Chapter 487: Sprouting
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The construction of Yao Mountain city had been going on like a raging fire.
On all four sides surrounding Yao Mountain, the foundation of the city wall was now under construction. The city wall designed by Kua E was three-hundred and sixty miles long, six-hundred meters tall and a mile wide. For withstanding the great counterforce from the heaven and earth great formation, the city wall must have a tough and solid foundation.
Therefore, divine gods had opened up four ten-mile wide ditches to serve as the foundation of the city wall. They dug deeper downwards, penetrated nine earth meridians and directly dug for a hundred and eighty kilometers deep. The width in the deepest area of the ditch reached nearly a hundred miles. Down in the area, divine gods cast their magic and strengthened the underground layer of rock, then drew numerous tremendous earth meridians over to this area.
After half a year, the first batch of divine materials collected in the starry void was shipped to Yao Mountain. Tens of gigantic stoves began the smelting together, processing a hundred and eight kinds of rare divine materials into the legendary ‘starry divine iron’, with a secret method that was created by gods in heaven. After that, the starry divine iron was structured into the ditches which were opened up around Yao Mountain, layer by layer.
Starry divine iron was a special kind of alloy. During the smelting process of this alloy, spirit blood that came from flood dragons and all kinds of fierce beasts had to be added, mixed with large amounts of powerful blood that came from the humankind.
In order to make starry divine iron, all Senior Magi under Ji Hao’s command had to cut their blood veins open and let out a large amount of blood every three days. Excessive loss of blood had caused serious harm to the life-force of those Senior Magi, and their battle effectiveness had temporarily declined by about thirty percent.
But all this was worth the effort.
Ji Hao stood on top of Yao Mountain, looking at tens of gigantic stoves working together and multicolored liquid iron surging out of the stoves like roaring dragons, directly into the four deep ditches along with a horrifyingly great heat.
The earth rumbled and clouds of steam rose straight from the ground. Waves of liquid iron boiled and surged in the four ditches, rampantly swallowing the natural powers delivered by those earth meridians. Stimulated by the natural powers, the liquid iron released a dazzling splendor, giving a colorful and magnificent glow to the sky upon Yao Mountain.
The liquid iron was incredibly heavy, and under the control of divine gods, it speedily reached to the root of the entire Yao Mountain through the crevices between soil and rocks. The immensely great Yao Mountain was soon saturated by liquid iron. Rocks, stones, sand and the soil of the mountain were assimilated by the liquid iron and quickly turned into a unity.
The color of starry divine iron was same as the rainbow that appeared after a storm. It was said that this kind of alloy could stay out of abrasion until the end of the day and once it was cast and molded, the wind, rain, natural disasters or the endless flow of time, nothing could ever do it any harm. Starry divine iron was a magical alloy that was used to cast the foundation of the Heaven Palace, and only a few descendants of ancient divine gods possessed the secret recipe.
More important was the extraordinarily magical fact that starry divine iron had a perfect degree of fusion. Any type of energy and natural power could go through starry divine iron without any losses. A small piece of starry divine iron could contain an immensely great amount of natural power. Therefore, it could be counted as the best material for the foundations of magic formations ever.
As the quality of raw materials were not as good as the ones used back in the ancient times, and divine gods who smelted the liquid iron were not as powerful as ancient divine gods, added with the limited quality of the spirit blood poured into the stoves during the smelting process, the starry divine iron made for Ji Hao’s Yao Mountain city was far worse in quality than the one used in Heaven Palace. Roughly, the quality of Ji Hao’s starry divine iron was only ten percent as good as the one in heaven.
Despite the low quality of this ‘home-made’ starry divine iron, it was still seen as a magical divine material, and casting the foundation of a small Yao Mountain city with it could only be described by one word, ‘luxurious.'
While pouring layers of liquid iron into the ditches, divine gods who were responsible for this part of construction were floating upon the boiling liquid iron, cutting their own fingers open and dripping drops of divine blood, which contained immeasurably great divine power, into the liquid iron.
Meanwhile, they had been loudly incanting the divine spell that was passed down from their ancestors through generations. Along with their voices, the blood drops dripped down from their fingers twisted, constantly changing into different sized divine spell symbols, and melted with the liquid iron.
Massive natural powers surged in through those different sized earth meridians while countless divine spell symbols were rolling and rotating within the boiling liquid starry divine iron, ceaselessly absorbing the natural powers. Gradually, those hazy spell symbols turned clearer and harder, eventually seeming like touchable objects.
Ji Hao stood on top of the mountain, looking down at the boiling liquid iron in the ditches. He then raised his head and looked at those loudly roaring stoves, and couldn’t help but get a little bit worried. “The next batch of raw materials would be delivered after half a year. What if this liquid iron solidified?”
Kua E, who had been directing the construction work, heard Ji Hao’s words and instantly laughed out loud, “Earl Yao, relax! You don’t need to worry about this at all. Starry divine iron is a magical divine material, you can’t compare it with ordinary iron. We cast layer by layer, it will never solidify until we cast a divine seal on it. Therefore, when the next batch of raw materials arrives and the casting work continues, the body of the city wall’s foundation will definitely be done as one complete, flawless piece.”
Hearing this, Ji Hao stopped worrying and grinned at Kua E and said, “Thanks for your hard works, big gods. Please pay attentions to the quality of the works, and I have already sent people to Pu Ban city to purchase nice wines. You, big gods, can enjoy as much nice wine and delicious meat as you want in here.”
“Nice wine!” Kua E’s saliva nearly surged out of his mouth when hearing Ji Hao. He popped his eyes out, staring at Ji Hao and yelled loudly, “Earl Yao, if you can go to the East Ocean and hunt three thousand dragons back for their bodies to be put into the foundation of the city wall, I promise this wall of yours would be no worse than the one of Heaven Palace!”
Ji Hao’s face turned dark. He flicked his sleeve, turned around and walked straight away.
‘Are you kidding me? A natural dragon can be as powerful as a Magus King, and a slightly more powerful dragon must have the power on the level of Divine Magi. Go to the East Ocean and hunt three-thousand dragons back? It would more like sending myself into their mouths like a dish!’ thought Ji Hao.
In a quiet valley that was located on one side of Yao Mountain, Ji Hao had opened up hundreds of different sized caves. He carefully selected three-thousand clever boys and girls from his people. By now, these kids were gathered in here, accepting educations from Shaosi and Yu Mu.
Ji Hao imitated Magi Palace‘s model of teaching, selecting a batch of young kids and starting giving them elite education, providing them everything needed for cultivation. These kids were now rather weak and young, but Ji Hao believed that he could turn all these kids into Senior Magi in ten years tops, as long as they could be given abundant time and resources.
An army of elite Senior Magi who were close and extremely loyal to Ji Hao since they were little kids would become the true core power of Yao Mountain territory in the future.
Ji Hao didn’t just teach them magic and battling skills, he had also been teaching these kids all kinds of knowledge, from daily administration, personnel management, laws and rules, military knowledge to the skills of prying for information and monitoring, etc. Ji Hao was going to raise these kids into his trusted helpers, into the leaders of his, Earl Yao’s clan.
When Ji Hao returned to the valley, all lessons in the morning had been finished. Three thousand kids, who were all about the same age, were standing on a hill, stunningly looking at the main peak of Yao Mountain hundreds of miles away, that had clouds of steam constantly rising from it.
From time to time, some kids would scream out in shock and admiration for the great, magnificent power possessed by those divine gods.
Shaosi stood among them, and said gently, “What is building over there is Yao Mountain city, your future home!”
“As long as you are willing to work harder and harder, one day, sooner or later, you will become as powerful as those divine gods. You will be powerful enough to protect Yao Mountain city, to guard your home, your parents and clansmen.”
Ji Hao looked at Shaosi smilingly.
Shaosi didn’t only have a great administrative ability, she was also great with these kids. Ji Hao even evilly guessed, ‘Was it because Taisi was actually a giant baby and Shaosi had been looking after him for so many years, that experiences with Taisi had given her such a good and natural ability to deal with kids?’
While Ji Hao was sneakily tittering, an assistant, who was sent to Ji Hao to help by Emperor Shun, rushed over with big steps.
“Earl Yao, the eight hundred children you mentioned before have been selected.”