Chapter 138: Bathtub

Because the Five-person Decision Team exists, other team members often don't consider overall issues much, and instead have more time to ponder their own Special Ability.

Chang Junyan is a typical example.

This guy's imagination is getting bigger and bigger.

And under Tang Jing's research and guidance, the function of his Special Ability is continually being developed.

"Tang Jing said your control has improved a lot?"

Tang Jing periodically discusses with Chen Mu the Special Ability status of everyone in the organization, but as the number of people increases, Chen Mu has gradually become unable to attend to everyone.

Chang Junyan laughed hahaha: "Yes, now I can make it itch when I want it to itch, and not itch when I want it not to itch; I can also control the degree of itchiness—when it's at its worst, even I find it a bit unbearable."

"But what's the use of that?" Chen Mu was somewhat speechless.

"It's useful." Chang Junyan excitedly said: "For example, when sleeping, I can grow two bumps in my ears to block sound, so I can completely not hear Old Wei's snoring; you guys can't, haha."

Although Wei Dalei already has a separate room, because the distance isn't far, if he wakes up at night he can still hear his snoring.

Of course, it's much better than before.

"By the way, since you can already make the bumps not itch, why do you still scratch them?"

Chen Mu watched Chang Junyan standing in place, constantly rubbing his feet, and really felt powerless to complain.

"It feels good." Chang Junyan's face showed it was natural.

Chen Mu: "……"

In Chen Mu's view, Chang Junyan's ability has considerable merit in defense; thus, one should naturally continue to explore its depth in that direction, rather than playing with it by scratching as before, which seems somewhat putting the cart before the horse.

But Chang Junyan obviously doesn't think so, and Tang Jing seems to support him doing that.

Guiding others' ability development is Tang Jing's main responsibility, and as Chen Mu is the most experienced, with the strongest mental power and control among Special Ability users, he naturally also has the qualification to advise others.

Only when their opinions differ does Chen Mu usually take the initiative to yield.

"Then keep at it." Chen Mu made a cheering gesture.

"Mm-hmm."

Chang Junyan tapped his shoes and slowly walked toward the toilet.

Chen Mu watched his back, a little worried that his shoes would wear out prematurely, but looking at his state, perhaps not having shoes would be better, with his soles directly rubbing the concrete floor—just thinking about it makes Chen Mu feel good for him.

……

After breakfast.

Chen Mu, Dong Junwei, Tang Jing, Wei Dalei, He Ying—the five gathered together beside the Water Reservoir.

Since this water diversion device was built, its usage efficiency has actually not been high, because there is no bathroom; everyone temporarily washes using the makeshift partition near the door, and cannot take a shower.

And after other more important matters were roughly done, Chen Mu also turned his attention to this.

It's time to build a bathroom.

In fact, with the current body size, the way water is used is completely different from before.

Taking the cup used for drinking water as an example, it's actually hard to perform the action of "pouring water"; so-called drinking is more like sucking.

Because of water's surface tension, atmospheric pressure, and capillary action, at the present scale the shape of water differs greatly from before; naturally formed droplets have a minimum value, which for today's humans is relatively large.

Especially when the pipe is small to a certain degree, relying on gravity to discharge water cannot be continuous, but becomes drop by drop.

This brings great technical difficulty to showers.

If the water amount is too small, the flow cannot be continuous, so one can only, while bathing, continually break the water droplets above the head and then wipe the whole body—but that loses the meaning of rinsing.

But if the water amount is too large, a person may easily be unable to stand, even be swept away, and moreover, with Qiming's current conditions, water usage hasn't reached the point of being extravagant.

After several calculations.

Finally, decided to abandon the shower plan.

Switch to using a bathtub.

The bathtub as a washing method is almost disappearing in ordinary households nowadays—one aspect is that it's troublesome and time‑consuming, another is that it wastes water.

Moreover, installing a bathtub in today's high‑priced apartments would ultimately be used only for keeping fish and holding a washbasin, which is really rather luxurious.

But under the current circumstances, a bathtub is actually a good choice.

Compared with showers, taking a bath now actually saves more water—about two or three droplets can fill a bathtub large enough for a person to lie down in.

After the five people discussed and agreed, they chose a spot near the corner of the wall not far from the Water Reservoir.

"For now we aren't many, so each person can have a bathtub, but later we'll still need to consider a more optimized shower plan."

"How about a public bath?"

"If the number reaches over a hundred, it's not impossible, but drainage remains a problem. With the current scale of these bathtubs, just pouring water on the ground will make it evaporate dry, but once we get to the size of a public bath, we'd probably need to install a drainage system."

"I have a question." He Ying suddenly said.

"What?"

"The weather now poses no problem for bathing, but what about winter? There's no hot water."

"This depends on the monitor." Tang Jing laughed.

"Boil water?" Dong Junwei said.

Tang Jing nodded: "My initial idea is to make a metal coil; before everyone bathes, the monitor heats it, and as long as we calculate the temperature, pipe length, and outflow speed, we can control the outflow temperature."

"A water heater!" Wei Dalei exclaimed.

"But does that mean the monitor has to heat it every time we bathe?"

Although the method is good, hearing it always feels unreliable, and it can't be sustained long‑term.

"For now we can only do this; relying just on us and these materials at hand, there's actually not much we can accomplish."

"Will there be a way in the future?"

"Actually, from a technical standpoint, the difficulty of centralized heating isn't high."

"Build a big furnace?"

It's also a direction to consider, but the fuel aspect is more troublesome: coal initially, natural gas later; the principle isn't complicated, the difficulty is just the huge amount of work, and it also requires a certain level of remote control and automation; otherwise people simply cannot approach the furnace, let alone operate it.

Looks like it can't be realized in the short term?

Hmm. Tang Jing nodded: "The use of open flame, before there is a certain population base, really has low cost-effectiveness, and it also comes with higher safety risks."

Fire?

Yes, given our current size, even the smallest flame is hard to extinguish, and fire doesn't care how big you are; once it catches, we probably won't even have time to escape.

Several people fell silent, imagining: if this storage room caught fire while they were asleep, what would be their chances of escaping?

Then what do you mean by centralized heating?

Actually, we also have a relatively easy-to-obtain heat source." Tang Jing said this, pointing her hand toward the window.

Solar energy!?