Chen Fan stood before Warehouse No. 1 inside the cave. He had excavated an extra chamber within the cavern specifically to house the warehouse, with an entrance measuring five meters high and four meters wide.
He had made the entrance deliberately large, mainly out of concern that if something exceptionally massive turned up in the future, it wouldn't fit inside.
He looked down at the nails and hammer in his hand, then glanced up at the height of the cave entrance.
"Weiwei."
Chen Fan turned his head toward the crocodile sprawled in front of Qi Chong, staring intently at the roasting meat. "Come over here and give me a boost."
"Zhou Mo, I'll hold the nails, you do the hammering."
"Watch it, don't hit my hand."
Standing on the crocodile's back, the two quickly hung up the wooden signs labeled "Warehouse No. 1," "Spirit Accumulation Pavilion," "Meat Grinder Passage," and the like in their corresponding spots.
"Mm, not bad."
Standing inside the cavern, Chen Fan looked around and nodded with satisfaction.
How to put it? These signs served no practical purpose, but much like the nameplates outside every office at a company in his previous life, while practically invisible day-to-day, things just felt off without them.
With them up, the outpost looked far more legitimate.
Seeing that there was nothing pressing for the moment, Zhou Mo took advantage of the gap before dinner was ready and scurried excitedly into the Spirit Accumulation Pavilion to experience the sensations of this new building.
If only one person was cultivating inside, even at tenfold cultivation speed, the ghost stone consumption was very low.
After all, Zhou Mo's cultivation was still modest. If his cultivation were higher and he absorbed more ghost stones, the consumption would naturally increase.
Dinner tasted especially delicious.
Perhaps owing to the day's massive harvest, everyone was all smiles and ate with hearty appetites.
Even Weiwei, sprawled inside the cave clutching the octopus head, ate with great relish.
Eternal Night fell as expected.
Darkness once more enveloped the entire wilderness.
Fed and full, they turned in.
Tonight, once again, no one stood watch—or rather, Weiwei was on night watch.
The beast seemed to rarely need sleep, and at the slightest rustle in the wind, it was always the first to start awake: prime watchman material.
As for the Level 2 wall connecting the sinkhole to the canyon, it had been fully lowered into the ground.
This wall wasn't meant as a defensive fortification; no cannon towers were mounted atop it, and it wasn't built to confront enemies directly.
Instead, it was meant to cut off the enemy's retreat once they swarmed into the sinkhole. When this wall rose, that was when they would shut the door to beat the dog.
The campsite gradually fell quiet as everyone prepared for sleep.
"Tonight is the fourteenth night of the rainy season. Just hold out for less than twenty more days, and the rainy season will be over."
Inside the stone house's communal quarters, Zhou Mo sat on the carpet, tucked his broadsword under his pillow, and pulled a file from his pocket, mumbling to himself as he carved marks into a wooden board.
Beneath him, pelts and piled grass served as a rug. There were no bedsheets—he had retrieved his sheet from Weiwei's mouth, but it was covered in drool. Thoroughly grossed out, he had washed it, and it hadn't dried yet.
Only a single oil lamp cast a faint glow inside the room.
Wang Mazi, A'le, and the others lay on floor beds beside him, quietly watching Zhou Mo carve out the rainy season countdown.
Whenever this moment arrived, the stone house was always exceptionally quiet, everyone watching in silence.
"Less than twenty days left, huh."
Wang Mazi licked his lips and grinned with fond reminiscence. "Brothers, don't say I'm not generous. Once the rainy season ends, I'm taking everyone out for a damn good time in Jiangbei City.
"Surviving this rainy season together makes us brothers who've stared death in the face. I won't be stingy. When the time comes, my treat—we're hitting the brothels to play with some Jiangnan lasses.
"Supple and tender, with waists that sway like enchantresses.
"And nothing like the rough women around Jiangbei. The ladies from Jiangnan speak so softly and sweetly. It's a completely different world.
"Last time, when I didn't have enough coins in my pocket, I went to a red house and found a local Jiangbei widow. That woman was built broader than me! I walked in, and before I could even take my pants off, she dropped hers first. You know what she said right off the bat?"
Wang Mazi paused, a flicker of genuine dread surfacing in his eyes.
"That dame opens her mouth and hits me with: 'Give it all you've got, big boy, your gal can take a beating!' Holy shit, who the hell could handle that?!"
"So you ran?" Xiao Qiu asked from beside him, gloating slightly.
He was young, had never been to a brothel or a red house, and had only heard rumors of such places without ever setting foot inside. Listening to Wang Mazi's tale, he found it thoroughly entertaining.
"Run? Like hell I would!"
Wang Mazi put on a solemn face. "When a man enters a brothel, it's like a soldier marching onto the battlefield! To go in and then back out—that's sheer cowardice!
"Whatever girl you get, that's your fate. You bite the bullet and charge forward! Retreat is dishonor!
"Think I'd let her have the upper hand? I put her right in her place then and there! By the next morning when I walked out of her room, the dame's legs were turned to jelly. Didn't take another customer for a whole month—word is, her legs shook every time she got up to pee in the middle of the night!"
Chuckles rippled through the dim room.
Wang Mazi loved telling bawdy jokes, and they were happy to listen. It wasn't really that they craved dirty stories; rather, hearing tales of life before the rainy season gave them hope that they could actually survive to see the other side.
"Say, Wang Mazi," Zhou Mo teased, lying on his side against the wall. "Do you even have any ghost stones left in your pockets? What are you going to treat us to the brothel with after the rainy season? If you've been skimming ghost stones on the side, brother, I might just earn myself a reward here."
Before joining this outpost, they had surrendered every last ghost stone they had saved over the years to the stationmaster.
Wang Kui had turned over the most. After toiling away for thirteen years as a worker bee and painstakingly accumulating a bit of honey, he had handed it all over in one day, leaving nothing behind.
And having relied entirely on the stationmaster's shelter to survive all this time, none of them would ever dream of demanding wages.
Taking refuge under someone else's roof and asking the master of the house for money was unheard of; pitching in to help was the least they could do in return.
"None. My pockets are cleaner than my face," Wang Mazi answered bluntly, without any shame. "But don't worry about where I'll get the ghost stones. As long as the stationmaster takes us on a stroll into Jiangbei City when the time comes—
"And assuming Jiangbei City hasn't been wiped out by the rainy season—
"Give me just one night, and I can scrape together enough ghost stones to treat you all."
"Got a few tricks up your sleeve, huh, Wang Mazi?" Zhou Mo chuckled, setting the wooden board aside, stretching, and lying down.
"Alright, let's sleep. Work to do tomorrow. Here you are dreaming about fooling around after the rainy season—let's survive it first."
He didn't doubt that Wang Mazi had the skills. Harsh as it sounded, down on their luck though they were, could anyone who had served as an outpost stationmaster out in the wild be an ordinary nobody?
They definitely possessed survival skills. Even unarmed, as long as he made it back to Jiangbei City, rustling up some ghost stones was well within his means.
The room gradually quieted down as everyone fell asleep.
The Level 3 wall at the cave entrance gave them tremendous peace of mind.
They even felt they might be sleeping more soundly than the people back in Jiangbei City. After all, though Jiangbei City had numbers on its side, its walls were only Level 1. For all they knew, Jiangbei City might not even exist anymore.
Most of the outpost's residents were fast asleep.
Chen Fan, however, stood inside the Level 1 Warehouse, admiring the day's spoils.
A smile crept across his face, impossible to suppress.
Especially standing at the doorway of the Mustard Seed Chamber, looking at the ghost stones floating one after another in midair—it was a truly delightful sight, giving him the feeling of an old farmer beholding a bumper harvest.
"Stationmaster."
Wang Kui, following behind with bamboo slips retrieved from the Archives Chamber in hand, reported, "Last night, Qianhu, one of the ghost king's four commanders, was wiped out along with his entire force. The four large chests he carried with him were also captured in full.
"One chest contained various ghost materials, which I have already sorted and categorized. The remaining three chests were packed with ghost stones, totaling exactly 17,000."
"A clean, round number, eh?"
Chen Fan nodded repeatedly, eyes brimming with amusement as he gazed at the ghost stones hovering in the Mustard Seed Chamber.
This ghost king really was a generous soul.
His wife Qiu Kui delivered a heart-guard armor.
His subordinate rushed over to deliver ghost stones.
As far as he knew, another commander named Qianxi had likely made landfall on the wilderness from the southern desert by now. What remained unknown was how much Qianxi understood about the situation here,
and whether he would mount a night raid.
That fellow was bound to be carrying a sizeable haul of ghost stones too. Since the ghost king had sent Qianhu with an entire year's accumulation of ghost stones, he had likely done the same for Qianxi.
If Qianxi didn't attack tonight, Chen Fan would have to figure out a way to actively lure him across the wilderness.
Not just for the ghost stones, but because the ghost king still had two remaining commanders. If Chen Fan could eliminate them one by one before the ghost king arrived, facing the ghost king when he finally tracked him down would be vastly easier.
"What about the ghost stones we brought back from the mountain this afternoon? Have they been counted? It should be quite a lot, right?"
Chen Fan glanced sideways at Wang Kui.
"Reporting to Stationmaster, the count is fully complete." Wang Kui looked down at the scroll in his hand and continued, "A total of 36,726."
"That many?"
Chen Fan's pupils narrowed slightly as he stared at the ghost stones floating in the Mustard Seed Chamber.
During the excavation, they had sensed that the deep pit held a substantial quantity, but he hadn't expected it to be quite this staggering.
"All told, how many ghost stones does the outpost have right now?"
"A grand total of 56,570 ghost stones." As Wang Kui reported, he pulled a small notebook from his pocket and continued:
"In last night's battle against Qianhu, the altar expended a total of 437 ghost stones to repair the walls and cannon towers.
"Most of that altar consumption went toward repairing the Level 3 wall; repairing a Level 3 wall consumes considerably more ghost stones.
"All eighteen cannon towers in Stage 1 of the Meat Grinder were activated. Together with the ten cannon towers on the wall, they consumed 217 ghost stones.
"Last night's battle consumed a total of 654 ghost stones.
"We made a handsome profit on that fight."
"Mm."
Chen Fan gave a slight nod. The duties he assigned Wang Kui went far beyond simple storekeeping; he had granted Wang Kui permission to view the ghost stone consumption of many buildings. That way, Wang Kui could gather enough data to compile and summarize reports for him, sparing Chen Fan from checking and calculating each one individually.
It saved him an enormous amount of effort.
Of course, this was also a core authorization. If such data were ever leaked, rival factions could easily deduce critical information from it.
In a sense, it reflected a deep level of trust.
"A profit was guaranteed." Chen Fan wasn't overly surprised by this. "Out in the wilderness, as long as you survive a ghost tide's assault, you'll never come out at a loss.
"Over these past days, what has the daily ghost fire consumption been like?"
Many buildings in the outpost were now linked to the ghost fire—such as the Warehouse, which required embedded ghost stones, the Spirit Accumulation Pavilion, and the unmanned outposts maintained outside the canyon.
Many structures required a continuous daily supply of ghost stones, and he hadn't tracked the exact numbers himself.
"The Warehouse currently consumes eleven ghost stones a day. It used to be just one—it never took much. But after taking in the Snow Lotus you provided, Stationmaster...
"The special storage environment for that Snow Lotus burns ten ghost stones a day on its own."
"That many?"
Chen Fan's brows furrowed slightly. Walking down the warehouse corridor to the Heavenly Treasures Chamber at the far end, he pushed open the door and looked inside.
A membrane composed of emerald-green mist floated in the chamber. It sealed in a freezing chill, and clearly visible snowflakes dusted its surface, resembling a uterus chilled inside a refrigerator.
Suspended midair within this membrane floated a Snow Lotus.
It was the very Snow Lotus he had brought back from the beast's lair, a special heavenly material and earthly treasure.
"Brilliant."
Chen Fan stared at the Snow Lotus for a moment without saying anything more, then turned to Wang Kui and said, "Understood. Continue."
Even though the Snow Lotus served no immediate purpose and drained ten ghost stones from him every day, he wasn't about to abandon such a treasure. A heavenly material and earthly treasure—and a green-grade one at that—carried a market value of at least five thousand ghost stones, if not higher.
Once the rainy season was over, he could find ways to make contact with other factions and gather more information. Whether he learned its true application or resold it, he was guaranteed never to lose out.
"The other structures with recurring daily consumption are the unmanned outposts. Right now we have ten unmanned outposts in total, with an average nightly consumption of around one hundred ghost stones.
"The return is quite good, though.
"The unmanned outposts yield around seven hundred ghost stones a day on average."
"Not bad."
Chen Fan gave a slight nod. That return on investment was actually stellar—it meant breaking even in just a few days, with everything after being pure profit. But for someone who had just claimed the inheritance left behind by Weiwei's parents, this trickle of ghost stones felt distinctly sluggish.
"No need to go into too much detail. Give me the overall figure."
"Understood. Currently, when not under attack by a ghost tide, the outpost's fixed daily consumption adds up to roughly 120 ghost stones."
"Mm."
Standing outside the Mustard Seed Chamber, gazing at the ghost stones wrapped in emerald mist and drifting in midair, Chen Fan patted Wang Kui on the shoulder. "Good work. Get some sleep early."
Only then did he walk out of the warehouse alone.
Rainy season countdown: 16 days remaining.
Chapter 93