American: Native Empire

Chapter 12 < Paper and Hangul >

The pottery in his hand was very similar to the image of pottery that Kim Ki-woo had in his mind.

He had made countless prototypes, and before he knew it, he had acquired this much skill.

It was worth it to invest time and resources, and to constantly inject modern information that he knew.

Besides, this was the real China.

Bone china, as it was called. It was pottery that was made with animal bones, making it cheaper and stronger.

He had started making pottery for practical reasons, so cheap and sturdy was the best. And it wasn’t bad in terms of aesthetics either.

Kim Ki-woo touched the bone china and looked around, letting out a short exclamation of admiration.

“Good! Is it possible to mass-produce it now?”

“It’s still a lot of failures, but it will get better over time.”

“That’s fine. It’s just a matter of time, right? I’ll give you more people, so don’t worry about anything else and focus on production.”

Once pottery became widely available, the primitive earthenware and wooden bowls that had been used until now would all be discarded.

With this, he was able to overcome one more obstacle today.

*

Of course, it wasn’t possible to just build a stone building by saying so.

Even ordinary houses were full of things that would collapse in one typhoon, let alone large-scale buildings.

In the end, Kim Ki-woo had to take the lead and train the workers to become skilled construction workers.

‘First of all, I’ll give up on style.’

It would be more complicated if he cared about the aesthetic aspects. Kim Ki-woo designed the brick houses for residential use as simply as possible.

 When the construction workers gained more experience in the future, they would be able to build more beautiful houses.

Kim Ki-woo first selected those who wanted to learn construction work among the craftsmen who had excellent manual skills. 

Most of them were from the Creek tribe, but this was unavoidable because there was a difference in the training period.

“You all know why you’re here, right? I won’t say much. Let’s just build a house here. You have to learn exactly if you want to teach many construction workers in the future.”

“Yes!”

“Yes, sir.”

The craftsmen were all volunteers, so their eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.

It was often better to experience practice than to have theoretical education a hundred times.

In this case, it was faster to just experience the real thing.

Kim Ki-woo took them and started building a three-story house.

“Don’t do that there! The angle is slightly off, but the building could collapse! Can’t you build it straight?”

“I’m sorry!”

“That’s where the door will go! What are you going to do if you block the door!”

Kim Ki-woo’s roar echoed dozens of times while laying the foundation and building the house. It couldn’t be helped because it was their first time.

Before long, a brick house was built. There were plenty of manpower, and Kim Ki-woo pointed out one by one according to the design.

Kim Ki-woo chose a three-story brick house from the beginning. He wanted to build it three stories high anyway, so he could solve the problem of overpopulation in the city of Great Start that was slowly appearing.

Many people flocked to the city because many things happened in and around the city of Great Start.

‘It looks sturdy.’

It was a house that he gave up on style and built sturdily, so it didn’t seem like it would collapse easily. Kim Ki-woo was satisfied with the result.

However, they couldn’t learn how to build a building for sure by doing it once. So even after Kim Ki-woo left, they built four more identical buildings.

The first brick house was not in good condition after Kim Ki-woo left, but thanks to his repeated comments, the fourth one was sturdy enough to nod his head.

“Good. Don’t try to build it your own way, just build it exactly like this building. What if the building collapses because you’re arrogant? What do you think will happen?”

“The people inside will get hurt or die.”

“Right. It’s hard to survive if you get crushed by such heavy stones. You don’t want such a disaster to happen, do you?”

“Yes.”

The craftsmen nodded quickly as if they agreed. Until now, they had built buildings by putting their heads together with many skilled craftsmen. But now one craftsman had to oversee many workers.

For a while, they wouldn’t waste their energy on building design.

“I’m going to recruit a lot of construction workers soon. Most of the workers won’t be from the Creek tribe. How are you going to communicate with workers who don’t speak well? But they are also workers of the same Creek tribe. Don’t ever discriminate or mistreat them because you don’t like them.”

“I will never discriminate against anyone.”

“Haha. There are no craftsmen who think like that.”

Is that so?

Now, slowly, discrimination against other branches of the Creek tribe was happening within the tribe. They felt superior to other tribesmen, as if being a Creek tribe was like a rank.

But for now, it was still a covert matter. Kim Ki-woo had strongly regulated such behavior.

“I trust you. Please don’t disappoint me.”

Kim Ki-woo decided to mention only this much.

And that day, he recruited a large number of laborers for the construction work.

There were no conditions. He accepted anyone who was a healthy male. The wages were also higher than other industries.

Maybe that’s why? As soon as he received the application for construction workers, a lot of applicants flocked in.

‘Wow, that’s amazing.’

The enthusiasm was very hot.

Kim Ki-woo investigated why this was happening and found out the reason.

The first reason was the hope of working in the Great Start City. And even more, the hope of settling down there someday.

‘People always want to live in the city, whether it’s then or now.’

Of course, that wasn’t the whole reason.

Construction was a new industry. 

Unlike other industries such as ironmaking, steelmaking, blacksmithing, or carpentry, where skilled workers already existed, construction workers could become outstanding builders faster if they worked hard.

Naturally, most of the applicants were those who had finished clearing the farmland. They had no skills and only did simple physical work.

So he taught them how to build buildings with attributes, and with craftsmen who learned how to build brick houses as their leaders, countless brick houses began to rise simultaneously.

But they didn’t build them haphazardly. They built them with perfect planning from the beginning, aligning the rows and columns like a knife. Even the location of the public toilets attached to each building was the same.

Of course, they were Puse-style toilets. Kim Ki-woo had emphasized hygiene from the beginning and told them not to throw feces on the street or in the river. 

The importance of toilets would surely increase as the population became more concentrated.

Most of the feces collected this way were used for farming.

He also planned to use them for making gunpowder soon.

‘If people had owned land, it would have been hard to plan the city like this.’

The Native Americans who believed in the earth spirit had no concept of land ownership. They thought that land was not something that could be owned. 

Therefore, the houses built on the land could not belong to individuals either.

In other words, all houses were rented.

For a while, Kim Ki-woo helped out at various construction sites.

There was no way there would be no problems when one construction manager who learned how to build a brick house with attributes led hundreds of unskilled laborers and built buildings.

“Are you okay? You don’t look good.”

“How can I look good? Look at that mess. I bet my hand that it will collapse in less than a month if they build it like that.”

“Um… It did look unstable.”

Although he was an unskilled worker named Straight Tree, he became familiar with construction after following Kim Ki-woo around the construction sites for a long time. 

A dog can recite poetry after three years at school, right?

If Kim Ki-woo saw a building that was too poorly built, he even demolished it completely. Most of them had room for improvement, so it ended with corrections.

But as time passed, things got better and better. 

Come on, if they kept messing up even with such a simple structure, they would be hopeless.

Kim Ki-woo gradually increased the scale of construction as things improved. 

Anyway, there was no shortage of construction-related work for a while. 

He had to build various buildings besides houses, improve roads, build canals when boats were completed, and even take care of drainage later.

Someday he would also build a bridge over that big river. 

Of course, it was a story of the distant future.

He had been focusing on construction for a while, but his main job was to rule a huge tribe. So Kim Ki-woo had to deal with a lot of work.

As a result, his sleeping time steadily decreased.

‘This can’t go on.’

It wasn’t just because of physical fatigue. He had reached the limit of his crude politics.

Most of the work was done by word of mouth. The workers were also inexperienced, and the work was passed on by oral tradition, so many parts were omitted. 

Nothing worked properly.

‘I’ve done almost everything I can in the ritual. Then what?’

It was time to eliminate the inefficiency of the internal affairs.

The most urgent thing was, of course…

‘Paper and writing tools.’

Writing tools were actually easy. It was because if you bake graphite and clay at a certain ratio, that would be a pencil lead. Ink was even easier to make.

He used bread as an eraser for the time being, since he didn’t have rubber.

And he had been preparing for paper production for a long time. 

Although he couldn’t pay attention to it because he had a lot of other things to do, he had assigned a few craftsmen to research papers and had them study it steadily.

He couldn’t produce high-quality paper in large quantities like in modern times. He had to try each step from getting pulp to making paper and get better quality paper.

Fortunately, Kim Ki-woo’s bag also contained detailed instructions on how to make paper. 

Paper was very important in any era. So he was able to reduce a lot of trial and error.

“Good. This should do it. You’ve worked hard so far.”

“Are you finally satisfied? Hahaha!”

“Yes. I think this is good enough for now.”

“Huh! Does that mean…”

“Huh? Of course, we have to improve it later. Look here. Doesn’t it look lacking?”

“Is, is that so? Haha…”

The man who would be remembered as the first papermaker of the Creek tribe, Cool Raindrop, looked gloomy. Kim Ki-woo chuckled and comforted him.

“Don’t worry. We’ll use it like this for a while. More importantly, can you produce this paper in large quantities?”

“If you provide enough manpower, I think it’s possible.”

“I’ll make sure of that. I’ll build you a big paper mill, so try your best there.”

“Yes, Grand Chief.”

Kim Ki-woo kept his word firmly. To reform the internal affairs, mass production of paper was essential, so the paper mill was built quickly.

And thanks to the hard work of Cool Raindrop, the paper mill manager, the paper mill began to establish its foundation little by little.