How Can Another Snore Beside My Bed

"…" Chen Fan stood in the massive pit, watching the bustling construction scene ahead. The walls on either side sank into the ground, ensuring that broken rock, earth, and debris could flow out. Zhou Mo and the others were hard at work clearing away the displaced stone and dirt, but the sheer volume of work was immense. With just a few of them, they were clearly overwhelmed. They lacked handy tools, and they were short on manpower. From the looks of it, it would take at least three days before his envisioned rear base could take a rudimentary shape. … Just like that. After toiling for an entire day, an hour before nightfall, the cannon towers finally ceased their bombardment. "Phew…" Chen Fan let out a slow breath. Standing atop the wall at the cavern's entrance, he peered inside. After a full day of indiscriminate blasting, the cave's interior was already ten meters high and thirteen meters deep, its ceiling standing taller than the wall itself. It was narrower at the entrance and broader inside. From time to time, dirt crumbled and collapsed from the cavern's roof. The ground was in utter shambles. "Stationmaster…" Panting, Zhou Mo sat down on the ground, his voice hoarse. "Outside is pretty much done. The rest will have to wait until tomorrow to clean up." They lacked the manpower and means to haul the dirt and rubble away, so they had simply let it slide through the gaps on either side of the wall down toward the original village site. Leveling it out as best as they could was all they were capable of. The cavern's interior was not even leveled yet. The plan for a rear base was glorious, but relying on just the few of them to carry it out was truly grueling. Behind him, Wang Mazi, Qi Chong, and the others were also gasping for air, completely spent. These past few days had indeed taken an exhausting toll on them. "No rush. We'll pick it up tomorrow." "You've all worked hard." Chen Fan crafted a ghost fire and set it up in the deepest recesses of the cavern. He placed both exotic treasures—the Clear Breeze Array formation disc and the Mountain Skeleton Embryo—into the ghost fire, then connected it to the copper pipes already laid through the canyon. The next instant— The Clear Breeze Array activated first. Ripples of faint, barely visible breezes swept across the campsite. A cool chill grazed the ankles, and walking felt as if a ghost were pushing one from behind, noticeably quickening one's pace. Even standing atop the wall, he could feel the cool breeze brush his ankles. Chen Fan took a few paces along the wall; his movement was indeed considerably faster than usual. It was a peculiar sensation, much like moving walkways at an airport in his past life, where each step covered the distance of two. It even came with a dust-clearing effect. Keeping it running cost 1 ghost stone per day, and the larger the camp grew, the more it would consume. Just then! *Crack… crack.* Thick, pale, gruesome bones extended from the ghost fire he had installed, burrowing deep into the earth. They moved swiftly through the surrounding rock face, and the cavern roof that had been crumbling moments ago instantly turned rock-solid. Not a single pebble fell anymore. The risk of cave-ins was gone. With these two exotic treasures placed within the ghost fire, the rear camp finally began to take on a proper form. As for structures like farmland and sacrificial towers, he held off on crafting them for now. At the very least, he had to level the ground inside the cave before erecting any buildings. What was more, the cavern in its current state was far too small to match his grand vision for the rear base; it needed several more days of excavation. He tried once more to craft the Vehicle Workshop, the yellow-grade structure he had recently acquired. The phantom outline that was supposed to consist of white lines had turned completely red. The building had an enormous footprint. It required roughly one and a half times the area of the current cavern. The cavern simply could not accommodate it unless he built it in the village area outside the cave. There was ample space out there, but that went against his whole philosophy for a rear base; in the event of an enemy attack, the Vehicle Workshop would be the first thing destroyed. Even so, although the rear base was still in its infancy, the crucial defensive fortifications were mostly complete. "Everyone get a good night's sleep," Chen Fan said with a faint smile, glancing at Quehou and the others. "I slept this afternoon. I'll take the night watch tonight." None of them declined. Climbing down from the wall, they entered the crude wooden cabin inside the cavern and collapsed into sleep almost the moment their heads touched down. These past few days had been utterly exhausting. The kind of exhausted where they could barely stand on their feet. When people were that worn out, they had no energy to think about anything else; all they wanted was to sleep. … Before long, faint snores drifted out from the wooden cabin. Chen Fan stepped out of the cavern alone and looked around. The massive pit nestled beneath the mountain cliff covered an immense area. It was a textbook square, roughly several hundred meters wide. The natural ghost fire zone could only cover the village, occupying a tiny fraction of the pit. It was positioned right in the center and could not blanket the entire expanse. With the others asleep, Chen Fan scanned his surroundings and continued laying copper pipes. He had not exhausted today's free quota yet. Starting from the cavern, he branched the pipes outward across the area. This time, he was not laying a road. He was expanding the camp's boundaries. Last night, a massive creature had watched him with greedy intent the entire night. In all likelihood, it would return tonight. The moment he heard any movement tonight, he would instantly activate the copper pipes, expanding the camp in a flash to bring the creature within range of his cannon towers and eliminate this hidden threat once and for all. How could another be allowed to snore beside his bed? Still… One detail was worth noting: the copper pipe was at most one meter wide, and upon activation, it incorporated half a meter on either side into the camp's domain, creating a camp zone up to two meters across. That worked perfectly for paving roads. However, covering the entire pit and bringing all of it within the camp boundary would require an astronomical amount of copper piping. By rough estimate, it would take around two hundred thousand meters of copper pipe. His daily free quota was only ten thousand meters, and less than three thousand meters remained for today. Therefore— Like a tree branching out, he laid the copper pipes from the cavern entrance across the floor of the pit like spreading boughs. This would not bring the entire pit into camp territory, but it could illuminate select areas once darkness fell. As long as the intruder stepped into these extended zones, the cannon towers could open fire. He also crafted five sentry towers, placing them evenly across the bottom of the pit and connecting them to the copper pipes. Once activated, a sentry tower provided fifty meters of vision beyond the camp. Though it only granted visibility while the cannon towers could not attack that far, as long as he had vision, he could unleash the eerie green mourning lantern in his hand. He had to deal with this unknown entity before the rear base could truly be secure. … Once his preparations were finished, Eternal Night fell on schedule. Holding the eerie green mourning lantern, Chen Fan sat quietly atop the wall at the cavern entrance. The wall was embedded into the cliff face, sheltered from the rain. He looked up at the overhang above and waited patiently. After an unknown amount of time passed, *Thud, thud, thud…* A familiar sound echoed again—ghost creatures plunging off the cliffs and smashing into the pit below. *Here it comes.* He snapped to alert; this was exactly what had happened last night. Sure enough, after several successive crashes of falling ghost creatures, followed by about the span of an incense stick of quiet, he clearly heard a rustling sound through the rain—the sound of a colossal beast moving through the downpour. *One, two, three…* Chen Fan held his patience, counting down silently in his head. The moment the count ended, he abruptly activated the copper pipes. Cold white flames surged rapidly from the ghost fire inside the cavern into the copper pipes, igniting every sentry tower along the network. The next instant! The pit, previously swallowed by Eternal Night, lit up in a flash. Branches glowing with golden radiance lay spread across the basin, and the illuminated sentry towers instantly banished the Eternal Night at the bottom of the pit, turning it into gray mist. He saw it. Through the gray mist, he saw a colossal, crocodile-like beast carefully clamping its jaws around a ghost creature's corpse at the base of the far cliff, preparing to withdraw. But the sudden illumination of the pit clearly startled it. The crocodile hastily dropped the corpse from its jaws and bolted headlong into the canyon passage in sheer panic. In the blink of an eye, it vanished from sight. The thunderous din of its sprint reverberated off the canyon walls on both sides. "…" Chen Fan stood silently on the wall, his expression blank. Only now did he understand what sort of creature had been watching him last night. He also realized how remarkably cautious it had been both last night and tonight; the noises he had heard before had been from it trying its best to minimize its movements. When it broke into an outright sprint, the sound was deafening, rumbling through the canyon and echoing for a long time without fading.