Chapter 2606

The matter went around in circles and returned to the starting point. Fortunately, such a large project could not be built overnight; even finalizing and revising the blueprints would take a long time.

Pamela, Strange, and Stark all put forward their demands. Xu Shangqi was responsible for revising the blueprints, and after Schiller brought Peter over, Peter also participated in the revision work.

The mages were diligently transporting raw materials. Although the building materials had not been fully determined, since they were to build a greenhouse, good soil and fertilizer were indispensable, so they transported those parts first.

Because the height difference was too great, the plan to build high-rises on flat ground had basically been rejected. They then proposed several other plans. Stark thought they should simply enclose all of Shambhala, and build whatever they wanted inside.

Strange felt they should respect the villagers' traditions; even if the internal materials changed, the exterior should match the village style as much as possible. If that failed, they could break it into dozens of small greenhouses, disguised as village houses.

Xu Shangqi still considered the modern architectural approach more, combined with his innate talent for infrastructure modification. He felt that having the village scattered like this was not a solution, and that they should simply relocate all the villagers to one place, then find a way to hollow out the mountain to create an intra-mountain plain, where any building would be easier to construct.

However, these ideas basically had no possibility of being implemented. If they enclosed Shambhala, what would the tourists see? How would they promote and market it? The villagers wouldn't be happy with a lid over their heads either.

Breaking it into so many small greenhouses could be said to have zero work efficiency, and industrial-scale planting would be impossible to achieve; in the end, the villagers would still have to plant manually, and poverty alleviation and prosperity would be out of the question.

As for the massive project of hollowing out the mountain, not to mention that Kamar-Taj only possessed territorial rights within Kamar-Taj itself—akin to embassies—the territorial sovereignty of Shambhala belonged to China. China certainly wouldn't allow these mages to carry out such a massive project, as it would constitute altering the landscape.

Finally, Pamela proposed a possibility that all parties reluctantly agreed to: forcing the growth of a World Tree.

This was a specialty of the Green. In the DC Earth, many giant trees that had stood for hundreds or thousands of years were avatars of the Green, which could be considered wonders for the Green to spread its faith. Naturally, Pamela knew how to do this.

Doing this had many benefits. Although the three villages spanned an altitude difference of about two kilometers, as long as they could connect them vertically, the two-kilometer distance wasn't particularly far.

The problem was that a straight two-kilometer elevator would be too ugly. Even if hidden inside the mountain, the village had a certain distance horizontally, which would eventually lead to a messy, unsightly structure.

However, one could tell from the term itself that there was a natural type of organism that wouldn't be viewed as ugly even with many chaotic vertical and horizontal connections: a large tree.

Human worship of trees was traceable, because where there were trees, it meant the local water and soil could nurture a people. Wasn't it because the Sherpas saw this lush green, which was different from the scenery elsewhere, that they chose this place at the intersection of air currents to thrive?

Although the three villages were above the snow line, under the protection of magic, there were plants here. A touch of emerald green amidst the vast snowy landscape would be particularly cherished. If a towering tree could rise from the ground, it would surely become a wonder praised by all humanity, and there would be no need to worry about tourism resources.

But this was, after all, the Marvel Universe, so Pamela's abilities couldn't be used. How to force the growth would have to be figured out by the mages, and this would definitely be a troublesome task—it wasn't as simple as planting saplings together and spamming them with bone meal.

The mages of Kamar-Taj knew almost nothing about plant magic, otherwise they wouldn't have been so frustrated trying to grow saffron. It was precisely because their magic was borrowed from those magical creatures that they were exceptionally bad at farming; after all, one couldn't expect Mephisto and his subordinates to engage in agricultural civilization.

According to Xu Shangqi, there were many such talents in China, and it could even be said that Chinese mages, even if they weren't good at farming, would find ways to make their abilities good at farming.

One only had to look at the Weather Witch, who carried a solar term calendar; whenever she discovered that it wasn't raining according to the solar terms, she would rush over to perform some physical "favorable weather for crops." Fire mages, pushed to the brink, would find a strength in burning crop stalks. In the Chinese magical world, there was a saying: "When you are a mage, you must have work in your eyes."

But Strange was stubborn and unwilling to ask for help, insisting on finding a way himself. After much discussion, Martin finally discussed a possibility.

Generally speaking, tasks involving plants and animals were handled by ancestral gods—in other words, Shamanism. To put it simply, only the primitive beliefs of humanity had gods in charge of these things.

Schiller and his group were quite familiar with the Egyptian civilization, so he returned to his high tower and intended to ask Khonshu. As soon as the words "agriculture" were mentioned, Khonshu immediately perked up.

Ancient Egypt was one of the earliest agricultural civilizations to develop in the world. The fertile soil on both sides of the Nile nurtured an extremely powerful and brilliant Egyptian civilization. There were also many gods in the Egyptian pantheon in charge of harvests. Hearing that they were needed, they rushed over without stopping.

But unfortunately, the Egyptian pantheon had been doing quite well recently. After humanity entered the stage of interstellar exploration, other than Wakanda, the rest of Africa had basically laid flat and rotted.

It was impossible for their technological level to catch up, and the emergence of Wakanda could be considered Africa's contribution to humanity as the eldest brother of human civilization. Others were already calculating that if the rest of humanity emigrated to the stars, it would be fine if they kept the Earth for themselves.

Or rather, they didn't want the whole Earth; just staying in Africa was fine. If something happened one day, they could still be the last spark of humanity.

Africa wasn't actually very poor, or rather, its people weren't particularly impoverished; they were just relatively primitive. The vast majority of countries were small-scale peasant economies, farming every day and having enough to eat. This kind of life wouldn't be very decent in modern standard statistical data, but it was far from being a living hell.

After all, the African continent was extremely vast, the soil was fertile, and the rainfall and heat conditions were good. To gain fame, Wakanda had built several aerial transport lines in Africa, greatly reducing logistics costs, and also leased advanced agricultural machinery at very low rents. Now, in Africa, basically as long as you were willing to farm, you wouldn't starve to death. Although primitive, it was much better than those countries suffering from war.

This prompted a further revival of faith in Africa. Everyone had enough to eat and no ambition, so they started praying to gods and Buddhas.

The Egyptian pantheon was considered to have status among the African pantheons. Although Egyptians basically didn't worship them anymore, this kind of primitive belief had never been broken. Recently, the animal gods and nature gods had all been living quite comfortably.

Because they weren't short of money, the prices for taking orders were even higher. Hearing that it was an order from Kamar-Taj, they opened their mouths like lions, intending to slaughter them once.

They also knew that this kind of primitive pantheon was hard to find and was a complete seller's market, so they intended to sit firmly on the Diaoyutai, waiting for the price to rise, and fish for some good things from Kamar-Taj.

Strange was angry at their behavior of sitting on the ground and raising prices, but the price they offered wasn't completely unacceptable. After all, Kamar-Taj was rich now, and the energy was so abundant that the students could spend it recklessly. Gritting his teeth and taking out this money wasn't impossible.

Just as Strange was about to make up his mind, Martin suddenly approached him quietly and told him that the ancestral gods of the Aztec side also had this ability, and the price was lower, almost half of the other party's.

The situation in Mexico was not as good as in Africa. Almost all other countries in the Americas were the United States' backyard. After the start of the interstellar exploration arms race, the United States wasn't just sitting idle. The originally ignored railway projects became the mainstay because of the emergence of aerial transport technology.

No country was willing to have a direct line with such a powerful country with such a large carrying capacity, because this thing couldn't just transport goods but also troops. Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and other countries had protested strongly, but it was useless.

The United States' rogue advantage was brought into full play at this moment. It didn't care whether other countries in the Americas were willing or not. Aerial railways were built one after another, creating jobs, revitalizing the logistics industry, and opening up international trade routes. It was done.

This led Canada and Mexico, countries with vast territories and sparse populations, to be forced to unify with the United States in a geopolitical sense. After all, the railways were connected into the same piece, and the national significance naturally weakened.

Internationally, there were people protesting this, but to be honest, no one's butt was clean. China was also building aerial railways to Southeast Asia in the south, building high-speed railways over India in the west, and even crossing the Mohe and Siberia in the north to connect with Russia's aerial railways.

Europe was an even more complex network of aerial railways all connected together. Under the pressure of the space exploration arms race, everyone was building them frantically. When routes conflicted, they connected them, and in the end, it was hard to tell who was who.

This thing was really too easy to build. It didn't require cutting through mountains or splitting the sea, and there was little cost. The technology was open-source. Except for the lying-flat Africa, there was a dense web overhead everywhere internationally.

Mexico's location was also very good, situated in Central America, belonging to the bridgehead connecting North and South America. Because the United States had been building extensively and was already overstocked, it was determined to build Mexico into the largest logistics and warehousing distribution center connecting North and South America.

Mexico's population wasn't large, and due to long-standing historical issues, it had always been unable to find any pillar industries despite its excellent agricultural conditions. Since that big guy next door said so, it could only accept it gladly.

Mexicans accepted it very well. After all, who would be willing to farm if they could work in a cool station? Most young people abandoned the land and went to the cities for logistics work.

This also led to a further decline in primitive beliefs, and even the decline of ancient culture. Many scattered Aztec ruins were destroyed because they stood in the way of the necessary logistics operations. The locals were also eloquent: "People, after all, have to eat."

Martin felt sorry for the few wandering gods who were left, so he decided to facilitate this business. He charged very little money, just hoping that Kamar-Taj could help Mexicans preserve the culture of their ancestral gods and not completely forget the glorious civilization that once existed on this ancient land due to the rapid progress of urbanization.

Strange had no reason to disagree, so he immediately let Martin proceed with forcing the growth of the World Tree. However, reviving the ancestral god civilization was indeed necessary; having one more pantheon meant one more path, and no one should think of sitting on the ground and raising prices.

But to revive the pantheon, one had to find someone with experience. Strange looked left and right, and saw the Egyptian pantheon again.

Thinking of Schiller's love-hate relationship with the Egyptian pantheon, he waved his hand and decided: "You are the Pope of the Aztec ancestral gods. Go and lead your civilization to reproduce its glory."

Thinking of Schiller's grievances with the Egyptian pantheon, he waved his hand and decided that you are the Pope of the Aztec ancestral gods. Go and lead your civilization to reproduce its glory.