Chapter Forty-Five: A Blueprint for Construction-No apocalipse, estoques bilionários de suprimentos e domínio total da construção em terras devastadas!(A lua segue o barco que navega.)

Jiang Qiyu sat at her desk, holding the "Handbook of House Construction" in her hands, carefully turning the pages one by one. The contents of the manual were extremely detailed, covering everything from basic city wall construction to complex residential designs, and even including construction methods for resource-gathering facilities such as lumber yards and quarries. Every page was illustrated with detailed blueprints and construction guides, resembling an encyclopedia tailor-made for a doomsday base.

"City walls, lumber yards, quarries, residences..." she murmured softly, a bright gleam of excitement flashing in her eyes. The more than thirty types of architecture mentioned in the manual deeply inspired her, especially the sections concerning resource gathering and defensive fortifications.

Centered around the villa, a lord's manor should be established, with a circular residential area laid out outward to form a sanctuary.

As the core building, the villa's walls would be constructed of thick reinforced concrete, the windows fitted with specially made bulletproof glass, and the main gate forged from high-strength alloy, equipped with multiple locking and defensive mechanisms. The interior of the villa would be divided into vital functional areas such as a command center, a material storage warehouse, and a medical room.

The residential shelters would be built surrounding the villa, primarily using wood and masonry structures. Each residence would cover an area of about 30 to 50 square meters, accommodating 3 to 5 people. The distance between houses would be 2 to 3 meters, ensuring a certain degree of privacy while facilitating communication and mutual aid among residents. The exterior walls of the residences would be built by piling bricks and stones to a thickness of about 30 centimeters, possessing a certain degree of impact resistance and zombie-proof capability; the roofs would be constructed using wooden frames paired with asbestos tiles, which are both rainproof and relatively lightweight.

Between the residences and the villa, a circular passageway about 5 meters wide would be set up to facilitate the rapid movement of personnel and supplies. The ground of the passageway would be paved with flat stone slabs, flanked by simple streetlights powered by solar energy to ensure night illumination. On the inner side of the passageway close to the villa, a row of wooden sentry posts would be established, with personnel arranged to take turns on duty 24 hours a day, responsible for monitoring the surrounding situation.

Along the outermost periphery of the entire residential area (sanctuary), a circle of defensive walls would be constructed. The wall would be about 3 meters high, built from a mixture of bricks, stones, and scrap metal, with a watchtower set up every 10 meters, equipped with binoculars and simple communication equipment to promptly detect and report dangerous situations. Multiple shooting ports would also be set up along the wall to defend against zombies and potential external threats.

This was the safest and most convenient architectural plan achievable at present.

She recalled the previous construction of the base; although they had also gathered wood and stones, they always had to drive to distant stadiums and forests each time, resulting in extremely low efficiency.

If they could follow the suggestions in the manual to establish lumber yards and quarries at suitable locations, the speed of resource gathering would be greatly enhanced.

"The lumber yard can be built near the woods on the east side of the villa area, and the quarry can be built directly beside the stadium," she whispered to herself, rapidly plotting the future layout of the base in her mind.

The last few pages of the manual also mentioned that as the buildings of the base increased, the level of the manual would also rise, unlocking more advanced buildings and functions. This made Jiang Qiyu look forward to future developments even more.

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Just as dawn was breaking, Jiang Qiyu was already standing in the center of the base's open ground, her posture upright and her aura formidable.

The residents arrived one after another, falling silent upon seeing her, their eyes filled with awe. In this doomsday world, Jiang Qiyu had become everyone's backbone through her strength and decisiveness.

"Today we are building defensive fortifications and residences. Follow the manual and make no mistakes," Jiang Qiyu said in a crisp tone, without any superfluous words.

She quickly assigned tasks: "Transportation group, haul the wood and stones to the construction site, and mind your safety. Construction group, strictly follow the blueprints." Her logic was clear, and her orders were explicit.

The crowd acted swiftly. The transportation group strained under the weight of materials heading toward the site, while the construction group gathered around the manual to study it. Due to a lack of experience, the construction progress was slow, and every step was taken with extreme caution.

On the second day, before the morning light had completely torn through the gray-clouded sky, the courtyard of the base was already bustling with noise. Jiang Qiyu stood on the steps of the villa, watching the ant-like busy crowd before her, her fingertips unconsciously stroking the leather cover of the "Handbook of House Construction."

The people moved like whipped spinning tops, shuttling back and forth between the temporary warehouse piled with timber and stone and the construction site. Old Li, getting on in years, hunched over as he hoisted a round log as thick as a bowl. Sweat rolled down his neck into his collar, soaking the crooked cloth strip sewn on his back that read "Transportation Team 3." "Take it easy, Old Li!" he shouted at the staggering middle-aged man ahead of him. "If this log drops, our day's work will be for nothing!" Before his voice faded, the timber on Old Li's shoulder suddenly tilted and slid off, crashing heavily onto the ground, startling a woman nearby who was nailing a fence so much that she nearly hit her finger with the hammer.

The situation over at the construction group was even more headache-inducing. Five or six heads were squeezed together over the spread-out manual like a flock of sparrows pecking at rice. A middle-aged woman in faded overalls poked the blueprint with her calloused finger: "This load-bearing pillar has to be mortised at an angle; before the doomsday, my dad built an old house..." A young student wearing glasses nearby frantically pushed up his frames: "But page 17 of the manual specifies a right-angle structure."

Zhang Yu, who was plastering mud onto the wall, came over waving his mortar-covered hands: "If you ask me, we should build the frame first..."

When Jiang Qiyu walked closer over the gravel, this was the scene that met her eyes: two men wrestling with chisels, wood chips falling rapidly onto the backs of their vein-bulging hands; three women kneeling on the ground measuring the foundation with grass ropes, the grass stems snapping into pieces in the morning dew; the youngest Ah Ming holding a rake as a measuring rod, his crooked shadow shrinking into a lump under the rising sun.

"Stop." Her cold, crisp voice fell like a basin of ice water. Everyone froze in place, watching the lord pull out a charcoal pencil and sketch rapidly on a wooden board: "The mortise and tenon angle is for the roof; the load-bearing walls must be vertical—Aunt Wang, bring over your father's traditional hemp rope winch." She then turned to the glasses-wearing student: "Use lime water to mark lines on the mud ground, and drive a wooden stake every five feet." Finally, looking at Zhang Yu: "The framework must wait until the markings are finished before..."

A sudden ripping sound interrupted her words. Everyone turned their heads in unison to see two porters clumsily trying to steady an overturned cart, sending gravel clattering down into a newly dug trench. Jiang Qiyu closed her eyes for a moment, smelling the scent of fresh wood chips mixed with the sourness of sweat, and suddenly recalled the uniform concrete high walls of the Dawn Base in her previous life. There were no flustered civilians there, only silent laborers and the whips of overseers.

"That's it for today." She put away her charcoal pencil, looking at the stunned expressions of the crowd, "Just finish drawing the marker lines before sunset."

When dusk fell, Jiang Qiyu stood on the rooftop looking down. The crooked lime lines wound across the scorched earth like a silver snake, and more than thirty wooden stakes stood unevenly like missing teeth. But at some point, someone had tied little bells to the stakes with scraps of cloth, which jingled as the night wind swept past—this was the most primitive alarm system, yet it made her eyes burn hotter than any sophisticated instrument.

Jiang Qiyu folded her arms and watched, seeing the wood and stones rapidly diminishing, and recalled the sentence in the manual: "Timber and stone are important foundations for the development of the base and must be stockpiled in large quantities." She knew clearly in her heart that at the current rate of consumption and gathering, the resources wouldn't last long, and a stable resource-gathering mechanism had to be established as soon as possible.