Endless Winter: My Camp Upgrades Infinitely

Chapter 1443 - 460: Golden Bone Melting Furnace, Reasons for Slow Progress, Army Mobilization and Arrival

The troop strength of Zhenyuan Camp is over two hundred thousand.

Among them, the strongest fifty thousand Silver Scale Army all have strength above 20 Zong; the one hundred fifty thousand Town Guard Army all have strength above 10 Zong.

A Cold Resistance Level army of over two hundred thousand, plus 148 Xianyang Level, and Cai Qiu’s Tribulation Body Realm—there is no way he would ignore this place, so he should be counted in as well.

With such a powerful force, this is all the progress they’ve made in two years of opening up the land?

The total area of the Blood Miasma Plain is over 7,500 square kilometers; what does the concept of a little over 400 square kilometers mean? It’s barely more than half a tenth, not even six percent.

Before the first year of Xia Hong, he had also led teams to survey unfamiliar regions. For example, the early development of Redwood Ridge was personally overseen by him.

If one insists on comparing, the efficiency with which Great Xia opened up Redwood Ridge back then is roughly comparable to what Cai Qiu is doing now.

But the problem is, at that time he only had Earth-digging Realm Cultivation, and Great Xia as a whole was in a ”few scrawny cats” state. If two Intermediate Cold Beasts showed up they’d have to run, and the reason mining efficiency was so low had nothing else behind it—just weakness.

If someone with Cai Qiu’s kind of strength had been there back then, he’d probably have just bulldozed straight through the entire Redwood Ridge.

Several Tribulation Body Realm experts, over a hundred Xianyang Level, a Cold Resistance Level army of two hundred thousand—this has absolutely nothing to do with weakness. To step back ten thousand steps, if more than two hundred thousand Soldiers deployed in full formation, even at one square meter per person, that adds up to 200 square kilometers.

Two years, a little over 400 square kilometers. Described like this, it’s easy to see just how outrageous this pace of development is.

It is absolutely impossible that Cai Qiu invested too little, or was too weak. The only explanation is that this stretch of the Blood Miasma Plain is too perilous, and the difficulty for humans to survey and open it up has risen to a level completely beyond normal understanding.

Just how dangerous does it have to be to make Cai Qiu advance with such difficulty?

Caiqiu Calendar, year 297, eleventh month, second day.

After resting for a day in the main building of the camp, Xia Hong finally received word from Cai Yunlan at nightfall.

The army is about to move out!

Whooo, whooo, whooo......

Red snow filled the sky, and the cold wind howled.

On the south side of Zhenyuan Camp, at the very center of the army formation preparing to march, stood a gigantic Melting Furnace with a diameter of ten meters and a height of about twenty meters.

The Melting Furnace radiated dazzling golden light; that radiance even outshone the raging flames more than ten meters high at its base. Not to mention the hundred thousand Soldiers poised to set out—even the entire Zhenyuan Camp was lit bright as day by the golden light spilling from the Melting Furnace.

Beneath the Melting Furnace was a cubic coal furnace five meters in length, width, and height. Aside from the top side, which supported the Melting Furnace, the other sides were all semi-enclosed, with a circular feed port about half a meter in diameter left on each of the four lateral faces. Over a thousand bare-chested porters stood by, periodically tossing in pitch-black, glossy coal blocks, clearly high-calorie coal that had been purified and compressed.

Under the coal furnace there were a total of twenty silver-colored giant wheels, each two meters in diameter, clearly the means of ensuring it could move smoothly. As for its source of power, that lay in the silver chains bound to all four sides of the coal furnace.

Each of those four chains was over one meter in diameter and roughly a hundred meters in length. Extending outward, each end branched into tens of thousands of smaller silver chains, which ultimately fell into the hands of tens of thousands of Soldiers—and these tens of thousands of Soldiers were the true source of power for the entire giant Melting Furnace.

Below, the coal furnace burned with a fierce glow, flames over ten meters high nearly engulfing half of the Melting Furnace; above it, torrents of silver-white smoke poured out ceaselessly. The Blood-colored Miasma, not particularly dense to begin with, grew visibly paler under the scouring of the smoke, proof that its concentration was continuously being diluted.

”Move out, advance!”

”Heave... ho... heave... ho...”

At the very front of the army, Fan Qinghu barked an order. Twenty thousand Town Guard Army Soldiers hauling on the chains let out a unified roar, and under the combined effort of all, the enormous Melting Furnace slowly began to move southward.

Of the remaining eighty thousand Soldiers, fifty thousand were Silver Scale Army and thirty thousand were Town Guard Army. They were evenly divided into four battle formations surrounding the Melting Furnace on all sides, about twenty thousand in each direction, matching its pace step for step as it slowly advanced.

”This Melting Furnace is made entirely from Cold Beast Golden Bone, isn’t it?”

High above the army, a hundred Xianyang Level experts stood in midair. Xia Hong stood near the front of the group, looking down at the golden Melting Furnace below, suppressing his inner astonishment as he turned to ask Cai Yunlan beside him with a calm expression.

From the moment they left the main building of the camp, Cai Yunlan had been paying close attention to the expression on Xia Hong’s face. Seeing that he hadn’t revealed the slightest hint of surprise from start to finish, he couldn’t help but shake his head inwardly, secretly blaming Fan Qinghu’s probing yesterday as somewhat unnecessary.

Hearing Xia Hong’s question, he nodded and said, ”Brother Hong has sharp eyes. Silver is no ordinary fuel; to smelt it to the point of vaporization, ordinary materials are naturally impossible. For this colossal Melting Furnace, besides the twenty giant wheels beneath and the four side chains of the coal furnace, all are made from Ten Thousand Forged Silver. Every other part is made from Beast King Level Golden Bone.

As for silver, let’s set that aside for now. Brother Hong should know that Golden Bone is the primary material for refining Bone Shedding Pill and many other important Dan Medicines, and is extremely precious. To make this Golden Bone Melting Furnace, Cai Qiu spent nine years in total, pouring in manpower and resources beyond count...”

”Beyond count” doesn’t even begin to cover it!

Looking at the Golden Bone Melting Furnace on the ground, Xia Hong’s face was placid as an undisturbed well, but inside, waves as high as the heavens were already surging.

Even without touching it, just from the marching speed of those twenty thousand Town Guard Soldiers below, he could roughly infer that the amount of silver consumed was at least over ten billion jin.