After roughly two months of training and coordination, the joint survey team was finally ready and officially set out.
Long before them, the development team formed by adventurers had already arrived. Unlike the survey team, the development team's task was to establish a camp and build roads. This camp would be enormous, able to accommodate three or four hundred people. It would not merely serve as lodging for the survey team; a simple smelting site would also be built there. Once ore was discovered, it would undergo preliminary smelting to determine its exact quality and estimate the value of this mineral vein.
Moreover, if this mineral vein was confirmed to be worth mining, the camp would also become a transit station linking the mine to the outside world—a place much like a processing plant, as well as a small fortress.
On Earth, there was a saying: "If you want to get rich, build roads first." It was much the same in this world. To accomplish great things, one must build roads first. With convenient transportation, moving either people or goods became far easier.
To say nothing else, without roads, the carriages could not get up here. Were they supposed to carry the tools needed for surveying, as well as the equipment needed to build a small smelter, on their shoulders and backs?
How much manpower would that take? How many risks would they have to face?
This place was especially far to the north. It was still manageable now, but in the depths of winter, snow reaching one's waist was an ordinary sight. Without a road, traffic in and out would be completely cut off. If anything went wrong then, they would truly be left crying to Heaven and Earth with no answer.
Building roads was not only for the