NEC Chapter 110: Witnessed by Thousands, Divine Engineering Project

On the morning after the envoys from Mistmoon Divine Court arrived at Vast Sea Territory, several highly decomposed human remains that had been mixed among the bandit gang remnants were solemnly handed over to the silver-armored temple knights under High Priest Farrell's command.

Well, only the bodies, not the heads.

The skulls were still mortared into the "Goblin Observatory"!

After enduring the baptism of wind and sand and the scorching sun, all the parts that could rot had long since decomposed. The guards responsible for arranging the heads at the time hadn't attached name tags or photos, so the current task of reuniting heads with bodies presented considerable difficulty.

Although if they dismantled the watchtower and carefully sorted through it, they could certainly distinguish human skulls from goblin ones, neither Vast Sea Territory nor Mistmoon Divine Court felt there was any real necessity for this.

This process was merely a tacit understanding between both parties to go through the motions and provide a decent excuse for everyone involved.

They couldn't really investigate, after all. What if they discovered something inconvenient?

Next came the question of whether to permit Mistmoon Divine Court's high priest to demonstrate divine miracles, and how such a demonstration should be conducted.

Chen Mo was quite eager about this. If they could record it, this would be fresh, firsthand material.

As for whether his subjects would become devoted followers of Mistmoon Divine Court as a result, Chen Mo wasn't worried at all.

Currently, Vast Sea Territory's labor division existed in an extremely distorted state. To put it in relatively standard terms, there was a severe disconnection between productivity and production structure.

The core value of each production link was completely controlled by the lord himself, while the vast majority of citizens created virtually negligible production value.

Take agriculture as an example. Everything from laboratory-grade saltwater rice seeds to nitrogen humic acid compound fertilizers and microbial fertilizers, to lightweight film greenhouses and their matching temperature and humidity control systems, were all provided solely by the lord.

Meanwhile, the extensive local farming workforce's contribution to all other supporting work, when viewed purely in terms of value, was utterly incomparable to the lord's contribution.

Extending this principle, every field in Vast Sea Territory fully embodied this characteristic. The lord single-handedly managed the core content of production, while thousands of laborers combined couldn't match even a fraction of the lord's value.

Even more critically, these production achievements still couldn't cover Vast Sea Territory's consumption. The territory currently had no products that could be traded externally, and the lord had to continuously invest large amounts of money into the territory.

Purely a case of one person supporting an entire nation!

According to calculations by East Xia's Planning Department, for at least the next year, Vast Sea Territory's economy would not return to positive territory.

The citizens' lives and property all depended entirely on the lord alone. Combined with East Xia's propaganda system specifically tailored for Vast Sea Territory, under these circumstances, if the divine court could influence territorial stability just by making a brief appearance, Chen Mo felt he might as well surrender directly and join their camp to save trouble.

High Priest Farrell soon received an official response from Vast Sea Territory's Council.

They agreed to the demonstration, but regarding how the divine court planned to display miracles, they must fully explain to Vast Sea Territory the specific details of time, location, format, scale, expected effects, and so forth, to avoid causing unnecessary trouble for Vast Sea Territory's current construction work.

Regarding this point, Divine Official Farrell had no objections.

After all, they were in the midst of vigorous construction. If you suddenly created earth-shaking movements, violent storms, or tornadoes, that certainly couldn't be permitted.

What followed was back-and-forth discussions and close communication between both teams.

Initially, High Priest Farrell only planned to perform the most basic miracle, namely "God said, let there be light!"

The Council flatly rejected this.

We have plenty of light here, enough for all-night illumination without problems. Even if the light you provide has greater range and brightness, it's nothing more than an illumination spell stronger than what a high-level mage could cast. Completely unoriginal!

Of course, the Council was responsible for taking the heat up front, but everyone knew the real decision-maker was that young lord.

Lord Chen Mo's exact words were, "What value does this have for the territory? If there's no value, why should we let him show off?"

Thus, it became: God says let there be light, the lord says no need!

Although the Seven-Eyed God had eyes all over, seeing past and future, heaven and earth, when faced with this situation, He seemed to have no solution either.

This was the real state of Starry Continent. If gods were truly that useful, the world would have been unified long ago. What business would other nations have?

Herlan, who was familiar with history, had specifically explained to the lord that regardless of which legendary deity, whether they had performed miracles or not, none could directly interfere in Starry Continent's conflicts. This world still belonged to nobles and professionals.

After deep consideration, the divine court entourage proposed a second plan.

"Vast Sea City has planned city walls that haven't been built yet, hasn't it? High Priest Farrell would like to request divine grace to erect a section of city wall for Vast Sea Territory. How would the Council evaluate this?"

This point made the various councilors quite tempted.

More importantly, this demonstrated true "creation from void," something mages couldn't accomplish.

The essence of magic was spiritual energy guidance. No matter how strong the spiritual energy tide you triggered, you needed to draw elements from the existing environment.

The seven elemental pools: fire, earth, wind, water, light, darkness, and space-time. When casting, there had to be elements in the pool to support you.

Most physical objects couldn't be conjured from thin air from the elemental pools.

Returning to the matter of building city walls, if Master Downs did it, at most he could make a section of earth rise or a piece of ground collapse, but from the perspective of elemental transformation, the rising earth layer would necessarily extract soil from nearby, and the collapsing ground would definitely scatter excess sand and stones around.

They couldn't make matter appear from nothing, nor could they make materials vanish into nothing. From this perspective, mages were actually quite scientific.

But the divine power of gods lay in their ability to truly create from void!

Building a section of city wall on site without blue bricks or stone blocks, in Farrell's view, was sufficient to prove the supreme might of divine power.

Just as communication teams from both sides were negotiating the height, thickness, and length of the city wall, word came from the city lord's side.

No city walls.

"The city lord said walls block the view and affect mood, which is why they've been left unbuilt all this time. Moreover, you can only build one section, not the whole thing. The city lord thinks if people see it, they'll assume we can't afford to build properly. Not good!"

Farrell felt somewhat frustrated.

"This won't work, that's not good either. What exactly do you want to do?"

Chen Mo had been waiting for exactly this question.

That afternoon, an engineering squad from the Youth Corps, carrying thick stacks of blueprints, came to Farrell's residence accompanied by Herlan.

"Lord's meaning is, since High Priest Farrell wants to demonstrate divine miracles, it should be done comprehensively. We have a small project here that just involves digging some ditches in the ground. It's certainly simpler than city walls, but happens to include quite a lot of content!"

Farrell couldn't read blueprints, no problem. They also brought a scale model.

This project was truly what Vast Sea Territory needed most urgently, as it related to the core requirement of territorial development: food production.

Film greenhouses could only solve part of the food supply. External procurement was also extremely susceptible to fluctuations in the external environment. If war or disaster struck, they certainly couldn't transport grain from East Xia to feed the territory's people.

That would be far too wasteful of the Sacrificial Altar's transport capacity.

Ultimately, they still needed large-scale farmland cultivation.

Saltwater rice planted in open-air, non-greenhouse environments could only achieve two harvests per year, with yields around 600 kilograms per acre.

Using the roughest calculation, with food consumption plus feed plus seed reserves, one acre per year could only support six adults. If engaged in heavy physical labor long-term, this would further drop to only 4.8 people.

Vast Sea Territory now had over 3,000 workers plus family members, adults and children. Calculating at six people per acre, they needed at least 500 acres of farmland.

Adding factors like continuously purchased slaves, future long-term development plans, and the need to stockpile grain for special situations, Vast Sea Territory's Agricultural Zone Phase One planned over 2,000 acres of saltwater rice fields.

But since saltwater rice was still rice, it required a lot of water. If they relied entirely on manual water carrying, they basically couldn't do anything else.

The best method was still to build canals, directly channeling water from the saltwater lake to the farming areas.

However, until now, the blueprints combining topographical surveys had been gathering dust. This project hadn't started at all because it was too laborious!

Not to mention the enormous surveying and excavation workload, just the question of how to prevent water in the canals from seeping into the sand layers and being lost during flow in the desert environment was enough to make the engineering team's scalps tingle.

After all, they didn't have conditions for tiling the riverbed.

This back-and-forth had caused delays.

Now, this project was placed before Farrell.

"Three main channels: one vertical, two horizontal. Note that the channel bottom gradient should gradually decrease, allowing water to flow smoothly downstream."

"Along the main channels are twelve branch channels, forming a complete water delivery network, ultimately achieving channel-to-water coverage throughout the entire irrigation area."

"That's the general situation. We also brought blueprints for Agricultural Zone Phase Two and Phase Three planning..."

Farrell was both exasperated and amused, and of course, curious.

With his perspective, he couldn't judge the actual value of this project's planning, but this rigorous and orderly style did give the high priest a different feeling.

After careful study, His Excellency the High Priest stated: I can only complete the main channel work. As for those branch channels, I'm afraid I'm powerless!

Lord Chen Mo was overjoyed.

Having the main channels was enough. People shouldn't be too greedy!

What followed was a series of intensive preliminary preparations.

Farrell couldn't read blueprints, and the Seven-Eyed God probably couldn't either, since He likely hadn't studied engineering drafting and couldn't understand orthographic projections.

Even if He could understand them, He might not be able to construct according to plans. So Chen Mo arranged preliminary positioning work.

The centaur engineering team dug out a standard trapezoidal cross-section for the water channel at regular intervals, used to lock in the channel length, depth, and slope angle at each position.

In the future, the honorable high priest would only need to follow the guide lines, connecting each pair of cross-sections in straight lines to create channels meeting standard dimensions.

There were also corner positions. For every L-shaped turn and T-shaped junction, the centaur squad completed precise excavation and positioning in advance, striving for one-time completion without rework.

The day to demonstrate divine miracles finally arrived.

To give High Priest Farrell proper face and to maximize the "educational" effect, Chen Mo waved his hand magnanimously and gave all citizens a day off.

Thousands of Vast Sea Territory's workers and family members were organized and gathered densely on sand dunes on both sides of the planned canal area. Complaints rose and fell:

"Tsk, this divine court really knows how to pick timing! Resting this day, I'm losing twenty work points!" A bronze-skinned burly man squatted on the ground, rubbing sand between his rough fingers, muttering with heartache.

"Exactly! My boy in the youth corps calculated it clearly for me. Work two more months and my family can become 'provisional citizens'! Isn't this just delaying things?"

"And meals too!" Another lean man counted on his fingers. "Working means full meals, resting means deducting work points to buy food! We're losing big inside and out!"

"Stop complaining, everyone!"

A patrolling foreman walked over, "Lord said, as long as this 'god' does the job well today, however many fingers he holds up, he'll add that many tens of work points for everyone! Hope for the best!"

Of course, High Priest Todd Farrell couldn't hear this at the moment. The lord was so cooperative, calling almost everyone in the territory to appreciate his performance, which made him feel tremendously excited.

Although requesting divine grace this time would cost him dearly, as long as this lord and his territory became believers under the divine court's banner, the rewards he could obtain would be incredibly rich.

Taking a deep breath of air carrying the scent of sand and dust, gently smoothing his spotless robes, High Priest Farrell gripped his oak staff inlaid with a huge moonstone, gently nudged his legs, and his unicorn began slowly moving forward.

The centaur engineering team led the way ahead. Farrell raised his staff, and an incomparably pure and dazzling light, like a living creature, suddenly burst forth from the moonstone at the staff's tip!

The light danced and leaped nimbly in the air, tracing winding trajectories, finally plunging like a homing bird into the distant vast saltwater lake!

Several seconds later, under the gaze of thousands of eyes, on the lakeshore near the channel starting point, a sluice gate that Vast Sea Territory had built in advance quietly rose!

Clear, slightly saline lake water flowed gurgling down through the gate opening.

Simultaneously, that ray of light twisted and meandered on the ground like an invisible giant brush, beginning to write miracles on the sandy earth!

The centaur squad's close-range recording equipment, drones in mid-air, and the lord's long-range camera systems captured this miraculous scene from every angle and perspective.

Where light flowed across the ground, soil layers began to churn.

A standard trapezoidal cross-section, as if grown from the earth itself, began rapidly extending forward inch by inch, meter by meter, section by section from the initial cross-sectional pit!

The churning sand and soil didn't accumulate on both sides, but under some incredible force, directly vanished into the void, as if devoured by an invisible giant maw!

The most amazing miracle came next.

On the bottom and sloped sides of each newly formed, mirror-smooth section of channel, a thin layer of warm, golden fluorite instantly appeared!

These hard channel bed pavements reflected scattered golden light under sunlight, making the entire waterway appear like golden veins flowing across the earth!

Just behind this rapidly advancing "golden passage," only two or three meters back, water diverted from the lake seemed precisely guided by invisible conduits, closely following the channel's excavation pace and quickly filling the newly created trenches!

Water surged in the golden channel bed, stirring up small white foam and making pleasant rushing sounds.

The entire process looked slow but was actually quite swift. As the unicorn went from walking to quick-stepping to trotting, the waterway also began running faster and stronger like an awakening golden dragon, raising its head and galloping through the sandy sea!

Chen Mo stood up, somewhat dazzled as he watched all this.

This aesthetic of construction was more captivating than destruction and killing. For a moment, he really wanted to have a good talk with Farrell: How about you come work as chief engineer of my territory's construction bureau?

Of course, this thought only flashed by.

Most likely, this was just a one-time deal.

Why was he so certain? Because gods of any level, type, race, or category in Starry Continent all shared one common characteristic: they never made losing transactions.

According to Herlan, this wasn't any secret in noble circles, because since ancient times, gods who liked making losing deals had all died out. Only gods who could continuously seize and grow stronger had the qualifications to survive.

East Xia's think tank highly endorsed this view and provided Chen Mo with theoretical analysis.

According to East Xia experts' interpretation, if this world truly had gods, then communication with gods was essentially a transaction.

Gods didn't actually need faith or incense offerings. The value of believers lay only in the fact that after you wholeheartedly believed in gods, you could transfer all your benefits to them.

That was all.

Once you had no more benefits to transfer, your faith became worthless.

On a larger scale, temple leaders could enjoy "divine" protection as long as they could transfer benefits, remaining safe even when their evil deeds were obvious.

But once the mistakes they made outweighed the benefits they could transfer, when "gods" felt it wasn't cost-effective, they would immediately face catastrophic disaster.

On a smaller scale, ordinary families praying to gods, throwing a few coins in donation boxes while praying for gods to bless them to win a million in the lottery, this "transaction" itself wasn't viable.

If gods really had this ability, they'd buy lottery tickets themselves.

Moreover, even if gods bought lottery tickets themselves, they very likely couldn't win...

However, if you paid thousands or hundreds of thousands for a piece of jewelry "blessed" by gods, gods could probably satisfy you, because gods profited in this process.

Based on this essence of "transaction," the miraculous power that Chen Mo now marveled at was merely High Priest Farrell exchanging unknown amounts of benefits he had transferred to gods over unknown periods of time for this one divine response.

Regardless, when water surged in the golden waterway, creating dazzling scales of light, High Priest Farrell concluded with a crisp gesture, panted a few times, then raised his slightly trembling arm again to cast a gleaming cleansing spell on himself and his unicorn.

Equivalent to cleaning and waxing.

Both man and beast looked radiant.

Then Farrell turned around with great anticipation.

[NEXT CHAPTER]