Tonight, they would make do with spending the night atop this bunker.
"..."
Chen Fan stood on the wall, resting his hands on the parapet as he looked up at the glow overhead. The light emitted by the natural ghost fire zone here shone brighter and reached higher than his previous ghost fire. The main concern tonight was that ghost creatures might leap into the pit from the surrounding cliffs.
Tonight was also when their defenses would be at their weakest.
He had only assembled a few overlapping walls to form a bunker, mounting a single Level 3 arrow tower on top.
A Level 3 arrow tower could be shifted and repositioned anywhere within the camp's boundaries without being wasted. Once upgraded to a Level 4 arrow fort or higher, it could no longer be moved at will.
Every bit saved counted.
He had not crafted a ghost fire. Normally, walls could only be constructed within camp boundaries, but inside a natural ghost fire zone, that rule could be bypassed—a natural ghost fire zone counted as half a camp.
Of course, he had to manually replace the ghost stones in this arrow tower to keep it powered.
Crafting a Level 3 arrow tower cost a mere sixty ghost stones. For a camp—especially one in the rainy season—such meager defenses were certainly not enough.
And so Chen Fan stood atop the wall, holding the eerie green lantern as he kept vigil alone. His plan was straightforward: get through tonight the rough way. If a powerful ghost creature broke in, he would use the lantern to eliminate it.
The green-grade mourning lantern was far more destructive than a Level 4 arrow fort; two blasts alone could level a wall, and he still had four uses left.
If the intruders were weak, the arrow tower would handle them. If they came in swarms, he could always craft a few more towers on the spot.
As for the others, they had taken shelter inside the garrison cave, sleeping in shifts. After going almost without sleep the previous night and toiling all day today, they had long since reached their limits of exhaustion.
Chen Fan was in better shape. Having caught a brief nap in the second half of the night, his mental state was holding up passably. He would switch out with whoever woke up later.
...
All through the night, Chen Fan kept his nerves taut, staring out into the darkness beyond the camp. Without a sentry tower, there was no grey fog to serve as a buffer zone, which left him feeling uneasy. Sleeping in an unfamiliar place made it truly difficult to relax.
On top of that...
*Crack, crack, crack...*
Through the patter of rain came a sharp, crackling din like strings of firecrackers going off. The sound had echoed several times tonight. He had assumed ghost creatures were leaping down from the surrounding cliffs, yet none had rushed the camp.
A cup of tea's time later, the sound of scraping limbs dragged across the ground outside. From the noise, he could tell it was just one ghost creature, and a massive one at that.
Yet it showed no sign of entering the camp.
It seemed to be observing. Judging by the sounds, it lingered in one spot to watch for a while, then moved to another and continued watching.
Feeling the chill of the rain, Chen Fan gripped the eerie green lantern with a tense edge to his expression. The moment the creature dared step into the camp, he would unleash the mourning lantern to deliver a fatal strike.
The standoff dragged on.
Even into the latter half of the night, the creature made no move to breach the perimeter—it didn't even make a probing advance, doing nothing more than watching.
By then, Quehou and the others had gotten enough rest and came to relieve him. After giving a few instructions, Chen Fan lay down in the garrison cave, where exhaustion swept over him uncontrollably.
He had no idea how much time passed until the darkness overhead receded like an ebbing tide. Daylight had returned.
Chen Fan, having just woken up to keep watch alongside Quehou and the others, let out a long breath of relief. The most dangerous night had passed. The behemoth that had eyed them greedily all night had ultimately chosen not to break in.
Tomorrow night, once the camp was properly fortified, he would finally be able to sleep soundly. Days of piecemeal naps had left him slightly run-down and nursing a headache.
Right then—
"Stationmaster."
Quehou's voice sounded beside him. Following the direction Quehou pointed, Chen Fan saw dozens of ghost creature corpses scattered at the foot of the cliffs—seventy or eighty in total, every single one mangled into a pulp of flesh and bone, dead beyond dead.
"..."
Chen Fan blinked, looking up at the sheer cliffs rising hundreds of meters into the air. He had wondered about this very thing last night: low-level ghost creatures possessed modest vitality, so wouldn't leaping from such a height kill them?
Now he had his answer: yes, it would. They really did plummet to their deaths.
"Da Yu."
He glanced at Da Yu beside him. "Did this happen in your village before?"
"Yes." Da Yu nodded. "Only during the rainy season. Every rainy season at night, we could always hear the ghost creatures smashing against the base of the cliffs. But once day broke, there were usually no corpses left, only thick, sticky blood. The night our village was wiped out, the ghost creatures that leaped down from the cliffs didn't die from the fall."
"..."
Chen Fan nodded, narrowing his eyes at the carcasses. Perhaps in the past, those corpses had been devoured by the massive creature lurking outside the camp last night. Had it held back this time out of wariness after noticing newcomers?
Setting the thought aside, he turned to Quehou and the others. "Quehou, come with me back to the old camp. The rest of you, tidy this place up. Clear away those ghost creature corpses, and knock down all the houses here."
"Understood."
Wang Mazi and the rest nodded in agreement.
The village houses were built of earth and stone, held together with tree sap gathered from the mountains as an adhesive. They held up well against the rain, but they stood no chance against a sledgehammer.
...
Just as dawn broke, Chen Fan and Quehou set off on the tricycle toward the old camp.
The old camp lay seventeen kilometers away in a straight line—seventeen thousand meters.
Yesterday afternoon before leaving the old camp, not wanting to waste his daily free quota, he had laid ten thousand meters of copper pipe along the way. Today, he needed only to add the final seven thousand meters to link both camps together.
The quota did not accumulate; whatever went unused that day simply expired.
Waste was shameful.
With a lighter load, the tricycle moved significantly faster.
"Young Master,"
Quehou, pedaling from behind to power the tricycle, spoke up with a trace of hesitation. "Are you planning to build a family clan of your own?"
"..."
Up front, Chen Fan glanced back at Quehou, paused for a moment, and replied, "No. A family clan naturally possesses bloodline cohesion and exclusivity. Right now in our camp, not a single person shares my blood. Besides, many specialized cultivators awaken at random; you can't get there through hard work later on. The family clan model isn't well suited to the Eternal Night Continent. Even if you treat hired retainers with absolute sincerity, they'll always feel like outsiders who don't truly belong to the family.
"What I want to build is a faction of my own. It won't care about bloodline—only about ability, loyalty, and a willingness to contribute to the camp. The camp will take them in. That way, even people with different surnames won't feel like they don't belong.
"As the camp grows, there will be more and more people. There aren't many I can trust completely. And you, Quehou... you're the one person I can trust without reserve. I want you to train more with Zhou Mo, become a powerful cultivator, and protect me by my side. I'll make sure resources tilt your way, too."
"I..." Quehou froze, then stammered with a mixture of excitement and unease, "Can I really? But I'm just a cripple..."
"What of it? I've seen people who were blind or missing an arm still practice martial arts and become renowned heroes." Chen Fan turned back with a smile. "Before the rainy season came, I saw what you could do. You're plenty capable. I believe in you, so you should believe in yourself too. Remember, only those who believe they can change the world can actually change it."
"Yes!"
Quehou nodded hard, his eyes shining with excitement and determination as his pedaling grew noticeably brisker.
After a while, Quehou's muffled, hesitant voice drifted through the rain once more.
"Um... Young Master, I actually never thought about changing the world."
"I know. Just adding some inspirational flair."
"What does 'inspirational flair' mean?"
"It means encouraging you."
"Young Master, I definitely won't let you down!"
"Keep at it."
Chapter 62