The crowd walked along the road between these strange plants for a while. After turning over a small slope, an underground lake with an area of about a few square kilometers appeared in front of everyone.
A large area of land around the lake had been reclaimed into farmland. A kind of fungus with a blue canopy was planted in the farmland, and many slaves were busy in the fields.
This blue fungus was the main crop in the Underdark. It was called the blue cap fungus.
The spores of the blue cap fungus were rich in starch and protein. After collecting, drying and grinding, it would become high-quality flour. The quality was even better than the wheat on the surface, but the spores of the blue cap fungus were not high.
After the blue cap fungus was planted, it generally matured in a month and produced spores. After that, spores could be harvested basically once a month. After three times, the blue cap fungus began to age, and the spore production was greatly reduced. Therefore, the blue cap fungus was generally only harvested three times.
The total amount of these three harvests was only about half of the flour produced by the wheat.
The blue cap fungus could be planted three times a year, and the flour produced was not worse than the land on the surface world.
However, the arable land in the underground world was too scarce.
The arable land in the entire Thorne City added up to only more than ten thousand mu.
In the city of Drow, the spores of the blue cap fungus were something that only Drow could eat. The slaves ate the blue cap fungus itself.
The canopy and stem of the blue cap fungus were rich in starch, but at the same time, they also contained a lot of coarse fiber. The amount of coarse fiber in the canopy was less than that of the stem.
The slaves would separate the canopy and stem of the blue cap fungus and transport them to the cave in the south of the city. There was a huge magma lake in the cave. The temperature in the cave was very high, and the air was extremely dry. The blue cap fungus and their spores would soon dry there and then be sent to the mill not far away to be ground.
Of course, the spore powder was Drow's meal, the canopy powder was the food of the slaves, and the stem powder, the worst quality, was the food of the livestock.
The yield of the blue cap fungus' spore powder was not high, but the yield of the canopy powder was quite large. The cost of feeding the slaves was quite cheap.
Simon whispered some general knowledge to Leo as they walked.
He pointed at the lake in the middle of the cave and said, "This lake may not look big, but it's very deep. Even Drow doesn't know how deep it is. This kind of lake can be very dangerous sometimes. There may be dangerous aquatic magic beasts hiding in it."
"This is a freshwater lake. In the Underdark, freshwater lakes are relatively safe. Saltwater lakes are even more dangerous. It is said that some saltwater lakes even have terrifying demonic fish."
"In the Dark Zone, both freshwater lakes and saltwater lakes can nourish such a vigorous underground jungle. However, the species of plants raised by freshwater lakes and saltwater lakes are somewhat different …"
Feng Chou listened to Simon's introduction with great interest. Unknowingly, he followed the slave team to the field by the lake.
Their arrival replaced a group of tired human slaves. After the patrol team in charge of guarding them and the patrol team escorting Feng Chou and the others took over, they escorted the tired slaves to the city.
Feng Chou and the others' task today was to water. Each of them received two wooden buckets made of Giant Tan to carry water from the lake and water the land.
After a day of strong physical labor, not to mention the ordinary slaves, even Leo, who had a strong physique, felt quite tired.
Feng Chou found that the labor density of the blue cap fungus field was much higher than that of the wheat field on the surface.
Feng Chou also did farm work when he was young in his previous life. With his current body, Leo, the son of a pioneer knight, learned agricultural management knowledge from an early age.
This knowledge told Feng Chou that the labor needed to serve the blue cap fungus field was at least four to five times that of the surface farmland.
Of course, this was also related to the fact that there were no water conservancy facilities in Drow's elven farmland and the lack of animal power.
It was no wonder that the one or two thousand human slaves in Thorne City struggled to serve more than ten thousand acres of land.
...
Over the next few days, Feng Chou and Simon used their rest time to sneak out of the city several times. They climbed from the gaps in the caves to high places and observed the population flow in the city.
They found that a large number of slaves were brought into an inconspicuous cave in the west of the city every day.
The slaves brought into the cave were all cavemen and goblins. There were no human slaves.
This was related to the positioning of different slaves in the drow city. In the drow city, human slaves were used to plant mushroom fields, goblins and cavemen were used to mine, and obviously, miners were used to build roads, which was more suitable for their profession.
In desperation, the two could only continue to endure and lurk, waiting for an opportunity.
After mixing with the slaves for a while, Feng Chou couldn't help but ask Simon a question. "Simon, I don't seem to have seen any powerhouses above level 5 in the slave area."
Simon glanced at Feng Chou and explained, "Drow won't allow intermediate professions to appear among the slaves. For them, intermediate professions are already dangerous enough to cause great chaos in the slave area. They also have the ability and possibility of escape. Therefore, the intermediate professions that fall into Drow's hands can only go to one place, and that is the inner city's arena."
Feng Chou suddenly understood. No wonder this guy was unwilling to expose his strength as a level 6 warrior.
...
The two endured and lurked for more than a month.
After more than a month, the Drow elves began to transfer human slaves into the cave. The two immediately mixed into the slave team without hesitation.
The slaves who were transferred to the cave were obviously treated differently from the slaves who went to work in the mushroom field. The slaves who were escorted to the mushroom field were escorted by only one patrol team in a team of more than a hundred people.
On the other hand, the same number of slaves that were transferred to the cave were escorted by two patrols.
Not only that, when the slave team walked to the entrance of the cave, two more patrols joined in the escort.
The ratio of the number of people in the escort team and the slave team was almost 1: 2, which made Feng Chou and Simon nervous.
This kind of force was of course not to prevent the slaves from escaping.
After entering the cave, the Drow who was escorting the slaves took a long rope and strung the slaves together.
In this cave, Feng Chou saw a spacious road.
What was strange was that this road was very flat, but there were no traces of artificial excavation. It was as if it was formed naturally.
What was even more strange was that on the flat stone road, they could see the footprints of cavemen from time to time.
This made them think of the scene of the cement ground being trampled on before it solidified.
Could it be that this road was paved with cement?
In fact, it was not. The result of Qiankun Pagoda's scan also told him that the ground was made of stone.
Feng Chou quickly found the reason from Leo's memory.
In the whole world, there were two quite famous "transformation" intermediate spells, which were "Stone to Mud" and "Mud to Stone". The former of these two spells could turn several cubic meters of stone into mud, and the latter could turn the same amount of soil into stone.
Obviously, there was a mage involved in the construction of this road. Otherwise, to build a road in the Underdark, where there were hard rocks everywhere, it was simply a sky-high project.
As long as he thought about the mage tower, Feng Chou did not find it strange. The mage tower, in addition to having a strong fighting power, was also a mage training center, a production base for alchemy items and magic scrolls.
If there was a mage tower in this city, then there must be a group of mages. Any mage, as long as they mastered these two spells, with the permission of the master of the mage tower, they could draw the power of the mage tower and repeatedly produce a large number of these two spell scrolls without worrying about the problem of spell slots.
As the team went deeper into the cave, the light became darker and darker. In the beginning, there were newly transplanted fluorescent fungi that barely provided a little light, but as the team went forward, even the fluorescent fungi were gone. The cave became pitch-black.
Human vision lost its effect, and the slaves unconsciously tightened the ropes in their hands.
Soon, even Feng Chou's dim vision lost its effect, which meant that the cave was almost completely dark.