CHAPTER 499: WE WILL BUILD A WALL

My girls looked at me in confusion.

"What? But we were trying to destroy all the ice-hole trees, not to spread them!" Workharder exclaimed.

"Is this to farm them? For prosthetics?" Tabletina asked.

Others just waited for me to elaborate, which I did with great glee. My plan would turn the tide of the war between the Bee Empire and the trees upside down!

"We will plant the trees in a long line, my dears. Of course, we will send gardeners to cut any flowers this line of trees will grow out before they can start releasing seeds. But we will let the trees grow nice and tall, then..."

I saw Researchina’s eyes widen. It clicked in her head, too. Still, I continued for the sake of the rest of my Advisers. And for the sake of theatrics.

"When water from the mountains reaches the tree wall, all warmth will be drained from it, and it will freeze immediately! This will create a wall of ice that will separate the Bee Empire from the flood until it seeps into the ground or evaporates."

Researchina looked at the map, then began rapidly writing calculations in her notes.

"This will require thousands of ice-hole trees to cover the range where the flood will hit... Then extra trees to make sure that the water won’t pour on us another way... But, Father," she suddenly raised her head to look at me. "What about the existing rivers that will flood when the snow melts?"

"Same thing. We can plant trees to create an ice dam as a part of our ice wall."

"What if the ice-hole trees spread away from the wall?" Bloodhero asked. "Will we keep gardeners near them?"

"Of course. I’m sure that a lot of people will be necessary to maintain this wall. However, I expect that it won’t be a problem forever. Eventually, the water will entomb the trees completely."

Workharder gasped.

"Yes, of course! Even though water freezes before it can even touch an ice-hole tree, if it pours from one side in such amounts... it will pour over it and create an ice dome."

Researchina still looked doubtful.

"The roots of these trees can break through stone. What will stop them from breaking through ice, too?"

"Our Warrior-gardeners," Bloodhero replied. "They can cut anything that grows too large!"

"Why didn’t we do this earlier? This sounds like such an easy way to deal with these ice-hole trees, yes-yes!" Things-Things exclaimed. "Just pour water on them, no need to pour acid!"

"How do you imagine bringing so much water to the mountains without it freezing on the way there? Think before you ask, Things-Things," Ambrosia chided.

Things-Things lowered her head, but her mood only went down for a second. The next moment, she was smiling again and imagining the bright future where the ice-hole trees only existed to be farmed for wood.

"This all sounds much simpler than it actually is, girls. So don’t relax just yet," I said more somberly. "A lot of work needs to be done to calculate where the trees will be planted, who will plant them, who will prune them... who will bring seeds to plant in the first place. And we have limited time."

After this, the working atmosphere returned to the Council Chambers. As if sensing that everybody needed extra sugar to make their brains work, Attendant Helping-Hands brought us fresh honeyed tea.

The work has begun.

We made a rough plan of what had to be done to make the ice wall a reality, then spread the task among our subordinates.

The ice wall was going to spread for thousands of kilometres and cross dozens of rivers. Some of them were only a few hundred meters wide, but others reached the width measured in kilometres! This was without even counting various narrow creeks.

The creeks could be just blocked by the wall, but each river required a dam, and each dam required a separate team of Builders who would plan it.

To make the ice dams possible in the first place, I proposed growing ice-hole trees in pots—pots large enough for a tree, of course!—then put them into the river.

This would require careful timing, though. Too early, and the tree would grow so large that humans and mechas wouldn’t be able to transport its pot without freezing their fingers (or their crew and joints in case of mechas). Too late, and the tree will drown before it can grow.

A large part of the anti-tree army was going to become gardeners and maintain the tree wall before and after it turns into an ice wall. But this was a temporary assignment—by our plan, the wall was going to be maintained by dedicated bees later, since it was a building that would stand there for an indefinite amount of time.

After all, there might be more floods after the anti-tree army cuts more trees.

To lessen the logistical burden on the Bee Empire, the Council split the future ice wall into sectors, each of which was given to the region of the Bee Empire it went through. This way, the local Queens could administer them and related workers without having to go through the Council.

Finally, we came up with an estimate for how long finishing the tree wall would take. It was a less favourable estimate than I hoped for.

Although the trees could grow to a massive size within a day, even without extra warmth brought to them, bringing the seeds to the necessary location would take time. The nearest ice-hole trees were high in the mountains, and it would take days just to gather and deliver enough of them.

It would also take days to carefully build every dam. Not building them and instead blocking the rivers entirely was not an option—these rivers irrigated countless fields and were a source of fish meat for entire regions of the Bee Empire. Not only humans, but bees, too, depended on them.

So in total, we would need...