After a week of nonstop hammering, hauling, and hollering, the brick kiln finally stood on the east edge of the village like some big, rectangular beast made of stone and sweat. Its chimney poked into the sky like it wanted to gossip with the clouds.
Yang Xu stood with his hands on his hips, covered in dust and satisfaction. "Finally! One step closer to not living in mud huts."
The cement factory had already become the new pride of the village. The once-skeptical old men now bragged about how their grandsons stirred the cement that held up walls, and every child had memorized the word "mortar" like it was some kind of magic spell. The system had long gone ding, awarding him the Brick Kiln Blueprint for achieving his first large-scale industrial production. Now, with bricks and cement both in his grasp, Yang Xu was finally beginning to feel like a proper boss… a slightly cracked one, but a boss nonetheless.
Naturally, to build bigger things, one needed more than just bricks and dreams. Yang Xu knew what was coming next—transportation. Roads.
Three months flew by in the blink of an eye.
By now, the kiln had been operational long enough to start producing uniform bricks that didn't look like overbaked steamed buns. A good number of villagers had been trained into semi-skilled workers. Some even began arguing over whose bricks were stronger, slapping them against tree trunks like proud craftsmen.
During those three months, Yang Xu didn't just rest. He introduced work shifts (to the villagers' horror), conducted a few crude literacy lessons ("This character is 火, like when your cooking catches on fire—anyone?"), and most importantly, he planned the lifeblood of any modern place—roads.
"People don't realize how much time they waste just trying to get somewhere," he muttered one afternoon while poking at a rough sketch on paper. "And I'm tired of tripping in ditches every day."
The first road he mapped out was the most practical: from the cement factory to the brick kiln. Even with both factories relatively close, transporting material over bumpy dirt trails made every trip feel like a mini war campaign.
The second road went from the cement factory up into the hills, where a promising deposit of limestone had been found. The villagers called it the "white mountain"—not very creative, but fair enough.
The third road, most ambitious of all, would connect the agricultural zone to the town square, slicing through several vegetable plots, a pigsty, and Old Man He's favorite tea spot. That last one required some "diplomatic persuasion" and several bowls of pickled radish.
On the day the first road was completed, the system chimed again with a faint glow in his mind:
Ding! You have constructed your first dedicated industrial access route.
Reward: +2 Business and Management Talent Personnel.
Yang Xu blinked. "Personnel? Like… actual people?!"
Two young men appeared the next morning, each looking clean-cut, oddly confident, and with expressions that screamed "I've read a book or two more than you." One of them was already organizing some leftover planks, muttering something about supply chain optimization. The other asked Yang Xu if there was a ledger system in place.
"Uh... I was using a bamboo tally and my memory."
The man looked at him like he'd just confessed to eating rocks for breakfast.
"Well, no more of that," the newcomer said, bowing politely. "Zhao Yefu, at your service. This is my colleague, Qian Su."
Yang Xu scratched his head. "The system really sends people now? What's next, automated accountants?"
But he wasn't complaining. With these two on his team, things moved faster. Materials were tracked, schedules were tighter, and villagers got pay slips made of stamped bamboo strips. Morale improved when people could actually count how many workdays they'd done instead of guessing based on how sore their backs felt.
The roads also had a curious side effect.
Once the road between the factories was complete, the older villagers who had been muttering things like, "This boy's building madness" suddenly changed their tune.
"You know, this walking path isn't half bad. My knees don't click as much."
"You can drag a cart over it now! Fancy that!"
And the village kids? They turned the newly paved section into a race track, skidding over the smooth surface in bare feet until Yang Xu threatened to assign them to rock hauling duty.
Now, midway through the road construction chapter of his life, Yang Xu sat under a tree, chewing on a roasted yam and grinning.
This world was still slow, still full of potholes, both literal and metaphorical but he was laying down the foundation. One shovel at a time. One brick at a time. One hilarious misunderstanding at a time.
He leaned back, watching villagers pull carts over the newly flattened surface, some humming, some laughing. A few even debated whether one day, they'd build roads that stretched all the way to Chang'an.
Yang Xu chuckled. "Roads to Chang'an? First, let's build roads that don't collapse after two rainstorms."
But in the back of his mind, the gears were already turning.
That didn't sound like such a bad idea.
[ Come and let's create a different world together, shall we? here's the key to do just that, hop into the server now! https://discord.gg/QdZ69nAZjf ]