Chapter 81: Chapter 81: Encircling the Wall and Building Watchtowers
Returning to the base, Ye Fan immediately went back to his temporary tent.
He first checked his supplies.
The supplies brought back by the new soldiers of the Third Company were all sent to the recycling station, and the piles outside couldn’t be seen.
Now those supplies have all turned into numbers on Ye Fan’s Red Alert interface.
Upon opening the recycling station to check, he found that the existing supplies were enough to build five thousand meters of wall.
There was especially a lot of cement, the quantity of steel was a bit lacking, and the amounts of gravel and bricks were moderate.
With the materials, building the wall was simple. Each meter required only 10 Gold to construct, so Ye Fan immediately produced five thousand meters of wall.
"Confirm construction of five thousand meters of wall, material costs offset by 90%, consuming 50,000 Gold, completing one meter every 6 seconds, and the officer can place construction at any time."
Then Ye Fan saw the progress bar for the five-meter wall start spinning.
Six seconds per meter was extremely fast, equating to ten meters per minute.
A few minutes later, Ye Fan walked out of the tent.
Behind him, Engineer Luo Jiaxin and others followed, telling Ye Fan where the inner wall should be built.
First, the river needed to be encompassed within the base, so construction had to start along the riverbank.
Ye Fan suddenly asked Nana, "Nana, can the base’s gate also be built through the system?"
"Yes, officer, every type of wall has matching gates, divided into land gates and water gates, but the cost of building a gate is ten times higher than that of the wall."
Ye Fan nodded, the tenfold cost was not a concern since the gate took up a very small area.
He began placing walls from the riverbank towards inland.
On the riverbank, suitable locations for construction began first, extending a hundred meters in a straight line!
With a sound, the giant wall was built!
Five meters high, one hundred meters long, completed in an instant!
Ye Fan was momentarily stunned, marveling at the wonder of system construction, then he climbed onto the wall to inspect.
There were steps to climb to the top of the wall, but only on the inside.
Walking up the stairs, there was a walkway one and a half meters wide.
In front of the walkway were crenellations, each over a meter high, making the five-meter-high wall, with the crenellations, exceed six meters.
Looking down from the crenellations, the wall below was as smooth as a mirror!
The cement made the wall’s surface almost devoid of any protrusions, leaving no places to climb.
Only at the five-meter height did the wall protrude, extending half a meter outward, and it was round, connecting the wall and crenellations.
The five-meter-high wall below was nearly unclimbable; even if one did climb, the round protrusion was a significant obstacle to further climbing.
Even if someone could leap over this protrusion, it would be quite laborious, and they would immediately become a target for the soldiers behind the crenellations.
Ye Fan stomped his foot hard, feeling a bit of pain, as the wall’s sturdiness was beyond his imagination.
"The wall isn’t particularly wide, a meter and a half on top isn’t quite enough."
"Officer, you get what you pay for. If you build a ten-meter wall, the top width reaches four meters and includes a curved pathway accessible by vehicles."
Ye Fan nodded, with the ordinary materials priced at 10 Gold per meter, the wall was an excellent value, and he couldn’t ask for too much.
At least, in Ye Fan’s opinion, ordinary zombies or even mutated zombies would struggle to reach the top of this wall unless the dead piled up too high below.
The Crawler they encountered today seemed to have a chance but not without difficulty.
Moreover, with defending soldiers, unless a large group of Crawlers rushed in, they were destined for death.
Once the wall was encircled, he would set up watchtowers for alert, place heavy machine guns, and his defense would be virtually impregnable.
Walking on the wall, the cool breeze carried the earthy fragrance of the fields, and Ye Fan couldn’t help but feel elated.
Suddenly in high spirits, he pointed to the fields below, "Look, this is what I made for you....."
Turning around, he saw not Zhuge Yunxue’s pretty face, but Shen Ruihui’s tense expression.
"Commander-in-Chief, what did you say?" Shen Ruihui asked excitedly.
"The work I arranged for you. Tomorrow, lead people to clear this area. Once the main wall is done, the internal partition walls need to start."
"Understood!"
Shen Ruihui, finally assigned a leadership task, was full of vigor.
Finishing the hundred-meter wall, Ye Fan started placing walls one by one.
The wall locations were priority areas, with stones and trees already cleared, allowing him to place them quickly.
The engineer beside Ye Fan told him where to leave gates and where to skip over.
For the inner base, Ye Fan planned to leave ten gates.
Among them, eight land gates and two water gates at the entrance and exit of the river into the city.
The inner base was rectangular, four kilometers wide on the front and one kilometer on the side.
The front had three land gates, one Star River water gate, and one material recycling station iron gate.
Each side had one land gate.
The rear had two land gates and one water gate.
Each land gate was twenty meters wide, with the main front gate reaching thirty meters wide, and the water gate fifty meters wide.
However, the construction materials for the gates were not yet assembled, requiring a large amount of steel.
Get the walls up first. With five thousand meters placed, most of Ye Fan’s inner wall was completed.
More than four thousand meters of wall remained, estimated to be finished tomorrow, followed by the ten gates.
After placing the wall, it was nearly dawn, yet Ye Fan was not tired. He began placing watchtowers again.
The cost of watchtowers was a bit higher due to the need for heavy machine guns, searchlights, and heavy machine gun warriors.
Facing five-meter walls, the watchtower’s main height was 5.5 meters, with a 1.5-meter foundation making it seven meters.
The construction cost was 1800 Gold, or 2400 Gold if three Army Soldiers were included as guards.
One operated the machine gun, one the searchlight, and one rotated between tasks.
Ye Fan checked the supplies; with added steel and cement, the construction cost could drop to 2000 Gold.
Overall, this was reasonable, as the machine gun team alone cost as much.
Current supplies allowed the construction of four watchtowers, which Ye Fan immediately produced.
During watchtower production, Ye Fan even fell asleep and woke up when they were completed.
He placed the four watchtowers at the four corners.
With seven-meter watchtowers established, the soldiers inside saluted Ye Fan.
These soldiers were added to Ye Fan’s regiment, with twelve more soldiers now on the roster.
Of course, four watchtowers were insufficient for ten kilometers of wall, requiring more supplies for additional ones.
After finishing the watchtowers, it was already morning.
Ye Fan took the steamed buns made by the logistics team and walked on the wall while eating.
The left side of the front wall was mostly done, only the back and right side walls remained unfinished.
The main structure of the base’s inner layer was essentially outlined.
The morning sun cast golden hues on the wall, giving a somewhat majestic feel.
Squads of soldiers were up for morning activities; some patrolled with military dogs, others were eating breakfast before heading out to gather more materials.
The Army Soldiers in the watchtowers dutifully fulfilled their roles; those who became sentries had superb eyesight, with binoculars and night vision equipment in addition to powerful searchlights, making surrounding kilometers fully visible.
Anyone recklessly approaching would face merciless sniper shots from the sentries.
Outside the four-square-kilometer inner base lay the area Ye Fan reserved for survivors.
This extra space covered roughly ten square kilometers, initially a large wasteland with scattered rocks and weeds.
Though Ye Fan didn’t plan to have soldiers clear it, leaving it to survivors themselves.
To live better, one must labor.
He planned to finish the walls today, then train the troops and search for a gold mine in the mountains to prepare for a mine.
He had just opened the soldier page to muster troops when the radio went off.
Upon answering, it was Xu Haoran.
"Officer, the base vehicle is expected to be completed tomorrow, please give instructions!"