324: Chapter 323 Visitors from Cangcheng

The third day.

The foundations for the Cultivation Zone were all complete.

On the fifty square kilometers of leveled rock ground, white markings crisscrossed, cutting the ground into neat squares. A red marker stake stood at the center of each square, with a serial number written on it.

The Engineering Mecha began installing the first batch of structural components.

The core buildings of the Cultivation Zone were the "Cultivation Grounds"—large, open-style buildings specifically designed for Spiritual Qi Cultivation.

The structure was simple: a skyfall steel alloy frame, with the top covered by high-strength transparent composite panels (allowing sunlight and Spiritual Qi to enter simultaneously), and ventilation on all four sides protected by defensive barriers.

Each Cultivation Ground covered two thousand square meters and could accommodate five hundred people Cultivating at once.

The first batch to be built consisted of one hundred units.

The Engineering Mecha installed them very quickly.

Ten mecha were responsible for hoisting the frames, another ten for securing the connectors, and the thirtieth was responsible for installing the roof panels.

With fifty units coordinating, it took only forty minutes to go from hoisting to topping out the frame of a single Cultivation Ground.

By the evening of the third day, the main structures of thirty Cultivation Grounds had already been erected.

The grayish-white skyfall steel alloy frames stood in three rows under the setting sun, ten units per row, evenly spaced.

The transparent roof panels hadn't been fully installed yet, leaving the skeletal frames exposed like a row of giant greenhouse skeletons.

—

The fifth day.

The first experimental building in the Research Zone was topped out.

This building was much more complex than the Cultivation Grounds—six stories tall, entirely made of skyfall steel, with the interior divided into dozens of laboratories, each equipped with an independent Spiritual Qi shielding layer and ventilation System.

The equipment hadn't arrived yet, but the building's shell was finished.

On the same day, the main structures of all one hundred Cultivation Grounds in the Cultivation Zone were completed, and the installation of internal facilities began—Spirit Gathering Arrays, temperature control Systems, and Spiritual Qi concentration monitoring equipment.

These Formations were modified by Tao Zhe's team based on the principles of Perfected Lord Yushou's Spirit Gathering Array.

The original version of the Spirit Gathering Array required Cultivators to carve them by hand, which was inefficient.

The modified version used skyfall steel alloy plates as the Formation base, with Spiritual Qi circuits carved by machines, and then activated by injecting crystal core energy.

Installing the Spirit Gathering Array for one Cultivation Ground took only two hours.

Once installation was complete, the Spiritual Qi concentration inside the Cultivation Ground could be increased to three times the plateau's baseline level.

This meant that Cultivating in the Cultivation Ground was more than twenty times more efficient than at the Forward Base.

Su Mingyuan came over from the Forward Base that evening to take a look.

He stood in the central corridor of the Cultivation Zone, with lit-up Cultivation Grounds on both sides.

Under the transparent roof panels, warm yellow lights illuminated the empty cultivation spaces.

The Spiritual Qi in the air was so thick he could smell it—a cool, slightly sweet scent, like a mix of mint and rock sugar.

“When can the first batch of Cultivators move in?” he asked Old Zhao, who was following beside him.

“The day after tomorrow at the earliest. The equipment in the Cultivation Grounds needs a day for debugging, followed by a comprehensive safety inspection.”

“What about the Living Zone?”

“The residential buildings are under construction. They're modularly assembled, so it's very fast. A twenty-story residential building takes only thirty-six hours from foundation to topping out. The first batch of three hundred buildings started construction today and will be ready for occupancy by the day after tomorrow.”

Three hundred twenty-story residential buildings, with four hundred apartments per building, totaling one hundred and twenty thousand units.

The first batch of over forty thousand people moving in would have plenty of room.

Su Mingyuan walked along the central corridor, checked the internal structure of the Cultivation Grounds, visited the Research Zone to see the construction progress of the experimental building, and finally stood on the Living Zone's construction site for five minutes.

The sounds of lights and machinery were everywhere.

The Engineering Corps worked in three shifts, twenty-four hours a day without stopping.

They relied on sunlight by day and searchlights by night.

The night sky over the plateau was very dark, and the beams of the searchlights hit the construction site, illuminating the orange-yellow figures of the Engineering Mecha and casting long shadows.

Su Mingyuan returned to the Forward Base.

On the way, he called Elder Qin to report on the construction progress of Dawn City.

After listening, Elder Qin said over the phone, “When can the first batch of people move in?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“Good. I will sign the transfer orders for the first batch of one hundred thousand people today.”

The sixth day.

Zhao Hu came again.

He arrived at the Forward Base in the morning, and just like last time, he brought a truckload of Cang City herbs and Pill Formulas for trade.

But this time, there was an extra person.

Zhou Yan.

The City Lord of Cangcheng.

A Fourth-Stage Grandmaster.

Since Chen Rong had led the mecha to save Cang City last time, Zhou Yan had never personally visited the Great Xia side.

Firstly, he had been injured and needed to recover; secondly, a City Lord could not easily leave their city.

But this time, he had come.

The reason was that after Zhao Hu returned, he told him one thing—Great Xia was building a city on the northern plateau.

Zhou Yan wanted to see it with his own eyes.

Zhao Hu brought him to the Forward Base, registered at the entrance, and then they directly boarded a command vehicle heading north.

The command vehicle departed from the Forward Base and followed the newly built highway toward Victory Pit. The highway was a four-lane asphalt road with streetlights on both sides and communication lines strung between them.

Zhou Yan sat in the vehicle, looking at the scenery outside the window.

He had never ridden in a car before.

Cang City's modes of transport were horses and ox carts, and the fastest way to move was through the Qinggong of Martial Artists.

The command vehicle's speed was about eighty kilometers per hour. To him, this speed was nothing—a Fourth-Stage Grandmaster running at full tilt was faster than this.

However, the fact that an iron shell could run this fast on its own, without being driven by Spiritual Qi or manpower, but only by that roaring machine inside, made him feel very strange.

“What does this thing burn?” he asked Zhao Hu.

“Oil.” Zhao Hu had already ridden in them several times and was now used to it. “A black liquid pumped from underground. It moves when burned.”

Zhou Yan didn't ask further.

He watched the rapidly receding scenery—the dark red mossy ground, low shrubs, and the continuous mountain ridges in the distance.

They drove for about an hour.

The vehicle climbed a gentle slope, and after cresting the top, Zhou Yan saw what lay ahead.

His body involuntarily leaned forward a bit.

There was something on the plateau.

From this distance, it looked like a field of grayish-white squares growing out of the ground.

There were many squares, densely arranged on the dark red mossy ground, extending all the way to the horizon.

There were lines connecting the squares—those were roads.

Gray road surfaces interspersed between the squares, forming a grid-like pattern.

There were also some taller structures standing among the clusters of squares—they looked like towers or pillars, with lights flashing at the top.

Further away, orange-yellow objects were moving.

They were huge, over ten meters tall, moving back and forth at the edge of the clusters of squares.

Engineering Mecha.

The vehicle continued to drive, and the scene became clearer and clearer.

Those 'squares' were buildings.

A massive number of neat, uniformly tall buildings, arranged in rows and columns like pieces on a chessboard.

Zhou Yan counted the frontmost row—about twenty buildings, each appearing to be ten to twenty stories high.

He had lived in Cang City for decades.

The tallest building in Cang City was the watchtower of the City Lord's Mansion, five stories and about fifteen meters high, which was already the highest point in the city.

Here, any random building was more than twice as tall as that watchtower.

And there were hundreds of them.