" Su Wei. To be honest, this is completely beyond conventional understanding."
Matt pointed to the blueprint.
"Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on industrial-grade water pumps and chillers, plus three coats of polyurea waterproofing, just to grow a few layers of grass and mud in the house?"
He shook his head.
"Those rich people don't care whether it's real mud or not. Silicone and plastic composite materials can be made to look completely real, and they weigh less than a tenth of what they are now."
Su Wei looked at him.
"What I'm looking for isn't simple industrial products, but authenticity."
Matt fell silent and rolled the drawings back into a paper tube.
He turned around and gestured to a group of workers fifty meters away.
"Ben, bring your men here."
Matt shouted.
Three construction workers wearing bright orange reflective vests put down the steel pipes they were carrying and walked over quickly.
The leader was a burly man with a full beard named Ben.
"Do as the boss says. Thoroughly clear out the sunken groove on the left and excavate a twelve-meter-long outline of the river channel."
Matt gave the order.
The three workers immediately picked up shovels and pickaxes, jumped into the trench, and began construction.
Forty minutes later, the roar of an engine tore through the wind and snow.
Su Wei drove his black Ford Raptor pickup truck and reversed it directly into the first-floor gate.
The large off-road tires left two wet snow tracks on the concrete.
The vehicle was parked next to the reserved area for the river channel on the left.
Su Wei got out of the car and slammed the heavy rear door shut with a loud crash.
Inside the carriage, five extra-large double-layered military woven bags were neatly stacked.
Each one was bulging and bulging, stretching out hard edges and corners.
"Discharge."
Su Wei gave instructions to Ben and the other two workers.
"Move it to the shallow channel at the bottom of the river."
Ben put down the pickaxe and rubbed his hands, which were covered in heavy work gloves.
He walked to the back of the pickup truck, bent down, and grabbed the straps on both sides of a woven bag with both hands.
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With a loud shout, Ben suddenly exerted force in his waist muscles.
The woven bags made a screeching sound as they scraped against the floor of the carriage.
The bag hit the ground, raising a cloud of gray dust.
Su Wei stepped forward, his gaze sweeping over the remaining woven bags in the carriage, and a thought struck him.
At the edge of his field of vision, a layer of eerie blue light, visible only to him, rapidly illuminated.
[ Substrate Analysis LV1 Unlocked.]
[Material composition: High-density basaltic volcanic rock.]
[Standard weight per bag: 180 pounds.]
[Current pH: 6.8, slightly acidic to neutral.]
[Matrix porosity: 78%. An excellent micro-culture bed for anaerobic and nitrifying bacteria.]
Su Wei patted the dust off his palms.
"Use a flatbed cart to transport one bag at a time."
He pointed to the construction cart a dozen meters away.
With the help of tools, all five heavy bags of volcanic rock were transported into the shallow channel of the excavated riverbed.
A thick layer of black waterproof engineering fabric has been laid at the bottom of the trench.
Su Wei pulled out the Kaba's secondary knife from his leg, and with a swift cut, the woven bag was sliced open.
Irregularly shaped, dark gray stones riddled with holes, mixed with black crystalline sand, poured out with a gurgling sound, producing a crisp, dull tapping noise.
A very faint smell of sulfur and the salty odor of seawater filled the air.
These are natural filter substrates that he just dug out from an abandoned shallow beach at the mouth of the Pilan Creek, dozens of kilometers away.
"Spread them out, lay these stones evenly at the bottom."
Su Wei sheathed his knife.
"The thickness is strictly controlled to be five centimeters."
He picked up a short-handled, flat-headed shovel and, demonstrating, leveled a pile of volcanic rock at the beginning of the shallow trench, creating a small area.
Ben and the workers began to get to work.
They were used to rough concrete pouring, with wide, sweeping movements, shovels haphazardly pushing stones across the bottom of the trench.
Su Wei stood by the trough, the eerie blue scanning light constantly scanning the bottom of his field of vision.
As the workers moved, red alarm data popped up.
[Incorrect operation. The pores in this area are excessively compressed.]
[The gaps between large rocks have been forcibly filled with black crystal sand. The water flow rate at the bottom has decreased to 30%.]
[Loss of living space for anaerobic bacteria.]
Su Wei threw down the shovel in his hand and took long strides to jump into the groove.
"Stop."
The three workers immediately stopped what they were doing.
"Ben, you're stepping on the wrong spot with your right foot."
Su Wei walked over, bent down, and picked out several irregularly shaped pieces of black crystal sand, each about the size of a fist, from the filled-in pile of rubble with his bare hands.
He stacked these stones alternately between large blocks of basalt, deliberately leaving obvious gaps.
The bottom layer is a drainage layer.
Su Wei's voice was steady.
"At the same time, it will also be a breeding ground for nitrifying bacteria throughout the entire river in the future."
"The gaps between the stones must be preserved; it is not allowed to fill the holes with small pebbles."
He pointed to the area he had just rearranged.
"Don't make it flat; arrange it in a honeycomb pattern with an angle."
Ben gripped the shovel handles with both hands, glanced at Matt, and then looked at Su Wei.
The three construction workers exchanged glances.
In their respective construction careers, they had never encountered an employer who couldn't fill the gaps by placing stones indoors.
But with the generous hourly wage, they had no choice but to put away their shovels and put on gloves.
They carefully arranged these heavy volcanic rocks, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
After two hours of fine-tuning and correction, the basaltic volcanic rock drainage layer at the bottom of the entire twelve-meter-long river channel was completely laid.
Countless rocks are tightly interwoven, forming a sophisticated natural filtration structure at the bottom.
Su Wei stepped out of the shallow trough and walked to the several dark blue plastic storage boxes piled up in the corner.
These are the results of his explorations over the past few days, both Emerald Lake and deep within private woodlands.
He opened the lid of one of the storage boxes.
"What's this?"
Matt leaned closer and sniffed hard.
"It smells like rotting, fermenting leaves."
Matt frowned.
"Forest understory coniferous soil and lakeshore humus."
Su Wei put on a pair of half-finger tactical leather gloves and plunged his hands directly into the cold, damp soil.
Two workers unfurled a thick, three-meter-square tarpaulin.
Box after box of soil was dumped into the center of the tarpaulin, forming a small hill half a meter high.
The dark brown humus soil exudes a strong, fishy smell, while the black soil mixed with half-rotten pine needles has a dry, granular texture.