The car drove onto the dirt road carved out between the mountains. The surface was still quite rough, but the traces of careful repair were obvious.
The roadbed that had been washed away by the flash flood had been refilled with crushed stone, potholes tamped flat with packed earth, and a new half‑man‑high stone wall had been built along the roadside, clearly to prevent mudslides in the rainy season.
When the entrance of East Valley Town came into view in the distance, Cheng Ye couldn't help but brighten. The entire town had been encircled by a tall wall, its body a newly built brick-and-stone structure, with scaffolding still standing at the top.
He hadn't expected that Gu Xinjing and Zhang Wen would actually want to turn this place into a "modernized mountain stockade," sealing this stretch of mountain terrain firmly within a barrier.
