Chapter 50 — The Main Force

After running more tests, Gao Yang decided there was no need to keep verifying anything further.

Rebecca was unable to establish a connection with the crystal.

He had Amber come over and try as well, and the result was the same—no good.

It seemed that apart from himself, no one else could make contact with the mysterious monitoring station high above, even if they touched the crystal. So then, for what purpose had Gao Yang Cecil left this crystal behind seven hundred years ago?

Gao Yang figured there could only be two answers: either Gao Yang Cecil of seven hundred years ago had been special, possessing some special method to make use of these crystals, or… these crystals had never been meant for Gao Yang Cecil himself, but had been left for him—seven hundred years later…

That second answer was especially chilling.

"Ancestor Yanyan…" Rebecca looked at the Xuan Yuan Sect head before her with some unease. She had just gone through a baffling round of tests; though she did not know what the purpose of the tests had been, she could clearly tell that she had failed, which made her feel she had probably disappointed the Xuan Mai Sect yet again. "Is it because my talent is too poor, so…"

"No, it's not your fault. Amber tried just now too, didn't she?" Gao Yang pressed down the tangled thoughts in his mind and consoled the girl. "This crystal was never meant for ordinary people to use. I just had a sudden whim to have you try it. Speaking of which—tell me about the results of your survey out there."

At the mention of this topic, Rebecca's mood indeed improved at once. "Yes, yes, I was just about to bring that up! Ancestor Yanyan, did you know from the very start that the land here had already been purified? I went to search the area according to the boundaries you gave, and found that it was all uncontaminated land. The terrain is open and flat, and water is easy to draw. The farmers who came along said this is the most suitable place for reclamation…"

Gao Yang was not surprised by this answer; of course he knew the situation here.

At least ten years ago, the pollution in this region had already receded—it was just that everyone in the kingdom was unaware of it.

When exactly the magic tide's influence around the Dark Mountains had faded was still unknown, but at least a hundred years ago this place had still been a contaminated zone. The records of settlement outposts left by the then-not-yet-declined Cecil family could confirm this. And it was precisely because the magic tide's pollution had still been present at the time that the mountain vault had been preserved to this day—otherwise the Moen family might well have retrieved those ancient supplies. Then, after the great upheaval of the Cecil family and the severing of the Moen lineage, no one knew the secret of the mountain vault any longer, and the kingdom had completely abandoned this southern frontier—this mess that was polluted year after year and plagued by disasters year after year. Naturally, no one knew of the magic tide's recession either.

After all, the "Unclean Wind" would still regularly blow across the Dark Mountains every year. Even if the pollution in the soil had receded, with those toxic dust storms present, this place was still not a good spot for reclamation.

Gao Yang could only be certain of one thing: in the overhead view stored in his mind, this place had already been free of pollution ten years ago.

The nearest noble fief was the Leslie family's Tansang Town. According to Ansu law, the nobles great and small along the southern border also bore the responsibility of monitoring the Gondor contaminated zone. So Gao Yang guessed that Viscount Andrew must know something, more or less, about the recession of the magic tide's influence. But for that traditional noble who lived comfortably off his mines, this temporarily stabilized land was probably still not worth investing in. Add to that the fact that the reclamation fever of this era had already cooled, and the good viscount had likely never even sent anyone to look at the situation here…

Gao Yang nodded and looked at Rebecca. "The range of land currently confirmed safe is the portion I drew out. The pollution farther out should have receded somewhat as well, but that will require careful surveying after the main force arrives. Don't go over there for now."

The clear overhead view in his mind was from ten years ago. Over the past decade the contaminated zone should have shrunk further still, but exactly how much… given that the satellite view had now turned into a "magic imaging map" that could not be adjusted, Gao Yang had no way of determining that for the moment, so this was the only arrangement he could make.

Time continued to pass. Through Hedy's tireless preaching and the territory's people gradually adapting over a period of time, the new work system finally began to show results. The laborers started to realize that work meant better rations, while those "clever ones" who tried to exploit loopholes and slack off in the new system came to understand that more painful than drinking vegetable soup while watching others eat meat was watching others drink vegetable soup while starving. As for Gao Yang, those clumsy loophole-exploiting tricks were hardly clever at all, and the punishments he laid down were never tempered with mercy.

This was a matter concerning everyone's future survival; there could be no room for leniency.

And because the new system had taken effect, the construction of the outpost camp was completed at an astonishing speed, and preparations were made for the arrival of the main force that would follow. Under Gao Song's planning, the fences around the camp were extended several hundred meters to the south and east, with a large stretch of open ground left for the seven hundred who would come later to pitch their tents. Space was also reserved for the workshops of carpenters, stonemasons, and blacksmiths, as well as new areas for piling materials. He further ordered a temporary small dock to be built of wood where the camp faced the river shoals, and a sawmill to be built on the spot nearby, to process the timber floated downriver from the logging sites in the western forest.

Of course, at present the dock and the sawmill existed only on blueprints. A hundred laborers were truly limited; even with Hedy's magical assistance, building the camp felt like stretching a poor covering over too much—there was never quite enough. At times like this, Gao Yang sincerely wished from the bottom of his heart that Rebecca could cast some spell other than fireball…

Standing on the high ground by the river shoals, Gao Yang looked at a large wooden-plank building nearing completion in the distance. It was one of the few structures in the camp that could actually be called a "house," and a very large building at that. For some time to come, it and the broad open ground around it would serve as a temporary blacksmith's forge. Although the mountain vault held many metal ingots already smelted into shape, they were hard to put to use in the camp's construction: most of them were mithril, adamantite, purple copper, and purple steel. However broad-minded Gao Yang might be, there was no way he was going to melt those things down to forge nails, was there?

The iron ore in the east had already been roughly surveyed. Although it was not yet time to dig out a proper mine, it was still feasible to bring back some ore to verify its quality. The first batch of ore had now been excavated; once the blacksmiths got their furnaces up, the Cecil territory could be considered to have entered the Iron Age…

How vexing.

Thinking of the magic tide that could come at any unknown moment, of the mysterious monitoring station in the sky, and then looking at this slow-moving reclamation camp before his eyes, Gao Yang could not help shaking his head and sighing.