You Really Have an Eye for Work

Pinned to the ground by the spear, the oversized maggot-like ghost creature barely struggled at all. Before long, it stopped moving and died on the spot. "Nicely done!" There was no time to harvest the carcasses now. Chen Fan pulled the remaining ropes, hauling in the bear traps from the darkness. Every single one held a maggot ghost creature. Spear in hand, Quehou skewered them one after another— Quite neatly. Once finished, Chen Fan tossed the emptied bear traps back outside the camp, then ducked back into the wooden cabin with Quehou, his eyes gazing into the depths of the darkness filled with anticipation. Ghost creature activity seemed unusually frequent tonight. After about three breaths, one of the hemp ropes began to twitch again. Another catch was on the hook. ... Two hours later. Stripped down, Chen Fan stood inside the wooden cabin. He wrung his soaked coarse-cloth outer garment with both hands, letting icy rainwater stream to the floor, then hung it above the cabin's stove and exhaled a long breath. Over the past hour, the harvest had been bountiful, with catches taking the bait every so often. Yet the ghost creatures in the area seemed to be thinning out rapidly. The time it took two sticks of incense to burn had passed without a single creature stepping into a trap, giving him a moment to tend to himself lest he catch a chill. The wooden cabin crafted with two ghost stones was different from the one at his base; it was sturdier and covered more ground, offering plenty of shelter from the cold and wind. Inside, several oil lamps were mounted on the walls for lighting, and a stove sat in the center of the room to keep it warm. There was no need for firewood—slotting a single ghost stone into an indentation on the cabin wall was enough to keep it going for a whole year. Though it consumed a ghost stone, it lasted more than long enough, making it far more economical than the ghost fire. "Quehou, you've studied quite a bit before. Do you know what kind of ghost creature this is?" "Never seen it." Quehou furrowed his brow in thought for a long moment before shaking his head. "I never saw anything like it in the ghost creature illustrated manual our village schoolmaster had. The ones the master taught us to identify were all common to the wasteland. Unless..." "Unless they weren't in the wasteland before and only arrived recently, or their numbers are so scarce that they're rarely discovered." "..." Chen Fan narrowed his eyes slightly and said nothing more. From what he could tell so far, aside from looking rather repulsive, this ghost creature didn't seem to have anything special about it. With virtually no strength, it belonged to the weakest tier of ghost creatures. However... tonight's operation had also validated one of his hypotheses. Ghost creatures on the wasteland might truly each have their own territories. The area around his base was the monkey-headed ghosts' territory. Once that batch was wiped out, no other ghost creatures appeared nearby for the time being. They waited another hour. Still, not a single ghost creature stepped into a trap. In their drowsiness, the two lay down on the bed and gradually drifted off to sleep. Until dawn broke. Chen Fan blearily opened his eyes and pushed open the cabin door. A blast of crisp, chilled air met him. The darkness had receded, but the torrential rain outside showed not the slightest sign of letting up, clattering noisily against the ground and seeping into the cracked wasteland, infusing it with a trace of vitality. "Time to go." He looked toward Quehou, who was bustling about in the yard despite the heavy downpour. Quehou had woken up at some point and was prying the ghost stones out of last night's ghost creature carcasses one by one and loading them into a basket, then stacking the carcasses onto the handcart. "Young Master, you're awake," Quehou reported, running through the torrential rain up to the cabin. "Last night we killed forty-seven ghost creatures in total and dug out forty-seven ghost stones, all packed into the basket. We can haul these carcasses back to the camp to use as fertilizer, but the handcart's a bit small." "So I stacked all the bodies onto the cart and tied them down with hemp rope. Much sturdier that way." "Nice." "You really have an eye for work." Looking at the handcart piled high with ghost creature carcasses, Chen Fan took his dried clothes off the stove and put them on, thinking how much trouble having a subordinate like this saved him. He didn't even have to say anything—the man took care of the work on his own. "Heheh..." Quehou scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "For servants like us, doing too much work isn't scary. What's scary is having no work to do." "Let's go. Time to head home." ... The rain showed no signs of stopping anytime soon, and waiting it out was out of the question. Quehou pulled the handcart at the front, while Chen Fan followed behind, steadying the several-meter-high stack of ghost creature carcasses with his hands to keep them from tumbling off. Chilly rainwater seeped down his neck, the icy trickle jolting him awake instantly. The clothes dried just last night were thoroughly soaked within a few steps. Not only was the rain heavy, the wind blew fiercely as well. Visibility had dropped drastically. Without the ghost-skin map guiding them, they definitely would have lost their way in the wasteland with no hope of finding the path home. Before departing, he had added another ghost stone to this camp's ghost fire to ensure it would keep burning. It was quite a distance. It had taken them two hours to walk out yesterday; today, in the pouring rain while hauling such a heavy cart, it took nearly four hours before they finally made it back to camp. "Quehou, well done. You worked hard." Looking through the torrential rain at the camp faintly visible in the haze, Chen Fan patted Quehou's shoulder with a trace of guilt. Making a lame man pull a handcart for nearly four hours—honestly, he felt genuinely bad about it. Along the way, he had thought about taking turns, but after just a few steps he had run out of strength. Lame as Quehou was, his physical stamina was actually far sturdier than Chen Fan's. In the end, he had no choice but to let Quehou pull it the entire way. "It's nothing," Quehou said, wiping his rain-drenched face. Panting heavily, he trudged through the storm, picking up the pace toward the camp as he grinned. "Don't know why, Young Master, but even though I followed by your side before, the future always felt like a blur." "Now, whenever I get close to the camp, it feels like coming home." "Just thinking about that makes the tiredness disappear." "If anything, I feel full of drive." As they spoke, the camp came clearly into view. "Hm?" Chen Fan noticed Wang Kui and his subordinate standing outside the camp in the pouring rain. A flicker of confusion crossed his mind. Narrowing his eyes slightly, he walked up to greet them, cupping his fists with a smile. "Stationmaster Wang. I stepped out to handle some business and wasn't at the outpost. What brings you two...?" "..." Standing in the downpour, Wang Kui looked past Chen Fan, his gaze locking onto the handcart heaped with ghost creature carcasses. A flash of shock showed in his eyes. He froze on the spot for a long moment before remembering the reason for his visit. His throat bobbed slightly, his tone hurried. "Stationmaster Chen." "The situation is urgent, so I'll keep it brief. This year's rainy season has arrived a month early!" "Normally, the rainy season wouldn't start until November. This heavy downpour will last an entire month, followed by winter and heavy snow until spring arrives next March." "And once the rainy season begins, the wasteland will be locked down, entering a five-month uninhabited period." "During this time, every outpost across the wasteland will be abandoned, with no traffic whatsoever." "They won't be reopened until spring."