The entire population of the Lion's Den was mobilized.
The three hundred smallfolk living in the fortress, together with the residents of the four military settlements, worked under Evelyn's direction — felling trees, constructing the massive wheel frame, building the elevated water troughs.
In the Lion's Den smithy, Brin's forge fire burned without pause day or night, hammering out the iron fittings and the critical central axle bearing.
At the fastest stretch of the Little Trident, a great construction site roared with activity.
Solomon mostly walked around, drawing on whatever thin, imprecise fragments of physics happened to surface in his memory, offering key interventions at the moments that mattered.
Nearly every smallfolk present witnessed this and carried it afterward — the sense that no problem in the world could stop their lord, that whenever they hit a wall, their lord's word could cut through it. There was no longer any doubt in the domain: Lord Solomon was a man blessed by the Smith.
Half a month later, a great silent giant took its place on the bank of the Little Trident.
It was so large that the people standing beneath it looked like children.
The day the waterwheel was installed, word spread through the entire domain before noon. Every landholding smallfolk came — the riverbank on both sides packed completely solid, a dark press of bodies stretching as far as the eye could see. Even the charcoal workers, the rabbit farm families, the craftsmen from Cross Town had stopped work and traveled here. They had set down every tool and every task for one purpose: to witness with their own eyes what they had been hearing about for weeks — the blessing of the Seven, the miracle of the Smith.
The crowd held its breath. The only sound was the river running fast over stone.
Solomon stood on high ground above the assembly and called out.
"Remove the barrier!!"
Fifteen strong soldiers pulled together on the lever.
The current struck the paddle boards at the base of the wheel.
The great wheel began to move — slowly at first, then steadily, unstoppably — releasing a long, deep sound, like the groan of a giant waking from sleep.
Both banks went absolutely silent. Every heart climbed into every throat.
The wooden tubes dipped into the river one by one, then were lifted back out, catching the midday sun, scattering fragments of light across the surface of the water.
The wheel turned faster. And faster.
When the first row of tubes reached the highest point of the arc, every face in the crowd tilted upward.
A cascade of clear river water poured from the height — a silver waterfall falling perfectly into the elevated wooden trough.
The flow ran along the newly cut channels, murmuring softly, carrying itself forward along the irrigation lines already dug across the hillside fields, reaching the dry cracked earth that had never had enough water.
A brief silence.
Then the riverbanks erupted.
Thunder from thousands of throats.
"Long live!! Long live!!"
"Long live Lord Solomon!!"
"The Smith has shown a miracle!!"
"Lord Solomon has been blessed by the Smith!!"
People grabbed each other, jumping, shouting. The sound cracked open the sky, carrying years of suppressed need and a joy that had no words.
Elderly farmers who had bent over dry soil their entire lives knelt on the riverbank and pressed their foreheads to the ground, bowing again and again to the turning wheel, tears running freely.
Children screamed and ran to the edge of the channel, cupping the water in their hands, splashing each other, throwing it in their own faces — receiving it like a holy baptism, like a blessing from the Seven handed down in liquid form.
They understood, in the way that people understand things that change everything: from today, this land's fate had been rewritten. The barren fields would not be barren. The long, exhausting trudge with wooden buckets was over. The terror of drought would never hold them the same way again.
Brin stood beside Solomon, watching the scene, his whole body trembling slightly with an emotion he couldn't contain. His gaze moved from the racing channel water — and then swung around, suddenly, to look back at the Moonstone Mountains rising behind them.
Something lit up in his eyes.
He raised his hand and pointed — shaking slightly — toward the steep slopes where no crop had ever grown.
"My Lord!!"
"Perhaps... perhaps up in those mountains, we could use the same method!"
His breathing was quickening. High in the mountains, there was land that could theoretically be farmed — positioned in difficult, steep terrain, too far from any water source, therefore useless.
"We could bring the water up to the mountainside!! And on those slopes... we could clear... clear farmland!!"
Solomon followed the line of Brin's pointing finger and smiled.
Good man. He's arrived at terraced fields on his own.
Brin was different from Lushen and Laurence. He had a craftsman's intuition — the kind that builds understanding through the hands rather than through words. He might not know the name of a principle or why it worked, but he could internalize it and apply it to production. More than that, Brin could fight. Lushen's strength lay in absolute fearlessness — the willingness to charge into certain death without hesitation — so his future was clearly in military command. As for Laurence, his position was still ambiguous, which was why Solomon had given him the mayor's role: a path toward mixed-purpose development.
He turned back and looked at Brin's flushed face.
Real approval.
"Brin — you are remarkable."
"I had exactly this in mind."
The great waterwheel continued its rhythmic creaking on the Little Trident, lifting river water without fatigue, pouring it into the elevated channel above.
The smallfolk's cheering gradually faded, but on every weathered face, the expression that had settled there — reverence mixed with a joy too big to be contained — showed no sign of leaving.
Solomon looked around the gathered crowd and spoke.
"But first — we need to solve a problem."
"Mountain land is not the same as valley land."
He held out his hand. A perceptive soldier nearby picked up a fallen branch and presented it with both hands.
Solomon crouched and began drawing in the smooth earth at his feet.
"The first problem: height."
His voice drew the crowd's full attention.
"The noria beneath our feet can lift water a few zhang at most. The mountain slopes are far, far higher than that. What do we do?"
People looked at each other. The excitement that had filled the air deflated slightly under the weight of the question.
Brin rubbed the back of his head. Right... the mountain is enormous. How do you get the water that high?
Solomon kept drawing, sketching a steep diagonal line.
"The second problem: water retention."
"A slope is a slope. Even if we get the water up there — how do we keep it there?"
"One heavy rain, and everything we worked for — the topsoil we cleared, the water we lifted — washes straight back down to the river."
Several old farmers standing near the front nodded slowly. This was knowledge in their bones, passed down through every generation: mountain land holds neither water nor soil. You cannot grow crops on it.
Solomon watched them thinking, then spoke again — unhurried, with a smile in his voice, the tone of someone who has already seen what the room cannot yet see.
"To solve the first problem — we need to upgrade the noria."
He paused.
"I call it the High-Lift Noria."
Brin's eyes lit up instantly.
Of course. Of course the lord has an answer. He had never once seen Solomon face a problem without one.
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