Chapter 36: Chapter 18: Urban Construction Planning Bureau
About five kilometers south of the World Tree lies the Wisdom Library.
From the outside, the library appeared to be a colossal tree. In reality, it was built within an ancient tree, much like the Lord’s Mansion was built within the World Tree.
The great tree was a sentient ancient tree named Gerhard Turan. It could speak, but it had never paid any mind to anyone other than the lord, Lin Yu, and the library’s director, Chenxi.
The ancient wisdom tree was not large, occupying only fifty square meters of ground, but it stood eighty meters tall, making it the second-largest tree in the territory.
A large door was set into its trunk. Pushing it open revealed the entrance to the library.
The library was immense, with many floors. It was obvious that its interior was far larger than the tree’s exterior, suggesting some form of spatial expansion was at play.
For the past few days, Lin Yu had taken a different path each day to find books, but he had yet to reach the end of any of them. Combined with the countless floors, he was beginning to suspect the library might be infinite.
The knowledge recorded here came from the All Heavens and Myriads of Realms. It contained everything, from high-level tomes like *A Simple Guide to the Application of Dark Energy*, *Practical Examples of Artificial Supernova Fusion*, and *Analysis of the Blazing Sun Magic Model and Its Principles*... to more mundane works like *Postpartum Care for Sows* and *1000 Common Jokes*. There was useful knowledge and useless knowledge, and in fact, there seemed to be far more of the latter.
Finding useful knowledge within this vast library was a tedious affair.
Even Chenxi, as the library’s director, only had a privilege akin to a search engine. She could search for books by keyword, but she still had to determine for herself whether a specific book was actually useful.
The primary job of the research assistants was to sift through this mountain of books, find the useful ones, and hand them over to the researchers. The researchers would then deconstruct and comprehend the knowledge within before finally applying it to the territory.
Lin Yu and Chenxi walked to the reading area on the library’s first floor. A section of the original reading area had been partitioned off to serve as a research and office space for the Research Institute.
For now, only the first floor was in use. If it became insufficient, they could expand to the second and third floors. The upside was that they wouldn’t have to worry about the Research Institute running out of space. The downside was that operations might become more scattered later on.
"Good morning, my Lord! Good morning, Director!"
Seeing Lin Yu and Chenxi, the nearby researchers came over to greet them.
"Carry on with your research," Lin Yu said. "Don’t mind us. We’re just looking around."
The pair inspected the researchers’ work for a moment before resuming their search through the library for books related to the utilization of Spiritual Qi.
As noon approached, the "City Construction Planning Bureau" project was finally completed.
Chenxi went to the Research Institute’s office area alone to plan the next research direction for the first and second teams. Only special research projects were reported to Lin Yu for his final decision.
Meanwhile, Lin Yu found a seat in the reading area. He then connected with the heart of his territory to view the specific details of the "City Construction Planning Bureau."
[Name]: City Construction Planning Bureau
[Category]: Special Building
[Grade]: Excellent (Blue)
[Description]: A building that holds territory construction authority. Requires at least 100 intelligent residents to operate. It can plan and construct buildings in the territory without the lord’s direct involvement.
[Prosperity]: 1,000
[Requirements]: 10,000 Wood, 10,000 Stone, 1,000 Ore.
It was a simple ability: it shared the lord’s—Lin Yu’s—right to construct buildings in the territory.
This building hadn’t originally been on the Technology Tree—or perhaps they just hadn’t researched far enough to find it.
Lin Yu and Chenxi had unexpectedly found a blueprint for a "planning bureau" in the library. However, the blueprint they found only described a bureau with the function of planning, and nothing more.
After they gave the blueprint to the Research Institute and added the requirement for construction authority, Chenxi used her privilege as the library director to generate a new research project on the Technology Tree. Upon completion, it unlocked this "City Construction Planning Bureau," which possessed territory construction rights.
"Haha, it’s done! I shouldn’t have to work so hard from now on!"
Lin Yu immediately connected with the heart of his territory, found an empty plot of land, and started construction.
Thanks to the "Bio-Architecture" technology they had just finished researching yesterday, any building in the territory could now be constructed with the help of the World Tree’s roots. (The roots could help transport materials and even act as a partial substitute for them.)
In other words, any building in the territory could now benefit from the "Lush Foliage" territory trait, while also being blessed by the "Rapid Growth" territory trait.
And so, by the time Chenxi finished arranging her work and came out, Lin Yu had already completed the construction of the City Construction Planning Bureau.
The City Construction Planning Bureau also had an option to appoint a director. When Lin Yu went to build it, he was shown a screen with a large group of vaguely familiar elf and spirit avatars. Since he wasn’t close with any of them, he decided not to pick a director and simply initiated the construction.
"Chenxi, come on, let’s go! We need to hurry and pick people to staff the bureau. I want to test out its abilities."
Lin Yu strode forward, took Chenxi’s small hand, and started walking out of the library.
A faint blush appeared on Chenxi’s face as she followed Lin Yu toward the fairies’ gathering place.
When they arrived at the gathering place of the Fairy Race, Lin Yu was just about to have the fairies assemble when he suddenly stopped. He turned to Chenxi and asked, "Chenxi, you probably know which of the fairies are the most intelligent, right?"
"Of course, my Lord! To figure out which of them were more intelligent, I found a lot of test questions for them in the library!"
Chenxi said proudly.
"Good. Go pick one hundred of the most intelligent fairies and assign them to the City Construction Planning Bureau. They’ll be working there from now on."
"Hee hee! My Lord, have you forgotten? Our territory has set working hours. To fill one hundred positions around the clock, we’ll need two hundred residents," Chenxi said, covering her mouth to hide a giggle.
It dawned on Lin Yu. "Right, I completely forgot. The territory follows that work system you all came up with. In that case, recruit two hundred fairies!"
A short while later, at Chenxi’s call, two hundred fairies had assembled in the small plaza before Lin Yu.
The fairies were tiny, even smaller than sprites, about the size of an adult’s fist. Most of them were sweet and charming in appearance, with beautiful wings. Flying in mid-air, they looked like a swarm of lovely, large butterflies.
Despite their small size, their stats were much higher than that of an ordinary adult. Moreover, they were born with innate skills, qualifying them as an Extraordinary race.
Afterward, Lin Yu and Chenxi led the two hundred fairies to the City Construction Planning Bureau.
Once one hundred of the fairies entered the building, the City Construction Planning Bureau’s functions activated.
Lin Yu immediately connected with the heart of his territory and entered the territory’s overhead view.
Now, he could plan the entire territory.
For example, he could designate an area on the map as a residential zone. The City Construction Planning Bureau would then need to create a plan for the residential buildings in that area, such as what type of housing to build and how to arrange it. Once the plan was complete and approved by Lin Yu, the bureau could use its authority to construct the corresponding buildings.
If the first phase of his life as a lord was like playing a mix of a town simulator and a tower defense game, then now, he was playing a large-scale city-building simulator like *Cities: Skylines*.
He only needed to designate a zone and its purpose, and the system would automatically allocate resources to construct the relevant buildings.
