Located in the central plains, vast rice paddies stretched across large areas.
Beside the bustling rice fields, sat a small village inhabited by hundreds of people.
Though called a village, a closer look at the paved gray-white roads and sturdy, clean houses made it difficult to compare it to the backward, dilapidated villages people typically imagined.
Independent two-story villa-style houses, surrounding large courtyards, stood row upon row, forming a massive village.
The architecture here differed greatly from that of the Douluo Continent.
Firstly, numerous large, transparent, and clean glass windows were embedded in the walls, allowing unobstructed sunlight to shine into the houses, showcasing the warm, life-filled wooden floors and furniture to the world.
The extensive use of glass in houses, especially in such a small village, was simply unimaginable.
If the glass windows of this village were removed and sold on the continent, they would fetch at least ten thousand gold soul coins.
After all, Douluo Continent still hadn't mastered the technology to mass-produce high-purity glass.
However, on Blue Silver Island, such large glass windows, almost covering an entire wall of a room, were a common sight.
Besides the glass, what was even more amazing was that the walls constructing the houses were completely covered with gray stone material, without exposing any gaps from stacked stones or bricks.
This material, possessing adhesiveness and hardness comparable to stone, was cement.
It was a hydraulic cementitious material made by mixing calcined lime with volcanic ash powder in specific proportions.
With its quick-drying and hardening properties, cement was widely used in construction, water conservancy, and other industries in my previous life.
As for why cement appeared here and was used in the construction of houses, it was obviously a change brought about by Quan Yi.
The Chemistry Department, established by Quan Yi, successfully developed this important material, cement, after the research and development of gunpowder.
The brand-new volcanic island, hundreds of miles west of the island, was piled with a large amount of volcanic ash. What was just a barren volcanic island to outsiders was a treasure trove in Quan Yi's eyes.
Not to mention anything else, volcanic ash alone was one of the important raw materials for manufacturing early cement.
Quan Yi's vision and knowledge, combined with the practical testing of the Chemistry Department, successfully brought cement into real-world application.
Sturdy, safe, and also cheap and quick to build, cement houses became the dwellings for farmers cultivating the surrounding rice paddies.
White smoke curled from the chimneys of the cement houses, as housewives inside busily cooked food.
Fragrant fried fish and crystal-clear white rice were the main staples.
Fresh sea fish, caught by island fishermen piloting steam-powered fishing boats, became delicious food to nourish their families under the housewives' careful preparation.
In addition to these two, each housewife would also create more balanced and nutritious dishes based on the fresh vegetables grown in their own courtyards.
This part depended on individual preferences and culinary skills.
However, during the busy farming season, the cooking was generally simple, with most people using iron pots to stir-fry dishes.
After finishing cooking, they quickly put the food into special metal lunch boxes and rode bicycles parked in the courtyard, heading along the paved cement road towards the central square of the village.
The usually leisurely square was now completely covered with steam engines and the noise of people.
In the open square, a number of large transport vehicles were parked, moving grain.
Among them, some were loaded with rice ears just harvested from the fields, stopping at the automatic threshing machines on one side of the square to efficiently remove the husks from the rice ears.
The golden rice ears, upon entering the continuously rotating machinery, would quickly separate into snow-white rice grains and discarded husks.
With this machine, a mere few hundred people in the village could efficiently harvest rice that would normally require dozens of times more people to complete.
And most of these separated rice grains would be loaded into rice sacks and transported to the empty transport vehicles on the other side, with a small portion being stored inside the village.
Sack after sack of rice was piled into giant cargo trucks like small mountains, and the loaded trucks would head towards the avenue on the east side, transporting the rice out of the village.
Thus, it could be distinguished that the vehicles parked on the west and east sides were each responsible for different transportation tasks.
The west side was responsible for transporting newly harvested rice ears and the lunch boxes sent to the rice fields by the women.
After emptying the transport vehicles of rice ears, the lunch boxes would be collected and then accurately delivered to each hardworking farmer based on the steel stamp numbers on them.
And the avenue on the west side was for transporting the grain to the densely populated towns and industrial areas on the east coast of the island.
Besides the farmers, the drivers who drove these vehicles for long periods of time were also very hardworking.
In the center of the square, there was a circular pavilion, the only space where the drivers could steal a moment of leisure during their busy schedule.
A middle-aged, sturdy man with blond hair and blue eyes, wearing short sleeves and shorts, his face tanned dark, took a notebook recording the grain transportation volume and walked to the wooden table in the middle of the pavilion, handing it to the man sitting at the table.
"Village Chief Shi, please stamp this for me. All the relevant information for this transport has been recorded above."
The person called Village Chief Shi was a lean man with short black hair.
He was the leader responsible for the smooth execution of the entire grain collection and transportation process.
His appearance was unremarkable, but he exuded a resolute and amiable demeanor.
It was worth noting that although he was wearing cool short sleeves and shorts, his exposed left arm was empty, and his right leg was replaced by a special metal prosthetic.
However, even though his left arm and right leg were missing, no one present would underestimate the man before them.
Rumor had it that before coming to the island, this man had been a soldier in a kingdom affiliated with the Heaven Dou Empire, only to have his left arm and right leg accidentally infected in battle, leaving him in this state.
A poor young man who had not awakened his soul power had wanted to change his fate by joining the army, but unexpectedly, misfortune befell him prematurely.
Unable to withstand the blow, the young man, in a daze, exhausted the remaining money he had, gradually falling into an even more miserable situation than before joining the army.
As time passed, the resilient man who had survived to middle age seized a ticket to Blue Silver Island, boarding the ship that changed his destiny.
Now, after years of hard work, he had become a respected and trusted village chief.
Village Chief Shi took the notebook from the blond man, opened it to the last page with writing, and carefully compared the various data on it.
After confirming, he picked up the red stamp on the table with his left hand and stamped it on top.
