like that is exhausting, isn't it?"
"It's fine. We can simply grow stronger."
Goodness. Quietly terrifying words, delivered so smoothly.
"There's something called falsework—a support frame. You build it, use it, then dismantle it and slide it over to the next section. That's how you should do it!"
"Is that so?"
He seemed to be thinking it over, but the picture clearly wasn't forming in his head.
I drew a diagram on the ground and explained the basics of temporary support structures.
"Ah—so something supports it in place of the people?"
"Exactly!"
Not entirely slow, then. Thank goodness. Keep using human pillars like that and someone would eventually get crushed. I had no desire to be recorded in later history as some cruel tyrant.
"So no one has to hold it up dangerously anymore, right?"
"Yes. Thank you."
"And when the rainbow gets bigger, the supports have to be pushed outward on both sides—so you'll need to think about that too, alright?"
"Hmm..."
He was pondering again.
"I'll find a way through trial and error."
"Good. Just be careful that no one gets hurt."
The smithy and the workshop handled rough work too, but apparently nothing quite as dangerous as construction. Even saying all this, people were bound to die eventually. All I could offer was: be careful.
And so, with the rainbow-bridge trials continuing, work on the sewer's foundation and walls pressed steadily onward.
Rebar would have made it sturdier, but mass-producing that much iron would have to wait for a blast furnace—and since the mix was made with seawater, for now this would simply have to do.
"Come to think of it, you all seem pretty good at this?"
The sewer would serve one more purpose, too. When it rained, water pooling inside behind the flood barriers could be drained away quickly.
They were digging the sewers tremendously wide. Barring disaster, this place was going to be the capital of a millennium.
No—let's aim for ten thousand years.
If I keep holding on and watching over it, won't it last that long?
"Eeheeheeing!"
"Huh?"
Something familiar drifted through the air. No way. A horse?
"Akum!"
Following the whinny, I spotted a familiar face. And standing beside him—was that not a horse-like animal?
"Oh! Haneul, it's been a while!"
"Where on earth did you catch this one?"
"There were lots of them up north."
People still got everywhere on foot, so their range wasn't all that wide—yet here he was, hauling back something incredible.
"These are fantastic!"
"They are? Are they tasty, at least?"
"Oh, come on! You can tame them and ride them, or have them pull carts!"
"We have oxen, don't we?"
"They eat far too much to ride around on!"
Strong as they were, oxen really did eat an enormous amount. For the blacksmith village, barely any distance away, if we sent two carts, one would be carrying nothing but ox feed.
"Wow. They're actually really cute."
Smaller and stockier than the horses in my memory—an adorable little fellow. The soft tan of its coat faded gradually to white toward the belly, a lovely gradient.
A highlight, perhaps: a black stripe ran down the center of its back from mane to tail, and its legs had blotchy patches of dark hair.
It might have looked a bit messy, but since it was only on the legs, it passed as a fashionable accent.
"Akum!"
"Uh, yes?"
"Catch lots of them and raise lots of them! They'll eat anything you give them."
I bet they'd take to potatoes just fine, too.
"Come to think of it, this one followed me on its own once I gave it a potato."
"Yes. Train them too—get them carrying people and hauling loads. However they look, they're going to be strong."
"True. Pull against them against their will and they absolutely refuse to move, though."
Hahaha. Horses, huh? At this rate, even Genghis Khan might get run out of town by us.