Chapter One Hundred: Build, Build

Clap, clap, clap...

Standing on a small branch jutting from the mountain tree, Wu You applauded to get everyone’s attention.

“All right, everyone. We’re about to begin construction, so let me give you a little pep talk.”

“Rainbow coral polyps, yes, I mean you. You’ve all familiarized yourselves with the blueprints, haven’t you?”

A dense cluster of mushroom-sized little beings of every color crowded the trunk, their shapes astonishingly varied.

Though they were called coral polyps, their mushroomlike size was obviously far larger than the rice-grain scale of ordinary polyps.

Some were flower-shaped, some tubular, some spherical, each looking soft and plump in its own way.

At a glance, they were rather cute.

They bounced twice toward Wu You to show that they understood.

Do not underestimate these little things. They could absorb active metallic elements, then use keratin and exoskeletal growth to construct structures.

Unlike ordinary coral polyps in nature, every piece of metal-rich exoskeleton they secreted retained living cells from their own bodies.

These metal-like exoskeletons, which could change color according to the metallic elements they absorbed and possessed astonishing hardness, were alive.

Even if they were merely simple black-iron creatures created through first-tier alchemy, some of their traits were genuinely useful.

They had been alchemically created from ordinary coral polyps of various kinds, together with the larvae of a bat moth commonly found in the RB region.

Those bat moth larvae had a pair of large mandibles on their heads, were only the size of grains of rice, and yet had a taste for chewing on metal, especially aluminum-rich metal.

Originally, only a few dozen had been created, but to everyone’s surprise their attempts at breeding had been spectacular. By now they had grown into a full-fledged legion.

Aside from the first few dozen, the later rainbow coral polyps were no different in obedience, though they did not appear as points of light on the system’s three-dimensional navigation map.

Though the sky was not yet dark, the air around the mobilization site was already filled with clusters of enlarged dandelion-like lights, each one as big as a football.

“The lighting team, make sure each engineer has two following behind them,” Wu You said to the floating bulbs.

These fluffy spheres were extremely light; a gentle shake of their “hairs” was enough to keep them aloft.

Each of them gave off a bright but gentle glow.

They were called dandelions, though that was not quite accurate, because an ordinary dandelion is spherical only when its many seeds are clustered on the flower head. Once the wind carries them away, the seeds have little more than a tuft of hair at the top, with the rest just a bare, slender shaft.

These luminous things floating in the air, by contrast, were covered all over their spherical bodies with fluffy light-fibers, and were exquisitely beautiful.

But although they were numerous, they were not all independent individuals.

They all came from a scattering of Luminous Ring Dandelion plants already growing throughout the ecological forest.

The parent plant of this dandelion species was no smaller than a tree, and on it formed countless dandelion offspring, waiting to fly away.

Those offspring, once separated from the parent, could grow into new plants of their own, or choose to fly back and remain inside the flower’s hollow chambers.

Luminous Ring Dandelions were like the forest’s lantern trees. Their light was warm and bright, but it did not travel far; each little bloom could illuminate only a space of a dozen meters or so.

Living throughout the forest, they could freely choose whether or not to glow.

By day, the parent plants, heavy with seed-laden offspring, looked like giant cotton trees and were just as pleasing to the eye.

They had been alchemically created from a larger variety of dandelion, luminous fern-like plants, and lantern trees, making them genuine second-tier alchemical organisms.

Once the mobilization was nearly done, Wu You finally turned to face Hu Lei and the others.

“All right, you can begin. I’ll leave the rest to you professionals.”

The others had been itching to get started for ages, after all. They were here to build this tree-top manor.

They had kept putting off leave requests to their respective advisors for so long that one of the advisors had bluntly told Fan Xiaojin, “Forget about passing your master’s degree in one shot.”

But by then, Fan Xiaojin no longer cared.

The whole reason he had wanted a higher degree in the first place was to make job hunting easier and to land a profession with both a decent salary and a respectable image.

Now that he was under Wu You, the pay and benefits were absolutely hard to find anywhere else in the industry, and he even had a chance to realize his dream.

Who cared anymore whether he finished graduate school or not? This master’s degree could go to hell.

Soon enough, the construction site sprang into action.

The rainbow coral polyps formed into several neat rows like a small army, taking their positions according to the foundation lines that had already been marked on the branches.

Then they fused together front to back and side to side, beginning a massed growth process.

About every ten minutes, that batch of little fellows would climb down from the section of wall they had already built and be replaced by another group.

The ones that came down would then walk along the vine bridges in midair to the thick branch on the other side to replenish their energy.

There, not only was there water from the water vines, but also a large pile of metal ingots, assorted scrap, and, of course, some organic matter as well.

After eating until their bodies swelled to several times their original size, they would trundle back over to “take part in the construction” again.

The wall-building speed held steady at roughly ten centimeters every ten minutes.

And that was ten centimeters of the structure as a whole, which was by no means slow.

As time passed, the world outside gradually darkened, but around the mountain tree it remained bright.

At first Wu You found it quite novel, but after watching for nearly two hours he began to feel bored.

Seeing that Hu Lei and the other four were still brimming with enthusiasm, he said hello and took his leave.

Since construction was already on track, it was time for him to go and carry out some of his other brainstormed plans.

If not for the limited amount of alchemical energy, and the need to reserve a thousand points in case raising the authority of the Eastern Domain brought additional consumption, Wu You would have wanted to keep creating endlessly.

The sense of achievement that came from creation, and the novelty of experiencing new abilities through alchemical beings, was addictive.

If Hu Lei and the others were driven by a dogged dream of building a grand structure, then Wu You, in the realm of alchemical creation, could at least understand them a little.

Lately, he had been feeling a faint, inexplicable pressure at the level of instinct.

If his current physical condition and mental fortitude had not made illness impossible, Wu You might have even gone to the hospital.

When exactly had this sensation begun?

It seemed to have started after that strange dream he could not remember.

And that was what made it so maddening. By the logic of movies and novels, shouldn’t a dream like that repeat itself several times in succession? Then Wu You could have used those chances to recover more of it.

But he had only dreamed it once. After that, no matter how he changed his sleeping position, he never had that dream again.

It was not a case of having dreamed it and then forgotten it, because the dream had been too unusual. Even if he could not remember the content, he would absolutely not have forgotten the feeling.

Still, he would not think about that for now.

Wu You planned to go out to sea tonight. There was no need to make a fuss with a yacht; he could simply fly out wrapped in a cloud of mist, or swim out beneath the water.

He had already rested enough and prepared the Spring-Back Continuation Ointment. Tonight, he intended to bring the “super tentacle monster” into being.