Hanhai Prefecture, Nameless Mountain.
"Blasting the mountain~"
The hearty shout sent the people toiling beneath the blazing sun scrambling to the safe zone at top speed.
Boom!
Amid an earth-shaking explosion, a massive cloud of smoke billowed up from the pit ahead. Countless shards of rock sprayed in every direction, and the sloping mountainside immediately collapsed over a vast area, as though a cataclysmic earthquake had struck.
The birds and beasts within a radius of ten li scattered in terror as if the end of the world had come, fleeing their homes.
The onlookers were all dumbstruck. Only after a long while did they erupt into cheers as one.
"Get to work!"
At the overseer's command, the quarry workers—refugees only two months ago—surged into the still-smoking pit and began hauling away the rocks that had just been blasted loose.
The Qinggang Stone they quarried was hard in texture and resistant to wind and rain, making it superior material for paving stones and wall bricks.
With traditional quarrying methods, workers had to chip away at the mountainside bit by bit with iron chisels, painstakingly prying free the stone. It was exceptionally time-consuming and laborious.
Now, however, a single blast brought down enough rock to keep several hundred quarry workers busy!
These high-quality Qinggang Stones would be polished into blocks of different sizes, then hauled by horse-drawn carts to a site ten li away.
There, the foundation had just begun to be excavated for a towering pillar designed to rise more than twenty zhang high.
Wang Chen had named it the "Mountain River Pillar."
Seventy-two such Mountain River Pillars would be built throughout Hanhai Prefecture, distributed across the earth apertures where Heaven and Earth spiritual energy gathered. Together, they would form the Mountain River Great Formation.
This Mountain River Great Formation, with