Chapter 275

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Protagonist:

Chen Yi

Muse and the others were first settled in the reclamation areas along both sides of the highway; they lit stoves to boil water, and the frightened mount beasts needed food and drink, their riding gear was all removed, and someone even directed native workers to bring stones from around as seats—for a time, voices rose in a clamor, bustling beyond compare.

Shi Nengren raised his brows at the knight commanding the native workers, then waved over Overseer Tu Shiqī and said: "You follow those three people, see what else the knights need, and the three of you help out."

Tu Shiqī agreed and hurried off. He had never seen so many knights before.

Damas glanced up at Shi Nengren. On the West Continent, commoners had to scramble for a living, while nobles survived mainly by playing tricks. He naturally understood the meaning behind Shi Nengren's words: the workers serving the knights were limited to three people, no more allowed!

A commoner daring to treat knights like this was truly not uncommon.

Perhaps it was the commoners of the city-state where the temple was located who had such audacity.

Damas thought to himself, I wonder which temple they come from.

He naturally didn't need to busy himself; he simply stepped onto a stone and watched the work of the Basic Construction Group from on high.

Looking down, the native workers below were divided into two groups: one group skillfully used long straps to measure something on the ground while skillfully marking various places.

Looking up again, within the dense woodland, faintly visible were gun-firing tree posts, and that deafening sound—recalling it made one's heart tremble.

Such great power!

Damas glanced at the mount beast dead on the road, shook his head, bypassed the trees in the open area, found a relatively clean spot, undid his belt, and prepared to relieve himself easily.

There had been little time to rest all the way, and the mount beast's jolting was unbearable; if he didn't relax a bit and release some water, he would burst.

Damas directed his little water gun with great interest, found a four-leaf grass, aimed at its root, and tried to blast it out. Four-leaf grass was very common, with a well-developed root system; anyone who could blast it out could call themselves a "Water Runner," considered a man's honorable title.

When the glory reached one-third of the stage, a native passing by to chop trees suddenly roared: "Why are you urinating here?"

Damas didn't turn his head at all, tilted his neck back with refreshing ease, and laughed: "Not here, urinate on your bed?"

He looked down on these mud-covered commoners. Actually, villagers' status was far lower than city commoners, but noble youths had no such concept.

The villager indeed retreated. He only saw slightly better clothing and heard the Ma La accent before realizing he had picked a fight with a knight. However, these days under the Jiangning people, a group of natives all felt superior, and as they left, they still muttered: "There's a toilet and you don't use it, barbarian."

"Toilet?" Damas pulled up his pants in confusion and walked out.

Just then, Muse and a group of knights were collectively relieving themselves, walked into that beautiful rough-wood house, came out a while later, all praising it endlessly.

"Having a river behind is great, no smell."

"I hit two forest frogs."

"They didn't bite you, did they?"

"What's this called again?"

"A latrine, maybe."

"Good pit, clean, no smell. Lao, better than your heavy cavalry camp's pit, right?"

"I went to urinate, lots of water."

Feces were a breeding ground for parasites; in tropical regions, they were an important factor that could determine life and death. Therefore, in the Ma La-State, various toilet conditions were better than those in ancient China at the same level of civilization. But the good ones were limited; at best, they were cleaned regularly, and occasionally some places knew to use quicklime for disinfection, but places without quicklime naturally had to flush with water frequently.

For these actual knight attendants, relieving themselves in the wild was a daily occurrence; being able to dig a few field toilets on the battlefield was already good enough, what more could they want.

Even a noble like Damas was used to defecating and urinating in the wild.

However, today Damas felt it was somewhat loss of face. Being mocked by commoners was the most disgusting thing; if the Elder Council found out, who knew how many people would laugh at him.

Damas spat on the ground, turned around, and went into the toilet to look.

Indeed it was clean and bright; the ground was made of some unknown stone, actually a whole piece, no matter how he looked he couldn't see seams, and with water washing, it was naturally clean.

Below the latrine, a small river had been diverted; the afternoon's filth would either be washed away or directly purified—the river's self-purification ability had long been known by people of old, they just didn't understand the principles and reasons.

Damas curled his lips, thinking: These Jiangning people indeed had some skill, they just loved cleanliness too much. Commoners should be dirty; no one feared a clean and tidy soldier.

Pretentiously on the wooden board, releasing all the unfinished Yellow Springs ahead, Sir Damas held up his pants and went out, only to see a youth dressed in white small clothes standing there, bowing and saying: "Knight Sir, please cleanse your hands."

The hand-washing was a native plant similar to soapberry, with extremely strong decontamination ability, but West Continent people not loving cleanliness was the norm—even in cities, the environment of sewage flowing everywhere and dust flying on the ground was also the norm, just like children playing on the sand trap every day, it was not easy to wash clean.

Damas, upholding his noble identity, was too embarrassed to just shake his hands and leave, so he washed his hands under the thin water of the wooden bucket, cleaned the filth between his fingers with soapberry skin, and finally took the white cloth handed to him by the young boy and dried his hands.

"So soft." When returning the white cloth, Damas suddenly wanted to wash his face, but felt a bit embarrassed.

Only when he walked out of that beautiful big house did he touch his hemp underwear and find it not as soft as the cloth the other party used to wipe hands.

"No wonder the nobles of Ma La buy Jiangning people's cloth." Damas thought reluctantly, returning to the knight circle.

Shi Nengren happened to walk over and said: "Sirs, Mr. Yu Weichao instructed us to do a good job in reception; the Inspection Team members will arrive soon, let's prepare to depart."

When Shi Nengren was at school, he was an active party applicant, one of the few at the Martial Arts Hall with ties to the Party. Yu Weichao happened to be a long-time old party member; although he hadn't obtained any position, on the West Continent he was a person of high status and weight. The fact that both parties spoke in the same way was also one of the reasons Shi Nengren was promoted faster than his contemporaries.

Konjac, no matter how it was translated, always kept Muse and the others busy for a while, re-equipping the mount beasts, helping each other put on armor, hanging the wiped-clean 6-meter-plus knight long spears on the mount beasts' bellies; the existence of knight attendants and knight attendants was not without reason—like the temple's most powerful heavy cavalry, whether pure-bred dragon beasts or mixed mounts, the dragon spears were never shorter than 10 meters; some wealthy nobles could add three or four meters of metal, far more than an ordinary knight's property. As for the equipment for mount defense, none could be lacking either. A 10-meter-high mount needed at least 5 meters of equipment; if the knights had to equip it themselves, they would be exhausted before even reaching the battlefield.

In the great legion wars of the West Continent, a good commander must be good at allocating soldiers' stamina. When to armor the heavy cavalry, when to let the stamina-recovering knight attendants and knight attendants charge, when to let them assist in attacks—all had their particularities.

Before the knights' gear was even ready, the Humvee drove over, honked its car speaker "di di" twice, and waited beside them. Qin Dajiang and the others came to the West Continent later, having a sense of superiority as rulers or conquerors, so naturally they wouldn't get out of the car to welcome a group of natives.

On the other hand, the regulations made by Yu Weichao also required that at non-essential times, Humvees were not allowed to open their car doors outside the city. As for what constituted an essential time, that would have to be corrected later. These regulations were content Yu Weichao was very interested in and Chen Yi didn't care about, so they were left to them to organize. After all, losing a Humvee, or losing a few students, was no big deal now; even before the highway was built, the value of the West River Water Fortress wasn't much.

After a while, She Lei led a patrol team composed of natives to welcome them. The Inspection Team composed of students had all been taken away by Chen Yi; those few who came early had basically become bare commanders.

She Lei had been here longer, and his attitude toward Muse and the others was slightly better; he greeted them to move forward from the reclamation area. Along the way, the roadbed being prepared had already been dug into trenches and could no longer be passed.

Damas looked on with great interest and asked: "What are you doing?"

"Building a road."

"Building a road for the city-state for free?"

"Mm."

"Then why dig it open? Shouldn't you be filling soil inside?" Important roads between city-states often had large mounts passing through; the load-bearing capacity of dirt roads was limited, so they would naturally sink inward. The simplest way to build a road was to dump soil in and then tamp it flat. It sounded easy, but when actually done, the amount of earthwork was not small at all.

She Lei didn't quite understand road building and had no secrecy awareness; he laughed and said: "After placing stones, the road's load-bearing capacity is better, so dig it open first."

"Lots of crushed stone." By the time Damas spoke, he had already seen the section being filled with crushed stone.

She Lei gave a grunt of acknowledgment, spurred his horse forward first, while the Humvee followed behind, its cannon turret always trained on the right side.

In recent days, the highway had suffered a few more attacks, on a scale comparable to previously, but with fewer casualties. Especially after the tree sentries were set up, hunter villagers armed with automatic rifles fitted with optical sights could open fire the moment something happened; sometimes even if they couldn't kill anyone, they could at least scare them off. However, the other side refused to leave even after leaving behind four corpses, and even wanted to find native workers to kidnap in exchange for the corpses — She Lei now most wanted to see the Hall Master return in triumph; lately, which of the trainees remaining in Shuizhai didn't envy those Inspection Team trainees who had been selected to leave? Night vision goggles, automatic rifles, rocket launchers, and C4 explosives — with these things, no matter which manor they were assigned to, it would be merit.

"I see quite a few wooden huts nearby; are they all... toilets?"

She Lei nodded and said, "Some are places for bathing."

Even Muse found this strange; he put aside the thought of how to get Good Citizen Certificates once they reached Shuizhai, and asked, "Bathing? What for do you bathe on the road?"

This counts as their innovation on the West Continent, so She Lei was willing to say a bit more: "The weather is scorching, there are rivers by the road, but they're not necessarily clean, so we selected some rivers, channeled the water in through bamboo tubes so it flows automatically there; whoever wants to shower just goes in, and they can also rest a while, relieving the fatigue of the journey. Besides, in such hot weather, there's no need to worry about catching a cold."

Damas listened with a dazed expression, thinking: Passersby won't necessarily go to Ma La; they might be people from other city-states; why are you so good to them? It's not like you're acknowledging them as fathers.

Muse also stomped his foot and said, "What a waste; those three-story wooden buildings are also places for bathing?"

"Oh, those are highway rest stops; they have food, bathing and toilets all available, but they charge a fee."

"But this is a dense forest; there are monsters at night."

She Lei laughed without speaking; to protect the Basic Construction Group, both sides of the highway have fortified bunkers — might as well use them. If they expand later, the developed dense forest will only be able to be called human monsters.

……(Unfinished, if you want to know what happens after this, please log in to www. qidian. com, more chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!)