Chapter 88: The War Fortress

As time passed, two immense fortifications rose one after another upon the adjoining grasslands. Everywhere lay gigantic blocks of stone, massive timbers strewn across the ground, wooden ladders affixed to the walls, and support pillars bracing the structure.

Throughout that long summer, the people of the territory toiled beneath the blazing sun, driving the battle beasts of their clans and hauling cart after cart of materials. These were precious resources originally quarried from the great mountain range a hundred thousand leagues away, then processed and stored away for this very purpose.

Li Hongshen and Li Fuzhen were personally directing their clansmen as they built the war fortress, or rather, their own main city.

The reason for building two was simple: Li Hongshen and Li Fuzhen had agreed not to follow his parents’ path of merging their lord-spaces. They would each develop independently, which would also avoid certain unnecessary troubles.

Li Fuzhen had agreed to Li Hongshen’s idea as well. If they truly merged, the problems that might arise later would trouble her greatly, and demands from her family could put them in an awkward position.

As things stood now, with both sides developing their own territories, so long as they still loved one another, there was in truth no difference at all.

Especially now, with each supporting the other, helping build each other’s main city, sharing resources freely, neither caring who gave more and who gave less.

...

When a lord’s population reached ten thousand and they arrived on the million-league plains, they could begin construction of a formal city and open the next stage of development.

This stage was generally carried out on the million-league plains, because building a main city required a lord to clear a vast tract of land, then reshape it and give it the rough form of their own capital.

Only the million-league plains offered enough room for these lords to stretch their limbs and display their talents. Only here could they be freed from the complex labor of maintaining ecological balance.

Though many within the civilization called this the main-city stage, Li Hongshen preferred to call it the tower-defense stage. This mode would last a very, very long time, until the day he completed his military service at the front.

Relying on layer upon layer of lord cities to resist the tide of enemies in stages along the front was the best solution the civilization had distilled over a thousand years.

Those main cities placed on the front lines were like reefs in a stormy sea, dividing the monstrous waves of enemies, reducing the force of their impact, and eventually grinding them down to nothing.

And the million-league plains of the Endless Wilds were like a trial ground made specially for that purpose, giving new lords an experimental environment in which to roughly simulate the conditions they would one day face.

Though this environment was perilous, and demanded a certain level of skill from new lords, at times even causing harm to the lords themselves, there was at least always a final means of self-preservation. When losses were about to become intolerable, lords could choose to withdraw their territory and leave the Endless Wilds.

Still, such an environment was undeniably useful, pressuring new lords to constantly revise and improve their main cities. Some elite lords could even, according to their own circumstances, modify textbook templates so that they better suited their own traits.

This main city Li Hongshen was building was different from the fortress in Phoenix Rest Valley. This time, he had chosen a site on the plain north of his own lord-space, where his livestock had previously been kept.

After all, Phoenix Rest Valley was a natural wonder, with an exceptionally strong boost to resources and ecology. In the beginning, when the population had still been small, living there had been for the sake of convenience and safety; seal the mouth of the valley, and it became a natural fortress.

But now, with the development of the territory and the explosive growth of its population, Phoenix Rest Valley was no longer suitable as the site of the main city.

Li Hongshen did this also to prevent, in the future, some unstoppable calamity from striking. If one battle were to level Phoenix Rest Valley, then he would truly be left in a miserable plight.

At present, about a thousand people remained at the fortress in Phoenix Rest Valley, chiefly responsible for planting, guarding forests, and gathering medicinal herbs. Beyond that, Li Hongshen had gone to great lengths to transplant a Spirit-Gathering Tree to the very center of the new main city.

Because the Spirit-Gathering Tree was unlike an altar, which could be put away and later unfolded again, if it were not transplanted in advance, then once the main city had been built, something as large and cumbersome as the Spirit-Gathering Tree would be difficult to move in or out.

Besides the Spirit-Gathering Tree, Li Hongshen also relocated the memorial monument from outside Phoenix Rest Valley into the main city. It had originally stood near the valley so that the territory’s people could easily visit their departed kin. Now, with the main city established, most of the population would live here.

The monument was placed just right, near the center along the main axis of the city. Upon entering through the main gate, one could see a straight avenue leading ahead, and at its end a square. In that square stood the memorial monument, the Spirit-Gathering Tree, and, across another avenue, the lord’s mansion. The two roads formed a T-shape, dividing the entire district neatly into sections.

This time, Li Hongshen and Li Fuzhen both chose classic polygonal city walls. Hers was hexagonal, his octagonal.

Such polygonal walls, like circular ones, were relatively convenient for defense and did not, like square walls, have four conspicuous corners that easily became focal points for enemy attacks.

Even so, though they had chosen polygonal walls, Li Hongshen and the others did not build them in especially grand fashion. In fact, even the passageways inside the walls were much narrower than some of the ancient city walls he had seen in his previous life.

Because this was only the first phase of the main city, which could also be regarded as its inner wall, or the first ring of the future capital.

As development continued, and with the increase in population and the expansion of territory, the main city would extend into a second ring, a third ring, perhaps even a fourth, fifth, or sixth.

By then the walls would grow ever higher, longer, and broader, and as the lord advanced and rose in rank, they would be able to employ more and more methods upon them.

Although this project was merely the preliminary wall for the first ring, Li Hongshen approached it with great care, with not the slightest trace of negligence.

After all, in the days to come, this wall would have many duties to perform and many trials to endure. It would need not only to withstand beast tides, but also to resist all manner of harsh and shifting weather.

It would even be used to test many of Li Hongshen’s ideas, to experiment with and explore suitable technologies, as well as attack-and-defense models fitting for his territory.

Now Li Hongshen was building the wall according to the suggestions given in the textbooks: ten meters high from the ground, eight meters wide, with four city gates facing east, west, south, and north, and a watchtower above each gate.

This height was just right for a new lord. If it were any lower, some wilderness beasts might even leap straight over it, and it would fail to serve its purpose against a beast tide.

If it were any higher, it would require more resources, manpower, and time, making it much harder for a newcomer to construct.

At each of the eight corners of the wall there was a tower behind the turn. These were the positions of the spellcasters, allowing them to cover both flanks of the battle line. When necessary, they could coordinate with another spellcaster to surround and annihilate enemies on a single stretch of wall.

And at the center of every straight section of wall there was a switchback stairway, allowing the soldiers inside the city to ascend the wall swiftly for defense.

As for the wall’s materials, limited by technology, Li Hongshen chose the simplest possible method: sheer volume and labor.

First, he marked out the general city area, then used tamped earth as the foundation across the entire ground, leveling the surface of the city.

After that, the wall area was excavated, digging out a moat nearly five meters deep from which the wall would rise.

At the bottom, tamped-earth mud bricks were used as the foundation. In the middle, great ironwood from the Wilds, which could be considered a spirit plant, was inserted as the skeleton. At the joints of the ironwood, besides securing them with mortise-and-tenon joinery, fish glue was also poured in to bind them together.

Then, layer by layer, mud bricks were rammed into a earthen wall. This tamping technique depended entirely on the help of the many battle beasts.

Whether pandas, fighting wolves, tiger beasts, or imperial crocodiles, all were enlisted as labor, trampling the mud bricks again and again, then dragging heavy stone rollers across them repeatedly until the spaces within the earth were eliminated and the whole mass became as hard as rock.

Next, glutinous rice obtained from internal trade with the Elite Assembly and provided by Li Fuzhen was pounded into rice paste, mixed with egg white, lime, river sand, and clay to make a glutinous-rice mortar. This mortar was even more useful than the cement Li Hongshen had originally mixed himself.

It could preserve a city for centuries without damage, and the joints filled with it were resistant to insects and borers, while also giving the mud brick structure a degree of earthquake resistance.

Once the earthen wall was complete, Li Hongshen then stacked a layer of stone bricks made from huge rocks upon its outer surface. This stone-brick layer was an astonishing one meter thick and offered superb protection.

Finally, stone slabs were laid along the passageway atop the wall, defensive installations were mounted, and the watchtowers were constructed. With that, the wall was fully complete.

I am truly sorry about today; it ran late. Tomorrow I will try for two updates. Right now I am rushing assignments: PHP project work, JS and HTML project work, Java project work... listening to lectures and coding during the day, writing novels at night. Headache indeed.

The chapter ends here.