The Fourth Eternal Night

In a daze. Chen Fan's thoughts ground to a halt, and the world before his eyes seemed to fall silent. Yet right at that moment— A trickle of icy rainwater seeping down the back of his neck and Zhou Mo's roaring shouts from inside the wall snapped him out of the stupor. "Stationmaster!" "Chen Fan!!" Inside the wall, broadsword in hand, Zhou Mo stood beside the wooden cabin, straining his throat in an anxious roar in an effort to wake the men atop the rampart. From his perspective, the stationmaster and the others had suddenly fallen into a trance. Wang Mazi had even unfastened his trousers and started stroking himself. Eternal Night, torrential rain, ghost creatures, masturbation. These four entirely unrelated concepts composed the present scene. While Zhou Mo could admit that jerking off was a pleasurable pastime, now was truly not the time for it. This bizarre spectacle made it painfully obvious that the stationmaster and the rest had run into a ghost creature capable of inducing hallucinations. "Get down!" As the first to snap back to his senses, Chen Fan looked at the waterfall of black hair behind the female ghost. It was stretching outward and lunging at them as fast as lightning. He shoved Wang Mazi and the others down behind the parapet. Humans could fall victim to hallucinations. Buildings, however, could not. From the moment the female ghost set foot in the camp, the mechanisms on the arrow towers had been continuously triggering. Crossbow bolts shot forth in rapid succession, streaking through the rainy night straight toward the female ghost standing outside the wall. Though most were deflected by the hair whipping through the air like lashes, there were so many arrow towers that some bolts still struck home. As long as the men weren't killed right away by that needle-sharp hair, this female ghost could not withstand the damage from the arrow towers. Evidently, her plan had been to tank the towers' attacks and capture the king to defeat the army. If Chen Fan died, the arrow towers would instantly grind to a halt, and the ghost fire would begin to slowly fade and dissipate. However— He had awakened and dodged the strike. That left the female ghost with only one path: death. The Level 3 arrow tower infused with fire elemental damage—crafted specifically to deal with this female ghost—began to display its terrifying might. Bolt after bolt flew at her, moving too fast for her to evade. They punched straight through her body. Not a drop of blood flowed from the holes, leaving only patches of charred flesh. ... A few breaths later. The battle was completely over. Once the female ghost's most potent weapon failed to deliver a decisive blow, she was reduced to a lamb to the slaughter, unable to endure even a few volleys before being shot dead inside the camp perimeter. By now, Wang Kui and the others had long since broken free of the illusion. "Damn it!" Wang Mazi pulled up his trousers, flushed with shame and lingering terror. "This creature's tricks are truly terrifying!" Fortunately, Zhou Mo had remained inside the camp and hadn't laid eyes on the female ghost outside, which allowed him to shake the stationmaster awake. Otherwise, who knew what disaster might have unfolded? For this creature to induce hallucinations like that was downright horrifying. Not a single ghost creature remained in the gray fog. "Go get some sleep first," Chen Fan said, turning to Zhou Mo as the latter walked up onto the wall. "You have field duty tomorrow morning. Sleep first; we'll handle things here." Only then did he turn to Quehou and the rest. "Clean up the battlefield quickly. The night is still long; more ghost creatures might attack." Over the past several days, the camp's personnel had developed a smooth synergy. At Chen Fan's command, Quehou and the others rushed down to dig out ghost stones from the corpses and pick up dropped exotic treasures, leaving the ghost materials to be harvested at daybreak. Meanwhile, Chen Fan immediately saw to repairing the damaged wall. The repair cost was seventy-eight ghost stones. The damage was quite severe this time, so the repair fee was steep. Yet... Repair it? Like hell he would. Only a four-meter stretch of the wall had been damaged; the ghost creatures had focused all their attacks on a single point. He simply tore down the broken section on the spot and built a brand-new four-meter wall, consuming a mere forty ghost stones. Repairing it would have cost more than rebuilding it from scratch. Afterward, the men took turns standing watch from the wooden cabin on the wall. This kept them from lingering too long in the damp, freezing cold and minimized the risk of catching a chill. ... The night passed quickly. In the second half of the night, only a few dozen scattered ghost creatures stumbled into the camp without forming a ghost tide, and the men dispatched them with ease. Given the camp's current defense, as long as it wasn't a full-scale ghost tide or overseen by higher-tier ghost creatures, ordinary wandering monsters that wandered in were merely delivering ghost stones to their door. They couldn't pose the slightest threat. Dawn arrived. The darkness was abruptly peeled away like the milk foam atop a tea. Another X was marked upon the Eternal Night Calendar inside the wooden cabin. This was their fourth Eternal Night spent amidst the wasteland's rainy season. As soon as the sky brightened, Zhou Mo led his subordinates out with broadswords in hand, setting off once more to retrieve resources from several destroyed outposts nearby. Only then did Chen Fan and the others relax and begin clearing last night's battlefield. Because they had rotated watches throughout the night, none of them were terribly sleepy. They could afford to sleep later. Qi Chong and his companion were already deftly dissecting the carcasses. Useful ghost materials—such as mantis arms, monkey hides, and bamboo pole ghost skeletons—were gathered and stacked in the warehouse, while ghost blood was stored in porcelain vats. It was worth noting that even after the Eternal Night fell, the Flesh Ghost Mother-Child Seeds planted in the farmland still required ghost blood for irrigation. Qi Chong and the others hadn't forgotten to water them during the night. Fortunately, the fighting hadn't dragged on too long; otherwise, they would have had to craft more copper pipes. Outside the wall. Wang Mazi stood in the light drizzle, gazing at the female ghost lying quietly on the ground, riddled with holes. He crouched down, squeezed her forearm to test its firmness, and sighed with a touch of sentimentality. "I did lose my composure last night." "Still, I have to admit, she's truly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. Countless times fairer than the top courtesan at Guihua Tower in Jiangbei City. Calling her a heavenly maiden wouldn't be an exaggeration in the slightest." "A reminder," Quehou said expressionlessly. "She's a female ghost." "I know, but she doesn't look like she has any monstrous mutations, does she? Just like a normal woman. What a pity." "Another reminder: she's dead." "I know... Why do you keep reminding me? You make it sound like I have other ideas..." "I saw you lick your lips." "My mouth was a bit dry." Right at that moment— A'le strode over from nearby, using a mantis arm as a blade. He knelt beside the female ghost and, with practiced ease, drove the blade into her scalp. Slicing along the joints like a butcher dressing an ox, he flayed off the complete ghost skin in moments. The thick, glossy black hair was peeled away intact alongside the scalp. The female ghost, who had possessed a chilly, delicate beauty just moments ago, was reduced to a heap of minced meat in the blink of an eye. "What are you...?" Wang Mazi, who had still been marveling a second earlier, stared at the scene in utter bewilderment. "Skinning her," A'le said, looking up at Wang Mazi and speaking in a muffled voice. "Stationmaster's orders. This long hair is good stuff, so it has to be stripped. Do you need me to save a ghost fleshlight for you? We can ask the stationmaster to make a suitably sized copper pipe to go with it." "Thanks, but no need..." Wang Mazi muttered sheepishly, "I was just chatting. You guys make it sound like I'm some kind of deviant..." "I was only hallucinating last night." "Yet you were the only one who pulled down his pants." "You guys tied square knots; I tied a slipknot." "Heh." ... "All good stuff." Chen Fan made his rounds between the various teams with a broad grin. The skeleton of that bamboo pole ghost leader, in particular, was exceptionally sturdy—perfect for serving as the chassis of an upgraded cart. So many ghost creatures had yielded a sizable haul of ghost stones. They had also dropped three exotic treasures. One had been recovered from the bamboo pole ghost leader. The other two were found on the female ghost, and one of them was an exceedingly rare building blueprint. As for the mantis ghost leader, it had carried nothing at all—quite a pauper. Last night's harvest was bountiful indeed. And with so many ghost corpses on hand, the newly constructed sacrificial tower would finally be put to good use.