Give It a Try?

It was not that rain never fell during the dry season. Yet according to historical records, when rain fell during the springs and summers of past years, ghost creatures did not become violent and rampage. This also resolved a lingering question in his mind: what naturally occurring rainy season could bring non-stop downpours lasting an entire month? The rain during the rainy season was fundamentally different from ordinary spring or summer rain. It was like... For the moment, he could not find a suitable word to describe it. Time to sleep. Dawn had just broken. Having seen Zhou Mo off and acquired the ghost skin, he did not dawdle any longer. Stepping down from the wall, he walked toward the wooden cabin to get some rest. Once he woke, he would have to continue laying the road. Building a highway passable by night, whether used to collect tolls or to serve the camp, offered endless benefits with zero downsides. Most importantly, the special upgrade branch unlocked when the ghost fire reached Level 3 was effective only during the rainy season. He had to make full use of the daily free quota; it could not go to waste. Even if something had no immediate use, he could build it and store it in the warehouse for later. ... With nearly three double-hours remaining before Eternal Night descended, Chen Fan woke up. He crafted another brand-new tricycle, then led Qi Chong out of the camp into the Eternal Night to continue laying his highway. The vehicle traveled at an uneven pace across the rain-soaked wilderness. Standing at the front of the cart, Chen Fan continuously laid down copper pipes in a straight line, connecting them end to end. He placed the copper pipes one meter beneath the wasteland, the deepest depth at which they could be laid. Under normal circumstances, unless someone intentionally sabotaged them, they were very difficult to damage. Even if one were destroyed, it would not have much of an impact. Only the damaged section of pipe would fail. The ghost fire would continue flowing through the copper pipes connected to the camp. As long as a camp was established at each end, any sabotaged area would simply result in that localized section going dead, without disrupting the overall network. However... Only he could maintain these copper pipes. If the camp survived the rainy season and continued to expand, he could not spend every day running around attending to structural upkeep. Therefore, the camp needed another architect. This architect would not need to construct anything—only handle the maintenance of existing structures. Architects... artifact refiners... alchemists... and personnel to handle routine tasks. To develop a faction, people were indispensable. Once the rainy season ended, he would have to go to Jiangbei City to recruit people. Recruiting an architect, however, would be harder than ascending to the heavens. It was no simple task and required patient planning, waiting for the right opportunity. "Stationmaster." Right then, Qi Chong, who was operating the power lever on the tricycle, wiped the sweat from his forehead. After hesitating for a long time, he finally spoke in a raspy voice. "There's something I've been debating whether to mention..." "The night before last, I accidentally discovered that Wang Mazi's subordinate... hid some ghost stones. He didn't turn them all over when they first joined the camp." "..." Chen Fan's brow furrowed slightly, though his hands did not pause their work. Wang Mazi's subordinate. He had kept a low profile in the camp, doing his duties obediently. Yet on the very first night those men joined, the camp had faced its greatest crisis to date—the flesh worm ghost tide—which nearly depleted all their ghost stones. Xiao Qiu and Zhou Mo had risked their lives venturing beyond the walls to bring back ghost stones, keeping the arrow towers running. And Wang Mazi's subordinate had clearly possessed ghost stones at the time, but chose to look the other way, letting Zhou Mo head out of the camp with near-certain fatal resolve. Such an attitude was utterly despicable... Chen Fan could understand selfishness. After all, who did not look out for their own interests? Selfishness under those circumstances, however, was pure stupidity. If the camp fell, who among them would survive? Wang Mazi's subordinate had currently been assigned to follow Zhou Mo, tasked with scavenging resources from other outposts. After a brief silence, Chen Fan spoke. "Does Wang Mazi know about this?" "Wang Mazi probably doesn't know." "Have you told anyone else?" "Not a soul." "Good." Chen Fan nodded slightly, his hands continuing the work. "I understand. Don't speak of this to anyone else." "Understood." Qi Chong gave a firm nod and resumed pumping the power lever, saying nothing more on the matter. The main reason he had hesitated to speak was that he did not want to disrupt the harmonious atmosphere currently prevailing in the camp. Yet he felt that someone like that might bring disaster upon them one day. After turning it over in his mind for a long time, he had decided the stationmaster needed to know. ... Once they finished laying today's quota of copper pipes, Chen Fan and Qi Chong returned to the camp together. Beside the original plot of farmland, Chen Fan constructed another plot of Level 1 farmland and handed it over to Qi Chong to transplant the crops retrieved from the other outposts. Only then did he begin his daily inspection of the camp. Eternal Night was about to fall. Less than one double-hour remained. "..." Standing atop the wall, Chen Fan looked down at the somewhat dimmed ghost stone in his palm and let out a soft sigh. Yesterday, he had asked Zhou Mo for a cultivation method, through which he could absorb ghost stones to enhance his cultivation base. He was currently a Level 1 architect. In this world, the higher an architect's level, the lower the energy loss when crafting structures, and the more energy they could manipulate to construct higher-level buildings. The difference between him and other architects was that he only needed to look at his interface panel to build. He was effectively a max-level architect. Raising his personal level provided no boost to his construction abilities, but it could improve his physical constitution. Naturally, being physically stronger was desirable, and absorbing ghost stones to practice cultivation during idle moments did no harm. However— the rate of absorption was far too slow. According to Zhou Mo, advancing from a Level 1 cultivator to a Level 2 cultivator required absorbing roughly fifty ghost stones. The exact speed depended on the grade of the cultivation method and the cultivator's innate talent. It had taken Zhou Mo an entire year to break through from Level 1 to Level 2, and that was with limited practice time but an unlimited supply of ghost stones. Chen Fan did the math. Even with an ample supply of ghost stones and setting aside several double-hours each day for cultivation, with the method Zhou Mo had provided, it would take at least six months to absorb fifty ghost stones and reach Level 2 architect. That speed was truly sluggish. More importantly, reaching Level 2 did not improve one's physical constitution by that much. The cost-to-benefit ratio was poor. He had previously thought along these lines, assuming there was little meaningful difference between Level 1 and Level 2. Yet... ever since Zhou Mo and his subordinate had run into that pseudo-human ghost in the wilderness, where Zhou Mo fled back alive while his subordinate perished, Chen Fan had understood. At critical junctures, there was indeed a difference between Level 1 and Level 2. That was why he had requested the cultivation method from Zhou Mo and prepared to practice. Level 2 was always better than Level 1; every bit of added physical strength counted. "..." A sudden thought struck Chen Fan. He turned around, looking thoughtfully toward the wooden cabin beside the ghost fire within the walls. He had never upgraded this wooden cabin. After all, it was merely a shelter from the wind and rain. Could he try upgrading it? Perhaps it offered an upgrade branch that boosted cultivation speed or something similar? Give it a try? Give it a try. Upgrading the wooden cabin did not cost many ghost stones, and he still had roughly three hundred ghost stones on hand. It was worth a shot.