High Above

  Chapter 142 Four years later (13)

  Terra calendar 773, April 9th.

  Drought to tide in early spring, frequent rain and thunder, the official road is muddy and there is a danger of flash floods, the number of caravans entering Harrison Port is obviously much less.

   But in recent years, with the emergence of new urban areas and several settlements outside the city walls surrounding the port, the permanent population has grown much more than before.

  Even without the caravan, Port Harrison is still full of vitality.

   This previously sparsely populated Nanling frontier has finally gained some popularity as a commercial center in the region.

  Harrison Port, New City, a caravan from the imperial capital is entering through the north gate, and is advancing along the riverside avenue beside the Ewok River.

  They arrived with a large amount of alchemy substrates and pre-processed raw materials that Harrison Port is currently unable to produce independently, and will take away a variety of southern Xinjiang specialties, as well as cheap Warcraft materials compared to the imperial capital.

  【Platinum Iridium Workshop】

   Judging from the logo, it is the name of this caravan.

   Far from the frontier, the surrounding area of ​​the imperial capital no longer has any soil for the survival of monsters, but it is also the economic and political center, where the strong and the rich emerge in endlessly.

  With such a market, the prices of potions and Warcraft materials will naturally rise.

Port Harrison, on the other hand, is just the opposite. Frontier towns surrounded by dense forests of monsters lack all the resources and wealth that a civilized society should have. However, materials for monsters and various fur resources are not difficult to obtain, so that some cheap.

  The long-distance trade between the two is extremely difficult and dangerous, but the benefits are equally sufficient to ignore all difficulties and obstacles.

The main body of the caravan, those gray dromedary beasts slowly raised their feet. This kind of desert creature that originally lived in the great desert of Flaming Land is not very suitable for the humid environment in southern Xinjiang, so that its fur is a little knotted and limp. together.

  But their speed is quite fast. The thick and hard hooves of camel beasts are said to be able to step on carbon fire, and even the far-flame burning sand that is enough to boil water cannot hurt it.

  A young boy whose face was covered by a hood, under the vague protection of several tall guards, followed the caravan cart, curiously looking around at this city that was different from what he had known in the past.

  Although the city walls here are low and there is no city defense array to protect them, the armor of the city guards coming and going is quite cheap.

  But the enthusiastic hawking in the city and the sails of the distant sea are all very new to him.

   "Contrary to what my mother said, Port Harrison isn't that scary. The muddy swamp in the frontier area, the wild land where bugs eat people, and the miasma jungle where you will die if you are not careful are really too exaggerated."

  He smiled cheerfully, and after hearing an old man beside him cough, he realized his impoliteness: "Ah, I'm sorry teacher, I didn't look down on you, it's just that everyone..."

   Sensing that the more he explained, the darker it seemed, the boy immediately coughed lightly, his complexion tensed up.

  The boy's words did not affect the surrounding guards, they just moved forward in silence.

   "The last time I came here was fifteen years ago. At that time, Harrison Port was indeed a city in a pile of mud. Although it was not as bad as your mother said, the environment was indeed very bad, and there were still rampant aborigines."

On the contrary, the leader of the caravan came to the young man. He looked around and said with some emotion: "This guy Ayers is doing really well. I thought he had given up managing the territory long ago and just enjoyed it. I didn't expect that he was just dormant and waiting." Timing, now that there is an opportunity, it will explode with amazing potential."

   "Ethan, how do you feel? You haven't been out of the Quinnor Plains before, have you?"

  The man and the old man beside the boy looked at each other, nodded at each other, and then looked at his nephew with a smile.

  He stretched out his hand and patted the blond boy on the shoulder: "It's the first time to travel far, so far away from home, do you feel uncomfortable?"

"It's not bad, uncle, thanks to the teacher who took me to the misty rain forest for three months." The boy said unexpectedly calmly: "Although I am also a little afraid that I will not be able to bear the hardships of the journey, but now it seems that I have not Spoiled by the environment of the imperial capital."

"That's good."

  The man nodded in satisfaction. He turned his head and looked along the avenue along the river to the pier at the end: "This time you have a heavy task...don't forget your parents' expectations of you."

   "Isengarde, you are already a half-adult, you can't tarnish the glory of the family."

   To this, the boy responded solemnly: "Yes, uncle."

   At this moment, the sea breeze blew, and a group of seagulls took off from the coast and headed for the woods farther away, causing everyone to look up.

  On the blue sky, a shadow passed quietly, and rain clouds moved swiftly in the sky.

   What came with it was a quiet drizzle.

  The wind picked up.

   Jingle bell, jingle bell.

  In a street near the pier along the river in the new urban area, there is a half-new two-story building, and the wind chimes hanging on the windows are jingling by the sea breeze.

"got windy."

  The pages of the book were scrolled by the cool air, the white-haired boy looked up at the window, then got up and closed the window, making the ringing disappear.

  The soundproof double-glazed glass made the room silent. Ian, who was already fourteen years old, sat in his workshop and began to work intently and breathlessly.

  The workshop on the second floor of the White Room is quite different from four years ago. Apart from the rows of alchemy raw materials and semi-finished substrates on the walls, there are also many complicated instruments and large lockers.

  The four walls and the sides of various instruments, all kinds of manuscript papers are pasted everywhere, some are instrument operation rules, and some are experimental plans that will be changed from time to time.

   On the workbench located in the center of the second floor, there are sheets of manuscript paper and schematic diagrams filled with correct fonts at the front, and common tools for inscriptions such as engraving knives, files, inscription pens, and ink are placed at the back.

  Several broken clocks that were half dismantled, a completely disassembled alchemy gun, and some mechanical parts and design drawings of no apparent use were placed aside.

  An obviously handmade telescope is placed in a translucent crystal box, pressed on several dilapidated notes and books that are often flipped through, and used as a paperweight.

On the wall directly in front of the workbench, there are two hand-painted 'maps', one side is a topographic map and nautical chart around Harrison Port, and the other side is a star map of the Nanling area, each star is marked with its brightness and features.

   It's just that this star map is extremely sparse, and most of the stars have been crossed out.

  On the workbench, on the silver metal armor, an old lithography pen is held tightly by a slender hand.

  The white-haired and blue-eyed boy concentrated and held his breath. The output of the lithography pen was stable, and the subtle and dense electric light formed a white arc of light on the tip of the pen.

  He turned his wrist intently, slowly drawing lines on the nail plate, and finally formed a smooth and complex multiple geometric pattern.

  These patterns are complete and smooth, with a sense of rhythm and order, and the degree of stability is almost at the level of high-precision machine tools in the previous life.

   After a period of time, when Ian exhaled softly and raised his wrist to lift his pen, the complex geometric patterns on the nails were complete, but this was not the end yet.

The young man took out a bottle of glossy ink with a lily pattern printed on the bottle from the table. He carefully used a test tube to draw a certain amount of light blue fluorescent ink from it, and then pointed it at the place where he first wrote on the nail. , drop the light ink.

   Pata.

  As the light ink dripped and merged into the nail plate, a faint light blue stream of light emerged from these lines, and then quietly dimmed.

  The originally inconspicuous nail plate now has a glimmer of light that is difficult for ordinary people to see clearly, and it feels much tougher and harder to destroy.

  From determining the material and finalizing the inscription; to conceiving the overall structure and stabilizing the effect of the inscription; and finally finishing the work with ink and light.

  The boy picked it up with satisfaction and looked at it carefully.

   "Not bad," he said.

   Until now, it is considered to be the most basic piece of 'Ether Armor Shockproof Armor'.

  (end of this chapter)