Southern Wasteland, Wu City.
The great sun hung high in the sky—without question, it was splendid weather.
At this moment, on the side of Wu City facing Qing Province, countless people were at work. One group quarried stone from the nearby hills, another hauled the stones away, while yet another used the massive quarried rocks to repair the city wall.
Building was forever harder than destroying. The breach had been blasted open for over half a year, yet even now, not even a fifth of the repairs had been completed.
Yet this was something that had to be done. Because of the nuclear explosion, the imperial court did not yet dare to send troops, but after a few years, that might no longer be the case.
The plank roads might have been burned, but the imperial court could always build them again. There were many treacherous stretches between Qing Province and the Southern Wasteland, but so long as they were willing to spend lives, they could not be said to be impassable.
Everything depended only on whether it was worth the price.
And if that day truly came, Wu City's walls, towering more than fifty meters high, would become the strongest bulwark.
Thus, repairing the city wall was imperative.
However, since ancient times, repairing city walls had been a major undertaking. It consumed not only manpower, but an enormous amount of money.
If a city wall was to be sturdy, its binder could not be mere earth and ash. It had to be a mixture of glutinous rice paste, slaked lime, egg whites, sand, gravel, and other materials.
In this age, using grain as a binding agent—what extravagance was that?!
If Zhao Cheng had not slaughtered quite a few wealthy local households back in Qing Province, exterminating their clans and