The CH-54’s distinctive, deep propeller drone sounded once more.

This time, the cargo was concrete piles. A single twelve-meter-long, ten-centimeter-diameter pile weighed nearly a ton. Even with the CH-54’s immense carrying capacity, it only dared to transport ten at a time.

After dropping off the concrete piles, the CH-54 immediately headed back.

Then came two medium-sized helicopters. Their carrying capacity was limited; five piles at a time was their absolute maximum.

Feng Mountain could only feel resigned to the situation.

The Far North Tundra was a vast expanse of frozen marshland with an extremely harsh natural environment. Combined with the Crown Territory’s exceptionally remote location, it was impossible to transport such heavy materials by land.

Helicopters were the only option.

The two medium-sized helicopters cost $20,000 an hour.

It had only been two days, and Feng Mountain already had to pay $320,000 for helicopter transport.

And this wasn’t the end of it. At the current pace, it would take at least three more days to transport all the log cabin materials.

’This is killing me.’

The log cabins themselves only cost a little over a million, but damn it, the shipping alone was going to be a million, and that didn’t even include the cost of installation.

It’s not like money grew on trees.

But he had already started, so there was no turning back.

As the pile driver whirred to life, CLUNK, CLUNK, CLUNK, Feng Mountain felt as if it were pulling money directly from his own pocket.

With every thud, another $10,000 was gone!

Thankfully, he didn’t have to pay for the CH-54. If it cost what Tom had said—$100,000 an hour—he might as well forget about building a log cabin. At a million dollars a day for transport costs, no amount of money could withstand that kind of spending.

"Mr. Feng, we’re starting to install the concrete piles." A worker came over and gestured for him to stand back.

"Go ahead. Be safe!" Feng Mountain said, taking a few steps back.

A small construction vehicle drove over to the stack of concrete piles. It used a claw-like front arm to grab a pile and returned to the foundation pit. The arm rotated, turning the pile from horizontal to vertical. Following a worker’s guidance, it lowered the pile into the pre-drilled hole.

They repeated this process, inserting the concrete piles one by one into the holes.

They took an hour-long break in the middle because the helicopters couldn’t deliver the piles nearly as fast as the crew could install them.

A full round trip for the helicopters took over two hours, and in that time, they could only deliver a total of twenty concrete piles.

Daylight in the Far North Tundra only lasted about eight hours. Factoring in two hours for helicopter maintenance, they could guarantee the delivery of 120 concrete piles per day, at most.

Another expensive day.

$240,000, gone.

Feng Mountain didn’t mention this to the other members of the Crown Territory. Instead, he cheerfully cooked a big meal of grilled reindeer steaks for the workers before returning to the bus camp.

「The next day.」

The deliveries continued. The last of the concrete piles arrived in the afternoon, and then the helicopters began transporting the log cabin components.

After driving all the concrete piles, the construction crew used wooden formwork to shape the foundation, leaving channels for future drainage.

Next, the workers built rebar cages matching the dimensions of the formwork and placed them inside.

Once all the formwork was complete, it was time for the concrete. Due to environmental constraints, there was no concrete mixer truck, so the contractor had fabricated a manual mixing device.

To put it simply, it was an auger welded to a gear, which was fixed atop an oil drum. An iron rod was inserted into the gear, and a person would have to manually push the rod to turn the gear, which in turn rotated the auger to mix the concrete slurry inside the drum.

The work was exhausting. The concrete slurry grew thicker and more viscous the more it was mixed, until it took every ounce of a person’s strength to turn the rod. If the concrete wasn’t mixed evenly, it could cause cracks and compromise the quality of the foundation.

After mixing just one batch each, two workers collapsed onto the ground, panting for breath as if they were completely drained.

Feng Mountain returned, saw the scene, and grinned.

’Isn’t this my strong suit?’

’I might not know how to build a house, but when it comes to brute strength, this is a piece of cake.’

Without a second word, he shrugged off his animal hide coat, strode forward, and took the mixing tool.

He began to crank the rod with all his might. The rod drove the gear, spinning the mixer at high speed. The loud RATTLE of the stones inside the oil drum grew quieter and quieter as they were incorporated into the slurry.

The nearby workers stared, dumbfounded.

’Holy shit, the speed of that mixer is almost as fast as a centrifuge.’

’Such incredible strength.’

A worker in charge of transporting the concrete came over from the foundation site, pushing a wheelbarrow. He had just gotten an earful from the pouring crew because he couldn’t get them a new batch of concrete fast enough.

When he saw the mixing crew seemingly slacking off, he erupted in anger—he hadn’t taken that verbal abuse just for them to be lazy.

He charged over, ready to curse them out, but stopped short when he saw Feng Mountain by the drum, his arms spinning the rod so fast they looked like the blades of a windmill.

’What’s going on?’

’How is he pushing it so easily?’

The worker crept closer. Under Feng Mountain’s power, the concrete in the drum was forming a small vortex, and some of the slurry was even sloshing out.

"How’s this? Is it ready?" Feng Mountain asked, not even breathing hard.

"It’s good, it’s good!" the worker said, dazed. He scooped up a handful of the slurry and put it in some water to inspect it.

The color was uniform, with no bleeding, no air bubbles, no coarse particles, and a perfect viscosity.

The quality was even better than concrete from a proper mixer truck.

"Good!" Feng Mountain unlatched the drum, and the concrete slurry poured smoothly into the worker’s wheelbarrow. "Next!"

One batch from the drum was enough to fill two wheelbarrows.

With Feng Mountain’s help, the pace of the concrete pouring increased several-fold. He fell into a perfect rhythm with two other workers, who were just barely able to add the raw materials fast enough to keep up with his mixing.

Wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, the concrete was poured into the formwork. The empty pit was gradually filled, becoming solid and level, and the foundation for the log cabin slowly took shape.

"Pouring’s complete!" a worker at the foundation pit shouted.

Hearing the shout, Feng Mountain stopped what he was doing and let out a long breath.

In the -10 degree Celsius weather, he was wearing only a short-sleeved shirt. The heat rising from his body instantly condensed into a white mist in the frigid air.

He stretched his slightly sore arms. The short-sleeved shirt, soaked with sweat, was now ice-cold against his skin, but Feng Mountain didn’t seem to mind at all.

The surrounding workers all stared at him in shock.

’He hasn’t taken a single break in hours.’

’Is he a monster?’

Feng Mountain secretly used his Soul Power to restore his spent energy. He walked over to the edge of the foundation pit, and seeing it now complete, an inexplicable sense of accomplishment welled up inside him.

"How soon can we start building the cabin?"

The contractor smiled.

"The temperature is pretty low, so even though we’ve used a curing accelerant, it will need 72 hours to set, at a minimum. That timeline won’t affect the rest of the installation. By the time all the cabin materials are delivered, we’ll still need to sort them before assembly. We can start building right after the foundation is fully cured."

’Seventy-two hours.’

’So, a three-day wait.’

Feng Mountain had no better solution. This was the tundra of the Arctic Circle, after all.

"Thanks for all the hard work."

The workers pulled a waterproof tarp over the foundation. Knowing there was nothing more for him to do, Feng Mountain said a word to the contractor and went to prepare dinner.

For breakfast and lunch, the construction team and the contractor had their own instant meals, which could be prepared just by boiling them in water so as not to affect the work schedule.

He didn’t have to worry about Old Swan and his group of Inuit at all. Just toss them a reindeer, and they could sort themselves out.

They considered grilled and stewed meat to be edible, something for an occasional change of pace. What they truly loved was raw meat, especially the raw reindeer from the Crown Territory.

In their own words, eating the Crown Territory’s reindeer raw tasted as if it had been marinated in berries—it was fresh, sweet, and tender.

’An eating habit I’ll never understand.’

Feng Mountain was happy for the break. Not having to cook for several dozen people cut the pressure on the Crown Territory by more than half.

「On the third day.」

The CH-54 and the other two helicopters began transporting the materials for the heavy-timber log cabin.

Logs, each fifty centimeters in diameter, were airlifted one after another to the new campsite.

The arrival of these timbers attracted the residents of Kivalina Town, who came to watch.

Building log cabins is common in Alaska, but no one used logs this thick. A trunk twenty centimeters in diameter was already considered heavy timber.

And yet these fifty-centimeter logs were just the minimum standard. A few of the load-bearing post logs were nearly seventy centimeters in diameter.

"Spirit of All Things, what kind of cabin is Feng planning to build?" Old Swan murmured, running a hand over one of the dried logs.

If logs this thick were used for the walls, they would be fifty centimeters thick.

Little Swan blinked. "Grandpa, how much will this cabin cost?"

"At least $300,000," one of the townspeople whispered.

A shocked murmur went through the crowd.

Three hundred thousand dollars! What an astronomical sum!

An installation worker carrying a piece of timber passed by the crowd. Hearing the townsfolk’s speculation, he smiled and quietly revealed the true price.

"You’re all wrong. The cabin kit is $700,000, and the installation is $250,000."

WHOA!!

That’s $950,000! You could round that up to a million!

Spending a million dollars to build a log cabin in this godforsaken patch of tundra.

No wonder Old Swan had called Feng a fat sheep.

With a million dollars, you could buy almost any kind of house in a major city.

With a million dollars, they’d have nearly enough to cover the entire relocation cost for Kivalina Town.

The townspeople all shook their heads, unable to comprehend it.

Feng Mountain didn’t need anyone’s approval, nor did he care what they thought. It was his money, and he’d spend it however he pleased.

The contractor used a walkie-talkie to direct the helicopters, having them place the palletized cabin materials in designated spots.

With trip after trip, piles of logs as high as small hills were soon stacked beside the foundation.

These logs and their associated components were crucial; not a single piece could be missing.

The workers carefully checked each piece against the numbers on the blueprints. After each inspection, they nailed a sign in front of each pile of logs, marking its contents, intended location, and quantity.

The first materials to arrive were for the cabin’s base and main frame. These main frame logs were all seventy centimeters in diameter and would be responsible for supporting the weight of the entire house.

The main appeal of this particular model, the Wind Roll Grass heavy-timber cabin, was its rejection of modern industrial aesthetics in favor of a natural, rustic look.

None of the wooden components used a single nail or piece of metal hardware. The only metal parts involved were the anchor bolts that had been set in the concrete foundation.

To connect the cabin’s main frame to the foundation, the bottoms of the load-bearing posts were drilled out. During assembly, the posts were simply aligned with the anchor bolts and lowered into place to secure them.

The rest of the construction would make clever use of mortise and tenon joinery, allowing each piece of timber to interlock and support the others. This allowed for a stable assembly without the need for any metal connectors.

...