Mourning Ghosts

"..." After a long silence, Chen Fan let out a long breath, turned his head toward the gray mist outside the camp, and muttered, "This world really is too dangerous, and the camp's defenses are still too weak..." Aside from ghost creatures, these assorted cultivators were not easy to deal with either. All along, everyone had told him that cultivators were weak—that even a Level 2 cultivator could be instantly killed by a Level 1 arrow tower, their strength completely negligible before an architect's structures. Yet... That only applied to ordinary cultivators like Zhou Mo. A special cultivator like a Nightwatcher was genuinely terrifying. She was practically a walking nuclear bomb, ready to detonate at any moment. After a while, Chen Fan turned his gaze back to Da Yu. "So you can control yourself now and keep from being forcibly activated?" "Mm." Da Yu nodded again. "With every activation, I become more familiar with the Nightwatcher's abilities, and I can wield them more freely." "Stationmaster." "I've already decided to treat this place as my third home." "If the camp is in danger, I will activate." "Don't." Chen Fan gave a soft sigh. "Neither of your previous two homes met a good end." "I will leave the camp, lure the ghost creatures away, and then activate." "Just focus on doing your work, and stop obsessing over activating. You only have a few years left to live as it is, yet all you talk about is activating." "A Nightwatcher's worth lies in activating. A Nightwatcher who doesn't activate has no worth." "That's enough." He cut her off. By now, the situation was clear. He finally understood why Da Yu's temperament was like a child's—she hadn't lived more than five or six years in total in this world. She really wasn't any different from a child. He also finally understood where the fear and pain in her eyes had come from. Destroying your own village with your own hands was truly agony. The last person who did that was an Uchiha, wasn't it...? "Go back and get some rest. Tomorrow, keep following Zhou Mo on field duty and do your work properly." "All right." Da Yu had probably never told anyone about this before. Now that she had spoken it all aloud, she was visibly much more relaxed. She looked up at Chen Fan and said earnestly, "I will protect you." "A Nightwatcher's purpose is to protect." ... "..." Chen Fan watched Da Yu's departing back and scratched his head. He seemed to have forgotten to ask how she had overheard his conversation with Qi Chong. They had been out on the wilderness away from the camp at the time, with no one else around. Forget it, he would ask tomorrow. This little kid... was really like a walking suicide bomb. He also finally grasped why she had said she could only look back. It made sense. Even without activating, she only had eighteen years to live. Without activating, she had no combat power; activate again, and she would die. Wasn't she just born to get screwed over? That sort of self-deprecating humor was entirely justified. Quehou and the others mounted the wall as well, each looking after Da Yu's receding figure. Though they hadn't heard the conversation, they had seen her unbound black hair and knew the stationmaster had talked with her for quite a while. "Stationmaster, he..." "She's a girl," Chen Fan said, keeping quiet about the Nightwatcher matter. "Her whole family died, leaving her as the sole survivor." "Oh." Quehou and the others nodded in realization, not showing too much sympathy. In this world, plenty of people had lost their entire families; their own situations were largely the same. Right at that moment— A familiar rustling sound rose from beyond the camp. It was the sound of crawling ghost creatures on the move. "Here they come!" Chen Fan looked out into the gray mist with a touch of excitement. Judging by the noise, there were over a hundred ghost creatures. Finally, they could have a decent feast. He urgently needed enough ghost stones to develop the camp, and slaying ghost creatures was the fastest way to get them. However... The next instant, his smile froze. Emerging from the gray mist outside the camp, over a dozen pale-faced men and women in long white robes slowly drifted forward. As they moved, their soles never left the ground, producing a constant, trembling rustle from the friction. Humanoid. They looked like pseudo-human ghosts, but he remembered that pseudo-human ghosts never entered camps after nightfall. Each of them held a white lantern bearing a red candle, looking just like a funeral procession. The scene was thoroughly eerie. More and more lantern-bearing pseudo-human ghosts stepped out of the dark into the gray mist outside the camp, creeping closer. Their exact numbers were impossible to tell, stretching out as if endless. "Is there any information in the memory bank?" He turned his head toward Quehou and the others. They exchanged glances and shook their heads. "They look like pseudo-human ghosts, but in our memories, pseudo-human ghosts don't carry lanterns. These aren't common ghost creatures on the wasteland. Whenever the rainy season comes, unfamiliar ghost creatures always turn up out here." "Then we'll call them mourning ghosts." Chen Fan gave these unknown ghost creatures a name. He disliked unknown entities; it meant he didn't know their methods, leaving a very low margin for error. If monkey head ghosts had shown up, he would have been delighted. Just then, the mourning ghost at the very front stepped within the camp's perimeter. *Whoosh!* As the light of the ghost fire flared inside the camp, energy surged through the copper pipes into the arrow towers atop the wall. All the arrow towers activated instantly. A bolt shot out, as though cleaving through the rainy night, striking the mourning ghost squarely in the forehead. The mourning ghost swayed on the spot, blood spurting, and collapsed. "Is that all the strength it has?" Chen Fan frowned. That bolt had only been fired by the Level 2 arrow tower on the breeding farm. If this was all they amounted to, then no matter how many mourning ghosts came, they would just be delivering ghost stones. Except... He still didn't know what purpose the white lantern served. It couldn't just be an ornament. The very next instant— The fallen mourning ghost suddenly began to convulse, writhe, and split. When it stood back up, it had become two mourning ghosts. Splitting upon death. He instantly understood the mourning ghost's method. However... Of the two resulting mourning ghosts, only the original one held a lantern; the newly split one was empty-handed. It seemed the lantern's ability was the split itself, and with this division, the light inside the lantern visibly dimmed a fraction. Another bolt fired. Both mourning ghosts fell together. The split mourning ghost dropped dead and lay motionless, but the one holding the lantern split yet again after dying, and the lantern's glow dimmed another fraction. "Understood." "I just hope the split ones have ghost stones in them too." Chen Fan took a deep breath. Looking at the growing swarm of mourning ghosts stepping into camp range, he activated all the arrow towers and roared at the top of his lungs, "Prepare for battle!" Tonight would likely be a tough fight. Fortunately, he had enough arrow towers, plenty of ghost stones remaining, and these mourning ghosts didn't look like they could breach the walls quickly. They seemed far easier to deal with than the flesh worm ghost tide. Perhaps they could gorge themselves on ghost stones. Of course, if they couldn't hold out, the other side would be the ones feasting. Someone was going to eat their fill tonight.