150: Chapter 150 Twenty-Four Cities, Battle Records Blocked

The desk was piled high with Jade Slips. The rosters of talent in Formation, agriculture, Medical Cultivator, and casting drawn from the Twelve Study Cities had been compiled, and the first batch of migrant lists was submitted to the Ancestral Court.

Wang Mu held a cinnabar brush, skipping over the columns for identity and military merit, focusing his gaze strictly on production skills, willingness to stay, and Family structure. Anyone who did not meet the criteria was crossed off without exception.

The selected one hundred thousand households received their migration orders and headed out to the twenty-four new cities, taking on the infrastructure construction of spiritual fields, workshops, academies, the Medical Cultivator Camp, and transportation Formation networks.

Seeing this, military merit families began whispering complaints privately. Relying on the fact that some members of their clans had participated in the siege against the Three Gods, they stubbornly tried to squeeze into the fertile land near the Spiritual Vein.

Several military captains holding merit records stepped into the Ancestral Court, slapped the booklets onto the long table, and stubbornly demanded to carve out ten percent of the land from the core area of the new city to distribute to the families of fallen and severely wounded soldiers.

Wang Mu pushed the application documents back to the edge of the table. "The welfare of the families will be borne by the Ancestral Court. The land near the Spiritual Vein belongs to the territory-wide production zone; whoever can make the land play its role is qualified to use it."

Several captains stood in place, refusing to leave, and rumors soon spread through the army that Wang Mu was suppressing military merit.

Hearing the news, Wang Shan grabbed his land allocation documents and strode into the military camp, slamming the documents onto the table right in front of the captains of various camps.

"I beheaded three Golden Core commanders, and you all know how much land I am entitled to based on my military merit. As for this quota now, I don't want a single mu."

He swept his gaze around the surroundings. "Whoever thinks their military merit is higher than mine can continue making a fuss at the Ancestral Court. If not, vacate the place and leave it to those who truly know how to farm and build cities."

The tent was dead silent. The few troublemaking captains sheepishly withdrew their documents, and the migrant list continued to be implemented according to the original standards.

Hearing about this, Wang Mu did not grant Wang Shan any extra merit, merely annotating the land registry with the four characters "Voluntarily Returned", cutting off any future thoughts of people using this to interfere in city administration.

The second phase of time acceleration commenced. Twenty-four new cities rose from the ground along the nine-ring Formation network, with independent water sources and backup grain depots completed one after another.

Formation Masters drove in Formation stakes to lay down transportation networks and drainage ditches. Agricultural masters turned over the soil layers to inspect them, the Medical Cultivator Camp cordoned off isolation centers, and casting craftsmen subsequently entered the city to set up workshop kilns.

The first batch of spiritual fields in the original seabed area ran into trouble. Although the surface toxins had been removed, a large amount of salt toxin was still lurking deep within the soil.

As the groundwater level rose, the salt toxins churned back to the surface. The spiritual rice seedlings, which had just grown half a foot tall, turned yellow in large patches, and yields plummeted for three consecutive seasons.

The new city's chief administrator reported to the Ancestral Court, requesting the deployment of a purification Formation. The Spirit Planting Department immediately ordered a halt to expanded planting and cordoned off the tens of thousands of mu of land that had already been reclaimed.

Agricultural masters divided the soil layers into six sections, first digging drainage ditches to lower the water level, and then channeling purification Formations to repeatedly flush the deep soil.

The washed-out salt toxins were all channeled into a closed mining layer. Three Formation gates were consecutively added at the entrance of the mining layer to cut off toxic water from flowing back into the river channels.

The first round of soil nourishing dragged on for five years, and only salt-tolerant plants could be grown in the ground. As soon as their root systems matured, they were cut down and burned on the spot, with the ashes loaded onto carts and hauled off to the poison-sealing zone.

The second round replaced them with a crop rotation of spirit beans and soil-nourishing vines. Agricultural masters checked the groundwater year after year until the salt toxins dropped to the standard line, only then opening up a small-scale trial planting of spiritual rice.

Dragging on for fifteen years in total, the tens of thousands of mu of land on the original seabed finally stabilized, and the yield of spiritual rice climbed back to normal levels.

Someone suggested that Wang Pingan smash source power to forcibly repair it; given the current area, it would only take a few years to make the new cities' granaries burst at the seams.

Wang Pingan suppressed this proposal. Source power could fix things for a moment, but it could not wash away the root of the salt toxins in the groundwater circulation, and the hidden danger would sooner or later resurface.

He ordered grain to be transferred from the old land to supply the twenty-four new cities, strictly stipulating that each city must have a three-year supply of rations prepared. Anyone who dared to misappropriate the reserve grain to expand the city walls would be severely punished without leniency.

The short-term output of the new soil slowed down accordingly, and the pace of migrant relocation also slowed down by a few years, but the carrying capacity of the spiritual fields was solidly built up step by step along with the soil recovery.

The original seabed was ultimately designated as a stable spiritual field zone and water area. The Formation Hall integrated the intercepted water-system Law into the purification Formation, expanding the irrigation water network outwards by hundreds of miles.

The reclamation of the northern gravity mining area also hit a major snag. Some mine tunnels could collapse several times a day, and ordinary craftsmen could not even drive a single Formation stake deep into them.

Having completed his ten-year recuperation period, Wang Shan handed back a thick battlefield review booklet. Wang Mu checked it page by page, and upon confirming there were no omissions, returned the tally of the Main Battle Army commander to him.

Wang Shan did not lead the Main Battle Army to crash blindly into the mine tunnels. Instead, he selected engineering soldiers proficient in Formation from the camp and plunged into the gravity zone in groups of ten.

The ten-person small Formation spread the heavy pressure borne by a single person across the entire team. Equipped with mobile supports forged by the Casting Workshop, they chiseled forward inch by inch against the rock strata.

Whenever the mining layer shifted, the engineering soldiers immediately retreated behind the supports, cut off the gravity diversion Formation, and resumed excavation only after the rock strata stabilized.

The first deep-sea Ore marrow channel was stubbornly chiseled for seven years before it was finally unblocked. The mining area never experienced large-scale collapses again, and ordinary craftsmen could enter the cave to work along the safety line.

Leveraging the gravity Law, the Casting Workshop built new forging platforms. Ores, spiritual Materials, and bone armor were sent into the Formation to be repeatedly crushed by gravity.

The Materials for the xueming mysterious armor, which normally took months to press and bond together, had their construction period slashed by nearly half, and the loss of spiritual Materials from scrapping and remelting defective armor also plummeted.

The Medical Cultivator Camp disassembled hundreds of variations from the toxin Law, and the Alchemy Pavilion filled prescriptions accordingly, modifying a new version of the antidote pill while conveniently adding a set of anti-toxin drills for the legions.

The Formation Hall kneaded the water-system Law into purification Formations, diversion Formations, and city-protecting water curtains, completing the civilian water networks of the twenty-four new cities.

The three foreign races' powers were no longer dead objects occupying space; they were completely dismantled into the Immortal Martial myriad arts, transforming into a long-term operational production Foundation.

Seven days passed in the outside world. Wang Pingan stayed inside his mansion behind closed doors, and his shadow could not be seen even in the Task Hall.

Storms and changes churned on Xinghe University's freshman rankings. Aristocratic Family teams banded together to farm points, and Wang Pingan's name slowly dropped from ninth place.

Some people spoke with absolute certainty, concluding that his consecutive slayings of three gods must have inflicted severe injuries upon him, and that the Foundation of his divine kingdom was also damaged when annexing the Three Realms, which was why he was hiding and dared not show his face.

Outside the mansion, the previously withdrawn spies poked their heads out again. They hid in distant neighborhoods, taking turns keeping watch, wanting to probe out some truth or falsehood from the movement of supplies and Formation fluctuations.

Wang Zhenyuan locked down all reception passages, archiving all incoming visiting cards. Not even a fly could fly into the closed-door cultivation secret chamber.

Every day, he copied the changes in the rankings onto a single-page briefing and slipped it into the secret chamber, neither urging nor asking, nor interfering with the grand blueprint for the internal transformation of the divine kingdom.