114: Chapter 114 The excitement of the Qin nobles: the steam threshing machine was too fast!

"What immense strength!"

The women thought to themselves.

They didn't dare to drop all the rice ears in at once anymore.

They carefully placed the rice ears onto the angle iron of the drum.

"Clatter, clatter, clatter..."

A crisp sound rang out; as the angle iron on the drum spun rapidly, it knocked the grains off the rice ears, sending them flying.

The women rotated the two clusters of rice stalks in their hands.

In no time at all, the rice ears on both large handfuls of stalks had been threshed by the drum's angle iron.

"Is it done already?"

The women were all astonished.

This threshing speed was a bit too fast.

When the women picked up the second pair of rice clusters to thresh, they had gained experience and didn't drop the ears onto the drum's angle iron all at once.

Amidst the crisp clattering, the two clusters of rice stalks in their hands were finished threshing.

As the women became more adapted to the steam thresher, their threshing speed grew faster and faster.

In a short while, the large pile of rice stalks began to dwindle at a pace visible to the naked eye.

General Wang Jian, who was sitting nearby resting, couldn't help but stand up when he saw this.

Although Li Si had told him more than once that the steam thresher was very fast and that he should feel confident purchasing the steam thresher invented by His Majesty the Head of State.

But after actually seeing the speed of the steam thresher, General Wang Jian was still struck with disbelief.

Li Si's evaluation of the steam thresher was not an exaggeration; if anything, it was too conservative.

The threshing speed of the steam thresher was far faster than what Li Si had described.

The reason for this was that when Li Si used it that time, he was threshing the rice alone.

When operating at full power, the steam thresher could accommodate two people working at once.

The only thing they needed to pay attention to was the pressure gauge of the steam thresher.

When the pressure on the steam tractor's gauge dropped, coal had to be added promptly to maintain sufficient pressure within the cylinder.

Additionally, they had to keep an eye on the water level in the boiler to prevent it from dry-firing.

Da Wu had repeated these precautions over and over like a broken record.

Although they found Da Wu's lecturing annoying, they still remembered the key points for safely using the steam thresher.

With the laborers gathering the rice and the women responsible for threshing, it took less than two hours to thresh all the rice stalks that had taken six hours to harvest that morning.

Midway through, they even stopped several times to rake away the grain that had piled up near the steam tractor and separate the straw from the grain.

Before they had the steam thresher, threshing used to take longer than harvesting the stalks.

Therefore, after cutting the rice stalks, they would have to carry them all back.

One could imagine how much physical strength and time that wasted.

With the steam thresher, they could thresh the rice directly in the field.

Then, they only needed to bag the grain and carry it home.

The women were responsible for bagging the sifted grain, while the men carried the bags back to the Wang family estate.

"This is too fast!"

"The speed of this steam thresher is just too fast!"

General Wang Jian spoke excitedly, repeating himself constantly.

He was far from the only one who felt this way.

When the Qin Nobility, including the Ying Imperial Clan and the Meng Clan, saw the speed of the steam thresher, they were all full of praise for it.

With the assistance of the steam thresher, the production efficiency of the farmlands on the outskirts of Xianyang significantly improved.

Even though the number of people engaged in agriculture had decreased, the speed of the summer harvest had increased.

As the summer harvest began throughout Guanzhong, Six-Fingered Black Knight brought dozens of Mohist Disciples to Xianyang.

Under Zhang Liang's arrangements, Six-Fingered Black Knight, Han Qiudao, and their elite subordinates all disguised themselves as farmers.

They even went to the Wang family's land to harvest millet, waiting for Zhao Fusu to visit the countryside.

They planned to strike and assassinate him when Zhao Fusu came into close contact with the farmers.

Unfortunately...

Zhao Fusu had no intention of going to the Xianyang outskirts to observe the summer harvest.

After Zhao Fusu watched the competition between the steam thresher and the use of the flail, he knew very well that the steam thresher's efficiency was far superior to the flail.

Consequently, during the summer harvest, because assassins like Han Qiudao and Six-Fingered Black Knight were working outdoors under the scorching sun, they were all tanned as dark as Africans.

They also received no news of Zhao Fusu coming to the countryside.

Zhang Liang was speechless; he had originally thought Zhao Fusu would place immense importance on the summer harvest.

As it turned out, Zhao Fusu didn't come to the countryside, which meant his trap never took effect.

This feeling of having spread a net only for the prey not to enter made Zhang Liang very frustrated.

The reason Zhao Fusu hadn't gone to the countryside was that he needed to deploy plans for the Summer Plowing following the harvest.

He heard that a large number of oxen belonging to noble families had supposedly tripped while walking and fallen into ponds, drowning.

Zhao Fusu was speechless at this clumsy excuse.

Did they take him for a fool like Hu Hai, who would believe Zhao Gao's 'Calling a deer a horse'?

Most of the draft animals in their country were water buffalo, which were excellent swimmers.

As long as they weren't tied up, even a flood wouldn't necessarily drown them.

A water buffalo drowning just by falling into a pond?

Zhao Fusu was utterly speechless; these nobles were just making up blatant lies so they could eat beef sooner.

With a large number of oxen being slaughtered, the steam rotary tiller needed to be produced quickly.

Previously, the Great Qin Empire Academy of Sciences had gone all out for the summer harvest, manufacturing parts for the steam thresher, producing a full ten thousand sets.

Now it was time to go all out on producing the steam rotary tiller.

With the experience gained from mass-producing the steam thresher...

They would continue using the assembly line method, first mass-producing the components of the steam rotary tiller before assembling them.

After Zhao Fusu held the launch event for the steam rotary tiller at Xianyang Palace, the number of orders reached eight thousand five hundred units on the spot.

Once he had the members of Elder Mos Team create the metal molds for the steam rotary tiller, the workers who had previously produced steam thresher parts began manufacturing parts for the steam rotary tiller.

Zhao Fusu sat at his desk and began writing out the Pinyin Alphabet from memory—the initials and finals, the tones, and the pronunciation methods.

Before he founded the New Oriental School, he at least had to compile the teaching materials for the kindergarten level.

While compiling the materials, Zhao Fusu didn't forget to check in for his daily rewards.

Over the past half-month of continuous check-ins, Zhao Fusu had obtained a large number of industrial items.

However, he hadn't had the time to inspect them yet.

After Zhao Fusu grew tired of writing the materials, he finally began to look closely at what exactly he had gained from his half-month of uninterrupted check-ins.