Volume One: First Arrival Chapter 32: Luring the Enemy

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As the bellows were worked and Ye Feng activated his supernatural ability, layer after layer of charcoal in the blast furnace quickly caught fire. The rising temperature was clearly perceptible.

Time passed slowly. Ye Feng had already exhausted all one hundred points of magical power and begun using his mental strength to activate his ability.

Just as his mental strength fell below five points and he was preparing to suggest adding aviation fuel to the blast furnace, golden-red molten iron began to flow slowly from the furnace outlet.

“Add more fuel! Keep it coming!” Zhai Yao shouted excitedly.

At once, someone braved the waves of heat and climbed onto the iron scaffolding beside the furnace, throwing charcoal and ore through the charging opening at the top.

Molten iron began pouring continuously from the outlet, flowing through the prepared channels into the molds.

Zhai Yao snatched up a tool and shoveled away the slag floating on the surface of the molten iron.

Since they had no converter, the ironmaking process was considered temporarily complete at this point. The molten iron was poured into the prepared molds, where it cooled into iron ingots. Later, Tongtong would use her supernatural ability to convert them into steel as needed.

The only difference between iron and steel was their carbon content. Tongtong merely needed to use her ability to remove some of the carbon from pig iron, and it would be transformed into steel.

Meng Xingchen looked toward the opposite bank. Now that they had produced iron, obtained slag, and secured limestone, the next step was to fire cement.

All kinds of construction materials were gradually being prepared, and construction of the settlement could soon begin. Before that, however, they first had to deal with the goblins.

Because the settlement had been chosen on the opposite bank, it would be much easier for the goblins to launch sneak attacks. The travelers would have to build the settlement while guarding against goblin raids, which would greatly divert their attention and delay construction.

Therefore, before formally beginning construction, they had to eliminate the hidden threat posed by the goblins once and for all.

The goblins had not launched another attack in recent days, but their scouts often appeared in the woods across the river, cautiously poking their heads out to observe.

For example, Meng Xingchen could clearly see a goblin beneath a large tree in the mountain forest on the opposite bank, half its head exposed as it spied on the blast furnace.

As another semi-intelligent race, the goblins were clearly wiser than the kobolds and gnolls. After their first raid had failed and they had witnessed the formidable power of the humans’ crossbows, they no longer acted recklessly. Even so, they continued to observe the humans’ movements.

Although the humans were considerably stronger than they had been a few days earlier, Meng Xingchen was still unwilling to lead them in an assault on the goblin camp. The casualties would be difficult to control.

The ideal plan was to lure the snakes from their holes, then use crossbows to destroy the goblins’ fighting strength in a relatively open area. Finally, they would concentrate their elite forces and annihilate the goblins completely.

In truth, with Meng Xingchen’s current strength, he could easily enter the goblin camp alone and continually wear down their fighting strength through guerrilla tactics. It would not take long for him to exhaust the more than two hundred goblins.

But such an approach would hinder the humans’ growth. Meng Xingchen could not protect them like a nanny forever.

He did not require every traveler to become an expert, but he needed to cultivate at least one elite fighting force. The goblins were the perfect opponents for training—and the ideal source of biological energy.

Looking at the patrolmen scattered around the perimeter, each holding a crossbow and keeping watch over the opposite bank, Meng Xingchen understood that this was probably the main reason the goblins continued to spy on them without taking any further action.

What the goblins feared most now was undoubtedly the humans’ crossbows. Perhaps they could create the illusion that the humans had lowered their guard and were devoting themselves entirely to building the settlement. If so, the goblins might launch an attack on their own.

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Preparations for constructing the settlement had progressed steadily over the past few days, and crossbow production had never stopped. By now, almost every traveler had one.

To prevent the goblins from disrupting their preparations, armed patrols equipped with crossbows traveled back and forth every day between Li Family Village and the construction site, serving as a deterrent.

Meng Xingchen decided to reduce the frequency of the patrols beginning the next day and withdraw all patrolmen three days later. Three days after that would be the official start of construction.

Just as Meng Xingchen was silently calculating his plan to destroy the goblins, Xu Jingya approached after arranging for the storage of the iron ingots.

“Xingchen, there’s something I need to discuss with you.”

Meng Xingchen walked toward the river to avoid the noisy crowd.

“What is it?”

“After we crossed over, all electronic devices stopped working. No one on our flight had a purely mechanical watch, so our entire system of timekeeping collapsed.

“The villagers of Li Family Village can only estimate the time by observing the sun’s position. But we have more and more tasks to handle now, and without an accurate means of measuring time, many arrangements have become extremely inconvenient.

“So I want to build a timekeeping device. Ideally, we should divide the day into twenty-four hours, as we did before.”

Meng Xingchen thought for a moment.

“Have you discussed this with Zhai Yao? As far as I remember, he’s the only one who might be able to design a timekeeping device.”

“Actually, the water clocks used in ancient China would make excellent timekeeping devices. Their principles are simple, and they can measure time with reasonable accuracy.”

Meng Xingchen looked at Xu Jingya doubtfully.

She smiled.

“I once watched some educational videos about water clocks. I still remember the basic principles behind combining a leaking vessel with a receiving vessel to measure time. Of course, we’ll probably still need Engineer Zhai’s help with the actual construction.

“There is one problem with water clocks, though. Because the vessels have limited capacity, someone has to remain on duty constantly—adding water to the leaking vessel, then emptying the receiving vessel once it is full before starting the measurement again.

“During the day, that would not be too troublesome, since someone would need to check the time anyway. It would not require any additional manpower or energy. But at night, would it really be necessary to assign someone specifically to stand watch over the clock?”

Meng Xingchen considered this.

“We need relatively accurate timekeeping during the day. At night, it doesn’t matter as much. But that raises another question: from what point should we begin counting the day?”

“I’ve thought about that too. My idea is to begin counting from the moment you finish your daily cultivation and open your eyes. We can designate that as seven in the morning. Then we stop counting at seven in the evening, making exactly twelve hours.

“Seven in the evening may be a little early, but that can be adjusted simply by changing the size of the receiving vessel and adding more markings to the scale.”

Meng Xingchen awkwardly rubbed his nose, but after thinking it over, he found the proposal quite practical. The time he spent cultivating his inner strength each day was fairly consistent, especially in the morning.

Ever since he had begun cultivating the Primordial Art, he had developed a different sensitivity toward the natural world. He would generally awaken on his own at a certain point in the early morning and begin cultivating. Then, when the first ray of sunlight touched his face, he would automatically emerge from his meditative state.

Even on unusual days when there was no sunlight, he would still leave that state at the same time.

Accepting the proposal, Meng Xingchen continued, “Now that we’ve established a system for measuring the hours of the day, we should complete the system for measuring longer periods as well.”

Xu Jingya looked at him with a smile.

“We currently have no idea how many days there are in a year in this world, so we don’t need to worry about that for now. Let’s designate the day you crossed over as the first year, first month, and first day of our calendar. Today is therefore the thirteenth day of the first month of the Crossing Era.”

First Year of the Crossing Era, January 16, eight in the morning.

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Today was a special day for the travelers. Their future settlement would officially begin construction.

Led by Meng Xingchen and Li Changfeng, all one hundred and eleven travelers set out. They crossed the dam and arrived at the small hill chosen as the site of their settlement, a rise of land extending into a pool on the northern bank of the river.

Beginning with Meng Xingchen, each traveler symbolically took a shovel and removed a scoop of earth from the top of the hill. With that, the foundation ceremony was complete, and construction officially began.

Liang Junyi had finished the blueprints long ago. Their first task was to level the ground and mark out the foundation lines.

Without heavy machinery, leveling the land by hand would have been both time-consuming and exhausting. Fortunately, they had people with earth-manipulation abilities.

Zhao Lei, Chen Yang, and Guo Yu activated their abilities simultaneously. The top of the hill was rapidly shaved flat, becoming an even expanse roughly the size of three or four soccer fields.

Some of the soil they removed was used to fill and level the ground. The rest was piled along the northern edge of the open area, where it was shaped into a small earthen hut.

The hut was square and just over three meters high, with an interior of roughly twenty square meters. It could serve as a temporary resting place and storage room for tools.

Yang Junyi began leading people onto the site to measure and mark the foundation lines. The workers at the brick kiln, blast furnace, and cement kiln also returned to the southern bank to resume work.

After saying a few words to Meng Xingchen, Li Changfeng led the ore-hauling team away as well. Before leaving, Tongtong and He Qingwan curiously ran into the little earthen hut to look around.

The ore-hauling team still went into the mountains once each day, but its personnel had changed considerably. Apart from Li Changfeng, Ye Feng, Wei Siyuan, Tongtong, and He Qingwan, who were always part of the group, the remaining members varied. Of course, the three savage bulls were permanent members too.

Everyone took up their assigned duties, and the entire site presented a bustling scene of construction.

With a light touch of his toes, Meng Xingchen leaped onto the roof of the little hut. A small black bird, slightly larger than a palm, flew out of the forest and landed on his shoulder.

It was a common bird in the mountain forests, and Wei Siyuan had named it Little Black.

After Wei Siyuan’s mental attribute had reached ten points, his communication ability had grown much stronger. To a certain extent, he could influence and alter the behavior of animals whose minds were not overly complex.

There were two other birds of the same kind, named Little Second Black and Little Black-Black by Wei Siyuan.

The three birds took turns monitoring the goblin camp from the surrounding woods. If the goblins showed signs of launching a large-scale sortie, the little black birds would fly back to raise the alarm.

Meng Xingchen took some grains from the pack on his back and fed them to Little Black, then looked toward the goblin camp.

The bait had already been cast. Now all they had to do was wait for the fish to bite.

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