Seeing the skeletons and corpses covering the entire construction site, waving tools and diligently digging the river channel, the British engineers on site who were in charge of supervising the work were all confused.
This was the first time they had seen such an exaggerated and "unusual" worker, and everyone was greatly shocked.
Some devout people even took out crosses and prayed loudly to God, denouncing the evil to retreat. At the same time, they also asked the British soldiers responsible for maintaining order on the construction site for help, asking them to destroy these blasphemous evil corpses.
However, these British soldiers had long been accustomed to the existence of these corpses and seemed to be indifferent. They even "appeased" these engineers and asked Lee Enfield to ask them to go back to work.
Faced with Lee Enfield's hospitality and the cordial and friendly "appeasement" of these British soldiers, these engineers returned to the construction site tremblingly.
In fact, the British soldiers were also frightened by these undead workers at the beginning, and many of them even opened fire. If the officers had not suppressed and comforted them, they would have started fighting on the spot.
But later, the Egyptian side sent over batch after batch of skeletons, mummies, mummies, and fresh corpses. The British army was shocked and frightened at the beginning and then numb at the end. Now they are used to it.
After all, the number of workers needed to widen the canal is not one or two, but tens of millions of workers. Such a large number, even a skeleton would look numb and feel nothing.
Of course, it was impossible for Chen Mo to control such a huge number by himself. Even the created acolytes did not have such a large number to control such a huge group of undead, so Chen Mo chose to erect an obelisk next to the river.
This kind of obelisk is one of the products created by Chen Mo by combining the necromancy knowledge in the spell book with the ancient Egyptian magic knowledge presented by Immorton. It is a type of gathering spirit tower and requires four acolytes to activate it.
After it is activated, it only requires one or two acolytes to continuously input mana to maintain it.
After this kind of obelisk is activated, it can cover a radius of about seven kilometers, and the undead that are marked within the coverage area will be controlled by the obelisk.
However, this kind of control is quite rough. It can only provide a general command, but cannot carry out detailed operations.
For example, you can order all or part of the undead to move forward or backward, or attack, or stop, but you cannot order a single undead to do any delicate work.
Therefore, on the construction site, an obelisk is set up on both sides of the river every ten kilometers. In this way, the four obelisks are spread out together, enough to cover a river with a length of 20 kilometers, and control the nearly one million undead workers for construction.
As the old saying goes, "If there are ten thousand people, there is no limit; if there are one hundred thousand people, it will stretch to the sky." The scene of nearly a million undead workers working together is very spectacular. Even standing on the bank of the river, you can see it at a glance.
They are all like skeletons.
Although these undead have low intelligence, are limited by physical problems, and are not very energetic, nearly a million workers who do not need rest are working on construction day and night, and there is no need to eat, drink, poop or sleep to affect the progress of the construction, so they still let them
The construction efficiency of the secondary canal widening project has been greatly improved.
As for where these nearly one million undead came from, it is naturally thanks to the ancient Egyptian funeral customs and natural climate.
From ancient times to the present, the Egyptians have had the habit of mummifying corpses and preserving them. This is true for both nobles and civilians. However, the mummies of the nobles are well-made and the corpses can be preserved for a long time. The pharaohs can even build grand projects such as the pyramids.
As your own mausoleum.
But ordinary civilians can only dry the corpse like bacon, and there is no good cloth to wrap it, and there is no magnificent mausoleum, so they can just bury it in an ordinary way.
However, thanks to Egypt's dry natural climate, these corpses will dry out quickly under the influence of the desert climate. If they are not damaged by activities such as tomb robbing, the corpses will remain underground and will not be damaged for thousands of years.
It is precisely because of this that after Chen Mo sent out his acolytes created using cloning technology, he quickly pulled out more than 800,000 undead from around Cairo and sent them to the construction site in the Canal Zone in batches.
Some of them are people who died during the previous Battle of Cairo. The corpses that were claimed will be taken away for burial, but the remaining corpses that are unclaimed or have been too beaten to be identified will be
Transformed into undead laborers and sent to work.
This is also one of the policies that Chen Mo plans to implement in the future. If someone is responsible for taking away and burying the dead body, then they will naturally be buried. However, if no one claims it and needs to be handled by the public sector, it will be transformed into undead laborers and then work for the country.
Work until you earn enough money for your own coffin before being buried in the soil.
And even so, these corpses will still be dug up and turned into undead laborers or undead soldiers when the country needs them.
In fact, Chen Mo himself wanted to collect a corpse tax, which meant that after Egyptian citizens died, their corpses had to work for the country.
Of course, if you do this directly, it will definitely not work. No matter how much the Egyptian tradition attaches importance to corpses, it is still too shocking to directly pull up the dead to work.
What Chen Mo envisages is to open up the service of resurrection after death. This is certainly not difficult for a necromancer. There are so many ways to resurrect the corpse. He can come up with seventeen or eight kinds at will and arrange one in each city.
The large passive resurrection circle automatically activates the resurrection program when someone dies. It is not a difficult thing for Chen Mo to do.
In this way, after the Egyptians died, they could be resurrected as undead and continue to live, but as a fee for resurrection, the deceased was required to serve the country for ten years. If the family had money to pay for the resurrection fee, they would not have to serve for ten years.
In this way, no matter whether you are poor or rich, you can still contribute to Chen Mo after your death, but the rich will contribute money and the poor will contribute your body.
The resurrected undead are not completely free and do not require any additional investment, because both the corpse and the skeleton will gradually decay and be damaged over time.
If you are a poor person, as long as you serve the country, the maintenance costs will naturally be borne by the state, but a maintenance fee will be added to the service years. However, if you are a rich person, you can only pay for maintenance services yourself.
In this way, whether it is a large number of lower-level undead or wealth, they can enter Chen Mo's pocket very smoothly.
The only limitation is people's acceptance of resurrecting the dead.
