NEC Chapter 131: Road Construction, Ore Processing, and Special Reduction Methods

While Little Kaga led his team in mining operations, Lynn, the city defense commander, personally led the laborers in road construction.

Lynn was a veteran soldier who had wandered between the southern nations in his early years, running errands and delivering messages, exploring and guarding, hunting monsters and seeking treasure, participating in factional wars, and even engaging in border smuggling and black market assassinations. He was the type who went wherever there was money to be made.

Until he became a prisoner of the Emerald Duchy at Iron Ridge Pass.

Based on past experience, he would probably be beaten up and then dragged to a prisoner-of-war camp to do labor.

Eventually, some mercenary company would take a liking to him, pay a sum of money to ransom him out, and then he would work hard for the mercenary company, slowly earning back the money for his own redemption.

This was a pure veteran opportunist.

This was also the main reason why the old clerk from Cloudmist Domain had picked him out from the prisoner-of-war camp back then.

Flexible, sensible, and familiar with the rules.

At first, Lynn didn't realize this journey was any different from the past. At most, he felt his lord had some background. However, as he experienced more and more events, Lynn quickly realized this was quite a thick thigh to hold onto.

However, Lynn's previous performance had been too slippery, causing him to lose too many impression points with the lord. Not only could he not compare to that simple-minded old bull, he couldn't even match up to the centaurs who joined later.

Nominally, he was an important military leader of the territory, but in reality, he was just a glorified patrol soldier. Later, he watched as even the little ones from the Youth Corps were about to climb above him.

Then, Lynn finally welcomed the turning point of his fate.

The lord wanted to send a gift to the young noble of Cloudmist Domain, and after picking and choosing, selected Lynn.

As for why it was him, Lynn knew it in his heart. First, he understood some of the open rules, hidden rules, and unspoken rules among nobles, especially in flattery and fawning. He was more willing to humble himself than others.

The lord didn't like it, but the lord felt that certain nobles ate this up.

The girl's classmates and teachers were all important figures, so Lynn, who could bow and scrape, was very suitable.

The other reason was quite cruel.

Lynn's position in the territory wasn't that important. With or without him, there wasn't much difference now.

This point was understood not only by Lynn but also by several subordinates who followed him.

Just after leaving the sentry reconnaissance range of Vast Sea City, a subordinate who was also a veteran opportunist made a suggestion.

"Captain, those gold coins in the cart are enough for us to live ten lifetimes!"

"Kill those caravan drivers, divide up the gold coins and run away. We brothers will have enough for this lifetime. Why work or risk our lives anymore?"

Before the words had finished, cold light flashed! Lynn didn't hesitate for even a second. His waist sword came out of its sheath and precisely sliced across that subordinate's neck.

He ordered the convoy to stop, sent someone to report back to the lord, and requested the lord to send additional personnel for escort and supervision.

It wasn't that Lynn didn't love money. Who wouldn't want those shiny gold coins? But Lynn understood too well that money wasn't always better in larger amounts. Most of the time, money that didn't come through proper channels often brought disaster upon oneself.

Those big shots who used to smuggle along the Gloomy Forest perimeter, none of them came to a good end in the end. Was it because they had no money?

Now you want me to steal money from a pioneering lord, abandon the identity of patrol captain that others would die for, get a sum of money, and from then on become an enemy of the human race, hiding here and there, not daring to show my face.

What use would that money be to me? Would I dare to spend it?

Of course, Lynn also had a vague feeling in his heart.

Although his lord sometimes seemed somewhat naive and kind, he always grasped the key points extremely well in major matters.

Facing any sudden situations, he always had contingency plans one, two, three, and four. Lynn felt that regarding the possibility of his group making mistakes, the lord shouldn't be without a contingency plan.

Lynn didn't dare to gamble, nor did he want to gamble.

Through this incident, Lynn cleared his impression of "unstable will" and "questionable loyalty" with the lord, earning the lord's evaluation, "Lynn is still a good comrade!"

What "comrade" meant, Lynn didn't understand at the time, but Lynn knew this title was only used by the lord for people he trusted very much. Even Herlan, the chief of civil officials, didn't qualify.

Then came the gift-giving incident at the Royal Central Spiritual Energy Academy.

The old mercenary was extremely skilled at reading faces and situations. When he saw Frost, just by glancing at the eyes and reactions of the people around, the old mercenary immediately knew that the young girl was probably receiving cold treatment or even ostracism.

Originally, following the lord's instructions, to avoid appearing too arrogant and showy, the gifts brought were to be quietly delivered to the academy after inspection, since there were plenty of royal relatives and nobles inside. Being too high-profile and flashy could easily cause resentment.

But after sensing the atmosphere at the scene, Lynn decisively changed his mind.

I don't care who you are. The young girl that the lord cares so much about can't be wronged here!

This move earned the lord's great appreciation afterward.

It could be said that in the entire Starry Continent, except for Chen Mo himself, no one knew Frost's weight in Chen Mo's heart. Even the boldest guesses would at most consider it as the admiration between young men and women.

In reality, the gift Chen Mo sent to Frost carried the gratitude of the entire nation of East Xia to the young girl. The respect of East Xia people for those who had served the nation was something others found very difficult to understand.

Facts proved that Chen Mo would also employ people based on his likes and dislikes. After returning to Vast Sea Territory, Lynn leaped back to the center of the territory's power.

Even Herlan, the Chief Administrator, who used to summon and dismiss him at will, now politely addressed him as "General Lynn" when they met.

The more this was the case, the more cautious Lynn became.

Having followed the lord for so long, Lynn had basically figured out this lord's temperament. The lord also liked to hear good words, but the prerequisite was that you could work and solve problems for the lord.

So, even though he had never done the "lowly" work of road construction in the first half of his life, even though Lynn now had strong soldiers and horses under his command with plenty of manpower and didn't need to do it himself, Lynn still took the lead with a shovel, sweating profusely as he fought on the front line of the construction site.

The gaps between people often open up this way.

Road construction in the desert was a major undertaking, not only because of the harsh weather and complex environment, but also because in the past thousands of years, everyone had used pack animals to come and go. No one had ever been crazy enough to build roads in the desert.

Simply put, no one knew how to build them.

At the territory's council meeting, the sand people elder had raised this question. The lord's answer was simple: I need to guarantee transport capacity.

Without roads, only pack animals could be used. With roads, wheeled vehicles pulled by pack animals could run on the roads.

Not only was there a huge difference in load capacity between the two, but the speed also differed by a large margin.

As for road construction technology, no problem. The lord was omniscient and omnipotent!

The surveyors and technicians sent to follow the team were all "personally" taught by the lord. They followed the operation manual issued by the lord step by step, executing the process methodically.

First, they had to select a route in the desert.

This route couldn't frequently rise and fall between sand dunes and had to maintain overall stability as much as possible.

They couldn't take shortcuts through valleys between two sand dunes, otherwise, one strong wind and the sand rolling down from the dunes could bury the road foundation.

They had to avoid wind gaps and choose areas where the sand layer was relatively stable.

They also had to be careful to avoid quicksand, sinkholes, riverbeds, and other unstable elements.

After determining the route, came the more complex road construction process.

Like the construction at the mining area, road construction required sand fixation first.

Workers would first push away the loose sand layers on both sides of the road. Lynn personally took the lead, and a group of high-level warriors used plowing rakes to penetrate the soil layer, plowing one-meter by one-meter groove grids on the sand surface, and filling the grids with tough shuttle grass or sand wormwood.

They took soil from both sides, setting the soil pits outside the sand-fixed grid areas, forming simple sand-blocking ditches to prevent loose sand from quickly burying the grass grid areas.

The extracted soil was spread in the central road area, using the dry pressing method. Ogres were responsible for casting spells, warriors for swinging hammers, and workers pushing giant stone rollers back and forth several times to ensure the road surface was compacted layer by layer.

Finally, according to the lord's requirements, stone markers had to be carved beside the road to let passing personnel know the direction, location, and distance to the Vast Sea Industrial Zone.

In the first phase, Lynn's city defense construction brigade only had time to lay a three-meter-wide road. If pack animal caravans came from both sides, they couldn't even pass each other.

In such situations, one pack animal convoy had to go up to the roadside and wait.

At the same time, this newly constructed road strictly prohibited sand beetles from using it.

Those things, in order to move quickly on sand, had biological hooks on their legs. If they walked on the road once, it would almost be equivalent to loosening the compacted ground once.

It had to be said that the lord's plan was arranged seamlessly. Right on the day when the mining area produced ore, Lynn's side also finished the last section of road. The creaking and groaning pack animal convoy traveled along the desert highway that stretched as far as the eye could see into the ore processing plant located in the Industrial Concentration Zone.

The ore processing plant began construction in late July. Because he did understand some knowledge related to ore smelting, Copperbeard was promoted to team leader of the technical group and transferred from the mine to the Industrial Concentration Zone.

Currently, Vast Sea Territory didn't have the conditions to use chemical agents and other chemical methods to process ore selection, so the first step in ore processing was pure brute force.

Smash first!

The brown iron ore brought in was directly dumped in the stockyard, and then subjected to violent hammering and beating, breaking the ore as finely as possible.

Then, the idle magnetic vehicles came in handy.

Right next to the processing plant were densely packed photovoltaic power generation panels. Electricity was temporarily not lacking. Through the connection and disconnection of powerful electromagnets, the separation of iron ore bodies and crushed soil could be quickly accomplished in general.

Next, according to the operation manual, came the second critically important step: removing impurities.

If using Starry Continent's local technology, this would require large furnaces, with coal raising the temperature very high, directly melting the ore into liquid iron water, thus achieving the effect of removing impurities and reducing slag.

This was the physical method.

If using Blue Star's technology, any reduction furnace would work, whether shaft furnace hydrogen-based reduction or fluidized bed hydrogen-based reduction, directly obtaining pure iron ore powder.

Previously, Chen Mo had been accumulating photovoltaic solar power generation panels to store electrical energy, while the seawater purification plant had also installed electrolytic tanks, preparing for seawater hydrogen production and then using hydrogen energy for iron ore reduction.

This was the chemical method.

But now, none of this was needed.

The lord had new methods: spiritual energy methods.

Why did the lord, after returning, start forcibly launching the steel industry without a stable coal supply and before being able to accumulate a complete set of East Xia reduction equipment?

Because the lord had an excellent worker.

The earthbound undead named Aurelio.

During the final negotiations at Blood Fortress, whether it was because the hundreds of orc corpses provided this warrior, who shared an irreconcilable hatred with orcs, with sufficient emotional value, or because the lord's sincerity plus force truly moved the undead heart, in any case, Aurelio finally accepted Chen Mo's soul contract chain.

After communication, Chen Mo also learned the story of this former Razor Fortress leader.

Aurelio's strength when alive was indeed at the level of a Void Breaking Sword Saint. In the three great nations, he might have become a city lord, and in a small country like the Emerald Duchy, he could have become a royal grand offering-level existence.

But Aurelio refused all recruitment and stubbornly remained nailed to the northern front.

Because he himself was a remnant of the northern lands.

At its peak, the northern White Deer Plains was home to a powerful White Deer Kingdom, ruling over more than seven million human race members. They farmed and cultivated, herded and raised livestock, reproduced and thrived, and of course, also trained in martial arts and conquered in all directions.

The turning point in history began with a cruel internal human struggle.

A White Deer noble faction that had failed in both political and military struggles and fled in defeat surrendered to the northern orcs.

They not only provided the orcs with topographical maps and defensive arrangements of the White Deer Kingdom but also taught the orcs how to build heavy catapults hand by hand.

This type of large engineering equipment that could destroy city walls directly brought the orcs' field combat capabilities into full play. From then on, the era when the human race relied on fortified cities and heavy fortifications to wantonly mock those "short-legged little greenskins" was gone forever!

Just two years later, the combined army of twenty-two orc tribes moved south, with more than three hundred heavy catapults leading the way. They broke through passes and cut down generals all the way, unstoppable, smashing the northern defense line of the human race into mush.

As frontier fortified towns were destroyed one by one, although the northern human race was still struggling desperately, the established defense system no longer existed.

The orc army could kill into the White Deer heartland at any time and place, plundering civilians, robbing wealth, swarming any small human units they encountered, and flanking and bypassing any regular human legions they met.

In just a few short years, millions of lives in the kingdom were lost!

Except for those who were slaughtered and those who fled inland, most others were captured by orcs and became slaves.

The powerful orc Bonebreaker tribe and Bloodhowl tribe, at one time, had every orc civilian in neighboring tribes owning at least one human slave, and some leaders even possessed tens of thousands of slaves.

The human race became "two-legged sheep" trampled upon at will by the orcs, just like livestock.

When the war first began, the inland nations continued to send mercenaries and support materials to the northern lands, and even personally dispatched troops to participate in combat.

But enthusiasm for resistance would eventually dissipate due to the gap with reality.

When they discovered that the northern lands had become a bottomless pit with only investment and no profit, the inland human nations all quietly withdrew their attention.

The monarch of the White Deer Kingdom, after repeated consideration, also chose to abandon the country, taking vast wealth and the last elite force south.

The monarch's carriage disappeared into the dust on the southern horizon, also completely crushing the last trace of hope for the human race on the White Deer Plains. The last breath of the entire northern plains human race was cut off!

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