Lord of the Myriad Worlds

Chapter 79: The Prototype of the Fortress

At ten o'clock in the morning the next day, Li Wei woke from a deep sleep. The room was already empty. Stepping outside, he saw the sky filled with sunlight, warm and comfortable, with even the breeze carrying a hint of spring.

In the distance, he could even see a small white butterfly fluttering about.

In the courtyard, Leon had taken off his wolf-skin jacket and was digging the foundation bare-chested. He was preparing to build the warehouse, which meant laying a proper foundation first, taking into account various conditions like rodent-proofing, insect-proofing, moisture-proofing, and theft prevention.

In the blacksmith shop to the south, Penny and Margaret were working together, clanging away at the forge. They were probably forging new tools, better tools. Because whether making one-star leather armor or one-star compound bows, one couldn't just make do. A craftsman must sharpen his tools if he is to do his work well.

Further away, Thomas and Fila were conducting on-site surveys. Building the perimeter wall was definitely not something to be sloppy about, as it concerned the development plan of the family camp for a long time to come.

In this area, Li Wei simply didn't understand. Even though last autumn, he had secretly thought about expanding the wall, the gap between imagination and reality was just that vast.

He truly admired those four workhorses. If it were him, he really couldn't make himself mine stone relentlessly in the freezing cold of winter.

The standard for the new stone wall seemed quite high, and its scale was quite large. Built against the mountain slope in tiers, it would be about fifty meters north to south and roughly forty meters east to west, with a total perimeter of around one hundred and eighty meters.

Looking at the numbers, it seemed a bit small, but once you actually drew out the area, you'd realize it was actually quite large.

It was almost a small fortress.Both Thomas and Fila had quite ambitious visions, but it also showed that once upgraded to a level 4 camp, there would truly be massive changes.

Of course, what differed from a small fortress was that the wall Thomas planned to build would, for now, only be set at three meters high and two meters wide. The middle would be filled with crushed stone mixed with clay, with more stone blocks on the outer layer and fewer on the inner layer. The foundation would need to be dug below, and there most likely wouldn't be a moat.

This left a foundation for future expansion.

So, the current scale of work should be much smaller.

It could only be considered the embryo of a fortress.

Furthermore, according to Fila's blueprint, the area inside the wall would be divided into four zones.

The northwest side would be the residential area. The northeast side would be the warehouse area and workshop, where important family supplies, tools, grains, and such would be stored.

The southwest side, with the largest area, would encompass the blacksmith shop, material warehouse, small blast furnace, brick kiln, charcoal kiln, and lime kiln. This would be the industrial zone.

The southeast side would remain vacant for now.

All the family's farmland was located outside the perimeter wall and not included within it.

It seemed Fila's initial plan was to include the farmland, aiming for a wall with a five-hundred-meter perimeter, but the revised plan agreed upon after discussion was undoubtedly more prudent.

After all, even Li Wei couldn't imagine what it would feel like for their family of six to live in a fortress with a five-hundred-meter perimeter.

Just patrolling it daily would probably exhaust them to death.

"It just feels a bit unreal, unless more players will join after upgrading to a level 4 camp," Li Wei thought to himself. The family's development still faced many difficulties. For example, the salt he seized last autumn was probably almost used up by now. When that happened, external trade would have to be put back on the agenda.

With more players, not only would conflicts increase, but food consumption would also intensify.

All these various things made his head ache just thinking about them.

But overthinking was useless now; they still had to work with their feet firmly on the ground.

Next, Li Wei went to the simple storage shed to fetch a steel shovel and a specially-made hoe suitable for cultivation. He planned to clear new farmland. After ten months of development, the family could at least be self-sufficient in tools, ensuring both quantity and quality.

He no longer had to be as pathetic as last year.

The only regret was that Old Ox had died. Otherwise, they could have completely used Old Ox to plow the fields this spring. Penny had even reserved iron ingots to make a plowshare, but damn it.

It felt like there was an invisible hand secretly disrupting the rhythm of their development.

Li Wei arrived at the farmland area and saw that Fila had already marked the specific cultivation lines here.

According to her development blueprint, the new farmland Li Wei cleared should ideally be in the form of terraced fields.

Firstly, this would maximize the flattening of the farmland, making better use of land space on the hillside. Secondly, it ensured the fields were away from the river channel, avoiding crops being washed away by rising floodwaters. Thirdly, it ensured convenient irrigation.

In short, Fila's plan was almost identical to Li Wei's, so there was nothing more to discuss.

Over the next three months, Li Wei would clear no less than six *mu* of farmland in this area in the form of terraced fields. This was the cultivation plan for the west bank of the creek. To cultivate more, they would have to go to the east bank of the creek.

But that was too distant. Li Wei's mission cycle was only three years. New players would definitely join in succession in the future, like a relay race.

But these were things he couldn't consider.

Including the previous two *mu*, that made a total of eight *mu* of farmland. With the boost from being a Professional Farmer, plus one-star quality seeds, and fertile land, a yield of five hundred catties per *mu* would be easily achievable.

Four thousand catties of wheat, combined with other food supplies, should be enough to feed ten people, right?

While pondering this, Li Wei swiftly swung his hoe. The ground had thawed partially, so the difficulty of clearing wasn't high. Plus, he had plenty of strength. He felt like a human-shaped little motor, with no pressure at all.

He only rested briefly midway, returning to the room for some water, and then Li Wei worked straight through until noon.

The temperature now had even reached around seven or eight degrees Celsius above zero. The gentle, warm breeze blew over, carrying the dampness of melting snow. He wondered if a flash flood would erupt after the snowmelt?

Of course, that wasn't something he needed to consider; he wasn't the Family Head.

In the blink of an eye, ten days passed. With sharp tools in hand, even though Li Wei started work at ten every morning, he easily completed the clearing of two *mu* of farmland and initially shaped them into several small terraced fields.

During this labor, his advantage of 170 points in Stamina was remarkable. Digging was like being a little motor; he could dig continuously for one or two hours without resting. And as long as food was plentiful, after a day's work, he could recover quickly by evening, still having time to practice parkour for an hour and archery and wooden spear throwing for another hour.

It was like child's play!

The cost, of course, was that he would get very hungry very easily.

The three-meal daily food ration Fila provided only allowed him to feel about eighty percent full.

Of course, it wasn't that he couldn't go to the warehouse to find food himself; at most, he'd just lose a bit of Family Contribution.

Such were the rules; he had to abide by them.

Fortunately, after clearing these two *mu* of farmland, the mandatory target for his Monthly Main Quest this month was considered complete. The rest was patrolling, and more patrolling.

Because sowing would have to wait until next month.

Of course, Li Wei could do some things in advance. For example, re-dig the irrigation channel from upstream of the creek to divert the creek water over to irrigate these two *mu* of land. He also needed to find time, based on temperature changes, to clear the withered grass from the surface of the winter wheat and irrigate it appropriately. By the beginning of next month, or the end of this month, they could sow.

Besides that, he needed to drive wooden stakes around the perimeter of the farmland to make a fence, move stones, and build a stone wall to prevent beasts from causing damage.

But for so many days, he hadn't seen a single wild boar. It was probably because this area was remote and rarely visited by people, causing less damage to the wild environment, so the wild boars weren't starving.

Because in the sun-facing areas of the mountain forest, fresh grass had indeed begun to sprout.

They had now entered the stage where "the color of grass can be seen from afar, yet seems absent up close."