The Great Dam
There were several critical considerations when building a State-run Ironworks.
The first was the river regime coefficient—also called the flow variation coefficient—which measured how widely a river’s average water level tended to swing.
A high coefficient meant the river’s level jumped and dropped wildly. In places like that, waterwheels either rose clear of the water or sank completely under it, wrecking the wheels and making hydropower impossible to use.
Given that the fundamental design philosophy of the State-run Ironworks rested on large-scale hydropower for mass production, this was no minor detail. As a rule, the coefficient grew larger from upper to middle reaches, and larger still from middle to lower.
True to his promise to Shaolin Temple, Hui-yeom chose a site among the lands Shaolin held that combined a low river regime coefficient, solid bedrock, and terrain well suited to drawing water.
Pingdingshan County, near Dengfeng County where Shaolin Temple stood, was not crossed by the Yellow River’s main channel, but its tributary—the Sha River—flowed through it.
Just as the First State-run Ironworks had been built at the mouth of the Min River rather than on the Yangtze, the massive State-run Ironworks rising near Henan County in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, shared a great deal with Sichuan’s First State-run Ironworks.
Construction ought to have proceeded smoothly. And while the infrastructure work and the building of the structures themselves raised no serious trouble, disaster struck the moment they began installing the machinery.
The water of the Yangtze and the water of the Yellow River were simply too different.
More precisely: someone belatedly pointed out that Yellow River water could not possibly be used for cooling metal, and that the process of sliding vast quantities of molten iron across a water curtain to draw flat plate was out of the question.
Why?
Because the Yellow River was an irredeemably turbid soup of mud!
Sand grains in the cooling water for molten iron amounted to nothing less than dumping impurities back into carefully refined high-purity pig iron.
The engineers tore at their hair.
“Damn it! This is nothing like the Yangtze!”
“We have to rip up the basic design from the foundation. Skim sand grains out of that much river water? Haha! If that were possible, why the hell would the Central Plains have developed frying and roasting instead of boiling and stewing, for crying out loud?!”
“Wait—don’t we have the Guizhou case? If we adapt the purification-jar technique they used there…”
“Ah, Chief Shim, are you joking right now? How many years do you think it would take to filter flowing river water that way and feed an ironworks?”
In the end the third section chief of the Blacksmithing Department, still clawing at his scalp and muttering that he was going to go bald at this rate, made his way to the Sacheondang Family main estate.
“? What is it?”
And there, confronted with the crown of Han Cheol, Head of the Metallurgy Department—polished past glossy into something that actually shone—he swallowed dryly without meaning to.
His own future was sitting right there.
“? Why are you staring at another man’s scalp like that? Think it’s somebody else’s problem?”
Han Cheol was rather sensitive about other people’s eyes landing on his head. When he set his brow in an unpleasant scowl, the section chief sighed.
“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve got much left myself.”
“…Hmm.”
Had Pung Seong-chung said that, he would have deserved to be treated like a traitor of the first order. But the third section chief’s own crown was already beginning to look like a winter forest after a wildfire, so the atmosphere turned solemn.
Han Cheol gazed at the man’s scalp with uncharacteristically wistful eyes, then patted his shoulder.
“…While you’ve still got something, take care of it.”
“…Yes.”
To do that, the worry currently weighing on him had to be solved first. But Han Cheol himself had no clear answer to offer.
Purifying river water was possible in principle. Purifying enough of it for an ironworks, however, would require purification works on a staggering scale. There was a real danger of the tail wagging the dog.
It was not a decision technicians without authority could make, so Han Cheol had no choice but to seek out Hui-yeom’s office.
Having heard Han Cheol’s concerns, Hui-yeom nodded with his usual expression that said it was nothing much.
“We’ll build a dam.”
“Pardon? A dam?”
Obviously not the woodworking plane. Han Cheol tilted his head at a word he was hearing for the first time.
Hui-yeom smiled faintly.
“You know what a weir is, yes?”
“Well…”
“A dam is building one of those at least ten times larger. If a weir means a village reservoir or a levee against floods, a dam means a colossal reservoir that can store water for at least an entire province’s drought needs, or hold back a flood.”
Dam used the characters for “great” and “embankment.” The word was common enough in modern China, but in this world it was almost certainly one Hui-yeom had coined for the first time.
“A reservoir storing water for a whole province… is building something like that even possible?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“W-what happens once we build it?”
“Simple. We store the Sha River’s water in the dam first. Unlike flowing river water, sediment in standing reservoir water settles to the bottom. We put sluice gates not only at the bottom of the reservoir but higher up as well, and open those to send water to the ironworks under ordinary conditions.”
It was a purification technique still used in modern China.
Of course we’d still have to build several settling tanks and run the water through them… but we’re not purifying drinking water here. For managing the quality that goes into the ironworks, this is enough.
“…Even so, it won’t be as clear as Min River water, so there will be differences in the composition of the iron we get…”
“We can overlook a degree of difference. Producing goods of completely identical quality is impossible anyway. Even beans grown from the same stalk in the same field vary in size from grain to grain—how much more so for things made by human hands?”
When Hui-yeom pressed the point with a saying of Mencius, Han Cheol—who had never steeped himself deeply in classical learning—could only nod along.
Dragged into a modern world of standardization and quantification, Hui-yeom’s words would have been catastrophic nonsense. In this medieval Central Plains, where romance and rule-of-thumb still lived and breathed, they were as natural as thunder on a rainy day.
…Though for something like that, modern factory managers used to spout the same crap as easily as breathing and turn my lungs inside out…
Remembering the plant manager who had shrugged and said “How should I know?” when asked why products stamped out by the same machines varied so wildly in quality, Hui-yeom felt a flicker of past-life PTSD.
Well—practical difficulties aside—the end result would be that iron from the First State-run Ironworks carried the advantage of higher quality than iron from the Second. Good news from the Dang Family’s point of view as well.
Sichuan happened to have good iron, good coal and coking coal, and good water quality on top of it. It would go on making a name for itself as a producer of fine iron.
From Han Cheol’s standpoint, a massive dam meant suffering for the Construction Department, not the Blacksmithing Department, so he nodded without much thought.
“Understood. Shall I notify the Construction Department?”
“I’ll summon them myself. As for you, Section Chief…”
“Ah—I’m rather busy, so I’ll just—”
Sensing something ominous as Hui-yeom began looking around for something, Han Cheol tried to bolt. Hui-yeom’s hand closed on his collar faster than he could flee.
“Section Chief. Make these.”
“W-what is this?”
“What else? Blueprints. You know that.”
“….”
Eyes squeezed shut in full I refuse to look~! mode, Han Cheol finally cracked them open like a horror-movie viewer who shuts his eyes in terror and then peeks right before the jump scare. At the thickness of the stack in Hui-yeom’s hand, he screamed.
“Buddha have mercy! How many pages is this?!”
“Nothing much. About… twelve?”
“What the hell is this—do you have a grudge against the Blacksmithing Department?! Why are you suddenly dumping this much work—”
“I should have assigned it earlier, but it looked as though the Blacksmithing Department wasn’t ready yet. Lately I thought it was about time to start making progress, so I prepared them.”
“….”
Han Cheol frowned and unfolded the blueprints. His brow crumpled all over again.
“…‘Steam-powered water pump,’ ‘new-type engine for the steam locomotive’—d-don’t we already have these?”
“We do, but they’re too large, too heavy, with poor thermal efficiency and long preheating times. So the steam pump can only be used on major construction sites, and as for the locomotive engine… at roughly half the size of the current one, it should produce twice the output.”
“I-is that even possible?”
“Section Chief. I’m Hui-yeom.”
“….”
“In the first place, shouldn’t the Blacksmithing Department be developing blueprints like these and submitting them to me? How long is the top executive supposed to handle machine design himself? I’m making everything and spoon-feeding it to you—I don’t understand why you’re reacting as if you’re unhappy…”
“Then don’t make them…”
“What was that? I didn’t quite catch it…”
“…Shit…”
“What did you just say?”
“Ahem. I said my shoelace came undone.”
Fine. He admitted it. Even if his people would have to grind their souls to meet the deadline, it was a splendid plan. His pride as a craftsman would not let him turn away from it.
Han Cheol swallowed a groan and nodded.
“H-at the very least, if you could give us two more months on the deadline…”
“We need them for the State-run Ironworks construction. We can’t fall behind schedule.”
“…No—then what about the work we’ve been doing so far?”
“You’ll do that too. Isn’t that why I treat you with a salary twice that of a first-rank high official?”
“….”
“….”
“…Urgh!”
Defeated in the staring contest, Han Cheol buried his nose in the blueprints.
“I understand everything else. I understand, but…”
He looked at one small sheet that seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with construction.
“Th-this device that wraps magnetite in copper wire and spins it—what is it? What are you trying to make?”
“Ah. That?”
Hui-yeom smiled.
“A great invention that will change the world.”
“?”
It was about time the Central Plains got a taste of electricity.
As Han Cheol trudged out with a baffled face, Hui-yeom smiled gently and summoned Ye-eun.
“You called for me?”
“Yes. How is the search for special-occupation practitioners I ordered last time progressing?”
At Hui-yeom’s words, Ye-eun slightly narrowed her brow.
“…Neither the Ice Palace of the North Sea nor Thunder Sound Temple of Tibet is nearby, and from our family’s position we have no connections. Even if we can expect a measure of friendly contact with the Ice Palace through the recruitment of Ivan Novikov, Thunder Sound Temple is an entirely first approach, so we must proceed with caution.”
“Right. Spend as much money as needed—we must bring talent from them.”
“I… if I may be so bold, Young Master. While it is true that the Ice Palace and Thunder Sound Temple are mighty powers beyond the pale of the Central Plains, is there a need to spend such vast sums merely to borrow people?”
“There is. Work that no one under heaven can do—but that only they can.”
Hui-yeom smiled.
“To seize the achievements of Willis Carrier and Benjamin Franklin, that much sincerity is the least we should show.”
“?”