The wilderness.
Qiuhe Wang Family Outpost No. 16.
Zhou Mo led his subordinates through the torrential downpour, following the coordinates on the ghost-skin map for a long time before finally reaching this outpost.
A few solitary wooden cabins stood in the pouring rain.
Outside the cabins lay a patch of farmland, and... a ghost fire.
Apart from that, there were no defensive fortifications whatsoever.
In reality, almost no outpost in the wilderness had any defensive fortifications.
After all, outside of the rainy season, ghost creatures rarely broke into camps on their own. If such a low-probability event did occur, it usually triggered a chain reaction, rendering a few defensive structures meaningless anyway.
"This guy really had great luck."
Standing outside the camp, Zhou Mo pounded his thighs vigorously to ease the fatigue from the long trek. Looking at the crude camp before him, he could not help marveling, "Without a single defensive fortification, he actually survived last night."
"He's just lucky he ran into you, Stationmaster; otherwise, he definitely wouldn't survive tonight."
"Let's head inside."
"We might as well grab a bite of something hot so we have the strength to keep moving back to camp."
Their own outpost had weathered a brutal battle last night, surviving only because heaven took pity on them. Yet this outpost didn't even have walls and had pulled through entirely on sheer luck.
"Old Chen?"
"Old Chen!"
Zhou Mo shouted at the top of his lungs as he stepped into the outpost, his voice cutting through the heavy rain into the cabins. Ordinarily, barging into a camp like this was a grave taboo, but at this point, he couldn't care less.
If he remembered correctly, the stationmaster of this outpost was named Old Chen.
Yet no one answered.
"Is he sleeping that soundly?"
Frowning slightly, Zhou Mo walked over to one of the wooden cabins. After knocking several times, he shoved the door open and called out, "Old Chen, you—"
His voice cut off abruptly.
His right foot, just about to step inside, froze in midair.
After a long silence, he looked at the two corpses hanging from the roof beam like cured meat and let out a soft, conflicted sigh. "Looks like your luck wasn't that great after all, Old Chen..."
The two bodies suspended from the rafters swayed gently with the breeze.
Evidently, when the Eternal Night fell last night, Old Chen and his man had been unable to bear the psychological weight and chosen to hang themselves.
It was understandable.
In truth, he could completely relate.
A camp without any defensive structures during the rainy season's Eternal Night was like a lone piece of driftwood in the depths of the ocean. The tempestuous winds and rain churning up the waves, along with the boundless horrors lurking beneath the sea, brought an overwhelming sense of despair—the despair of seeing no hope and knowing the sun would never rise.
No one could endure that kind of pressure.
The sea was beautiful. Azure.
Yet the deep sea at night held no beauty to speak of. The pitch-black waters, much like the Eternal Night, offered people nothing but despair and helplessness.
"..."
After a long silence, Zhou Mo instructed his subordinate, "Go outside and check if there's anything growing in the farmland. Pack whatever we can use onto that handcart in the corner."
Only then did he step forward to cut down the corpses and check their pockets for anything of value.
Along the way, he stripped their clothes and took the hemp rope as well.
Outside, the ghost fire had already dimmed considerably. With the stationmaster dead, it was gradually going out, and before long, it would be extinguished completely.
...
There were roughly under two shichen left before the Eternal Night fell once more.
Chen Fan woke up. Pulling back the quilt, he put on his clothes—still damp from the humidity—and washed up briefly with collected rainwater. Then he stood at the wooden door, looking outside as he stretched lazily, before turning his gaze toward the stove inside the cabin.
Even with the stove, the relentless rain kept everything damp and bitterly cold.
He hadn't slept well last night; the cold had chilled him thoroughly.
The living conditions left much to be desired.
He was the only one inside; everyone else was busy working outside.
Stepping beyond the wall, he spotted Quehou busy burying ghost creature corpses in the farmland.
"Young Master."
Noticing Chen Fan, Quehou jogged over and said excitedly, "They're growing wonderfully! They should be ready to harvest by tomorrow."
"Mm."
Chen Fan looked at the seedlings outside the wall, already half a meter tall, and nodded with a faint smile. "Carry on with your work."
By his count, tomorrow would mark exactly the third day.
That was precisely when this batch of crops was scheduled to mature.
The fresh, earthy scent in the rain cleared his head considerably. He looked at the three exotic treasures tucked in his robes—his spoils from last night. What he needed to do next was reinforce the camp once more to prepare for whatever crisis might arise tonight.
The first exotic treasure was a blueprint.
Much like the sentry tower blueprint, it was as thin as a cicada's wing.
Only...
The structure depicted on it was remarkably crude. It showed only the phantom outline of a copper pipe, resembling a drainpipe, without any apparent practical value.
—
[Exotic Treasure Name]: Sealed Copper Pipe
[Exotic Treasure Grade]: White
[Exotic Treasure Effect]: This exotic treasure is a building module blueprint, adaptable to all buildings.
—
"..."
Chen Fan crushed the blueprint in his hand. Immediately, changes surfaced on the Eternal Night Lord panel in his mind. This time, instead of adding another buildable structure, it unlocked an entirely new category.
—
[Currently Buildable Structures...]
[Ghost Fire, Arrow Tower, Wall, Farmland, Wooden Cabin, Sacrificial Tower, Sentry Tower, Bear Trap.]
[Currently Buildable Building Modules...]
[Copper Pipe.]
—
The description for this building module blueprint was also quite concise:
[Copper Pipe]: Adaptable to all buildings. Crafting one meter requires 1 ghost stone.
Though he didn't quite understand what that meant, he knew one thing for certain: practice yields truth.
Crushing a ghost stone, milky-white liquid flowed into the air. Immediately afterward, the phantom outline of a one-meter-long copper pipe slowly hovered in midair. Its dimensions could be adjusted at will—as narrow as one centimeter or as wide as one meter.
He chose ten centimeters.
The moment this phantom copper pipe appeared, every building in the camp simultaneously transformed into phantom outlines composed of white lines, just as they had when first constructed.
The ghost fire, the wall, the wooden cabins, and the rest all entered this phantom outline state.
Yet Quehou and the others showed no reaction; clearly, Chen Fan was the only one who could see it.
The scene before him was just like...
Just like...
His eyes narrowed slightly. He guided the copper pipe toward the ghost fire, and as the two phantom structures approached one another, they fused instantly and rapidly solidified.
Immediately after, the entire camp returned to normal.
The phantom outlines vanished.
And the ghost fire situated in the center of the camp had changed. Originally, its base was a bonfire pit made of stones, burning with a cold white flame.
Now, however, a copper pipe appeared naturally embedded into the base, resting on the ground as one unified piece with it. From another angle, one could faintly see the cold white flame flowing back and forth inside the pipe.
"..."
Looking at the sight before him, Chen Fan froze where he stood. An unbelievable possibility flashed through his mind. Could it be... Could it be...?
Without a moment's hesitation, he spent another twenty ghost stones to forge a twenty-meter-long copper pipe!
As the phantom pipe floated into the air, the structures throughout the camp once again dissolved into phantom outlines made of white lines.
Chapter 32