Before he knew it, some time had passed since Qi Yuetian's visit.
It was now late October. Li Chen stood on a high ridge behind the Crouching Tiger Hill basin, looking down at a newly completed tower.
Following his instructions, the artisans from the city had used local materials, casting this Wildstead residence from iron ore and stone found in the nearby mountains. Dark red throughout, it resembled an iron tower and looked as impregnable as walls of metal surrounding a boiling moat.
The tower was a regular hexagon, modeled after the Octagonal Fort in Coldwind Valley. It likewise had a large, hollow courtyard in its center and eleven stories, each over three zhang high. However, owing to limited resources, its footprint was far smaller than that of the Octagonal Fort.
Li Chen intended to use it as his seat of governance here. It only needed to provide living quarters and facilities for precision manufacturing. Large-scale experiments could instead be conducted in the mountain forests.
At the thought of the forests, Li Chen turned his gaze toward the boundless sea of trees in the distance. He had already dispatched several people there to lay nodes for the Hive Network continuously. More and more wilderness areas were coming under its coverage, beginning to take on the embryonic form of the Heavenly Network he envisioned.
When Li Chen stilled his mind and connected to this network through his Divine Sense, an unprecedented sense of clarity and openness surged through him.
With the reconnaissance Flying Discs and Eye Crystals scattered throughout the surroundings, it was as though he had gained nearly a hundred pairs of eyes, observing everything around him from different angles.
Vast amounts of information arrived from different devices, a jumble containing a great deal that was useful and a great