By the time Alexei collected enough lava, three full days had passed.
The delay was not his fault. According to Yan, melting stone required precise control over spiritual fire. He did not understand the technical details, but he was impressed by the level of control required.
Of course, there had been a price for Yan's assistance. She had insisted he owe her a favor, one she would collect at a time of her choosing. He had agreed without thinking too much about it. But looking at the ten obsidian blocks now sitting in his inventory, he felt it had been worth it.
Over the past few days, he had also managed to obtain 48 redstone dust by purchasing a clock from one of his librarians and deconstructing it. Unfortunately, most redstone contraptions were still out of reach. Two critical components required Nether quartz, which only spawned in the Nether.
The other librarian had not offered either a clock or a compass at the Expert level. Instead, they had provided a modded enchanted book called Critical Strike II.
Critical Strike could be applied to bows and tridents, up to level three. Each level added three seconds of maximum charge time, and for every three seconds charged, attack power and attack range increased by fifty percent.
At level two, that meant up to six seconds of charge time for a one hundred percent increase in both damage and range.
He had tested it. Even the flight speed of arrows and tridents doubled at maximum charge. Practically speaking, it was situational at best. Most enemies would not stand still for ten-plus seconds while he charged an attack.
But it looked incredible.
Each charge stage made the golden glow on the arrow or trident brighten by another level. And when fired, it left a golden trail through the air.
For now, he had only applied the enchanted book to his bow. The trident already had too many useful enchantments to waste a slot on something this impractical.
---
Beneath the mob farm, Alexei had begun constructing the Nether portal.
Safety was the priority. He hollowed out the entire area beneath the portal frame so that if hostile mobs poured through, they would fall to their deaths immediately.
He then used MC-ified stone bricks to seal the portal chamber completely, leaving only a single 1×1 opening through which he could observe the interior.
Standing outside the sealed room, he held flint and steel in his hand and took a deep breath.
This was the moment of truth.
He reached through the opening, aimed at the obsidian frame, and struck.
Click.
Sparks flew. A small flame flickered briefly inside the frame and died.
Then the portal ignited.
Purple energy erupted from the center of the frame, rushing outward before being pulled back inward. The space within the obsidian rectangle rippled and warped, filled with swirling violet light.
A low hum filled the air, accompanied by an invisible force that tugged at his body, trying to pull him toward the portal.
The weight of his equipment kept him grounded.
He waited, watching through the opening for the horde of monsters he had imagined pouring through.
Nothing happened.
"Huh. Maybe I overthought this."
He waited a bit longer just to be safe, but the portal remained empty.
Finally, he squeezed through the narrow opening into the chamber, stepped over the trapdoor on the floor, and approached the portal.
The purple energy rippled more intensely as he got closer. He could feel a pressure against his skin, like standing too close to a fire.
He took one more breath, then stepped through.
---
The transition was disorienting.
It felt like pushing through a thick membrane. The purple energy surrounded him completely, warping his vision as strange sounds echoed from all directions.
Then his feet hit solid ground, and the sensory overload faded.
Heat hit him immediately.
Before he had time to properly assess his surroundings, dozens of pig-like cries erupted from all directions, so loud that his ears began to ring.
"OINK!"
"OINK! OINK! OINK!"
He spun around, searching for the source.
Piglins were everywhere.
At least two dozen stood within sight, with more visible in the distance. They had all stopped what they were doing and turned toward him.
Then they reached for their weapons.
They raised their armaments and began advancing toward him.
"Oh shit..."
Alexei fumbled in his inventory and yanked out a golden helmet, jamming it onto his head.
The piglins with crossbows immediately lowered their weapons. The ones charging with swords stopped mid-step, looked at each other, then turned around and resumed their idle wandering.
"Good thing I came prepared." Alexei exhaled shakily.
In Minecraft, wearing any piece of gold armor prevented piglins from attacking unprovoked.
Just within his field of vision, he could count at least two or three hundred piglins. Unless he had completely lost his mind, he was not going to provoke them.
Piglins attacked in groups. Aggressive mobs in the Nether did not mess around.
---
Now that he was not about to be murdered, Alexei finally took stock of his surroundings.
He was standing in a Crimson Forest biome. That much was clear from the color palette. Deep reds and dark purples stretched in every direction, while ash drifted downward like snow through a haze of crimson mist.
But this was nothing like the Crimson Forest from the game.
The huge fungi, known in technical terms as Nether trees, were impossibly large. In vanilla Minecraft, their trunks were usually no more than a meter in diameter. Here, trunks six meters thick appeared ordinary. Nine-meter giants dominated the landscape, and in the distance he spotted several that must have measured at least twelve meters across.
Thick clusters of weeping vines hung from the enormous fungi. Shroomlights provided illumination throughout the forest. Above, he could see streams of lava flowing along the ceiling.
The ground was covered in crimson roots, warped fungi, and smaller crimson fungi growing in dense clusters.
"What the hell..."
This was not just a scaled-up version of the game. This was an entire ecosystem.
Then understanding clicked into place.
In Minecraft, one meter traveled in the Nether equaled eight meters in the Overworld. That mechanic formed the foundation of Nether transportation. A player could build a portal in the Nether, walk a relatively short distance, construct another portal, and emerge far away in the Overworld.
The original Minecraft world was already seven times larger than Earth.
If his abilities had scaled the Profound Sky Continent to match Minecraft's Overworld, then of course the Nether would scale proportionally. The Eastern Territories alone had two mortal empires with a combined population equal to Earth's entire population. The landmass had to be enormous.
And if the world was bigger, the Nether would be bigger too.
At least the mob spawning seemed normal. He could see about a hundred piglins in the area, which suggested the regional cap of roughly seventy hostile mobs was still in effect. Otherwise, there would not be two or three hundred piglins visible. There would be thousands.
He scanned the forest again, this time looking for specific threats.
There were no ghasts, which came as a relief. Those flying, fire-spitting monsters were easily the worst enemies to deal with.
There were no hoglins either, though that was hardly surprising. Piglins and hoglins were natural enemies. With this many piglins around, any hoglins had probably been hunted to extinction in this area.
What he did spot, about thirty meters away, was a piglin brute.
"Why is there a brute here?" he said aloud. "Those are supposed to only spawn in bastions."
The brute had not noticed him. It wandered aimlessly through the area, letting out the occasional low grunt.
If a brute was here, then a bastion had to be nearby. And if there was a bastion, there would be netherite upgrade templates and other valuable loot.
He stored that information away for later.
Right now, he had a more pressing goal: gather resources and get out safely.
---
For navigating the terrain, Alexei chose the simplest solution: go in a straight line opposite the portal and dig through anything in his way.
The Nether was full of one-meter elevation changes, which would have been annoying to constantly jump over. His solution was to just mine through obstacles as he encountered them.
His enchanted diamond pickaxe tore through crimson nylium, the Nether's equivalent of grass, at a rate of two to three blocks per second. It was far faster than mining cobblestone.
As he moved forward, he gathered resources in large quantities. Crimson stems, which served as the Nether's version of wood. Shroomlights for lighting and decoration. Magma blocks. Netherrack. And, of course, five buckets of lava.
Three of the lava buckets would be used to craft an enchanting table. The remaining two would power a cobblestone generator.
The cobblestone generator was particularly important. Once operational, he would no longer need to assimilate blocks using experience. Infinite unassimilated cobblestone meant infinite building materials.
Fortunately, despite the world's increased size, ore spawn rates had not decreased. Nether quartz and glowstone were still abundant and easy to find.
With his Fortune III pickaxe, he rapidly filled two full stacks of quartz and more glowstone than he currently needed.
"That should be enough," he decided, checking his nearly-full inventory. "Time to head back."
He had not found any Nether wart or soul sand, but those were not critical yet. Nether wart required exploring fortress structures, and soul sand could be obtained by bartering with piglins using gold ingots.
The return trip was uneventful, though navigating through crowds of nearly-two-meter-tall pig-headed monsters was a bit nerve-wracking.
---
Back in the Profound Sky Continent, Alexei used crimson stems to craft additional chests and sorted his new materials into organized storage.
He also expanded the area around the Nether portal, connecting it properly to his collection system.
The mob farm would remain as-is for now. He was not ready to convert it into a trident killer. His primary need was still villagers, and the current system was his main source.
Speaking of which, the villagers he had placed upstairs still showed no signs of breeding.
"Come on," he muttered, glaring up at the ceiling. "How hard is it to make babies? You have beds. You have food. Just do something."
The lack of baby villagers meant his iron farm was stuck in development limbo. He needed ten villagers minimum to spawn iron golems naturally. Right now, he only had six.
He was experiencing severe baby-making anxiety, and it was entirely the villagers' fault.
He checked on the zombie villager he was curing. Golden spiral particles still drifted around it. There was no sign that the process was complete.
---
With time to spare, Alexei returned to the Nether with a load of stone bricks.
He made basic modifications to the area around the portal, expanding the safe zone and adding half-slabs to the floor to prevent mob spawning.
On the Nether side, he hastily constructed a crude box around the portal and covered the floor with half-slabs. Eventually, once he mined enough Nether bricks, he could build a proper fortress that looked decent. For now, functionality mattered more than aesthetics.
The real priority was preventing piglins from wandering onto his mob farm platform.
That left one final task: the piglin brute.
The heavily-armored brute was still wandering about thirty to forty meters from the portal. It had not noticed him, but that was only a matter of time. If a piglin brute attacked, nearby piglins would join the fight. Leaving it alive was a constant risk.
He pulled out his bow and carefully aimed.
The technique was simple: shoot the target's feet, not their body. Arrows hitting the ground near an enemy still dealt damage, but from the enemy's perspective, the arrow came from the ground. They would not immediately identify the shooter's location.
He charged the bow fully, holding for six seconds as golden light intensified along the arrow's shaft.
Twang.
The arrow flew, covering forty meters in less than a second, and struck the ground directly beneath the piglin brute.
Thunk.
The brute roared in confusion, spinning to find its attacker.
Alexei was already charging a second shot.
Twang.
The piglin brute collapsed, items scattering from its corpse.
No other piglins reacted. As far as they were concerned, nothing had happened.
"Foot-shooting technique works," Alexei said with satisfaction. "Good to know."
As for exploring more of the Nether?
He would wait.
He still needed to finish building his ender pearl stasis chamber first. Without a reliable way to teleport back home, exploring too far from the portal was suicide.
Once that was complete, he could explore properly.
---
Alexei had just finished his latest trip to the Nether when he discovered some good news waiting for him back home.
The cleric had finally finished converting.
"About damn time," he muttered, pulling the newly-cured villager out of its luxurious isolation chamber.
Even though he now had a stable redstone source through deconstructing clocks, getting 24 free redstone was still a fantastic deal. But more importantly, with this additional redstone, he finally had enough materials to build his automatic sorting machine.
He opened the trading interface, already knowing what to expect.
[Cleric]
[Level: Novice]
[Rotten Flesh ×32 | 18 → Emerald ×1]
[Emerald ×1 → Redstone Dust ×2]
[Cleric]
[Level: Apprentice (Locked)]
[Gold Ingots ×3 | 1 → Emerald ×1]
[Emerald ×1 → Lapis Lazuli ×1]
He bought out every available trade without hesitation. His redstone dust reserves jumped from 48 to 72.
At present, the mob farm produced four primary items: rotten flesh, bones, gunpowder, and arrows. There were also secondary drops from manually killing mobs, including potatoes, poisonous potatoes, carrots, and various pieces of worn equipment.
Of all these materials, he only needed three. Rotten flesh could be traded with villagers. Bones could be converted into bone meal. Gunpowder was essential for crafting TNT and fireworks.
Arrows were unnecessary. His bow carried the Infinity enchantment, which meant a single arrow was enough.
That simplified the design considerably. He only needed a four-item sorting system.
He planned three separate rows of chests for rotten flesh, bones, and gunpowder. A fourth chest would collect miscellaneous drops, and that chest would connect to a high-frequency redstone circuit linked to a dispenser that automatically destroyed unwanted items in fire.
He placed the crafting table and began taking stock of his materials.
For a four-item sorter, he would need six redstone comparators, six redstone repeaters, six redstone torches, thirty hoppers, and sixteen chests. If he wanted to include the trash disposal system, he would also need two observers and one dispenser.
After setting aside a small reserve, his 68 pieces of redstone dust were just enough. He would even have one piece left over.
At first glance, the design looked complicated. Redstone machines often did. However, once divided into modular components, the structure became much simpler. Each storage module required only one comparator, one repeater, two chests, three pieces of redstone dust, four hoppers, and five smooth stone blocks.
Simple enough.
He had built variations of this system dozens of times back on Earth. It was one of the foundational designs in redstone engineering.
He began with the foundation, placing two chests vertically, one stacked neatly atop the other.
Behind the chests, he connected four hoppers in a vertical line. The bottom two fed directly into the chests. The third hopper could face either forward or backward, since its direction did not affect the mechanism. The top hopper pointed sideways toward the space where he planned to install the miscellaneous storage later.
"Main structure done. Now for the annoying part."
Redstone circuits always felt like he was trying to explain electricity to someone who had never seen a lightbulb. But the logic was simple enough once you understood the basic principle.
He placed a smooth stone block one space behind the bottom hopper, then stuck a redstone torch on it.
The torch locked the hopper directly in front of it. A locked hopper could not transfer items and would simply hold them in place.
On top of the torch, he placed another smooth stone block. Powering this block would lock the second-row hopper.
Next, he placed a comparator on top of that stone block. From there, he extended two more stone blocks backward and laid redstone dust across them.
He then placed another stone block one block farther out at ground level and added a final line of redstone dust on top.
"Alright."
The redstone comparator detected the number of items in the third-row hopper and output signals of different strengths depending on how full it was.
To configure the sorting system, he placed the target item in the first slot of the third hopper. In this case, the first module was designed to sort rotten flesh.
The remaining four slots were filled with placeholder items that could never appear in the mob farm's drops. He chose Nether quartz because it was distinctive, easy to recognize, and impossible for the farm to produce.
When items passed over the third hopper, anything matching the first slot would get pulled in.
The placeholder items in slots two through five would never absorb anything, since those items didn't exist in the farm's output.
When the hopper contained exactly 45 items, the comparator output a redstone signal strength of two.
When it hit 46 items, signal strength jumped to three, powering the outermost smooth stone block.
A repeater placed between that block and the block holding the redstone torch extended the signal and powered the torch block.
The torch turned off.
The two hoppers that had been locked started working, pulling the 46th item from the third hopper and transferring it into the chest.
Once the count dropped back to 45, the signal weakened, the torch turned back on, and the hoppers locked again.
The cycle repeated every time a new item came through.
If an item in the top hopper didn't match the sorted item, it would continue moving sideways through adjacent hoppers until either a matching module absorbed it or it ended up in the miscellaneous chest at the end of the line.
"And that," Alexei said to no one in particular, "is how you automate inventory management."
Once he understood the principle, and he had understood it for years, building the machine was straightforward.
He constructed six identical modules, paired them together for three separate item types, and added a dedicated miscellaneous chest at the end.
Then came the part he had been debating: the trash disposal system.
Did he really need it? Probably not. Was he going to install it anyway because leaving junk lying around annoyed him? Yes.
The disposal system was simple: two observers facing each other to create a high-frequency redstone pulse, a dispenser connected to the miscellaneous chest via hopper, and a block of netherrack that would burn forever once ignited.
Items in the miscellaneous chest got transferred by hopper into the dispenser. The high-frequency circuit constantly triggered the dispenser, throwing items into the fire where they were destroyed.
Gold ingots and iron ingots were no longer in short supply. If he was going to automate, he might as well go all the way.
The mob farm only produced a handful of junk items per day anyway. Not worth manually processing.
"Done."
He used downward-facing hoppers to connect the sorting machine to the mob farm's loot chest.
The entire system came online immediately.
Within fifteen seconds, the first piece of rotten flesh appeared in its dedicated chest.
After that, rotten flesh sorted itself at a rate of four to five pieces per second.
Alexei watched the system work for a full minute, making sure nothing jammed or backed up.
Everything worked perfectly.
"Beautiful."
While the machine did its job, he sealed the top with smooth stone blocks, hiding the entire contraption underground. Only a two-block-wide staircase remained visible, leading down to the storage area.
He also placed item frames on each chest so he could identify the contents at a glance: rotten flesh, bones, gunpowder, trash.
Of course, this was just the beginning.
The current setup was working but inefficient in other ways. The villagers lived in the iron farm area above, which meant trading required running up and down stairs constantly.
The process was tedious and wasted valuable time.
Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, he would need to connect the sorted storage chests to the villager trading area using a proper item transportation system.
Hoppers beneath each chest could feed into dispensers. Water streams and bubble columns could carry items upward to a centralized trading post near the villagers.
That way, he could manage all trades from one location without having to haul materials up manually.
The bones produced by the mob farm could be pre-processed into bone meal using auto-crafters before being transported up. Since the items would already be sorted, no complex circuits would be needed. Simple hopper chains leading into expanded storage or shulker box loaders would be more than sufficient.
The bone meal itself could fuel a bamboo farm, which in turn would provide fuel for future automated furnaces.
As for bamboo, the shoots could not be assimilated directly. Even so, bamboo was still a plant that produced seeds. He had heard that the sect leader maintained a collection of rare seeds within the agricultural archives.
Acquiring some through official channels would probably not be difficult. And if that failed, there were always unofficial methods.
He added it to his growing list of future tasks.
Another major project awaited him as well. The blocks surrounding the redstone circuits would eventually need to be replaced with proper MC-ified materials.
At present, everything was constructed from ordinary smooth stone. It worked, but it was vulnerable. If something went wrong, if he accidentally damaged part of the structure during expansion, the entire system could collapse.
MC blocks, by contrast, were indestructible by normal means. Rebuilding the infrastructure with them would secure the system for the long term.
"That's going to be another huge project."
But that was fine.
---
Alexei waited beside the automatic sorting machine for another ten minutes, watching items flow into their designated chests.
Everything worked exactly as designed.
"It's really beautiful," he muttered before turning and heading back upstairs.
His next project was significantly more ambitious: building a water transport system to move items from the sorting machine directly up to the villager trading area.
Once it was finished, he would no longer need to run up and down the stairs with armfuls of materials like some exhausted delivery boy.
The design required observers to generate a high frequency circuit. There were several ways to construct such a system, but he preferred the simplest and most reliable option. Two observers facing each other could create a continuous pulse.
This design used more materials than some alternatives, but materials were the one thing he did not lack. If necessary, he could simply wait a few more days for the mob farm to produce whatever he needed.
Besides observers and dispensers, the water transport system still required two other critical components: ice blocks and soul sand for bubble columns.
Fortunately, both were relatively easy to obtain.
Ice normally required a pickaxe with the Silk Touch enchantment to harvest without melting. However, he had a way around that limitation. Qingxue could simply freeze regular water for him, and he could convert the ice afterward.
Soul sand was even easier to obtain. All he needed were gold ingots and the willingness to take a gamble with piglins.
Trading with piglins had an 8% chance of yielding two to eight soul sand per trade. The odds were not particularly good, but they were manageable with enough gold. More importantly, bartering could also yield ender pearls, which were one of the essential items for safely exploring the Nether.
He knew he could not realistically explore the Nether while constantly trying to memorize every turn of his route. Even back when it had only been a game, he had often gotten lost and spent hours searching for his portal again.
Now the Nether was seven times larger than the already enormous overworld. Trying to navigate it by memory alone simply was not an option.
----------
[POV: Yi Mengyao]
Mengyao had once again "rescued" the strange cow Alexei called a mooshroom from its fence enclosure. Now she stood beside it, gently rubbing its fuzzy head.
For reasons she could not entirely explain, petting this emotionally stable spirit beast was oddly addictive. The creature just stood there, chewing placidly, completely unbothered by her attention.
Also, she was bored.
Her cultivation had been progressing well. She had practiced the Body Tempering Art for several weeks, and by her own estimates she would reach the Qi Refining stage in about two more weeks.
But Yan had not yet begun teaching her actual spells or sword techniques.
To be fair, spells required at least Qi Refining cultivation to perform. You needed a dantian full of spiritual energy before you could start throwing fireballs around.
Swordsmanship was technically accessible now, but Yan had explained that once she reached Qi Refining, Cheng would come out of seclusion and take over her training.
After reaching Foundation Establishment, they would decide whether she specialized in spirit cultivation or body cultivation. If she chose body cultivation, she would continue studying under Cheng.
If she chose spirit cultivation, she would study under Qingxue, who specialized in ice-based techniques.
Thinking about it now, Yan's role in the sect seemed to be... logistics support?
Then again, she reconsidered. Her master was the one providing those miraculous pills. Calling her mere logistics support was like calling a nuclear reactor a heating element.
The woman was essentially a living Pill God.
Having an alchemist of that caliber as a master would make cultivators across the entire continent lose their minds with envy. Dao hearts would collapse left and right out of sheer jealousy.
Since beginning body tempering, every pill Yan had given her had been at least nine-pattern quality.
Mengyao's personal storage chest currently contained four to five bottles of thirty-pill quantities each: Meridian Nourishing Pills, Foundation Cultivation Pills, Hundred Flower Pills, and Bone Cleansing Pills.
For context, even in the Celestial Path Sect pills were typically sold in bottles of five. Only the most common varieties like Qi Replenishment Pills, Fasting Pills, and Blood Qi Pills occasionally came in bottles of twelve.
She suspected that if Yan could find larger bottles, she would happily pack fifty or a hundred pills into one container. With pills of that quality and quantity, her cultivation breakthroughs should have been as easy as eating and drinking.
In practice, it was not.
Yan had explicitly told her to suppress her cultivation as much as possible.
She was currently in the foundation-strengthening stage. The more solid her foundation, the smoother her cultivation path would be in the future.
But strengthening one's foundation required massive quantities of spiritual materials, something ordinary cultivators simply could not afford.
In her previous life, she had been one of those ordinary cultivators. Otherwise, if she cultivated at full speed using just the mid-grade spirit stone torch Alexei had given her, she could break through to Qi Refining in just a few days.
There was also something else Yan had mentioned: after successfully completing body tempering, it seemed a fire sparrow had flown into her mind.
Apparently, she had awakened some kind of spirit body. But Yan was not certain exactly what kind of spirit body it was. She could only make rough guesses based on the manifestation.
The randomness of spirit body awakenings was simply too great. If she wanted accurate information, she would need to use the Immortal Alliance's Spirit Testing Monument.
She had already given up on that idea. Too much attention from the wider cultivation world was the last thing she needed. What puzzled her most was that this had never happened in her previous life.
She had never awakened any spirit body before dying. So where had this one come from?
The spirit fruits she had eaten were not the type that triggered spirit body awakenings. And even if they were, what kind of spirit body manifested as a fire sparrow? That sounded pathetically weak.
She had heard that when the Empress of the Divine Cloud Dynasty awakened her Fire Phoenix Immortal Body, heaven and earth changed color, the sun and moon lost their light, and a ten-thousand-meter fire phoenix circled above the royal capital for more than half a month.
She suspected there was significant exaggeration in that story. Even if you cut the numbers in half, it still sounded absurdly dramatic. Compared to that, a little fire sparrow fluttering around in her head seemed almost embarrassing.
She scratched the mooshroom behind its ears. The mooshroom made a contented sound and leaned into her hand.
At least someone here appreciated her.
----------
[POV: Alexei]
Alexei stood hunched over his cobblestone generator with a pickaxe in hand, steadily mining.
The design was simple: lava extending from one side, water flowing from the other. When they met, cobblestone formed. One block every second, like clockwork.
His pickaxe could mine exactly two blocks consecutively before the next one generated. Each mined block was immediately absorbed by the hopper below and transferred into the chest beneath his feet.
The system was not as fast as a TNT-based cobblestone generator. Those designs could produce tens of thousands of blocks per hour. Even so, this setup still generated roughly three thousand blocks every hour. More importantly, cobblestone generated this way did not require assimilation.
If he had to manually convert three thousand blocks at a rate of forty to fifty per hour, he would be here until the heat death of the universe.
Of course, just mining cobblestone was not enough.
This was his base. He was not building it out of raw cobblestone like some kind of medieval peasant hovel. He needed smooth stone bricks. Which meant smelting.
The problem was that furnaces were slow.
A single cobblestone took ten minutes to smelt into stone. So he had upgraded his furnace setup into a 16-furnace semi-automatic array. The top eight furnaces smelted cobblestone into stone. Once finished, hoppers pulled the stone downward and fed it into the bottom eight furnaces for a second round of smelting, producing smooth stone bricks.
Finally, more hoppers transferred the smooth stone bricks into a collection chest. The entire array could process up to 96 blocks per hour simultaneously, producing 48 smooth stone bricks per hour.
A full stack of cobblestone required roughly ten and a half hours to finish smelting. If he loaded the furnaces before sleeping, they still would not be done by morning. Running continuously for a full day, the array could produce 1,152 smooth stone bricks.
Not bad, actually.
He estimated that by tomorrow, he would have enough smooth stone bricks for his current construction needs. But there was another problem rapidly approaching: he was running out of coal.
Besides this 16-furnace array, there was another six-furnace setup above that operated 24 hours a day, continuously smelting unassimilated smooth stone for general construction.
At this rate, his fuel supply would be completely exhausted in five days, maybe less.
"Damn it."
He had been putting off the bamboo farm project because there were always more urgent things to handle. But he was out of excuses now.
The bamboo farm had officially become an urgent priority.
He needed to get bamboo seeds from the sect master's agricultural archives. That should not be too difficult. The sect maintained seed collections for various useful plants.
Then he would need to build the farm itself: observers, pistons, hoppers, and a collection system. Auto-harvest the bamboo, smelt it into fuel, and feed it back into the furnace arrays.
Full automation from start to finish.
"Add that to the list," he muttered, watching another cobblestone block materialize and immediately get mined into his inventory