85: Perspective of the Earth

Open the second treasure chest.

[Skill Upgrade Scroll]: Directly upgrades one of the Hero's normal skills by one level.

Good stuff!

Perhaps his luck was too high, or perhaps the Barbarian King's gift was very thoughtful; every treasure chest was truly a good item, and they were all treasures he needed most.

Han Huohuo didn't hesitate to directly upgrade his Intermediate Earth Magic to Advanced Earth Magic.

For no other reason than Earth Perspective, he had to upgrade this skill.

He had been suffering from the lack of black oil resources for too long, which had become the current development bottleneck; the upgrade of the Mecha Workshop was completely stuck on black oil.

Seeing the possibility of solving the black oil problem, a flame seemed to ignite in Han Huohuo's heart.

No hurry to find the black oil mine.

There are three more treasure chests; open them all.

[city building order]: Allows the Lord to build a sub-city!

[Treasure Map]: This is a map of buried treasure, but it's not very clear and requires the Hero to search carefully for himself.

[Cotton Seeds]: Using this seed can grow the exotic crop, cotton.

All the chests have been opened.

Han Huohuo was extremely shocked; each one was more impressive than the last. What kind of top-tier treasures were these?

Recognizing the Barbarian King as Da Ge was too worthwhile. He was truly loyal and gave him nothing but good things.

Opening the Treasure Map revealed a blurry map on a very old parchment. Han Huohuo studied it for a long time but couldn't figure out where it was, but he could see the desert terrain on the map, which made him think this map was definitely not in the Ten Thousand Mountains and was likely in the Barbarians' territory.

If he has time in the future, he'll go to the Barbarians' place to look for it.

He also didn't know what the treasure inside the Treasure Map was.

Silently memorizing the map, Han Huohuo put away the Treasure Map.

He went out and found Mu Jiu, handing her the cotton seeds. Mu Jiu was greatly surprised; currently, the most expensive expenditure in Tongtian City was buying cloth and cotton.

If they could grow cotton, they could save a large amount of gold coins.

However, all the land was already planted with wheat, and they would have to wait until harvest time to switch to cotton.

This world is quite peculiar; crops planted can be harvested in seven days, but the land after harvest cannot be immediately replanted. It needs a recovery period. Overall, from spring to autumn, five seasons can be planted!

As long as there is enough land, the grain yield is quite good, but the farmers are overly hardworking.

Tongtian City doesn't care; they have mechanical farmers.

This is also what Han Huohuo understood the least: with such excellent land and climate conditions, how could so many people starve to death in this world?

Eight out of ten times, it's man-made disaster!

Han Huohuo also handed the city building order to Mu Jiu.

"What is this?"

"We can build a new city. You can choose a location, primarily focused on resource collection."

"Still in the Ten Thousand Mountains?"

"Of course. Our strength is still very weak. Hiding in the Ten Thousand Mountains is safer. When we have enough strength, we will expand outwards."

"Mm, okay!"

Thump!

Howl!

Han Huohuo turned around and saw Northern Darkness fall from the roof, covered in mud, and whimpering.

Northern Darkness was unconvinced, bounced and jumped back onto the roof, spread its wings as if to fly, and then, thump, fell down again.

It refused to continue, pacing around angrily and cawing incessantly.

Mu Jiu was speechless.

She walked over, grabbed Northern Darkness by the neck, and scolded, "You need to lose weight! You eat so much every day, like a little pig. How can you fly? Your future is in the sky; don't just know how to eat and drink all day."

These words almost made Northern Darkness cry.

Being disliked by his mother, he felt so wronged.

While Mu Jiu was educating Northern Darkness, Han Huohuo took the opportunity to try using Earth Perspective.

His eyes lit up, and a phantom light shot out from Han Huohuo's eyes, making the land and rivers suddenly transparent.

His vision extended extremely far; all living creatures in the world disappeared, water disappeared, man-made structures disappeared, all man-made items were invisible, leaving only the vast, translucent earth.

He could see very far, but he had to adjust the focus; when gazing into the distance, he couldn't see nearby.

Han Huohuo sighed.

The Ten Thousand Mountains are too vast. If he were to search little by little, he didn't know how long it would take.

Alright, let's first look around his own home.

Han Huohuo first looked at the black oil mine near his home, seeing a vast underground black oil layer, and roughly understood what a black oil mine looked like underground.

He first scanned the nearby mountain ranges and underground areas, but there was no second black oil mine at all. When he looked to the left, a golden light suddenly flashed, extremely dazzling.

Huh?

That looks like a gold mine?

He didn't find a black oil mine, but Han Huohuo discovered a hidden underground gold mine at his doorstep!

Han Huohuo wondered, is black oil really that scarce?

But thinking about it, it was normal. He had sent out so many exploration vehicles, exploring almost the entire surrounding area, but hadn't found a single oil well. One exploration vehicle even ran into the river but was crushed by a giant python.

That Tongtian River had almost become the territory of the giant pythons; no boats or people were allowed to enter, they were very overbearing.

Wait!

Why did the exploration vehicle go into the river?

Han Huohuo was startled, and suddenly thought of a possibility.

He used Earth Perspective again. This time, Han Huohuo looked into the river. The river water suddenly disappeared from his sight; both the giant pythons and fish disappeared together.

He first saw a rocky cave at the bottom of the river, winding and twisting, like the giant python's lair. Then he continued to look down, penetrating through dozens of meters of rock layers, until he reached a very deep underground area, and was suddenly stunned.

The bottom of the Tongtian River is full of black oil mines!

There is a thick black oil riverbed, right beneath the Tongtian River, separated by a thick layer of rock.

Below is a hidden black river, and on the surface is a turbulent white river, winding and intertwined, like a masterpiece of nature, flowing in parallel on two levels.

Seeing this, Han Huohuo suddenly realized.

No wonder the Tongtian River never freezes, even in winter. It turns out that flowing black oil is beneath the Tongtian River. This black oil flows from the volcano, bringing warmth, and constantly heating the Tongtian River.

And the black oil mine at his home was actually just a little leakage from the underground layer beneath this Tongtian River, just a tiny bit that seeped through.

He carefully searched along the Tongtian River.

There are a lot of giant python lairs inside; at intervals, there are some similar underground rocky caves. In the Tongtian River of the Ten Thousand Mountains, it is estimated that there are tens of thousands of huge snakes?

No wonder the Barbarian King and the Great Qian Dynasty had no solution; these giant pythons were not only powerful but also too numerous.

Wait for the Earth Perspective magic to disappear.

Han Huohuo hesitated.

It turned out that the black oil mines he had been dreaming of were all in the river, but those overbearing giant pythons wouldn't let anyone go into the water. What should he do?

He wondered if these giant pythons were easy to communicate with.

If not, he could only forcefully expel the giant pythons at his doorstep.

Expelling the giant pythons would be a win-win situation.

First, he could extract oil, and second, there was also a plain on the other side of the river where he could plant crops and cotton!

The more he thought about it, the more tempted he became!

Of course, Han Huohuo didn't want to go to war with all the giant pythons; he just needed to drive away the thirteen giant pythons in the river channel next to Tongtian City.

Extracting black oil starting from near his home would be more controllable and safer.

After Mu Jiu finished scolding Northern Darkness, she came to find Han Huohuo and asked about the new city again.

"Huohuo, then I'll go look for the location of the new city in a while. Do you have any ideas?"

"Mm, this is what I'm thinking: First, there should be more mines around. Second, there should be more plains; farmland is also very important. Third, it's best to be not far from the Tongtian River so that we can use the water from the Tongtian River and also collect black oil from the Tongtian River."

"Mm, I understand." Mu Jiu was about to leave when she suddenly felt something was wrong with Han Huohuo's words. "You just said... black oil from the Tongtian River?"

Han Huohuo smiled and told Mu Jiu the result of Earth Perspective: "The black oil we've been thinking about is actually under the river water!"

"It's everywhere!"

"Ah?"

"No wonder we haven't found a black oil mine; it turns out they're all underwater!"

The mining vehicle could go underwater, but the giant pythons in the water wouldn't allow it. Han Huohuo now recalled that the exploration vehicle probably had already detected black oil mines in the water, which is why it went underwater, preparing to build a mine shaft, but was destroyed by the giant pythons.