Heaven-Piercing Pillar

Fan Domain appeared to have achieved some scale, but its foundation was still somewhat lacking. The most obvious sign was that the camp's primary structures remained predominantly white-grade, with green-grade buildings being a rarity. There was only a single green-grade building: the Warehouse. And only a single yellow-grade building: the Vehicle Workshop. A building's level was important, of course. Yet its grade was just as vital. Taking the Warehouse as an example, whether in its Mustard Seed Chamber effect or its ability to preserve heavenly materials and earthly treasures, no wooden cabin could match it, no matter how high the cabin was leveled. High-grade building blueprints were hardly easy to come by, however. Only by arriving here had Chen Fan obtained two green-grade building blueprints, the Anti-Air Cannon and the God-Slaying Cannon. The camp also held a reserve blueprint for a Port, though it simply had not been put to use yet. There was also another yellow-grade building: the Star Observation Terrace, which allowed one to track ghost tide movements across a vast territory. Strictly speaking, however, that was considered a Wonder. The yellow-grade building blueprint currently in his hand was Fan Domain's second true yellow-grade building blueprint. "Exotic Treasure Name: Heaven-Piercing Pillar." "Exotic Treasure Grade: Yellow." "Exotic Treasure Effect: Building blueprint. Upon completion, provides one Heaven-Piercing Pillar." It was simply a pillar. A fairly tall one. Several hundred meters high. The array markings and patterns drawn across the parchment were rather complex and difficult to decipher, and the specific details were not spelled out—they would only become clear once construction was complete. "Let's try it!" Chen Fan glanced around, tucked the jade slip and the storage ring into his robes, and crushed the blueprint in his grip. Scrambling swiftly onto Weiwei's back, he headed back to Nameless Mountain. If this thing worked out, it would be formidable. Before long, Chen Fan reached the summit of Nameless Mountain, right beside Weiwei's lair. Taking a deep breath, he shattered five thousand ghost stones. A Heaven-Piercing Pillar traced in white lines materialized before him, rapidly solidifying into an enormous pillar standing beside the cliff. Just below the cliff lay the Sinkhole Camp. He tilted his head back, gazing up at the pillar piercing into the clouds hundreds of meters above. Its appearance was bizarre. It was neither straight nor smooth. Instead, it twisted upward in a posture of tragic struggle, resembling wild grass on a desolate plain. Neither stone nor metal, its material was exceptionally rough. Rather than a cylinder, its cross-section was square. The top and bottom were of equal width—ten meters across. Carved across its surface were various runes and patterns he could not comprehend. At the base stood a small door. Pushing it open revealed a hollow interior. At the bottom rested a stone platform flanked by a jade button; pressing the button would carry the stone platform upward like a lift, straight to the pillar's peak. Stepping inside alone, Chen Fan stood on the stone platform and pressed the jade button beside him. The platform beneath his feet slowly began to rise. Soon enough, it delivered him to the very top. He emerged onto a platform ten meters long and ten meters wide, suspended hundreds of meters in the air. The sight before him was staggering. "Bloody hell..." Wind howled past his ears. Chen Fan instinctively flattened himself against the platform floor, crawling cautiously toward the edge to peer downward. As far as the eye could see, the Jiangbei Wasteland spread out like an endless expanse of wrinkled, dead skin. He spotted Fan City. A tiny speck. Standing upon the wasteland, where one could vaguely make out numerous Skeleton Horses and pedestrians moving back and forth through the streets. Someone seemed to look up in his direction. Logic told him he was perfectly safe here. Yet bodily instinct still left his legs trembling slightly. "This is way too high!" Chen Fan realized he might have a bit of a fear of heights. Only a single question filled his mind right now: if he fell off, could the emerald cane protect his life and let him survive? He was someone who liked experimenting. Whenever he had an idea, he wanted to test it. However... He had no intention of conducting this experiment right now. Nobody experimented on themselves; one needed at least a guinea pig. "Phew..." Taking a deep breath, he remained prone near the platform's edge and checked the panel for the Heaven-Piercing Pillar. The panel was simple. "Can attract lightning during the rainy season and accumulate its energy, unleashing it when needed to repel enemies or for other purposes." "Attack range may exceed camp boundaries." "Upgrade to next level requires 10,000 ghost stones." "Current storage progress: (0/100)." The thing was essentially a lightning rod. Though a bit stronger than an ordinary lightning rod. It could draw down lightning and store it. It had arrived a little late, unfortunately. If only he had obtained it before the rainy season. Still... This made for a fine observation post. With an unobstructed view, height aside, the vantage point was excellent. He did not linger. Retreating quickly back down the pillar's interior, he took shelter from the howling wind. The platform lacked even a handrail; he did not want a stray gust blowing him off the edge. He could accept dying to ghost creatures or falling to rival factions because his strength fell short. Plummeting to his death from a misstep, however, would be far too pathetic. He chose not to upgrade the structure for now. It would be useless in the short term and would have to wait until next year's rainy season. Still, if the Heaven-Piercing Pillar could store lightning across four consecutive rainy seasons, it might yield extraordinary results in the great battle four years from now. Returning to solid ground and feeling grounded once more, Chen Fan looked up at the Heaven-Piercing Pillar and clicked his tongue. "Why does it have to be four years?" He had already laid out a series of four-year development plans for Fan Domain, aiming to hit every target within that span. Collectively, it was the Four-Year Plan. He simply found the phrasing somewhat awkward. A three-year plan, a five-year plan, or even a ten-year plan sounded natural enough—why did it have to be four years? Right then, the voice transmission talisman inside his robes grew faintly warm. Pulling it out, he heard Zhou Mo's hurried voice: "Domain Lord, someone's causing trouble in Fan City. We've taken them down and are waiting for you to decide what to do with them." "Hm?" Chen Fan's brow furrowed slightly. Climbing onto Weiwei's back, he rushed down to the base of the mountain and sent a voice transmission telling Shao Qiu to follow him. Then he boarded the Nine-Five Dragon Carriage and sped toward Fan City, pulling an ordinary Fan Domain member along to serve as the driver. Handling the Nine-Five Dragon Carriage was not difficult. He could have driven it himself, of course, but it would have looked rather unbecoming. Soon, the Nine-Five Dragon Carriage rolled into Fan City. The marketplace streets of Fan Domain remained bustling, though a crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle, accompanied by sporadic cries for mercy. Stepping down from the carriage, Chen Fan glanced toward the merchant associations from various factions gathered nearby. The moment they saw Chen Fan, the onlookers scattered. Seven or eight men had been tied up and pinned to the ground by members of Fan Domain. Seeing Chen Fan arrive, Zhou Mo, who was handling the matter, stepped forward and reported in a low voice, "These men carry no identification. They entered the city this morning. "One of them is an architect. "After entering, that architect began trying to build ghost fires, arrow towers, and other structures in a far corner of the marketplace. Just as the structures were about to take shape, however, they suddenly collapsed. Leading the men of the War Pavilion, I stepped in immediately and captured the group." It was brief and to the point. "Mm." Chen Fan leaned on his emerald cane in the street, gazing down at the pinned strangers. Long ago, he had obtained an exotic treasure called the Eternal Night Land Deed, which possessed a straightforward effect: Once deployed, the lord held absolute ownership over the land within the camp's boundaries. Without permission, no outsider could build or place any structure within that territory. This was his camp's domain. Any attempt to construct or place buildings here would naturally fail to take form. He glanced toward the surrounding walls. With the rainy season over, ghost creatures would not be assaulting the city, so he had not stationed many cannon towers along the ramparts—only twenty Level 4 cannon towers, purely as a show of deterrence. "Domain Lord Chen, it's a misunderstanding! All a misunderstanding!" One of the pinned men struggled to lift his head, trembling as he looked up at Chen Fan. "We came to Fan Domain to trade, and we only wanted to showcase our faction's architect's skill. If other factions had construction needs, they could hire us. "We didn't come to make trouble. "It's all a misunderstanding!" "A misunderstanding?" Hearing that, Chen Fan could not help but chuckle. The excuse seemed plausible on the surface, but it fell apart under scrutiny. Building an arrow tower to demonstrate one's skill might barely pass as an excuse, but conjuring ghost fire was no longer just a demonstration—that was preparing to ignite the ghost fire and activate the arrow tower. In all likelihood, this group had intended to create chaos, while another group waited to exploit the confusion. He glanced around at the merchant associations of the other factions. That second group might very well be standing right among the spectators watching this unfold. "Sick Monkey." "Young Master, I'm here." "As Pavilion Master of the Penal Pavilion, one of your duties is interrogation. Take these men back to the camp, pry their mouths open, and find out what faction is behind them and what they came here to do." "Understood!" Sick Monkey nodded with a solemn expression. Leading his subordinates, he bound the men, loaded them onto a carriage, and set off toward the camp at Nameless Mountain. "Just a minor incident." Chen Fan looked at the gathered onlookers, his face warm with an easy smile. "Nothing to see here. Disperse, everyone." With that, he stepped into a nearby building. Standing inside, Chen Fan watched the busy Fan Domain members around him, drew the voice transmission talisman from his robes, and said softly, "Sick Monkey, don't take them back to the camp. Take them to the back of Nameless Mountain." He then turned toward the shadows in the corner of the room. "Shao Qiu, go follow them and keep watch." "Yes!" A nearly imperceptible voice answered. The shadow in the corner shifted subtly for a fraction of a second, then went still. "Interesting." Having arranged all this, Chen Fan sat on a chair inside the room, poured himself a cup of cold tea, and downed it in one gulp, his eyes narrowing slightly. For Fan Domain to be so prominent would inevitably draw covetous eyes. He simply had not expected it to come so quickly. Looking at it from the other side... If he were the enemy, knowing full well that Fan Domain possessed the Nine-Five Dragon Carriage and the power to strike the Dan Sect, how would he make a move? Would he really find a few weak cultivators to escort a low-level architect into Fan City just to stir up a commotion? And then? What would creating a commotion accomplish? This was Fan Domain's home territory. Once interrogated, if the faction behind them was exposed, they would be dead without question. Even trained deathsworn found it hard to endure real interrogation; torture was not so easily withstood. Therefore... Thinking carefully from the enemy's perspective, and recalling the genuine terror in those men's eyes, he arrived at a working hypothesis: these men had no idea what faction stood behind them at all. They were mere pawns. Their objective was never to create chaos. Their true objective was to be taken back to Fan Domain's headquarters for interrogation, thereby fulfilling the real mission. How could one guarantee that a certain item was delivered into Fan Domain's headquarters? The simplest method was to create suspense. A few troublemakers who knew nothing about the faction behind them would inevitably be dragged back for questioning. That was how the real objective would be achieved. What that real objective was—a self-destruction, or something else—he could not say. But he knew one thing: only by declaring openly in the marketplace, before everyone's eyes, that he was taking these men back to headquarters for interrogation could he lead the true enemy to believe their plan had succeeded. Only then would they slip up and reveal who they were. This was precisely why he had spared no expense to strike the Dan Sect back then. It forced any faction plotting against him to think through their moves far more thoroughly. It also narrowed down the pool of possibilities. Otherwise, it would be difficult to tell whether this group had a deeper scheme or if the faction behind them was simply too foolish, which would severely skew his judgment. Stupidity and malice. At times, there was little difference between them; both were unpredictable. Yet even fools knew how to gauge strength, and they would not lightly provoke a force capable of striking the Dan Sect. If it was not stupidity, then it had to be malice. Thus, when someone acted against him using methods that appeared utterly foolish, it meant the enemy had a hidden agenda. That was another latent benefit of having struck the Dan Sect. In a corner of the Jiangbei Market, among the crowd of onlookers, two men exchanged glances after watching the entire scene unfold. Melding into the crowd, they transmitted a thought into the distance: "The fish has taken the bait." The pair had consumed the Flesh Ghost Mother-Child Fruit. A major limitation of voice transmission talismans was the requirement to speak aloud, carrying the risk of exposure. Consuming the Flesh Ghost Mother-Child Fruit, however, allowed thoughts to be transmitted directly across distances without any danger of detection. "Uh..." Sitting atop the carriage escorting the troublemakers back toward the camp, Sick Monkey received the young master's order shortly after leaving Fan City. Though puzzled, he obeyed and refrained from entering the gorge. Instead, he followed a mountain trail leading toward the back of Nameless Mountain. The path was relatively level, having been trampled flat by Weiwei, but it was steep and not easy to traverse. Just as they reached the back of the mountain and Sick Monkey was about to prepare their next move, a voice suddenly reached his ears. "Pavilion Master Sick." Shao Qiu had appeared on a tree at some unknown moment, sitting on a branch and looking down at him. "The Domain Lord ordered that something is wrong with these people and told me to watch them. You'd better stand back as well, lest you get caught in any crossfire." Sick Monkey looked up at Shao Qiu in the tree, his brow furrowing as he asked in a raspy voice, "Where's your token?" Shao Qiu gave the Dark Pavilion Master token in his hand a slight wave. Sick Monkey drew his own Pavilion Master token as well. Feeling the gentle warmth radiating from its surface, he lowered his guard and quickly led his men to step back around the carriage. He had mainly been concerned that Shao Qiu might be an imposter. Under normal circumstances, Shao Qiu should have been training his subordinates inside the Spirit Accumulation Pavilion right now. The men tied up inside the carriage had no idea what was happening outside. Their mouths were gagged, leaving them unable to speak, reduced to issuing muffled struggling whimpers. Perched on the branch, Shao Qiu looked down at the carriage parked in the mountain woods, murmuring with a touch of excitement: "Don't let me down..." He was eager for the Dark Pavilion to carry out an operation; actual combat was always the best form of training. In truth, he did not know what was amiss with these men either. Yet since the Domain Lord had ordered him to keep an eye on them, something was bound to happen.