CHAPTER 503: CHAPTER 481 THE FUTURE INDUSTRIAL CENTER OF THE SAVIOR POPE COUNTRY

The torrential rain has been continuing for three days straight, even the sewage water is overflowing from the cedar boards.

On the slippery, muddy streets, every time the doors open, swarms of slimes can be seen crawling and rolling merrily on the stone bricks.

However, soon specialized artisans would arrive with temporarily hired laborers to capture all these slimes, skin them, extract tendons, and then use them as one of the raw materials for mortar.

It wasn’t until the fourth day that the rain gradually lessened, the misty rain strands nonchalantly embraced the long dike, and it seemed a layer of transparent rain fuzz had grown on the bluish-gray stones.

Donning an oilcloth cloak and holding a barely effective oil-paper umbrella, Horn stood atop the dam, gazing at the lake water crashing against the long dike like ocean waves.

Though he held an umbrella, his body and face were covered in rainwater, causing his black hair to stick to the corners of his mouth.

Due to the unique climate of Thousand River Valley, the rain here doesn’t fall like in Jiangnan but swirls sideways or even flies horizontally.

Horn initially thought the locals preferred cloaks over umbrellas because they couldn’t make them.

But when he opened the umbrella only to find the rain stop, then not using it found the rain falling, and when the umbrella was blown sideways by the rain, he realized the joke was on him.

Reluctantly, he handed the umbrella to Armand beside him, put on a hood, and continued forward on the slippery cobblestones.

It’s been five days since Horn returned from the underground palace, and currently, news about the underground palace is circulating within limited upper circles.

As for the murals in the underground palace, Horn had them roughly copied, while Hilov is still deciphering those two books.

These two pieces of information will serve as internal reference materials for the Salvation Army, visible only to those with certain permissions.

The events triggered by the Demon Hunter end here.

The only puzzle is that the person acting covertly hasn’t surfaced up to now, despite several investigations yielding no reliable results.

But Horn doesn’t care much, previously there wasn’t preparedness, but now the security forces on Autumn Dusk Island have tripled.

If that person truly comes with malicious intent, Horn ensures they won’t get away unscathed.

In the subsequent torrent, many of Horn’s daily activities had to stop.

These two to three days of rain were his true rest time, until today when Armand brought news that the day to open the gates and release water finally arrived.

"What time is the gate opening?" With his hands behind his back, Horn looked at the murky blue-black lake in front, where aquatic plants, stones, and mud surged beneath, along with many fish bones and branches swirling.

"About an hour later, we’re doing the final inspections." Armand stood about two feet behind Horn.

Horn turned around, facing the originally dry riverbed.

After days of heavy rain, the mud in the riverbed became more viscous and wet.

Within this sticky, wet mud, hundreds of people were running back and forth barefoot, with yellow-black mud splatters on their pants cuffs and cheeks.

Sometimes Horn even saw chunks of mud floating on some people’s arms, upon closer inspection realising they were river mud clinging to their arm hair.

According to those water management talents (many were captives, including Knights) dug out by Horn, the standard to judge a river laborer’s dedication was to look at their calves.

Because any diligent river worker would have no hairs left on their calves, pulled out by the mud.

Yet they were astonished that these paid laborers worked far more efficiently compared to their obligatory counterparts.

Someone even calculated and found the more the salary, the harder the laborers worked, thus yielding higher efficiency.

Higher efficiency then reduces the overall project duration, hence less expenditure, and lesser total salary payments.

So, more salary equals less salary.

In all honesty, Horn thought their reasoning process was deriving from nothing, because the real effective factors—spring mechanisms and collective consciousness—they didn’t even count.

Not speaking of spring mechanisms, this primitive collective consciousness inherited from the Gulag era greatly reduced the management difficulty of laborers in the Savior Pope Country by several levels.

Upon this topic, Horn couldn’t help but recall the craftsman examination from a few days ago.

The artisan exam on Autumn Dusk Island was divided into two parts, the first being a written test.

However, since many artisans were quite rough around the edges, many handed in blank papers, but it didn’t matter because everyone being equally bad meant all were still okay.

The second part was crucial—the practical exam.

Woodworkers went to saw wood, weavers went to weave, and dyers had to dye on-site, based on the product’s labor time, and every category’s time varied.

Dyer exams could last three to five days, while woodworking concluded in half a day.

For example, the clothing artisan examination required crafting a cold-resistant garment to be worn between the underwear and outer coat within a stipulated period using existing materials according to Horn’s needs.

Surprisingly, among the two artisans attacked by Aijia Lang, one named Asle turned out to be a superior all-around tailor.

The improved jacket he designed successfully won first place, aligning with Horn’s requirements and the characteristics of the current materials.

From its design, it closely resembled Victorian wool vests from Horn’s memory, indicating Asle was indeed on the right track.

Horn had his reasons for setting up the artisan exams on Autumn Dusk Island like this.

The first product Asle designed will be Horn’s first order for his workshop.

wool vests, with advance payment from the Pope’s Palace, delivered before winter.

These wool vests won’t follow the original tailoring shop’s custom-fit model, instead, they’ll be uniformly made according to size specifications.

This batch of vests and other clothes will initially be released to various shops and general stores under the Pope’s Palace, priced lower than custom-made ones.

If sales are good, Horn will continue to place more orders; if sales falter, then Asle would have to seek orders himself.

One of Horn’s development goals for Autumn Dusk Island is to focus notably on the textile and clothing industry.

At the current level of civilization, the only substantial gap in clothing, food, housing, and travel throughout the Empire and the industry capable of development and profit is the textile industry.

His homeland’s history has shown that both the Netherlands and England rose with the textile light industry.

The former capitalized on the religious reform dividends, the latter on steam engine dividends and made the Netherlands its own dividend.

Autumn Dusk Island or Daze Village reaped the benefits of spring mechanisms and alchemy.

The former could detach from water and animal power and steadily and swiftly produce vast quantities of standard textile products.

The latter brought various alchemical products, including Slime Gel, mortar, mountain copper, and various alchemical potions.

Take Slime Gel alone as an example, as a dye fixative, it has a strong fabric adhesion, allowing dyes to firmly bond to the fibres.

Using Slime Gel as a supplementary printing dye effect can even shatter old dyers’ worldviews.

If this were a high magic world, these old dyers might even explode from the inability to accept new knowledge.

The strangest part about Autumn Dusk Island is that these two benefits are pretty much tied to it.

Due to the political environment, many Wizards within the Pope Country are keener on living in Daze Village than external cities.

Because the residents here are the most devout, their customs more open, and the Natural Priests are abundant, not suffering much discrimination.

Regarding spring mechanisms, because Star-forged Gears need to recharge every 15 to 20 days, they can’t stray too far from the Ethereal Tower.

Otherwise, they might not recharge in time, leading to inefficiency.

This means many powerful spring mechanisms cannot leave the range of Autumn Dusk Island, they can only establish workshops there.

Horn plans to place the ruling center on Autumn Dusk Island, not only because it’s an old devout base but also for real factors.

If Horn were to predict a future industrial hub for the Pope Country, he would bet on this very lake island before him.

"Speaking of which, the Star-forged Gear distribution was just compiled a few days ago, would you like to hear about it?" Armand suddenly spoke as he listened to Horn.

"Why wasn’t I told sooner?" Horn looked at the perplexed Armand, suddenly recalling his order not to disturb him with non-urgent matters.

Coughing, he said, "Then go ahead and tell me."