After Lin Chenxing said he was willing to take in the people from the Qimen City settlement, Zhang Tiemin, captain of the Sky Blade Squad, immediately sent a message through a small communications device.
The situation was urgent. The longer they delayed in Qimen City, the more dangerous things would get. They also hoped Xingyan Base could send people as soon as possible, especially Lin Chenxing, to return with them and help evacuate the entire base.
However, to ensure everything went smoothly, Lin Chenxing and Gao Zheng's group discussed the matter and decided to wait half a month. Once the base had secured the surrounding area, they would send out the vast majority of their people to support Qimen City.
Zhang Tiemin thought it over, then agreed. After all, that was the safest approach.
However, Zhang Tiemin decided to leave only one person behind to serve as a guide later. He would lead the squad back to the Qimen City settlement first, helping it better withstand the coming Beast Tide attacks.
This incident put the entire base on edge. Bringing in ninety thousand people would be a massive undertaking. The base would have to expand; otherwise, there would be nowhere for the new arrivals to stay, which would hardly be ideal.
The base's construction crews sprang into action once more. Under the Martial Artists' protection, they began extending the base's walls and enclosing more open land within its boundaries.
The Bamboo Forest that had already grown in this area outside the walls withered all at once. Beyond the section of wall under construction, shoots began sprouting from the ground, quickly growing into bamboo stalks.
The expansion naturally drew the attention of the strange beasts that had recently wandered into the area. However, with the Bamboo Forest and the Martial Artists protecting the base, they failed to cause much trouble.
Over the course of half a month, the outer wall was completed, and the foundations for the buildings inside were laid. This area was being built according to plans for four floors above ground and two below, with a focus on residential buildings and enough space to house eighty thousand people.
The base had grown from its original five hundred mu into a giant covering more than a thousand mu. Nearly five hundred mu of that was residential space. With fifty square meters per household and three people per household, it could just about accommodate 110,000 people.
Although most of the base's people had been called in to help with construction, completing the project was still expected to take nearly two months, and even then, the buildings would be no more than basic, unfinished homes. That estimate already took into account that people were now far stronger than they had been before.
But in this world, having a place to live was already a blessing. If necessary, they could renovate the homes themselves later.
Once everything was ready, Lin Chenxing and He Qishun led the team out.
Aside from Lin Chenxing, a Primary War God, the team consisted of ten Advanced Battle Generals, including He Qishun and Peng Tianwen; twenty Intermediate Battle Generals; sixty Primary Battle Generals; and one hundred Advanced Warriors. Beginner and Intermediate Warriors were not required to join the team, so they all stayed at the base.
Both He Qishun and Peng Tianwen were at the peak of the Advanced Battle General level and could break through to the War God level at any moment. Peng Tianwen in particular had highly refined mental power. He could control twelve Bamboo Leaves at once and unleash their full power, and he could also manipulate sixteen threads simultaneously. The only thing holding him back from breaking through was the amount of his mental power; his body had already reached the Intermediate Battle General level.
As they traveled, they followed the route the Sky Blade Squad had taken before. They encountered no strange beasts powerful enough to require Lin Chenxing, He Qishun, or Peng Tianwen to step in, and reached the town where the Sky Blade Squad had been ambushed with little trouble.
To avoid alerting their enemies and ensure they could strike with a single decisive blow later, Lin Chenxing led the team around the town before rejoining their planned route.
Everyone stayed cautious along the way and did not travel at full speed. Though Lin Chenxing had no need to fight, he kept working through the fragments of the Guidance Technique he had found. The fragments had indeed helped people at the base grow stronger faster, but only by a little. With memories from his past life to draw on, Lin Chenxing could hardly be satisfied with that.
He wanted to create secret techniques and a Guidance Technique that could rival Hong's World Destroyer and Thunder God's Nine-Fold Thunder Blade.
The attacks of the Bamboo Forest were what he knew best, especially the Bamboo Roots, whose use bore a fair resemblance to that of a spear. His ideas had been moving in that direction. After all, the Bamboo Forest's strength was his strength, too. As long as he continued to improve in this area, both bodies could gain a tremendous increase in combat power.
Resilience was the first chapter Lin Chenxing had comprehended from bamboo. By drawing on bamboo's natural resilience, he could turn attacks from any direction into nothing, then use that momentum to counterattack. Of course, he had also borrowed from the principles of Tai Chi.
However, this chapter did little to improve Lin Chenxing's strength. It merely let him borrow an opponent's force to strike back, and it did nothing to speed up his cultivation. It was even less effective than the fragments of the Guidance Technique.
So Lin Chenxing continued trying to incorporate other ideas into this chapter. Now, his attention turned to bamboo nodes.
From what Lin Chenxing knew, bamboo nodes strengthened the stalk and kept it from bending or falling over. That meant bamboo's resilience was enhanced in a certain way. What about force? Could it also be compared to a hollow, unsupported stalk of bamboo, with each "node" helping transmit force more effectively, or even adding to it and amplifying its power?
With that thought, Lin Chenxing began experimenting. His movements grew strange; from time to time, he would punch a tree or a rock by the roadside.
At first, he could not control his strength. His punches shattered rocks and snapped trees. Later, he gradually reined in his power, leaving only a mark behind.
Then Lin Chenxing began trying out a two-stage method of exerting force, imagining the formation of the first bamboo node.
He placed the first node at his wrist, intending to briefly halt the transmission of force there, then release it along with the second wave of force when it arrived. But this first attempt did not increase his strength. Instead, the halted force dissipated, and a faint ache began to throb in his wrist. The second wave was also obstructed and weakened. Lin Chenxing was terribly frustrated, but there was no helping it. He had made the mess, so he had to fix it himself.
After resting his wrist for a while, Lin Chenxing began his second attempt. This time, he did not forcefully block the first wave of force. Instead, he tried to control the muscles in his wrist to slow its transmission, releasing it together with the second wave. This time, the mark left on the tree was slightly deeper than before. By Lin Chenxing's estimate, the force was about 1.2 times greater.
He had succeeded, but too much force was leaking away, and the time it took to throw a punch had increased by 0.1 seconds. Lin Chenxing couldn't help complaining to himself.
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