Beneath the Sand

Early the morning after the commendation ceremony, a vast force set out from the camp and headed east.

Over three days, the force covered a thousand kilometers, reached the border of the First Sunrise Republic, and officially entered the Gravel Scale Desert.

The Feather Race engineering troops deployed along the route, leveling the ground and casting "Turn Sand to Stone" to build simple, flat roads across the uneven sands.

The spell could quickly create a reasonably hard road surface, but its drawback was equally obvious: it did not last long.

To extend its duration, the engineers placed "reconstituted crystals" along the roads, providing a continuous supply of energy to the hardening magic.

"Reconstituted crystals" were made by adding a polymerizing agent to a magic-conducting liquid filled with crystal fragments.

They were then cured under ultraviolet light and sealed into shape.

The finished products were palm-sized "crystal discs."

They were only one-tenth as effective as magic crystals of the same volume.

Given too much time, the polymerizing agent would oxidize and decompose, causing the "reconstituted crystals" to crack and fail.

But that did not matter.

On the previous Kunpeng cargo flight, Su Ming had shipped a full sixty tons of "reconstituted crystals" from Ruby Base.

There was enough to choke on!

Some Feather Race mages had originally scoffed at the performance of the "reconstituted crystals."

But then they saw the Final Bone Mad Machines' logistics department unloading sack after sack from the trucks as if they were carrying bags of rice.

Every one of them wanted to drop to their knees and call him daddy.

The magic crystals many of them had seen in their entire lives amounted to no more than a few crystal discs.

Su Ming had brought three whole truckloads in one go!

And there were more to