When Feng Chou and the others arrived, there were already about two hundred slaves clearing and flattening the ground outside the entrance of the cave leading to the surface. It was not difficult to guess that a large fortress was going to be built here, as well as a trading center with humans.
To Feng Chou's surprise, when their group of slaves arrived, the female architect who came with them took over the entire project. The slaves were divided into more than ten groups and began to work on the construction site.
Feng Chou even saw the female architect being escorted by several Drow warriors to the Drow camp that led to the surface cave. She entered a large tent and was received by someone.
In the following period of time, the human slaves that Feng Chou and the others saw along the way came here in groups and joined the construction site. After more than a month, the entire construction site was filled with nearly a thousand human slaves.
Near the camp, there were even more troglodyte slaves in charge of mining stone, cutting wood, and providing for the needs of the project.
After a period of work, the prototype of the fortress gradually appeared in front of Feng Chou.
If completed, this would be a large fortress that could accommodate thousands of people. Just like the first fortress that Feng Chou and the others built, this was also a D-shaped fortress built according to the cave wall. The width of the fortress reached five to six hundred meters and the depth was four to five hundred meters.
It was not difficult to see that once the fortress was completed, the entrance to the cave leading to the surface would be completely sealed. Anyone who wanted to go to the surface would have to go through this fortress.
Because it had not been completed yet, it was not known how high the outer stone walls were, but it could be seen that the thickness of these stone walls was more than three meters. Every thirty meters or so, there was a semicircular defensive tower protruding out of the stone walls to increase the defensive power of the walls.
This fortress not only attached importance to the defense of the cave, but also the defense of the cave entrance leading to the surface was even tighter.
From the entrance of the cave to the depth of forty meters, it was all remodeled and rebuilt with the help of the mage's Stone to Mud. Here, there were four groups of slaves working at the same time.
Feng Chou and Simon mixed in with the four groups and took the opportunity to spy on the inside of the cave.
From the foundation of the cave, it could be seen that there would be four defensive towers built here, two at the entrance of the cave and two at the depth of forty meters. Feng Chou guessed that in the end, two walls would be built along the cave wall, sandwiching this passage in the middle. If two more gates were built between the four towers, then this section of the cave could be used as a foundation to build a barbican with a ceiling.
Feng Chou and Simon mingled here for a few days and gradually saw the Drow army stationed in the cave.
This army was not large in number, only about a hundred people, but all of them were elites. Even the lowest level of Drow warriors were generally eighth or ninth level existences. The captain was already a high-grade warrior, and there were two high-grade priests with two spider elves. The two also had a priest team composed of mid-grade priests. As everyone knew, the combination of warriors and priests was not an addition, but a multiplication!
Such a force was almost comparable to the Lord's guards in Antalya County.
This powerful Drow army was stationed in the cave leading to the surface, blocking their way out.
After a few days of observation, Feng Chou and Simon mixed out again in disappointment, slowly moving to the edge of the construction site.
The two of them had almost given up on the idea of leaving the underground world, but they also didn't plan to return to Thorne City. Because once they returned to the underground city, it wasn't hard to imagine that they would never have the opportunity to come back to this cave again once they thought about the first fortress they built.
Therefore, they planned to escape to the underground forest to hide. Although the underground forest was dangerous and there were terrible tigermen here, they would rather take the risk and look for opportunities in the underground forest than return to the underground city and be slaves for the rest of their lives.
According to Simon's idea, since they were going to leave, they should leave now. If by any chance they could not leave after a few days, it would be too late to regret it.
However, Feng Chou felt that they could wait, the reason being that the underground forest was too dangerous.
Almost every day, tigermen wandered around the periphery of the construction site, and almost every day, unlucky troglodyte slaves were hunted down. Drow's patrols had collided with tigermen more than once, but they were unable to disperse them. This group of tigermen seemed to have set this place as a fixed hunting ground.
Feng Chou originally thought that with Drow's ruthlessness, it would not take long for him to organize people to eliminate this annoying tigermen tribe.
But after such a long time, Drow did not make any move, which could not help but make people feel strange. When did Drow become so easy to bully?
What was even more strange was that this huge and rich cave was only 30 kilometers away from Thorne City, but Drow did not want to control it, instead, he built so many defensive fortresses here.
If I were Drow, instead of building so many fortresses, why not control the entire cave?
If they could clean up this cave, then they would only need to control all the entrances and exits around the cave to control this huge and rich cave. At that time, not only could they ensure the smooth flow of the trade route, but they could also use this rich cave to open up more farmland and feed more people.
But why didn't Drow do this?
This point was easy to see, and Drow would never have thought of it. The only explanation was that there was a strong local force in this cave. This local force was so strong that Drow did not dare to have extravagant hopes of controlling this place!
Combined with the appearance of the tigermen and Drow's weakness, then the local forces here were on the verge of appearing.
There must be one or more powerful tigermen tribes here.
This fertile underground forest was enough to nurture a few powerful tiger-men tribes.
If there really was a powerful tigermen tribe, then this forest was extremely dangerous. Tigermen were the best hunters in the wilderness. They were powerful, as fast as lightning, and had a keen sense of hearing and smell. They were natural predators and trackers.
Feng Chou and the other two entered the forest. Once they were targeted by the tigermen, it would be extremely difficult to escape. Any adult tigermen would be difficult for them to fight against.
So, Feng Chou's idea was to stay here first, and wait until the project was almost completed before leaving. They would hide nearby to see if there was a chance to escape during the handover after the project was completed. If there was no chance, then wait until the transaction to see if there was a chance to sneak out. Of course, the prerequisite was that they could survive until then.
After listening to Feng Chou's analysis, Simon thought for a while and expressed his approval. They stayed.
Two months later, the fortress was basically completed. The only thing left was for the mages to use the Mud to Stone spell to solidify the entire project, as well as the installation of some large war machines.
In these two months, Feng Chou and the others did not see even the slightest chance.
After the fortress was basically completed, the slaves were chased out of the fortress to avoid interfering with the mages' casting.
For the slaves, this was a terrible disaster because this meant that more people would become the prey of the tigermen.
But for Feng Chou and Simon, this was a good opportunity.
Because they knew that there were tigermen hiding in the forest, looking for firewood for cooking became a task that everyone shirked.
When Feng Chou and Simon made a bet that they dared to go into the forest to collect firewood, everyone unanimously squeezed them to fulfill their promise.
The two pretended to bite the bullet and went into the forest, never to return.