Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors
Chapter 371 - 234: Building Blocks_3

Chapter 371: Chapter 234: Building Blocks_3

After a dozen complex procedures, the gold-brick-paved ground was not only exceptionally hard but also smooth as jade.

During this process, Li Hongyun gradually realized that the task was not as difficult as he had imagined.

Because everything happening before his eyes could be fast-forwarded at will, and once the same work was completed, it could be finished in batches just like "copy and paste."

This was somewhat similar to some city-building games, where constructing roads only required selecting a starting point and then dragging straight to the destination; and as long as a certain area was designated, the tiles could be filled in directly.

Thus, laying the tiles was not very difficult, although there were also balustrades, bridges, and white marble steps among various different units, all of which could be accomplished with patience.

A lot of this repetitive labor could be completed using the copy and paste method. Moreover, some specific components only needed to be assembled once.

Particular attention needed to be paid to some special units, such as the previous block weighing over two hundred tons, carved with a five-clawed gold dragon, which had to be properly placed at the center between two rows of stone steps.

Watching a large number of craftsmen and laborers put these materials in their places, Li Hongyun felt an inexplicable sense of achievement.

In this process, Li Hongyun also saw many ancient construction methods used by craftsmen, which was quite an eye-opener.

But then, a more difficult challenge arrived.

Because he was about to start constructing a large palace.

In the entire Forbidden City, there were nearly nine thousand buildings, including some small rooms for eunuchs and palace maids, but also some very large structures.

For instance, the largest Golden Throne Hall, also known as Fengtian Hall, had a floor area of three thousand square meters and was over thirty meters high, supported by seventy-two massive pillars, six of which were wrapped with golden dragons.

In fact, the existing Golden Throne Hall only had a bit more than two thousand square meters. This was because Fengtian Hall, built so high, often suffered from lightning strikes and was destroyed by fire, leading to repeated rebuilding and repairs.

During the rebuilding and repairing process, on the one hand, the nation’s dwindling strength could hardly support such a massive project anymore; on the other hand, there might have been fear of further lightning strikes, so the reconstructed hall had its size and height reduced compared to the original.

What Li Hongyun was looking at was the scene when Fengtian Hall was first constructed, so it was still in its most magnificent state.

As the layers of floor tiles were being laid, the entire hall was already beginning to take shape.

Li Hongyun selected several columns that appeared to be quite sizable, and placed them one by one on the virtual blueprint.

However, after setting them up, Li Hongyun was a bit taken aback.

He watched the laborers, straining, setting up the huge golden nanmu pillars on the ground, but upon closer inspection, he discovered that these pillars were not driven deep into the ground, but were standing on the surface!

That made Li Hongyun very puzzled; he even wondered if he had missed some steps.

According to modern principles of construction, shouldn’t these load-bearing columns be embedded as deep into the ground as possible?

Because the deeper the load-bearing columns are, the more stable they naturally become. Otherwise, a slight earthquake or the like would shake the columns standing directly on the surface, along with the entire building, causing it to collapse easily, wouldn’t it?

Still, he compared them against the blueprint again and confirmed that these columns were indeed standing on the surface without penetrating the ground.

With his doubts, Li Hongyun continued to assemble the parts above the columns.

He had a basic understanding of mortise and tenon joints and dougong structures.

The so-called mortise and tenon is a method of connecting two structural parts using protruding and concave sections. The protruding part is called the tenon, and the recessed part is called the mortise. Some skilled mortise and tenon structures can combine two pieces of wood tightly together without any nails or glue.

Moreover, this structure was not only stable but also maintained a certain flexibility and was long-lasting.

Metals are prone to rust or oxidize, and glue tends to lose its adhesive qualities, so many modern pieces of furniture fall apart after a few decades. However, furniture made using mortise and tenon structures, even after more than a hundred years, remains sturdy and durable.

If the mortise and tenon are considered the basic units of crest and trough in building blocks, then the dougong is a special structure composed of several basic units.

Simply put, it involves stacking various beams layer by layer upon columns, continuously expanding the bearing area, and ultimately supporting the roof.

Li Hongyun had indeed seen dougong structures before, as many modern buildings use large red dougong shapes to showcase cultural heritage, but seeing them was one thing, constructing dougong himself was another.

On top of the over seventy huge golden nanmu columns in Fengtian Hall, each column was equipped with a dougong structure, and between them, various beams were connected to one another, together supporting the entire roof.

Just the basic structure of a single dougong utilized dozens of different sizes and shapes of timber, and these structures each had their names.

The creators of "Dark Sand" generously allowed players to assemble the larger structures, and for those more intricate components, the players were permitted to automatically complete them after assembling the rough structure.

However, even so, Li Hongyun still felt immensely overwhelmed; he was completely shattered.

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