Chapter 87 - 86: [Exotic Treasure Name]: Heaven-Asking Incense
Chapter 87: Chapter 86: [Exotic Treasure Name]: Heaven-Asking Incense
The night grew still, but the rain hadn’t stopped.
The City Wall slowly retracted from its Full-Closed Turtle Shell Defense mode. As a gap reappeared between the top of the wall and the mountainside, Chen Fan emerged from a passageway to stand on the ramparts, gazing at the scene outside the city.
He had built another Wind Tower, placing it on the cave floor behind the City Wall.
This was a special City Defense Building.
He had obtained the Blueprint for this City Defense Building from the Hey Hey Cave. Unlike ordinary City Defense Buildings, simply constructing this one required 500 Ghost Stones and one of several materials, such as the Wind-Resistant Pearl or the Wind-Stabilizing Pearl.
For comparison, an Arrow Tower only required materials other than Ghost Stones for upgrades after reaching Level 5.
Fortunately, he happened to have a Wind-Resistant Pearl, the exact material needed to build the Wind Tower. It was a parting gift from the leader of the Mourning Ghosts.
...
Chen Fan gazed at the Wind Tower behind him. Towering nearly ten meters high, it almost scraped the ceiling of the cave. It was a tall structure.
It wasn’t a bulky fortress.
Rather, it was a slender, elegant tower of jet-black stone, standing tall within the cave like a rapier poised to be drawn from its sheath.
It bore some resemblance to a Sentry Tower, but was obviously far more exquisite.
The tower stood perfectly straight.
Its surface was inlaid with countless spiraling and streamlined silver runes. These runes were not static objects; they flowed slowly at all times, as if caressed by an invisible, ceaseless wind.
And at the tower’s apex stood a... Copper Eagle.
He wasn’t sure how to describe the Copper Eagle perched atop the tower. He could only feel that its gaze was sharp and imperious. The surfaces of its smooth, spread wings were riddled with countless honeycomb-like pores, and one of its eye sockets was set with a white, faintly green Wind-Resistant Pearl.
The other eye socket was empty and hollow.
It only had one eye.
The next moment—
Chen Fan willed a section of the Copper Pipes from outside the city to extend into the cave, connecting the Ghost Fire to the Wind Tower. This eliminated the need to power the tower by inlaying it with its own Ghost Stones.
As the Copper Pipes activated, the runes on the tower’s surface lit up.
Light surged like water from the base of the tower to the top. All the honeycomb pores on the Copper Eagle’s wings instantly constricted, emitting a heart-stopping whine like the mournful cry of an eagle. Then, a translucent, cyan gust of Gang wind, visible to the naked eye, roared forth from the myriad pores!
It flew over the wall and blew toward the Celestial Pit.
He could even see the falling rain shifting slightly in its path.
The wind wasn’t especially violent, but it sent a chill through him as he stood on the City Wall. The foul stench that usually filled the Celestial Pit was swept away, flowing down the canyon and out of the pit.
...
"Over the top,"
Chen Fan watched the illuminated runes on the Wind Tower’s surface flashing rhythmically, making it look as if light was constantly surging from the base to the peak. The corner of his mouth twitched.
The Wind Tower.
It basically had only two uses.
To resist the Meat Worms’ Ghost Tide.
And to sweep away the foul smell.
It was a support-type City Defense Building, but its construction requirements were demanding, and its visual effects far surpassed any of his other buildings. It didn’t look like a Level 1 Wind Tower at all.
It looked more like a Level 5 Wanxiang Celestial Attraction Pavilion or some other, far more impressive-sounding structure.
Even though it was technically just a common-grade building.
’But I’m sure it’ll gain other powerful effects as its Level increases.’
’Just...’
’Upgrading it to Level 2 requires 1,000 Ghost Stones and another Wind-Resistant Pearl, and I don’t have a spare one right now.’
...
By now, the city gate had opened.
Lame Monkey and his men slowly filed out of the city. Gazing at the desiccated Ghost Object corpses that littered the Celestial Pit, they all froze in place, their faces a mask of utter shock.
The scene before them was by no means beautiful.
All the Ghost Blood had been absorbed by the Ghost Blood Patterns on the City Wall, leaving the corpses desiccated and even more terrifying than usual. If the area weren’t illuminated by the Ghost Fire, but instead lay shrouded in the gray gloom of a normal moonlit night...
...add a few cobwebs and the occasional scurrying rat,
and it would be the very picture of a mass grave.
The kind of place that would scare you sober, even if you were dead drunk.
And yet—
For Lame Monkey and the others, who had grown up fully expecting to one day die in the jaws of a Ghost Object, this was the most beautiful sight in the world.
Sunsets over vast mountains and rivers, no matter how beautiful,
could not compare to a world where all Ghost Objects were dead.
The Ghost Objects they had feared since childhood, the ones they had spent every rainy season hiding from, now lay dead in heaps before them. The impact of this scene was more profound than any victory before.
"Young Master..."
Leaning on the Godslaying Spear, Lame Monkey limped out of the cave. He stood in the rain, his gaze sweeping over the field of corpses. When he turned back to look at Chen Fan, who stood on the City Wall in simple linen clothes, his eyes began to redden. His feelings at that moment were impossible to describe.
He just felt that the Young Master had truly become a man of great capabilities.
He was now fully capable of carving out a domain of his own in this wretched world.
Just moments before, they had been watching from the mouths of other caves—more than forty meters above the ground—and had witnessed the Meat Grinder activate with their own eyes.
For the past several days, the camp’s main project had been the Meat Grinder. But it had never been activated, so they had no idea what it could do. Only at the moment of its activation did they witness the Meat Grinder’s true, terrifying power.
"What are you all standing around for? Get to work!"
Zhou Mo pulled a Big Saber from his clothes and was the first to charge into the downpour. The others, shaken from their stupor, reacted as well. They drew their tools and rushed into the rain—some to dig for Ghost Stones, others to collect Exotic Treasures, and the rest to begin the dissections.
The entire process flowed with practiced coordination; they had become extremely Skilled.
Their division of labor was clear.