Chapter 431: Minister Beard

The "commute" time between Valar Bay and Phoenix is still a day and a half.

Before the establishment of the Valar Tunnel or the change of "transportation tools," this time will not change much.

The biting cold wind swept across the silver-gray Valar Mountains with ice crystals, adding a bit of murderous spirit to this land.

Only a month and a half had passed, and when Gao De came to this end of Valar Mountain near Phoenix again, he could already see a newly appeared, pitch-black hole that couldn't see the bottom, from which faint light came out.

This is the Valar Tunnel under construction.

On both sides of the hole, half-human-high ice rock fragments were piled up; these were the waste materials produced during the excavation process.

Since he was here, and it was on the way, Gao De stopped his journey immediately, preparing to understand the current construction progress and specific situation of the Valar Tunnel.

One is curiosity, and the other is that as one of the key projects of Phoenix at the current stage, he, as the King, certainly has the necessity to pay attention and inspect.

Seeing Gao De arrive, the northern realm people wrapped in heavy animal skin clothes at the hole immediately knelt on one knee and saluted: "My King!"

His voice carried the roughness unique to the northern realm, mixed with a bit of trembling due to excitement.

This was his first face-to-face communication with the new King of the northern realm.

Gao De used Mage Hand to help him up, "No need for courtesy."

He pointed to the inside of the tunnel, "Just passing by, so I came to see the progress of the tunnel project today."

"My King, I will notify Minister Beard immediately!" The man said hurriedly, a hint of nervousness flashing in his eyes.

Gao De nodded slightly.

He was not here for a secret visit; if he wanted to understand the specific situation of the tunnel project, it was certainly most clear to connect directly with the "project general manager."

It was just that Gao De noticed the title of Minister.

When he left the northern realm last time, Phoenix had a total of four departments, namely the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Education, the Public Security Bureau, and the Office.

The Minister of Agriculture was Flora, the Minister of Education was himself, the Public Security Bureau only had two deputy directors for the time being, and the Director of the Office was Aisha.

This new minister he had never heard of before should be the Minister of the newly formed Ministry of Construction.

This made Gao De feel a bit of interest.

In the northern realm, the only person who could directly appoint a department head besides him was the War Mother Su Naifa.

Getting Su Naifa's recognition itself was not an easy thing.

While Gao De was daydreaming, a burst of hurried footsteps sounded, from far to near.

Subsequently, a sturdy man walked quickly out of the shadows of the tunnel.

This person was unexpectedly young, looking only in his early twenties, with thick apple muscles hanging on both cheeks, eyes very small, narrowed into two curved slits, and fine wrinkles laughing out at the corners of his eyes, looking as if he had been smiling.

The brown hair looked extremely messy, also stained with some dust, and a few strands of hair hung on the forehead.

He wore an animal skin coat stained with gravel and gray-white dust, revealing a mouthful of not-so-neat big white teeth to Gao De, and said with a slight pant: "Beard has seen Your Highness."

Your Highness? Gao De was stunned for a moment.

In the northern realm, the Enduring Zhenbing clan people all called him King directly; generally, only outsiders would call him Your Highness.

In other words, this guy who looked extremely young but was appointed as the Minister of Construction was actually not a Enduring Zhenbing clan person?

What kind of outstanding talent did this guy have that could make Su Naifa break the rules and promote him?

Gao De became more and more curious.

"Are you the newly appointed Minister of Construction?" He asked first.

"No, no," Beard shook his head hurriedly, smiled honestly: "Just acting."

"Choosing people is troublesome, but the affairs of the Ministry of Construction are very urgent, so I was let to top up first; I did this before, built many houses, and can be considered to have some experience..."

"Oh?" Gao De raised his eyebrows, didn't ask further, but signaled with his eyes: "Take me to see the situation of the Valar Tunnel first."

"Okay, Your Highness, please follow me." Beard was not stage-frightened, leading Gao De into the tunnel.

Once entering the tunnel, a cold wind carrying ice shavings rushed toward him, like countless tiny silver needles piercing his face.

Every distance, there would be a burst of flashing light, like a light bulb, illuminating the environment inside the tunnel and pulling the shadows of the two long on the ice wall.

It was not any black technology, just a simple trick "Light Spell."

All-natural, pollution-free.

While walking, Beard introduced the specific situation to Gao De: "The Valar Tunnel has been under construction for twenty-nine days, and the currently completed tunnel is about 250 meters long.

However, this is because it was not familiar in the early stage, and many problems were encountered that needed to be solved; now that it is skilled, the construction speed is slowly accelerating..."

Tunnel construction is generally dug and built at the same time; one is timely support, which can ensure safety, and at the same time, it can avoid the soil weathering and loosening problems caused by the tunnel being exposed for a long time after being dug through.

Of course, Gao De didn't know much about these; he was just a senior graduate of the Department of Mathematics in his past life, and couldn't get involved in civil engineering at all.

Gao De opened the Mandola Magic Eye and scanned it slightly, and obtained another precise data.

The width of the tunnel is 12.5 meters, and the height is 6 meters; in the past life, it barely counts as three lanes.

But in the northern realm, it can only be used as two lanes.

The reason is also very simple; the volume of the carriage here is larger.

The technical content of the tunnel construction process is actually quite high, at least with the situation of the northern realm, which is close to a primitive tribe, it is not enough to complete such a high-tech project.

But fortunately, this is a world with supernatural power.

Therefore, many technical difficulties can be directly crushed by supernatural power.

For example, environmental surveying; the northern realm does not have high-precision geological survey instruments, but there is detection magic; in the excavation stage, 【Rapid Excavation】 can also completely replace precision excavation equipment and blasting technology.

"What is that?"

Gao De looked up and noticed a layer of gray-white vines covering the top and surroundings of the rock wall.

Those vines were entangled in the ice rock cracks like living things, and the ice crystals condensed on the surface refracted cold light, and light blue light spots flowed in the vine veins every distance.

"Used for reinforcement and support, Eternal Frozen Vine..." Beard rubbed his hands: "After the tunnel is dug through, the biggest difficulty is how to support and reinforce the tunnel rock wall to prevent later deformation and collapse.

What I thought at first was to pave a layer of extreme ice... but the drawbacks are also very obvious; as long as someone casts fire-element spells in the tunnel and melts the extreme ice, it can cause great damage to the tunnel..."

"Use wood; firstly, the northern realm does not produce wood resources, and another point is that ordinary wood is very easy to become brittle under this extreme cold condition and cannot hold up for too long; using special wood, the cost is too high..."

Beard seemed to be a chatterbox; once Gao De asked, he would chatter and tell the whole construction process one by one.

"Finally, I thought of Eternal Frozen Vine; it will secrete a kind of sticky ice crystal in a cold environment, which is very annoying, but the body is very tough, so we have always used it as waste for bundling firewood, or weaving baskets, but every time the hands would be stuck painfully, so it was not less disliked."

"But these characteristics of it are absolute necessities for the tunnel."

"Sticky ice crystals allow it to stick rock blocks together tightly, and what's more wonderful is that it becomes stronger the colder it is, and its vitality is extremely tenacious; planting it down, with time, the whole tunnel will only become stronger and stronger.

Even if someone attacks with fire-element spells, the ice crystals on the surface of the vines will isolate most of the heat, at most burning the outer layer, which will not affect the internal structure at all and cannot cause damage to the tunnel."

"And what we need to do is just to clean up the overgrown Eternal Frozen Vines regularly."

"Now, every five meters of excavation, I will let people plant Eternal Frozen Vines, and then let magic users who have mastered natural arts accelerate growth; within a few days, it can grow into a natural reinforcement net."

Beard walked to a rock wall and pulled the entangled vines hard, and the sound of ice crystals colliding was crisp, "Look, this Eternal Frozen Vine was planted half a month ago, and now it has grown together with the rock wall."

Gao De's heart moved.

He noticed that when Beard introduced the tunnel progress, the units used were all "meters."

Not to mention anything else, just the fact that Beard, as an outsider, could accept and apply the measurement system he set so quickly was enough to show that he was a talent with extremely strong learning ability and adaptability.

And this was not his biggest advantage.

"Is this method of using Eternal Frozen Vine to reinforce the tunnel thought of by yourself? Also, is the design of this tunnel also done by you?" Gao De confirmed further.

His gaze swept over the crisscrossing vine nets on the top of the tunnel and fell into the gullies dug down on both sides of the ground road.

The edges of those gullies were neat, and stones were paved at the bottom.

With his experience, he could naturally see that this was a drainage facility.

The problem is, this is the northern realm of extreme cold; in most people's cognition, they can't think of the necessity of drainage pipes at all.

Beard scratched his hair, and there were tiny ice dregs in his brown hair; he took out a curled sheepskin paper from his arms, which copied Phoenix's road grid map, and then said honestly:

"Not really, the design of the tunnel is referenced to the Phoenix expansion map you drew, Your Highness; it has a detailed road design structure, and I think it can be moved here for use."

"Then how did you think of these gullies?" Gao De pointed to the gullies that were much smaller than the drainage pipes on the rock wall.

"The Phoenix expansion map drawn by Your Highness has some strange lines; I asked the War Mother, and the War Mother said these are some necessary designs envisioned by Your Highness, but the conditions are not yet mature, and they cannot be landed for the time being."

Beard gestured along the gully with his finger: "I observed it and found that these lines exist on all roads."

"Although I don't know the use of these lines for the time being, I think the tunnel, as an important trunk line for traffic between the two places, must also need the existence of these lines, so I reserved corresponding gullies."

Gao De's eyes lit up as he listened.

He finally understood why Su Naifa would choose a young outsider who looked like this to act as the Minister of Construction.

Whether it is the willingness to go down to the construction site with the construction team, or the familiarity with the project, or the response and plan made according to the actual situation during the construction process without any reference experience, all show that this is a complex talent who can think and has tight logic.

Especially the insight to transform abstract concepts on drawings into actual projects, and the logical reasoning ability, let alone in the northern realm, even looking at the entire Star Fall Continent, such people are few and far between.

This is really picking up a treasure!

While talking, the two had already arrived at the innermost part of the tunnel.

Here, the twenty Ice-born magic users who have mastered the 【Rapid Excavation】 spell are working hard to dig the tunnel.

Naturally, they are now the backbone of the Ministry of Construction.

Seeing Gao De arrive, they hurriedly turned and saluted.

Gao De waved his hand, signaling not to be polite, and encouraged everyone.

Digging a tunnel is a very hard thing.

Looking all the way, Gao De was already relieved.

This peace of mind mainly came from the ability shown by Beard.

After the inspection, he rode the snow wolf again and set off for Phoenix again.

Beard watched Gao De leave at the entrance of the cave, and until his figure completely disappeared from sight, he turned around and said to his confidant subordinate selected from his own tribe: "Help me clean up these dirty things!"

The subordinate hurriedly stepped forward to help pat the dust and gravel on Beard's animal skin coat, complaining while cleaning: "Young Patriarch, we northern realm people don't have you so particular!"

Beard patted his confidant's head: "You talk too much."

"Your Highness came without any omen, and there was not much time for me to prepare. My appearance when I just came out should be okay, right?" He thought for a while and confirmed to his confidant again.

"Too okay, Young Patriarch, gray-faced, one look and you know you are working so hard that you forget to eat and sleep." The confidant nodded repeatedly to confirm.

"That's good." Beard revealed his iconic "honest smile."

"But Young Patriarch, your ability is here, and you are indeed dutiful, just love to be clean yourself, is it necessary to do this facade work specially?"

"Ability is one thing, attitude is another. Your Highness didn't know me before and didn't know me well. If he saw me clean, he would inevitably think that I only talk but don't work."

"And Your Highness can become the new King of the northern realm; whether it is ability or cultivation, it must be extremely extraordinary. Even if he thinks so in his heart, he certainly won't say it in his mouth. After all, I am appointed by the War Mother, and he has to give the War Mother face."

"In this case, wouldn't I have no chance to explain, and left a bad impression on Your Highness for nothing..."

He patted his confidant's shoulder, still with an honest expression, and said earnestly: "Mixing out, just having ability without a facade is also not okay."

After a day and a half of rushing, before sunrise the next day, when the eastern sky was turning fish-belly white, Gao De finally saw the vague huge outline of Phoenix under the morning glow, lying on the flat snowfield like a sleeping giant beast.

The wheat fields on the snowfield had expanded much more than a month and a half ago, as far as the eye could see.

The wind blew the wheat waves, and the surging wheat waves seemed to be the breathing of the earth.

The fresh wheat fragrance mixed with a trace of coldness rushed toward him, making people feel happy.

Gao De rode the snow wolf into the city, passed through the quiet streets, and went straight to his residence, which is also the core spirit land of Phoenix.

Stepping into the residence, Gao De took a deep breath, feeling the mellow and majestic magic in the high-level spirit land; he didn't stop at all and walked into the cultivation room impatiently.

Gao De sat cross-legged and took out the wooden box containing Longqin Xuejun from his arms.

He wanted to take Longqin Xuejun and break through to the late First Circle first.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 432 =====