Late Ming Dynasty: Summoning players from Liaodong to support the Ming Dynasty

"We did it! We did it! Wow, we've built a blast furnace for iron smelting in the late Ming Dynasty! From today onwards, Guangning will have plenty of weapons!"

The roar of Gongshu Ban, mixed with the booming of molten iron, echoed in the night sky of Guangning City.

The sheer ecstasy in that voice instantly ignited the passion of all the players present.

But there was one person who was even more excited than Gongshu Ban.

Zhou Keke pushed through the revelry, and her eyes shone with an alarming light in the scorching heat.

She didn't look at the flowing molten iron, but stared intently at the unremarkable iron ingot in Gongshu Ban's hand after it had cooled down.

"Iron! It's iron!" She rushed over and snatched the still-warm iron ingot from Gongshu Ban's hand. The rough and heavy texture made her tremble with excitement.

"We have the materials! We finally have the core materials!"

Gongshu Ban hadn't recovered from the joy of success when he was stunned by Zhou Keke's crazy appearance.

"Sister Zhou, what are you doing? This molten iron still has too many impurities; it can't be used to make weapons..."

"Who said we were going to make weapons?"

Zhou Keke interrupted him, raising the iron ingot in her hand high and issuing a new command to all the infrastructure players who were excited about the completion of the blast furnace.

"I'm going to build a tower! [Project Fortress], entering Phase 2.0!"

"I'm going to turn Guangning City into an impenetrable steel tortoise shell!"

If blast furnace ironmaking was the prelude to the "steel torrent," then what Zhou Keke is about to play is the final movement of the infrastructure powerhouse.

With cement, they also had iron.

A crazy and audacious idea took shape in her mind.

She ran back to the makeshift shed, and amidst the noise, spread out her huge drawing sheet, quickly sketching and modifying it with a charcoal pencil.

"Look here!" she explained to the gathered players, pointing to a cross-section of the city wall. "We used cement to build the wall, which is strong enough, but it has its limits in terms of impact resistance. Now, we have iron!"

She used charcoal to draw crisscrossing lines inside the wall.

"This stuff isn't strong enough! So it's not called steel reinforcement, it's called 'iron bars'! But that doesn't stop us from using these inferior iron bars as a framework and then pouring cement on them! If the strength isn't enough, we'll make up for it with quantity! I'm going to build a complete 'iron-reinforced concrete' load-bearing structure inside the city wall!"

"And here, the firing ports! They can't just be simple breaches anymore! We need to build bunker-like firing ports with roofs! Reinforce the tops with cement so the Tartar catapults can't penetrate them! Archers can safely fire from inside!"

"And here too! The inside of the wall needs to be hollowed out to build 'hidden troop tunnels'! This will allow for rapid troop movement and can also serve as temporary rest points!"

Her speech became faster and faster, and the lines on the drawing became more and more complex and grotesque.

Finally, she used charcoal to draw a protruding, sharp pentagonal structure at the corner of the city wall.

"This is called a 'bastion'!"

"With it, our city walls will no longer be rigid straight lines! Any enemy attacking our walls will be simultaneously exposed to crossfire from two directions! There will be no blind spots below the walls!"

Inside the shed, there was a deathly silence.

All the players stared in disbelief at the war monster on the blueprint, a creature brimming with violent aesthetics.

Is this... is this still defending the city?

This is a fortress city!

Shi Dali leaned over to take a look, scratched his head, and offered his professional opinion.

"Sister Zhou! How about we put two giant fists at the entrance? Fists! That big! It'll scare them to death!"

Without even looking up, Zhou Keke kicked him in the butt.

"Get out! I want a killing machine, not a tourist attraction!"

Project Fortress 2.0 has officially launched.

The entire city of Guangning has been transformed into a massive, bustling construction site.

The players' enthusiasm was at an all-time high. Under the command of Zhou Keke, the obsessive-compulsive chief engineer, they frantically poured tons of cement and freshly forged iron bars into Guangning's city defense system.

Of course, the "artistic creations" of silly gamers will never be absent.

A player left his huge handprint on a freshly poured cement wall, and next to it, he crookedly carved his ID.

Another team overflowing with artistic talent used excess cement to build a giant "funny" expression sculpture more than two meters tall in a small square in the city.

A few amused people even put up a classic picture of Kun Kun leaning on the city wall, which made Chu Ze's lips twitch.

Qian Lele's live stream title has once again ignited a firestorm on the forum.

[Exploring Ancient Reinforced Concrete! China's Infrastructure Giants Recreate the Maginot Line in Guangning!]

The screen was flooded with "666" and "Holy crap" comments.

Zhou Keke chose to turn a blind eye to all of this.

As long as it doesn't affect the load-bearing structure and firepower layout she designed, these energetic guys can do whatever they want.

Day 14.

Amin's "half-month period" has only one day left.

Wang Erniu patrolled the city wall early in the morning, but the more he walked, the more uneasy he felt.

The city walls have changed every day these past few days.

The walls, which were originally pitted and covered with moss, are now smooth as a mirror, presenting a cold grayish-white color.

Wang Erniu reached out and touched it. The hard, cold touch made him feel as if he was touching not a city wall, but a huge piece of rock.

What he couldn't understand even more were the strange new things on the city wall.

The covered openings were dark and menacing.

There was also that huge, pointed platform protruding from the corner of the city wall; he wandered around it for ages but still couldn't figure out what it was for.

"What... what kind of sorcery is this?" Wang Erniu's mind was completely overwhelmed.

He felt that if he continued watching, his decades-long understanding of war would completely collapse.

He couldn't hold back any longer, so he turned around, ran down the city wall, and headed straight for Li Xunyi's residence.

"Mr. Li! Mr. Li! Please come with me to take a look!" Wang Erniu kicked open the door, startling the old scholar who was studying "A Preliminary Exploration of Potato Planting Techniques".

"Deputy General Wang, what's the matter that you're so panicked?"

"The city wall! Something's happened at the city wall again!" Wang Erniu pulled Li Xunyi along and headed outside. "Those heavenly soldiers are causing trouble on the city wall again! You're so knowledgeable, come and take a look for me, see if those things can even fight!"

Li Xunyi was dragged along by Wang Erniu, staggering as he climbed up the south city wall.

When he stepped onto the incredibly smooth, gray-white ground, and when he saw the complexly structured bastion that exuded a chilling killing intent, he froze.

He adjusted the monocle on the bridge of his nose, his mouth agape, unable to utter a single word.

Zhou Keke was conducting a final inspection on the fortress when she saw the two NPCs coming up, so she casually offered an explanation.

"This is a crossfire point. The archers standing here can attack the enemies below that wall. And the archers on that wall can also shoot at the enemies below this wall. Any enemy who tries to get close to the wall will be torn to shreds."

Li Xunyi looked in the direction she was pointing, and his mind went blank.

A three-dimensional, all-encompassing killing network composed of countless arrows instantly took shape in his mind.

He recalled the chapter on city defense in the ancient book "Mozi," and those ingenious mechanical designs.

But this thing before us is a hundred times more ingenious and a hundred times more practical than the Mohist arts!

This is not some fancy trick.

This...this is the art of war!

The old scholar walked forward tremblingly, reaching out to gently stroke the cold walls of the bastion.

He didn't speak to Wang Erniu, but turned around and looked at Zhou Keke with the eyes of someone looking at a rare treasure, and asked excitedly:

"Lady! May I ask you, lady?"

"Such an astonishing design, could it be... could it be derived from the ultimate techniques of ancient military strategists?"

Zhou Keke paused for a moment, thought about the "Structural Mechanics" and "Military Architecture" courses she had studied in university, and answered very seriously.

"No, this is science."

science?

Li Xunyi pondered this unfamiliar word, feeling that it contained endless mysteries.

A gray-white war fortress stands quietly on the land of Liaodong.

It was cold and silent, like a lurking prehistoric beast, quietly waiting for its prey to come to it.

Li Xunyi stood at the highest point of the bastion, the cold wind blowing his gray beard.

Looking at the Later Jin camp outside the city, still immersed in the jubilation of "victory is certain," for the first time, there was no worry in his cloudy old eyes.

Instead, a complex emotion mixed with awe and pity arose.

He lowered his head, looking at the killing machine made of cement and steel beneath his feet, his lips moving as he muttered to himself.

"General, what kind of people are these... monsters?"