Chapter 93 - 75: Harvest
Chapter 93: Chapter 75: Harvest
The events that followed unfolded just as Lin Kong had expected.
Soon, lords began arriving after hearing the news. After confirming the Tree-men’s abilities with Li Hua, they sought out Lin Kong, wanting to rent them.
The two sides haggled for a bit, and the final deal was that a lord would rent four Tree-men and pay 25% of their treasure chest earnings upon returning them.
Since the two parties had no binding contract to guarantee the deal, they could only ask the middleman, Li Hua, to act as a guarantor. For this service, each side would give Li Hua 5% of their treasure chest earnings as an intermediary and guarantor fee.
They waited a short while, and a squad of Death Devourers emerged from the Goblin Forest to the west.
The lord then left with the four Death Devourers.
After that, more than ten other lords arrived one after another, all making deals based on the same terms.
After the deals were done, Lin Kong also asked the lords to help spread the word.
The lords all readily agreed, but after that first wave, no one else came.
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"Brother Lin, still waiting?"
"Yes, my lord. I’m not sure why, but I made an agreement with those lords yesterday to help make some introductions. I’ve waited all day, and no one has shown up."
"Brother Lin, if you had units that could purify Death Energy, what would you do?"
"...First, I’d clear out the Great Tombs, then rent out my surplus units."
"...No, what I mean is, what if you had *rented* those units? And you had plenty of neighbors, all of whom were also trying to tackle the Great Tombs."
Lin Kong thought for a moment, and it dawned on him.
’Human nature is selfish. The number of Great Tombs is limited. Previously, due to their difficulty, the surrounding lords had to band together to clear them, so everyone was an ally.’
’But the moment one of them gets units that can purify Death Energy and gains the ability to clear Great Tombs alone, the other lords are no longer allies—they’re competitors. Naturally, they’d keep the source of these purifying units a secret. Even with an introduction fee, why share when keeping all the spoils for yourself is so much more appealing?’
Having figured this out, Lin Kong was no longer anxious. He believed some lords would still come.
Sure enough, just before sunset, a few more well-informed lords arrived. This time, Lin Kong negotiated the terms up to 35% of the treasure chests. Similarly, both parties agreed to give 5% of their treasure chests to Li Hua.
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For the next half a month, Lin Kong stayed in Li Hua’s territory. Occasionally, lords from distant lands would hear the news and come to rent his Death Devourers to clear Great Tombs.
As the end of the third month approached, lords gradually began to return the rented Death Devourers.
This was mainly because many of the nearby lords had rented Death Devourers, causing the difficulty of clearing Great Tombs to drop significantly.
The Great Tombs had gone from being high-difficulty bosses that everyone avoided—and were forced to unite against due to the threat of their late-game attacks—to hot commodities that everyone was now scrambling to clear.
Before the end of the month arrived, all the nearby Great Tombs had been cleared by the lords. They even took their Death Devourers to clear some of the slightly more distant ones.
Most of the lords who came to return the Death Devourers didn’t try to cheat and delivered the agreed-upon treasure chests. However, a few tried to get clever. After Lin Kong questioned the Death Devourers and confirmed the details, he and a group of Li Hua’s heroes gave those lords a sound beating, after which they too handed over the treasure chest fragments as required.
After this incident, the lords returning the Death Devourers were much more honest. In fact, they were all extremely grateful, thanking Lin Kong for lending out the Tree-men.
This was because as the end of the month drew closer, more and more people were crying for help in the World Channel.
[World Chat Channel (789054)]
Tan Niu: "Help! The zombies are laying siege to my city! I can’t hold on much longer!"
Tan Niu: "Is there any nearby lord who can help? Save me! Spatial Coordinates: XXX.XXX.XXX. You can take any one item you like from my territory."
Tan Niu: "You can take three... that’s fine too..."
Gu Chuncheng: "Stop yelling. All the nearby lords are under attack. You think you’re the only one getting hit?"
...
After lying dormant for over half a month, the zombies had amassed a huge wave of forces and begun to attack everywhere.
If one were to look down upon the land, they would see that the entire continent, save for a small cluster of territories in the north, was shrouded in the flames of war.
In truth, after Lin Kong had released the information about the zombies, most lords had sent out their subordinates to search for Great Tombs.
However, not everyone was capable of clearing them.
As time passed, the forces of the Great Tombs grew stronger. If there happened to be no powerful lords nearby, a group of Civilian Lords couldn’t break through a Great Tomb even if they united. Instead, they would just end up feeding it more troops.
For these lords, a forced attack would only lead to heavy losses and inadvertently strengthen the enemy. It was better to actively bolster their defenses. As long as they could withstand the zombies’ attacks in the later stages, they had a high chance of surviving until the end of the month.
The Commander of a Great Tomb couldn’t split itself, so it couldn’t attack all territories at once. It would only choose one territory to attack each day. At that point, it all came down to a test of luck.
In contrast, the lords who had rented Death Devourers not only didn’t have to worry about zombie attacks but had also profited handsomely. Many of them even made it onto this month’s battle record rankings. For an ordinary Civilian Lord, just getting on the leaderboard and receiving ranking rewards was an extremely worthwhile achievement.
Besides, without renting the Death Devourers, they wouldn’t have been able to defeat the zombies from the Great Tombs anyway.
Of course, because the Death Devourers participated in clearing the Great Tombs, it was judged as a joint attack. Thus, after clearing a Great Tomb, they wouldn’t receive a complete golden Calamity Treasure Chest, but rather golden treasure chest fragments, which were perfect for paying the rental fee.
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When the last three days of the month arrived, Lin Kong recalled all the rented-out Death Devourers. In addition to receiving over 2,000 golden Calamity Treasure Chest fragments, the Death Devourers themselves had also reaped great rewards.
The weakest among them had leveled up three to five times, while the strongest had gained over ten levels. Each one was full of vigor and still seemed eager for more.
Lin Kong led these Death Devourers back to the territory. Then, Lin Yu dispelled his clone, reabsorbing Lin Kong.
Over the past half-month, Lin Yu had also accomplished a great deal within his territory.
First was his profession. Although he had not yet completed his Senior-tier Druid studies, he had passed the exam to become a mid-tier Druid. While he didn’t receive any attribute boosts, his abilities had strengthened considerably, and he had learned many more Druid skills.
Then there were the territory’s military affairs. The great army had swept through the Goblin Forest to the west several times, leaving only various goblin nests and a few animal-type unit buildings. Because the goblins were easy to kill, the Goblin Forest, much like the Skeleton Wilderness to the south, had been turned into a leveling area.
Now, newly recruited soldiers in the territory would first go south to level up against the skeletons. After reaching level 10, they would head to the Goblin Forest. The variety of goblins there was plentiful; aside from the small goblins who gave little experience, the other types offered quite a lot, enough to get a soldier to around level 15.
After clearing the Goblin Forest, the territory’s army did not continue exploring further west. Instead, Lin Yu dispatched them to the eastern mountain range.
West of the Goblin Forest, many lords had already cleared most of the Great Tombs with the help of the Death Devourers, so there was no need to explore there. As for lands even more distant, they were too far away for Lin Yu to even consider.
The eastern mountains were full of gullies and caves, perfect for hiding Great Tombs. Although there was no sign of the zombies colluding with the monster colonies in the mountains to farm experience off each other, Lin Yu still had to inspect the range thoroughly.
As expected, Lin Yu found no fewer than ten Great Tombs in the mountains near his territory.
During the process of clearing these Great Tombs, Lin Yu discovered that their forces developed extremely quickly. The first Great Tomb he found had less than ten thousand troops (inferred from the points on the battle record rankings), but the later ones discovered in the mountain caves already had nearly two hundred thousand.
Fortunately, he wasn’t afraid of the zombies absorbing energy from fallen Death Zombies, evolving and advancing mid-battle. Otherwise, it would have been a truly difficult fight.
Still, one could only imagine the despair of those lords who couldn’t quickly purify Death Energy, facing zombies that grew stronger the longer the battle raged at the end of the month.
After clearing the Great Tombs in the mountains, combined with the twenty he had swept through in the Goblin Forest, Lin Yu had single-handedly annihilated more than thirty Great Tombs, wiped out a massive number of zombie forces, and earned approximately 1.68 million battle record points.
He was currently ranked third on the battle record leaderboard under the name "Anonymous 1."
The first and second ranks belonged to Yun Qihao and Qian Duoduo, respectively. Every move these two made was calculated for the future, each step interlocking with the next. By the third month, they were already far ahead of the vast majority of lords.
First, both of them had methods to rapidly purify Death Energy on the battlefield, which countered the zombies’ greatest strengths: infecting living beings with corpse poison, which turned them into more zombies upon death, and absorbing the energy of fallen Death Zombies to strengthen the survivors, making them grow stronger as the battle went on.
With these two core abilities nullified, the zombie calamity could hardly be called a calamity anymore; they were just mobs that were slightly numerous and had good defense.
Second, both of them had many underlings scattered across the continent. Whenever these subordinates discovered a Great Tomb, they would call their respective bosses for help. The two would then dispatch their purifying troops to help their underlings clear the Great Tomb, killing a large number of zombies and racking up battle record points in the process.
Yun Qihao’s advantage was that all his troops were holy units of the Goddess of Wisdom and War (possessing divine attribute attacks/defenses from the Goddess’s Divine Power). The Goddess’s Divine Power would automatically neutralize/dispel Death Energy, which meant every attack came with a built-in purification effect.
As for Qian Duoduo, only the Holy Knights and Priests in his territory could purify Death Energy on the battlefield, and their purification effect was not as good as Yun Qihao’s holy units. However, he was rich, so he had recruited a great number of Holy Knights and Priests.
It was rumored that he had once considered using the "Recruitment Scroll (1000)" he had saved from the second month to compete for first place in the third month. In the end, he gave up on the idea, considering the significant gap in unit quality and the fact that Yun Qihao hadn’t used a "Recruitment Scroll (1000)" either.
As of now, Yun Qihao was ranked first with 3.21 million battle record points, while Qian Duoduo was second with 2.34 million.
Third was the territory’s research. After more than half a month of development, the administrative structure was complete, and the territory had unlocked many administrative-type buildings.
The territory was currently constructing a Military Center and a Government Affairs Center.
The two basic disciplines, Basic Rune Theory and Basic Rune Application, had also been fully researched. The development of Spiritual Weapons was now underway.
Research into Plant-based Architecture Cultivation was also complete, and development of Plant Hybridization and Cultivation Technology was in progress.
The construction progress of the defensive line had greatly improved. A subgroup had been formed within the Urban Construction Planning Bureau to create the Landscaping Planning Bureau. Its office was still located within the Urban Construction Planning Bureau, and it borrowed the latter’s authority to manage the propagation of defensive plants.
After the Sun and Moon Breathing Technique was completed, research on the Path of the Stars began smoothly.
All creatures in the territory now knew the Sun and Moon Breathing Technique. The territory’s daily Spiritual Energy generation had decreased by about 10%, with the reduced portion being absorbed by the territory’s denizens.
After more than half a month of development, the entire territory’s potential had increased tremendously.