Chapter 100: Fifteen Thousand Jin

"In one month, Xia Chuan increased from less than seven thousand to eight thousand, an increase of over a thousand jin; Luo Yuan increased from just over eight thousand to nearly nine thousand, an increase of over eight hundred; the three Zhao brothers also increased from over seven thousand to eight thousand, also about eight hundred;

They eat at most eight jin of cold beast meat a day. This month, I ate as much as twenty or thirty jin of cold beast meat every day, basically my limit intake. My strength increase should be higher than theirs!"

Xia Hong had a rough feeling about his strength increase, but if he wanted to know the exact number, he still had to test it.

He naturally noticed the crowd watching, but he didn't care, just fiddling with the force-measuring pile on his own.

Placing a ten-thousand-jin pile at the very bottom first, then placing five one-thousand-jin piles on top, Xia Hong hesitated for a moment before adding one more on top.

Xia Hong took a deep breath, squatted down, hugged the bottom ten-thousand-jin pile with both hands, and then let out a fierce shout, slowly exerting force at an extremely slow speed.

Everyone watching had also long since held their breath.

Accompanied by Xia Hong standing up, the force-measuring pile slowly rose from the ground.

Ten centimeters... twenty centimeters... half a meter... one meter...

Until the end, as Xia Hong stood up completely, the force-measuring pile was still firmly held in his arms. A trace of respect appeared in everyone's eyes.

Bang...

"Fifteen thousand jin. The limit should still be able to add a few hundred. The increase during this period is not bad!"

Xia Hong smashed the force-measuring pile directly onto the ground, rubbed his arms that were almost exhausted, and couldn't help but feel a trace of joy in his eyes.

Previously, when fighting the Snow-Mane that transformed from the wooden dummy pile, his base strength was over thirteen thousand. Only a month had passed, and it had increased by nearly two thousand. The improvement was not insignificant.

However, judging from the increase, his improvement was clearly not as good as Xia Chuan, Luo Yuan, and the others. The resources consumed were two to three times theirs, but the increase had slowed down, which also proved that the improvement of base strength was definitely more difficult the further one went.

Fortunately, the supply of cold beast meat was no longer a problem now. As long as it steadily improved like this, the limit of thirty thousand jin would be reached sooner or later.

"Luo Ming said before that the limit of the Earth-Digging Realm is thirty thousand jin, but once the limit of thirty thousand jin is reached, he doesn't know the subsequent ways to improve strength. I don't have a clue yet about how to break through to the Cold-Resistant level that Yang Ning and Li Hu mentioned."

Xia Hong frowned slightly, but soon relaxed.

Judging from the current increase, he was still far from reaching the limit of thirty thousand jin. Even if he didn't have a clue about the subsequent cultivation methods, he didn't need to worry for the time being.

There will be a way when the car reaches the mountain. Once he reaches the limit of thirty thousand jin, at worst, he would learn from Luo Ming and break into the Arrow Bamboo Forest to ask at that giant camp called the Beehive.

After testing his strength, Xia Hong turned his head and found that the people who were watching just now were almost all staring blankly at the force-measuring pile on the ground and were still standing in place without dispersing.

"What are you staring at? Are you all stuffed from eating cold beast meat? If you want to become as strong as me, don't waste time here. Hurry up and go cultivate."

Hearing Xia Hong's banter, everyone burst into laughter.

"Hahaha, Leader, we don't dare to compare with you. It's already good enough if we can hurry up and break through to the Woodcutting Realm."

"I've been eating too much cold beast meat lately, it seems I'm a bit stuffed."

"If you can't eat that much, share some with me!"

"Hahahahaha..."

A few bold children followed Xia Hong's words and bantered with each other, but after a burst of laughter, everyone soon dispersed and began their own cultivation.

Watching the dispersing crowd, Xia Hong's mood also relaxed a lot.

Not to mention comparing with the time at the dirt slope, even compared to a month ago, the spirit of the people in the camp had clearly risen by a large margin.

Previously, let alone taking the initiative to joke, it was extremely difficult to find a smiling face among these people in the camp.

When survival became a problem, safety had no guarantee, and there was no hope in their hearts, it was impossible for people to relax.

The continuous distribution of cold beast meat could be considered to have ignited the fire of hope in everyone's hearts. The current Great Xia could not be said to have no worries about survival, and safety was not 100% guaranteed.

But at least, these people already had hope and something to strive for in their hearts.

Walking back to the wooden house, the original position of the iron-smelting furnace had been moved more than ten meters to the left. Along the route of the iron-smelting furnace's movement, a trench two meters deep had already appeared on the ground.

Luo Yuan, Xia Chuan, Zhao Long, and Yuan Cheng were each holding a sheep-horn chisel, constantly digging in the trench.

This trench was prepared for driving piles for the new wooden house.

"One month, fifteen meters. If it's at this progress, it's estimated that it will take four or five years to dig an eight-hundred-meter trench to drive piles..."

Xia Hong thought of the eight-hundred-meter total length of the trench, and his eyes suddenly went a bit dark.

The ground softened by burning coal stone in the iron-smelting furnace could indeed be dug by those in the Woodcutting Realm, but the problem was, firstly, coal stone was limited, and the camp couldn't burn coal for heating every day; secondly, there were only thirty-six people in the Woodcutting Realm in total, and they still had to log and hunt. It was impossible for them to dig trenches here every day.

So for this month, Xia Hong could only take advantage of the time when burning coal stone to let some people in the Woodcutting Realm take turns to dig.

During this period, he himself had also tried digging. He could dig the ground without coal stone softening, but no matter how well he could dig alone, it was useless.

There were two ways to increase the speed of pile driving:

Either burn more coal stone to increase the speed of ground softening and let more people in the Woodcutting Realm participate in digging together. The difficulty was in coal stone, which required mining enough coal stone, and this required a large number of Earth-Digging Realms.

Or directly let people in the Earth-Digging Realm come to dig without coal stone softening the ground. This, too, required more Earth-Digging Realms.

So, in the final analysis, it was still that there were not enough Earth-Digging Realms!

This was an unsolvable problem.

Xia Hong jumped into the trench, snatched the tool from Luo Yuan's hand, and said:

"You go cultivate, I'll dig for a while!"

"Leader, I'm not tired, I can dig for a while longer, it's fine."

Luo Yuan, who didn't know why, thought Xia Hong felt sorry for him and wanted to take back the tool, but facing Xia Hong's rejecting eyes, he could only give up.

Luo Yuan climbed out of the trench, turned back to see Xia Hong had already replaced him in digging, and a trace of emotion suddenly rose in his heart, so he hurriedly seized the time to go cultivate.

"I really can't hold on alone! You kid, if you don't break through, coal and iron won't last long!"

【Resources: Wood 6835, Coal 160, Iron 270, Silver 0, Gold 0】

Looking at the coal and iron resources in the system decreasing day by day, Xia Hong's mood of hoping Luo Yuan would break through to the Earth-Digging Realm was probably more urgent than his own.

Timber resources had risen crazily this month, but coal and iron were already in a state of exceeding income. If it continued like this, it probably wouldn't be long before they hit bottom in a few months.

The new wooden house was being prepared, and many iron materials had to be prepared. Mu Dong would find him to forge things almost every day, plus the batch of woodworking tools he forged for Mu Dong some time ago, quite a lot of coal and iron had been used during this period.

His main task was to lead the team to hunt, so he could only find time to mine. The time he could extract was quite limited, and the coal stone and iron ore harvested were naturally minimal, simply unable to supply the camp's consumption.

Before the coal and iron were used up, if Luo Yuan didn't break through again, he would only be able to reduce the number of times he went out hunting and set aside more time to mine coal and iron.

Xia Hong sighed secretly, stopped thinking about it, and focused on digging the trench.

However, after digging for a while, a prompt came to his mind again:

【The medicine-decocting pot has automatically generated the Golden Sore Powder formula based on the recorded items】

Hearing the prompt, a trace of joy suddenly appeared on Xia Hong's face. He hurriedly put down the sheep-horn chisel in his hand, walked out of the trench, and walked toward the medicine-decocting pot.

Walking to the side of the medicine-decocting pot, he saw Cheng Feng taking out a light blue plant from inside. Smelling the faint fragrance coming from that plant, Xia Hong's eyes suddenly lit up.

"Leader, why are you here?"

Seeing Xia Hong walk over, Cheng Feng was startled. Noticing his gaze, he hurriedly handed the plant in his hand to him.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 101 =====