We left the camp with the giant groundhog and walked all the way to the slope northwest of the River Bay Peninsula. This is the starting point of the canal. Five or six meters on the other side of the slope is the upper reaches of the Anzeno River. When the canal is completed, as long as this section of the slope is dug through, the river water will flow down, across the peninsula, and irrigate thousands of acres of land on the peninsula. At this time, a canal more than 500 meters long had appeared under the slope. This is an inverted trapezoidal canal with a width of approximately two meters, a bottom width of one meter, and a depth of two meters. The terrain of the Hewan Peninsula is not very undulating, so the construction of the canal is relatively convenient. The entire canal only needs to be dug three meters deep in the high-lying areas and about one meter in the low-lying areas, and then the excavated earth can be used to raise the canal bank. If the canal planned by Ulyanovich is completed, it will connect the upper and lower reaches of the river bay, cut the river bay peninsula in half and turn it into an island. If the canal is deepened, the embankment is raised, or even a wall is built around the canal, the entire river bay peninsula will become a safe large farm. By sending a few people to patrol, the villagers no longer have to worry about wild beasts in the forest attacking the village or their crops being destroyed. However, this amount of work is still a bit unrealistic for the current population. This was the plan made by Uliyan before he set out based on a population of one thousand. Therefore, in the first stage, Ulyanov only needed to dig a two-kilometer-long canal to connect several small lakes in the middle of the peninsula and drain the excess water from the swamps in the reclaimed area in the north.
The geology on the peninsula is relatively soft. Although most of the channels only need to be compacted with yellow mud, there are also some sections of the channel with loose mud and sand, which will collapse when washed by water, and need to be repaired with gravel and branches. Therefore, the construction speed of the canal was not ideal. A team of fifty people worked hard for a week and only dug 500 meters. If it was a sizable town, and he was a lord or noble with some spare money, Leo could have started researching the cement formula. However, in Hewan, the entire village didn't even have a decent craftsman, and they were penniless and had to make do with everything. "See? Can you continue digging from here all the way to the foot of the mountain over there?" Leo brought Freya to the end of the canal and pointed to the foot of the mountain in the distance. "Digging a hole? I'm the best at this!" Freya made a few tentative digs and then looked up at Leo to make sure she wasn't going to get scolded. "Keep going! Keep going!" Leo encouraged. Freya finally felt relieved and threw herself on the ground, digging the soil in front of her with her front paws. No matter whether it was dry clay soil or soft sandy soil, under her sharp claws it was all a layer of plastic foam, which she easily dug off and then kicked behind her butt with her hind paws. The canal extends forward at a speed visible to the naked eye. Leo was grinning from ear to ear as he watched from the shore. This wasn't just a harmful animal; it was simply an excavator! This is the correct way to open a groundhog! I'm in the Middle Ages and I have an excavator! Freya was more like a harvester than an excavator. All four of her claws left afterimages. The hard soil and sedimentary rock quickly disappeared in front of her, and then turned into debris and splashed out behind her. Dig dig dig! So happy! Freya's tongue was flailing and her facial features were flying around, just like a Husky letting itself go. By the time the team of villagers who were repairing the canal arrived, Freya had already dug forward several dozen meters. A group of people stared in amazement at the giant bear-shaped beast in the canal, with only a strip of black hair on its back showing, and was hit in the face by mud splashing ten meters away.
The fifty of them worked together, divided the work reasonably, and dug and chiseled, but their progress was still not as fast as that of this groundhog! "What are you all standing there for? Get moving!" Uliyang, who had followed, was the first to come to his senses. He immediately scolded the young and strong villagers, asking them to follow the marmots and transport away the excess soil and build the canal walls, so as to preserve the fruits of the marmots' labor before the cold groundwater seeped out. Last night he was still thinking about how to get rid of this gluttonous druid, and today he just wanted to give her a snack! Satisfied with the enthusiastic work scene, Uliyang put his hands behind his back and approached Leo, smiling and asked: "Boy, where did you find this ground rat? You are quite capable!" "It's a giant bear, a druid in the form of a giant bear!" Leo corrected seriously. "Yes, yes, it's a giant bear!" Uliyang echoed repeatedly. As long as you can do the job, it doesn’t matter if you say you are a giant bear, you can even say you are a chinchilla! Leo recounted his experience of meeting Freya, and described in detail the boar man's body shape, decorations, and weapons and equipment. Although Wuliyang usually looks like an old country man, he is an elite scout who has been stationed in a wilderness outpost for five years and is familiar with the ethnic culture and living habits of many alien tribes. Just from Leo's description, Urian could roughly estimate the military strength and level of civilization of this boarman tribe. So the more details Leo provided, the more accurate the intelligence Urian obtained. After listening to Leo's report, Uliyan subconsciously maintained an expression of "everything is under control". When he found that no one was paying attention, he sighed slightly, revealing a bit of heaviness. "It's a bit troublesome, this is not a kobold!" Leo asked unwillingly: "How much trouble can it be?" "We can't eat it all by ourselves." Looking at the approaching villagers, the two stopped talking and just looked towards the big waterfall in the distance. With the addition of an excavator, the progress of the canal construction became very fast. Even the fifty people responsible for moving soil and building the canal walls could not keep up with Freya's pace. But this excavator is very unique. If it digs up a tree root, it will chew it and taste it. If it digs up a beautiful stone, it will also hold it and play with it. She even fell down while digging. Leo went over to take a look and found that she had buried herself in the mud and was snoring. What else can I do? I can only keep promising delicious food. In just one morning, Leo had transferred all the food reserves in the camp to Freya's account. We dug all the way to the foot of the mountain, where there was a ridge extending from a small rocky mountain. It extended hundreds of meters into the peninsula, blocking the way of the canal. Leo was about to step forward and explain to Freya the next work. According to Urian's plan, when the canal is built here, it will adjust its direction along the stone ridge, turn eastward along the foot of the mountain, make a big circle, and then merge into the small lake on the south side of the ridge. This would of course greatly increase the length of the canal, but the current development team does not have the ability to excavate the stone mountain. It is obviously not a rational behavior to want to dig through the ridge and build a stone tunnel. Unexpectedly, the digging-loving marmot reached the stone wall at the foot of the mountain and showed no intention of stopping. She lay on the stone wall, clumsily stretched out a claw, drew a circle on the stone wall, and then gently poked along the gap of the circle with her claws. The hard stone wall became as brittle as snow cakes under her claws. The stone wall in the middle of the circle cracked under the huge force. Large pieces of stone fell down, and a round hole as big as a washbasin appeared in a blink of an eye. Following the round hole, Freya continued to expand its area and depth. In less than five minutes, her head had already penetrated into the stone wall. What an invincible tunnel boring machine!
Leo was really envious.