Infrastructure Throne

At night, the city lord's mansion.

"Did you see that?" The waiter who was clearing the dishes in the restaurant whispered gossip, "Just now the city lord and the chief priest didn't know what happened, and they blushed and their necks were thick."

"That's right, I've never seen the face of the city lord." The attendant who wiped the table recalled for a moment, trying to come up with an appropriate metaphor.

"It's as if there's smoke coming from the seven orifices." He lowered his voice, "I'm sure I'm not mistaken, the city lord is so angry that tears are in his eyes."

"Could it be that the two adults had a dispute? I heard some bad rumors..."

"Shhh, don't talk nonsense." The waiter looked around nervously, and when he saw that there was no one around, he was relieved, cleaned the restaurant and left in a hurry.

The third main bedroom of the Lord's Mansion.

On the window sill, a pot of light purple Zhidie flowers swayed gently in the moonlight.

Shen Qingze carried a small watering can and slowly watered the flowerpot, while Yan Zui carried a large glass teapot, raised his head to water his throat.

The warm yellow light of the kerosene lamp brightly illuminates the bedroom, and Shen Qingze's side face that seems to be smiling but not smiling is lightly exposed through the glass window.

"You can't eat spicy food, but you still have to eat so much."

Yan Zui hugged the teapot: "Ton ton——"

The sound of the other party drinking water was too prominent, Shen Qingze suppressed a smile, and looked at him sideways: "My lord, you will suffer if you try to be brave."

Yan Zui's cheeks and the corners of his eyes still had the color of chili peppers, and tiny beads of sweat dripped from his nose and forehead.

After drinking a pot of herbal tea, he was still reluctant to put the pot down, licked his bright red lips with the tip of his tongue, and looked at Shen Qingze faintly.

"Why are you fine?" The city lord who was holding the kettle expressed his grievance.

Shen Qingze smiled without saying a word, thinking in his heart, there are extra spicy and perverted spicy that you haven't tasted yet...

It’s been a long time since I’ve had such an enjoyable meal. Try the spicy shrimp and spicy crab another day.

The wind-up clock on the table passed nine o'clock, and Shen Qingze was still crouching on the desk, rustling and writing something.

Yan Zui finished grooming, put on a black silk nightgown, stepped barefoot on the velvet carpet, quietly came behind him, leaned over and hugged his waist from behind.

Yan Zui has not yet recovered from the trauma of the spicy hot pot, and his voice has a hoarse nasal voice: "What are you still writing? I haven't seen you for half a month, and I finally came back. It's fine if you don't accompany me, return it to me." I eat weird stuff!"

"Master Priest, why are you so bad? Huh?"

Shen Qingze slowly closed the plan he was writing, and Yan Zui glanced at the cover - the food upgrade plan to improve the city's happiness index.

He took an exquisite wooden box from the tray on his right, opened it, and found that it was covered with fragmented ice cubes, and a glass with a lid was embedded in the ice cubes, containing half a cup of solidified milky white.

Yan Zui was suddenly attracted: "What is this?"

Shen Qingze opened the glass cover, took a metal spoon, gently scraped off a layer of milky white crushed ice, and brought it to the other party's mouth: "Open your mouth."

Yan Zui suspected that this fellow was teasing him again, but he obediently opened his mouth and ate it with a kind of death-defying mood.

A refreshing and cool sweetness melts in the taste buds, full of milk flavor, sweet but not greasy, it melts in the mouth.

Yan Zui's eyes suddenly lit up: "It's delicious!"

"This is milk ice cream."

Knowing that Yan Zui was coming back, Shen Qingze specially ordered the kitchen to make it. The raw materials were milk, egg liquid and white sugar. After it was done, it was frozen in the ice cellar for several hours, and just ordered someone to take it out.

Yan Zuitian squinted her eyes, resting her chin on his shoulder and rubbing lightly: "More."

Shen Qingze raised her eyebrows, held the spoon and shook it near his mouth, but refused to feed him, and asked solemnly: "Am I still bad?"

Yan Zui: "..."

His officiant has changed, it was obviously not like this before!

※※※

After conquering Nanji City and Beiji City, Shen Qingze temporarily left the frightened Pearl City aside and ignored it.

Nanji City has suffered huge losses from the beast tide, and it has not recovered yet. As for Beiji City, it has been in turmoil during the financial crisis for a while, and has barely stabilized recently. These two main cities urgently need a period of recuperation and recuperation.

Shen Qingze did not immediately start rebuilding the city, but chose to build roads first.

He wants to build a high-speed freight road that closely connects the three city owners - the horsepower track.

After days of intense discussions among the artisans who specialized in pavement, an original rail track design took shape.

The initial plan that everyone submitted to Shen Qingze was to build a wooden track with sleeper support on the bottom and wooden track surface on the top, which was relatively low cost.

But the disadvantages are also very obvious. The wood is very easy to wear and needs to be replaced after a long time, and once the cargo is too heavy, the wooden boards are easy to break.

After careful consideration, Shen Qingze decided to directly use the rails from his previous life.

Since the comprehensive technical upgrade of the smelter, iron smelting in shaft furnaces, steel smelting in crucibles, and hydraulic blowers working around the clock, before the advent of steam engines, Yuanliu City's iron smelting efficiency has reached the peak of current technology.

The distance between the three main cities is not too far away, and it is completely feasible to lay a horsepower track with steel.

The idea of ​​the rails is similar to that of wooden rails. Two parallel steel rails are fixed on the sleepers, and the road ballast is piled up. It is a bit more expensive, but it is better in wear resistance and pressure resistance, and can withstand greater weight and worse weather.

The design plan was finalized, and the road construction team of Yuanliu City sent experienced craftsmen, porters and workers to recruit directly from the three main cities.

Three mighty road construction brigades started from the three cities at the same time, followed the marked route, and converged little by little toward the middle.

Late summer is the season of unbearable heat, just after a thunderstorm, and the air is sticky and stuffy.

The road leading to Beiji City is a primitive loess road, washed muddy by rain, wet and slippery.

The peasants recruited from Beiji City, pushing a wheelbarrow, struggled to and fro between the lumber workshops and construction roads in the city, helping to transport the sleepers for paving the road.

Most of these peasants are exiled farmers in Beiji City, as well as civilians who went bankrupt in the financial crisis.

The way Shen Qingze treats them is the same as he once took in the refugees. He distributes a bowl of rice porridge for free every day to ensure that they will not starve to death on the street, but just one bowl of rice porridge is definitely not enough to eat. It must be exchanged for labor.

Cash for work is the best way.

On the one hand, these idle labor forces are used to promote infrastructure construction, and on the other hand, these poor people have income, no matter how meager, it can bring people hope of a stable life, so that they will not take risks and disrupt social order.

On the yellow mud road, there was an endless stream of folk men coming and going. Most of them had only a pair of dirty and torn pants wrapped around their bodies. The bottom of the trousers was full of loess mud.

But they seldom complained. They just pushed cart after cart of neat logs and walked through the rain in silence.

As far as these poor people are concerned, they don't know a single word, and they don't have the ability to simply defect to Yuanliu City with their whole family like the Qin family from the medicinal material shop. Life in Beiji City is difficult, and it is already a god to have a job that feeds their stomachs. I dare not ask extravagantly for other gifts.

For the construction of the railway tracks this time, the remuneration given by the foreman is already so high that they find it unbelievable, and it is still a daily settlement, and there will be no default.

While chatting with the craftsmen, I learned that this level of remuneration is actually at the bottom of Abyss City, and any farmer who is randomly pulled out is much richer than them.

The peasants are both envious and jealous. When they get off work and receive their wages, they can always hear people sighing occasionally. It would be great if Beiji City was merged into Yuanliu City earlier.

As long as they can live well and live better, who cares which nobleman is sitting in the city lord's mansion?

Compared with the muddy and difficult loess road, the newly built cement road between Yuanliu City and Nanji City immediately showed its superiority.

The folkmen recruited by Nanji City can transport wood much more easily than Beiji City. Most of them wear cheap linen bunts and push small wheelbarrows to run and fly.

The friction between the wheels and the cement road is much smaller than that of the loess road. The road is flat and straight, and it is not easy to slip even if it rains, and it will not fall into the pit when you push it.

The speed of track construction, compared with Beiji City and Nanji City, is one day at a time. When Nanji City completes half of the track distance, Beiji City can barely fill the loess road.

People are more popular than people, so there is one more object of jealousy among the citizens of Beiji City.

The three road construction teams worked together, and all the steel rails were laid by Yuanliu City workers. After two months of construction, the huge construction teams from three directions finally saw each other and joined forces victoriously.

After the three tracks were checked repeatedly at the joint, the connection was completed, and the first rail train pulled by horsepower in the Northland was officially opened to traffic!

Six tall horses lined up on the left and right sides of the track, pulling an eight-meter-long iron-skinned wooden truck box, and tried it out on the iron track at a leisurely pace.

The carriage was full of grain and other products from the grain-producing area of ​​Yuanliu City.

With the horsepower track, the goods that used to need to be pulled back and forth three times are now enough, and the speed is still fast. The goods that leave early in the morning can reach the two main cities in less than a day, and the transportation efficiency is greatly improved.

There is no need to worry about the problem of wheel sinkholes, and there is no need to send more people to follow the car.

When the first trial truck finally appeared at the gate of Beijicheng City, all the peasants and craftsmen left behind were all excited!

The reduction in transportation costs means that more and more goods will be put on the market, and it will become cheaper for them to buy goods from Yuanliu City.

Everyone cheered like a wave and rushed to tell each other, and the sense of accomplishment of participating in the big project suddenly came to life!

"Did you see that beautiful railway track?" For quite a long time, this was the most frequently mentioned thing by the folks in Beiji City.

After a long period of hunger and numbness, they, as the bottom class of society, will one day be able to hold their heads up high and proudly say, "I did it!"

※※※

During the two months of building the horsepower track, Yuanliu City has turned from midsummer to autumn.

At this time last year, Yuanliu City was still a small earthen city with low walls, struggling to sustain itself under the invasion and plunder of the dove orcs, mourning everywhere, and depression everywhere.

Now, people are happily working in the fields, clusters of golden wheat are cut down, and grains are piled up in granaries.

It's the annual autumn harvest festival again. According to the custom, a grand ceremony should be held in the city, presided over by the chief priest himself, to celebrate the harvest.

While the people of Yuanliu City were looking forward to the Autumn Harvest Festival, the new city lord order was quietly posted on bulletin boards and newspapers——

This year's Autumn Harvest Festival, a week-long food celebration will be held in the city, and tourists and businessmen from all over the world are sincerely invited to taste it.

At this moment, in the south a few kilometers away from Yuanliu City, there is a team of well-equipped horse convoys silently walking on the country road.

More than a hundred fully armed guards surrounded a luxurious gilded carriage in the middle.

The person in the car has golden hair, a pair of pointed ears hidden in the soft hair, different from the goblin orc, he has an extremely tall figure, and a handsome face, and his complexion is more fair than that of the Mansi.

The man is neither an orc nor a human, but an elf from one of the three great empires - the Southern Blue Sky Business Alliance.

He was playing with a pair of exquisite gold-rimmed glasses in one hand, while reading the secret letter sent by the branch of the Blue Sky Business Alliance in Pearl City.

"Abyssal City... Interesting."