Chapter 808: Celestial Canal

This chapter is a bonus chapter sponsored by "Wu Ma Wei Yang".

With the precise positioning of the sextant, Acheronides effortlessly sketched a rough terrain map of the Flaming Archipelago in her notebook.

The Flaming Archipelago is not the kind of scattered island group that spans vast sea areas. It looks like those broken oracle bones preserved in museums—a complete turtle shell shattered into many pieces and then pieced together. Of course, Liszt likes to call it a broken seashell.

The turtle shell sounds kinda cheap, while "seashell" instantly makes it sound fancier.

This seashell also resembles an elliptical leaf, pointed at both ends and rounded in the middle, with an overall northeast-southwest orientation. At the northeast corner are three large islands, each about as big as Ironhoof Island according to Acheronides' depiction. In the center lies the massive Flaming Island, with the Whirlpool Mountain right in the eastern center.

The southwest corner features four large islands forming the edge of the seashell, which, together with Flaming Island, form an inland sea.

Of course, this is only a rough map. Many areas are based on Acheronides' inferences, without precise positioning, and neither the islands' sizes nor the sea areas have been calculated. Completing the Smokegrass task to survey the map will require much more effort before they can locate the missing invisible dragon.

In short,

The archipelago is called the Flaming Archipelago, and the surrounding sea can no longer be referred to as the Azure Sea. Liszt went ahead and named it the Seashell Sea.

All future coastal waters under the rule of the Flaming Kingdom will be called the Seashell Sea.

"Brother, the Whirlpool Mountain is deep inland on Flaming Island. Whether heading north, south, or east, the distance is over five hundred kilometers," Acheronides said. She’s great at math, as she has mastered the four basic arithmetic operations Liszt taught her, along with basic stuff like square roots.

However, Liszt has long forgotten more advanced mathematical concepts. He probably can’t even solve a quadratic equation, let alone functions like cos, sin, or exponents.

But he does remember many area formulas: a rectangle is "length" times "width," a parallelogram requires you multiply "height" by "base," a triangle is "height" times "base" divided by two, a trapezoid is "height" times the sum of the "top and bottom lengths" divided by two, and a circle is π times the square of the "radius."

Additionally,

For more abstract shapes, the area can be calculated by cutting and supplementing to approximate rectangles or triangles, or by drawing grid lines and summing the area of the occupied grids.

After Liszt taught these formulas to Acheronides, she immediately ran with them, turning them into essential tools for studying magic arrays, astronomy, and geography. Thus, Acheronides easily calculated the distance from Whirlpool Mountain to the coast, concluding that no route would be shorter than five hundred kilometers.

"Five hundred kilometers is manageable. If Leo flies at full speed, it should take about three to four hours to reach the coast," Liszt estimated, doing the math in his head.

However, since they’ve come all the way to the Flaming Archipelago, Liszt isn’t about to head back yet. He plans to first survey the islands' areas.

Completing the Smokegrass task is more important.

It concerns the whereabouts of his old friend, the invisible dragon. He always carries a big Smokegrass feast, waiting for the invisible dragon to join the banquet and partake of the Milon Mind Fruit.

...

Leo landed, happily munching on the magic herbs and supplementary ingredients Liszt had stuffed into its mouth.

Meanwhile, Liszt and Acheronides talked about his plans for building Ember City: "A city must be established. The Great Whirlpool Magic Teleportation Circle must be developed. The current issue is it’s really dangerous going in and out of the whirlpool, as many fragile supplies cannot remain intact."

"We could put up a water curtain magic array at the whirlpool’s entrance to slow down ships passing through."

"But even after slowing down, the ships would still crash into the mountain."

Acheronides thought hard: "I remember you once told me about a canal connecting two seas. If the sea levels differ, ships can navigate by adjusting water levels through valves." The canal story she referred to was actually the Panama Canal, which Liszt had brought up in passing.

However, Liszt had got it wrong—the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are at the same sea level.

Geological constraints made direct excavation impossible, so the Panama Canal relies on river elevation changes, raising and lowering ships to facilitate passage. China’s Three Gorges Dam also uses this lock-style canal navigation, and the world’s earliest lock canal was China’s ancient Lingqu Canal.

Unaware of his own misinformation, Liszt nodded: "Exactly. That canal used lock gates to raise and lower water levels for step-by-step navigation. So, are you suggesting we build such a canal on Whirlpool Mountain? That might not work—a three-thousand-meter elevation difference makes canal excavation impossible."

"But magic can. I can design a water column magic array that ascends and descends, starting from the whirlpool’s entrance and following the mountain’s slope. About thirty vertical water columns, each with a hundred-meter drop, would make it work."

"Even so, the resources needed would probably be astronomical."

"Once Acheronides masters ice magic, she will delve into the transformation of earth attributes. Then, earth-based magic can be used to thoroughly reshape the mountain, reducing resource consumption!" Acheronides declared ambitiously.

She’d read the magic books Kenley Truth brought from Steel Ridge, which contained scattered records of magical marvels from the Moon Empire era.

Rumors spoke of a "Sky Canal" stretching from the Moon Empire's capital all the way to its western frontier, propped up entirely by magic arrays. However, the Sky Canal had long vanished into the river of history. Many mages had attempted to verify its existence through relics, but none had succeeded.

So Acheronides wanted to build a shoddy, small-scale knockoff of the "Sky Canal" for Vortex Mountain.

She was an Archmage, after all. If ancient Archmages could achieve it, why couldn’t modern ones? The old Moon Empire magic texts she’d read were packed with outlandish tales, making her marvel at how, for mages, the only limit was imagination.

Too bad magic’s golden age was long gone.

Liszt wasn’t so hopeful. With the shrinking of the Magic Web, magic arrays could no longer easily draw magic power from it and instead required precious magical materials for construction.

The resources needed would undoubtedly be astronomical. Right now, raising two dragons alone strained his finances, making him wish he could plunder a few more expeditions each year.

Sinking resources into a canal seemed unrealistic.

Still, he didn’t want to dampen Acheronides' enthusiasm: "Then hurry up and master earth-magic shifting. Once that’s done, we can further develop the Great Vortex Magic Teleportation Circle... For now, let’s think of ways to utilize the vortex for transporting resources and developing this vast archipelago as soon as possible."

Acheronides kept her feet on the ground: "Brother, how about this—we build many ships like the Flame, reinforce them carefully, load them with resources and people, and then send them into the vortex. I’ll go through first and use magic to catch the ships at the vortex entrance, then set them aside for unloading?"

"You mean treating the Flame as a disposable transport?"

"Yep."

"Still kinda wasteful, but compared to shipping resources across the sea, it’s much more convenient. Though it’ll mean frequent trouble for you and me."

"Heh, as long as you’re cool with it, bro. Acheronides is really looking forward to traversing the vortex again and studying the Magic Teleportation Circle. Who knows? Soon I might even build my own teleportation array—one that teleports from Black Horse Island straight to Flame Island!"

Liszt laughed. Pipe dreams like the "Sky Canal" were iffy—this was the way to go: "I’ll be waiting eagerly."