🏰Chapter 28: Fortress of the Forgotten Valley
🌍 November 17th, 99 BCE — Late Autumn 🍂
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By late summer, the hidden village had crossed an invisible threshold—from hopeful rebuild to full-on stronghold. The crops were in. The militia was shaping up. The coin system was humming. And now? It was time to lock the whole thing down.
No more playing nice with chance. No more hoping raiders just wouldn't find them.
They were going medieval.
The Plan: Go Big or Get Raided
Junjie brought it up at a council meeting with a straight face:
"I want to build a stone wall. Like... a massive one. Big enough to say, 'Turn around, or turn into mulch.'"
At first, people laughed. Then they saw he was serious.
The next week, he and Chengde hauled in a board with a clay-and-wood model perched on top. They'd spent nights bent over the workshop table, his father carving ridgelines and Junjie pressing stonework lines into the clay. All the while, Nano whispered in Junjie's head like a smug architect—"No, two degrees more on that slope. Unless you want the whole tower to collapse and kill everyone."
Chengde just thought his son was being unusually precise. He never questioned the sudden flashes of design intuition.
The elders leaned over the model, running calloused fingers across its grooves and towers. They could see it, plain and solid, right there on the board. A vision of their valley, fortified. Something they could touch. Something they could build.
And suddenly everyone started asking when they'd start, not why.
Timeline Reality Check
A project this ambitious takes time, even with Junjie's tricks. So Nano helped work out a phased timeline, something that would work with the seasons, not against them:
Weeks 1–2 (Late Summer, Mid-August):
Site prep. Trees cleared. Ground leveled. Stone veins marked on cliffs nearby. Quarry crews set up camp practically on top of the rock.
Weeks 3–6 (Early Autumn, September):
Foundation work began while the weather was still dry and warm. Junjie's contraptions—basically a hybrid of pulleys, sledges, levers, and reinforced wheel systems—allowed even small crews to drag and position half-ton blocks like they were hauling firewood.
Weeks 7–10 (Mid to Late Autumn, October):
First layers of stone went up. Gatehouse frame started. Watchtower foundations took shape. Labor split between wall-building and final harvest duties. Long days, double shifts. People were exhausted but energized. They wanted this.
Weeks 11–15 (Late Autumn into Early Winter, November):
They raced against the frost. By now, the outer wall stood chest-high in some places, shoulder-high in others. Each stone was locked in place with fitted channels and metal pins made in the village forge. No mortar needed—just old-world precision and Nano-assisted math.
Junjie's machine shop (okay, let's be honest—it was a secret tech lair) kept churning out upgrades: stone clamps, dual-pulley lift carts, even modified sleds that could glide over muddy terrain using a layer of secret resin.
Winter Solstice (Mid-December):
The main gatehouse was up. A heavy timber frame, reinforced with iron strapping, stood between two squat towers built straight into the valley mouth. A roofed walkway connected them. The portcullis wasn't done yet, but the frame was ready. Archers could already station above, and the wall on either side stretched nearly 120 meters in each direction, curving gently toward the natural cliffs on both sides.
Snow started falling heavy. Outdoor work slowed—but didn't stop.
Deep Winter (Late December through February):
Progress staggered. The quarry froze over some days. Crews turned to indoor work: forging hinges, chain links, crank wheels, and shaping iron teeth for the drawbridge. In the evenings, militia drills continued in the hall by firelight. The smiths built arrowheads by the basketful. Women wove rope and tarred nets for siege defense. Even in snow, teams still hauled stone on sledges across packed ice—slow, but steady.
The wall grew inch by inch, week by week.
Early Spring (March):
When the thaw came, they pressed the advantage. Melting ice freed the quarry, and warmer days let them finish capping towers and shoring up the gatehouse. They sealed gaps with resin, reinforced drainage channels, and laid the first beams for the river drawbridge. By the time the fields were calling for seed, the fortress stood unmistakable: wall, towers, and gatehouse guarding the valley mouth like the teeth of some great beast.
Stone Walls and Goat Paths
The design wasn't flashy, but it was brilliant. Unless you knew the goat trails up the east ridge—a nightmare path only hunters and mountain goats dared touch—you weren't getting around that wall. The cliffs on the west side dropped off fast and brutal. The only real entrance was now this gate, backed by towers with clear lines of sight and reinforced platforms where ballistas could someday live.
They'd dug out deep post holes and sunk stone-reinforced spikes into the dirt on both sides of the wall, in case any army thought of bringing ladders. Nano suggested they add murder holes to the gatehouse and clay pot storage for fire-oil.
"Just in case," Junjie had said, grinning way too wide for someone discussing boiling death traps.
Nano's Tricks, Junjie's Machines
Let's be honest—this project shouldn't have worked this fast. Even with 400 villagers, maybe 250 were physically capable of hard labor. But Junjie's gear cut the work time in half. And Nano? Nano was like an invisible overseer, optimizing routes, rerouting labor when someone dropped from exhaustion, predicting weather changes, and managing building materials like a logistics god.
There was even talk of "blessing" the stonework—quiet whispers among the villagers that Junjie had infused some kind of protection into the foundations. He hadn't. Not yet. But maybe someday.
Futureproofing
There was still work to do come summer—the final portcullis install, a smoother drawbridge system, metal caps for the tower roofs, better rainwater channels. But the skeleton was in place, strong and undeniable.
Once a scattering of refugees, now they were a fortress carved into a hidden valley. Not just surviving—thriving.
And if anyone did stumble in?
Well... they were welcome to try that gate.
Good luck.