After repelling Tifeco's forces, the town returned to calm.

Roland selected three people from the Ministry of Education in the Town Hall, plus two teachers to form a team, and took the household registrations copied by Soraya to Longsong Stronghold. Regardless of how much effect it could achieve, he had finally taken the first step in assimilating the stronghold.

Although Peiluo wasn't good at commanding battles, he was indeed excellent in administration. Within a week, two thousand recruited road construction laborers arrived in the town one after another under the escort of knights. If the second batch of ten kiln groups hadn't been put into production, Roland wouldn't have dared to decide to build a hard road between the two places. Now, he finally had the opportunity to splurge.

This road was named the Kingdom Avenue by Roland, and was fully managed by Karl, the Minister of Construction. Its structure was exactly the same as the town's streets, both being cement-stabilized macadam layers. In an era without heavy vehicles, such a road surface was sufficient to handle transportation tasks. Moreover, it had good drainage performance, and asphalt or concrete could be added later as needed.

In terms of construction materials, four steam engine-driven rolling mills replaced manual labor for stone crushing, producing dozens of tons of crushed stone every day. The weakness of transportation capacity limited further increases in production. So many stones required more than a hundred people to transport them to the construction site by horse-drawn carriage for a whole day. If it were the road overlord dump trucks of later generations, one truck would be enough to transport it all.

In addition to the four kilns maintaining the firing of clay bricks, the remaining blast furnaces in the kiln area had been put into the production of cement powder. After many component experiments and the iron powder supplied by the mine, the cement produced in the town was now far superior to the initial batch of products in terms of both quality and stability.

However, the large number of people transporting crushed stone and cement powder also brought some negative effects to the town, the most serious of which was dust. By the afternoon, with just a slight breeze, dense dust could be seen flying all over the sky, and the streets turned light yellow. Although most townspeople didn't mind this situation, for Roland, there was nothing worse than having to keep the doors and windows tightly closed in the hot summer.

Therefore, covers were quickly installed on the carts carrying cement and crushed stone to reduce spillage during transportation. At the same time, with the help of Leaves's ability, the town was covered in shade in just a few days. Rows of lush sycamore trees were symmetrically arranged along the streets, making the whole place look green and vibrant. In addition, Roland called on all the lords to actively sprinkle water to reduce dust, and this problem was quickly improved.

The straight-line distance between the two places was less than seventy kilometers, but considering that the road had to avoid the foothills extending from the Mountains of Impassability, the total length of the road was about one hundred kilometers, with an estimated construction period of one year. With high-quality roads, some means of transportation could also come in handy—such as bicycles and steam cars.

In his vision, whether it was developing education or building roads, they were all measures to connect the two places, just like the urbanization promoted vigorously in later generations. After the land between the two places was developed, Longsong Stronghold and Border Town would merge into a huge city. If he could turn the southern hills into part of the city, and open up the Impassable Mountain Range, he would even have a seaport.

Of course, developing so much land required more population, and in order to cope with possible wars in the future, the city had to be self-sufficient in agriculture while also providing a large number of workers for industrial production. According to preliminary calculations, he needed to bring in about 100,000 people, while the largest city in Graycastle, King's City, had only about 20,000 to 30,000 people.

Roland set his sights on the northern and southern regions of Graycastle. Both places had experienced war, and when winter came, there would likely be a large number of refugees lacking food and clothing. By simply providing filling food and warm housing, they could be absorbed into Border Town. Even the refugees from Everwinter and Wolfheart were under his consideration. To this end, he also wrote a letter to the merchant Margaret, asking her to help inquire about the situation in these two countries.

……

After writing down the recent development plan, the prince folded the paper and put it in the drawer, stretched himself, and decided to go to Anna's room to see how her lenses were being cut.

Since understanding the reason for Soraya's evolution, he had planned to make a microscope that could observe the structure of cells.

If he could see the wonderful microscopic world with his own eyes, it might trigger more witches to evolve new abilities, or at least arouse their interest in learning.

For the production of a microscope, the two convex lenses used to magnify the target were not the difficult point. The difficulty was that each manually ground lens had a different focal length, so matching the eyepiece and objective lens was a delicate task, requiring repeated adjustments to the distance between the two lenses.

After briefly explaining the imaging principle of the convex lens, he gave Anna several pieces of crystal with excellent texture, and asked her to try to cut the lenses and measure their focal lengths. Now that three days had passed, Roland was full of curiosity about what Anna had accomplished.

Walking to the door of Anna's room, Nightingale smiled at him, standing against the wall, seemingly indicating that she wouldn't go in—since she had reduced her invisibility time, Roland didn't have to guess the other party's whereabouts anymore. When alone with Anna, Nightingale always chose to stand in a distant location.

Pushing open the door, Anna was sitting at the table fiddling with a metal tube.

"How is it?" he asked as he walked forward.

As soon as he asked the question, Roland was stunned. He saw several instruments that looked like microscopes on the table, very close to the schematic diagram he had drawn casually.

"I made a few prototypes according to the drawings you gave me. They can indeed see many details that are usually difficult to find," she looked up, her slender bangs sliding to one side. "I used it to observe paper, leaves, and stagnant water, and found that they are very different from their usual appearance." -- Since the hot air balloon trip, Anna no longer used honorifics when the two were alone, which made him feel very relaxed.

"How did you make it?" Roland asked in surprise, "That schematic diagram is just a rough outline."

"The outline is enough," Anna smiled, "You see, as long as the eyepiece and objective lens are fixed at a suitable distance, they can play a magnifying role. Then fix them with an iron tube, and the main body of the microscope is completed. When I tested the magnification effect of the lens, I found that the objective lens and the observation target must be kept at a specific distance to see a clear image. If my hand shakes, it will be blurred. It can also be seen from your schematic diagram that a frame is needed to fix the lens barrel, and the platform below that carries the target can be moved up and down to obtain the best object distance." She paused, "The sheet-like object at the bottom of the schematic diagram is more difficult to understand. Can you tell me what it is for?"

Roland glanced at the drawing and realized that he had made a mistake - it was a reflector used to increase the light passing through the target, but mercury mirrors had not been invented in this era. Generally, nobles still used copper or iron mirrors to tidy up their appearance, while the palace used silver sheets behind glass to obtain better reflection. Even without this mirror, the microscope could be used as long as there was enough sunlight.

After he explained it in detail, he couldn't help but marvel at Anna's amazing comprehension. Based solely on the rough outline, she had produced an almost complete product. He would never have been able to do this himself.

Looking at the fair neck exposed when the other party lowered her head to test the new lens barrel, Roland couldn't help but lean forward, wanting to kiss it, but she pressed his face with her hand and gently pushed him away, "Wait a moment, Your Highness, I'm busy."

"Um... okay." ( . )