Thanks to the Villa's special sticky mud, the abundance of stones, the considerable amount of rebar, and the immense strength of these brick-moving warriors, building houses was as easy as eating and drinking.
The ground was dug up into mounds of soil everywhere as they built monster-fighting bases for their own teams.
Some had trap courtyards surrounded by loop-shaped walls.
Some had guillotine-style trigger traps. When a bird flew through, it pulled the switch and sent the blade crashing down.
By dusk, as the grand construction effort continued, some people had already spotted a business opportunity and begun selling semi-finished building materials:
"Selling dirt blocks, the same kind as in My World! Make building your fortress even easier!"
"I'm selling iron doors with shooting holes! A safe entrance door is crucial!"
But no one fought over territory to build defensive towers. After all, a mere hundred people's construction area did not take up much land.
The Blacksmith Shop was even more bustling, with all kinds of bizarre weapons emerging one after another.
Some people even went out to learn how to design traps and ancient military fortresses, cramming in a whole lot of lessons!
Passion truly was the best teacher!
There was also a crowd of armchair strategists online offering advice. All kinds of blueprints appeared one after another, helping them create the miracle of a hundred childlike loli soldiers defeating tens of thousands of flying troops!
The Mountain Villa was far too lively!
"Hey-yah!"
"Hey-yah!"
A group of people shouted as they drove stakes into the ground and laid foundations. Their faces were flushed, and they worked with feverish enthusiasm. Even eating dirt had become more invigorating, and they stuffed handful after handful into their mouths!
Meanwhile, Jiu Cai Rong was even busier, running around until his feet barely touched the ground.
Iron plates covered in spikes became the most practical basic components for all kinds of traps.
As for the master swordsmith Dao Jiujiu, he was assigned to forge more high-quality Magic Artifact blanks.
Once the war began, they could obtain a crow and immediately start crafting formal Magic Artifacts. Perhaps that would help change the course of the war.
Su Yu Niang also began practicing archery.
Although her skill was far above that of ordinary people, her hit rate against fast-moving targets at a distance was a disaster.
Even well-trained modern marksmen were not necessarily able to hit a flying bird.
Could they only wait for the enemy to land and preen its feathers before launching a surprise attack?
The results were obviously not very good.
At noon, Ning Zheng finished his meal.
He planned to see what the Mountain Villa was doing and whether everything became lawless the moment he left. Had they been putting on an act in front of me all along? A powerful curiosity welled up inside him, along with the urge to secretly spy on them.
Of course, he would not go there personally. Were there not already spectators Queuing to Log In?
Ning Zheng forcibly logged in as one of them and gave himself an extremely plain online name: Flower Blooming Rich. After all, once he Opened the Three Flowers and became a cultivator, wealth would naturally follow! Flower Blooming Rich carried an auspicious meaning in this world.
After logging in, he saw all this nonsense from one perspective after another, and he was completely dumbfounded.
At this moment.
Everyone was also chatting about various things.
"Wow, I really want to play! This is way too challenging!"
"How did that idiot build that trap? Trap the crows, circle around, and stab people from behind? He built a tool specifically for attacking the crow airdrops. Just how much resentment has he accumulated? (Laugh)"
"I'm jealous, so jealous! Sob, when will those of us still Queuing to Log In get to log in too? (Pitiful.jpg)"
"Before the Old Steward left, he described the Manor Lord's appearance and circumstances. Could this mean a new NPC is about to appear? When they can't defeat the crows, won't the Manor Lord come out and kill them all with one wave of his hand?"
"Wait, wasn't he said to be in secluded cultivation and unable to come out?"
"Are you saying the Manor Lord can't create an external incarnation and come out to kill everyone?"
"Then that would be so damn cool!"
Ning Zheng wore the expression of an old grandfather staring at a phone.
As a young man who had fallen behind the times, he only felt that this place, where people could switch perspectives and chat, was rather interesting.
This way, he could monitor the entire Mountain Villa.
He had not chatted with anyone online in a long time. He remembered secretly going to an internet café to play Penguin back in the day, where the first thing people asked upon meeting was, "Are you an MM or a GG?" It gave him a strong sense of nostalgia.
Thus, he typed out a message.
Flower Blooming Rich: "Hello, everyone. It's nice to meet you all."
"Rich lady, please support me."
Ning Zheng: "???"
Rich lady? What rich lady? Where did that come from?
He glanced at Ning Jiaojiao beside him, whose cheeks were stuffed full of food. She did look more like one.
Someone sent him a message: "Sis, do you know what the flower language of a steel wool scrubber is?"
Ning Zheng could not restrain his curiosity.
Flower Blooming Rich: "What is it?"
"Endurance and Flower Blooming Rich."
?
He could not understand a word.
Ning Zheng felt that he and these people belonged to different generations. Although he found it interesting, he stopped saying much and merely switched between perspectives in silence.
He watched from one angle after another, wearing a vaguely sinister expression that probably amounted to: Secretly observing.jpg.
Just like that, two days passed in a single breath.
Over the next two days, Ning Zheng paid almost no attention to outside affairs. He only occasionally spared a little time to see what bizarre structures the Mountain Villa had produced, then focused single-mindedly on breaking through.
After all, everyone else was preparing for war so diligently.
As the only combat force in the Mountain Villa, Ning Zheng had to work hard too.
Their passion and fervor had infected him.
As it happened.
Ning Zheng planned to break through to the next realm and strengthen his battle power over the next few days.
If the Crow Chief appeared, breaking through beforehand would increase the odds of a successful surprise attack.
At this very moment.
He had reached the final stage. Magic Coins filled the entire room around him.
The spiritual energy stored within them was continuously drawn out in fine threads.
A massive amount of spiritual energy poured in through the Heaven and Earth Bridge atop his head, following the Spinal Dragon and his meridians before gradually flowing into his left hand.
The Five Bodies Realm.
The head and four limbs were collectively called the Five Bodies.
Each time one body was completed, that limb could be destroyed and regenerated.
The First Body of the Five Bodies had to be the head, because the "head" marked the beginning of the immortal path. One Opened the Three Flowers on Crown, opened the Heaven and Earth Bridge, and drew qi into the body—hence the name Five Bodies.
Now, Ning Zheng was about to complete his second body.
"I'm afraid the breakthrough won't be stable. I'll use some Luck Value to assist it. With good fortune, accidents are less likely."
His thoughts returned to the matter at hand. Ning Zheng sat cross-legged, adding another 300 Luck Value to be safe. His Luck Value surged to 800, and his mind became crystal clear as he began attempting the breakthrough.
Whoosh~
Spiritual energy surged through the air and gathered above his head before entering his brain. It slowly poured down along his spine into his left arm, opening his meridians and merging into his flesh and bones, which began to reassemble.
Half an hour later, Ning Zheng slowly opened his eyes.
"It worked."
He picked up his sword. A flash of cold light streaked through the air.
His left hand fell with a thump.
The severed arm bounced and flailed on the ground.
"Come back."
Fine strands of spiritual energy seeped from the stump, slowly drawing the severed hand back onto his arm.
He clenched his left hand, completely satisfied.
A breakthrough that was extremely perilous for other people had passed without the slightest ripple for him.
Once he finished cultivating the Five Bodies—the head and four limbs—the outer edge of his body would form a complete doughnut, circulating and regenerating endlessly.
At that point, his weakness would be his chest cavity, the center of the doughnut: his abdomen.
Cultivators of the same realm specialized in attacking their enemies' stomachs.
That area consisted of fragile mortal flesh. It had not been tempered and possessed practically no defensive power.
Even a minor injury could easily result in the loss of an organ, leaving the physical body incomplete and making it impossible to break through to the next realm.
At that point, one could only seek out the legendary heavenly treasures to reconstruct a complete physical body—but how difficult would that be?
After the Five Bodies Realm came the Four Organs Realm, which made up for this flaw.
Thus, in some places, the Five Bodies and Four Organs were collectively called the Nine Grades of Physical Body.
"It's not bad. I've got another hand that can live for eight hundred years." Ning Zheng clenched his fist. When his body rotted after a hundred years, he would not be left with only a head. He would have an extra hand too.
That made a huge difference.
At the very least, with another hand, he could pound the ground with one arm and hop along.
"Time to practice archery."
Ning Zheng took a deep breath and pulled a Copper Bow and several bundles of wooden arrows from beneath the bed.
At present, his only means of attack was to draw a bow and shoot arrows!
This was the awkwardness of having neither an inheritance nor a matching cultivation technique.
Other people in the Five Bodies Realm possessed all kinds of spells and looked like true cultivators, while he had nothing at all and was as clumsy as a mortal.
Ning Jiaojiao had made the wooden arrows in the courtyard when she had nothing else to do.
They were made from strips of wood, with only the arrowheads crafted from Magic Copper. The materials were extremely crude, and their power was so weak that they might not even pierce the hide of a slightly thick-skinned beast.
Ning Zheng was naturally not relying on the arrowheads' killing power. His magic power could carry spiritual damage, parasitize the target through its soul, split the target's soul, and multiply his own incarnations.
Every incarnation he parasitized consumed the target's soul power, essence, and spirit.
The balance shifted with every exchange.
The more of his own incarnations he split off, the weaker the opponent's soul became and the harder it was for them to resist.
That was why it was called a spiritual toxin—spreading and proliferating, beyond the reach of any medicine!
After all, cultivators in the Five Bodies Realm did not cultivate the soul. They only tempered the flesh, leaving the soul extremely weak. Ning Zheng's soul-infused attacks were practically their natural nemesis, giving him an overwhelming advantage in the early stages!
This was also why he was confident in launching a surprise attack.
Whoosh!
An arrow shot out.
"Go pick it up."
"Oh."
"Go pick it up."
"Got it."
Ning Zheng practiced archery until noon and was slightly out of breath.
The wooden arrows on the ground were single-use. After being shot once, their shafts had already burst apart, and Ning Jiaojiao was making new arrows beside him.
By noon, the sky suddenly grew gloomy.
Dark clouds blanketed the sky, rolling and surging as they swept over from every direction.
"Caw-caw!!"
Carrying boundless fury, flock after flock of crows flew toward the mountain, letting out sharp caws.
"They've provoked the crows already? Why so soon?"
Ning Zheng lowered the bow in his hand and looked up at the swarms of crows flying toward the Mountain Villa.
"Looks like they're ready to fight. Why didn't they prepare a little longer? They're being far too reckless."
Once the battle began, it would be a fight to the death.
Ning Zheng soon formed a battle plan.
He absolutely could not engage in close combat. It would be best for him to hide in a secluded corner at the foot of the mountain, look for an opportunity, and fire cold arrows from afar to provide secret support.
He had great confidence in his tactic of hiding at the foot of the mountain and firing surprise arrows. The Demon People had died from that very strategy before. Once the Crow Chief appeared, one well-placed ambush might even kill it outright.
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