Food Crisis

"Father, look! There's a tree monster over there!"

Zhang Han cried out in amazement, tugging frantically at Zhang Rui's clothes, his eyes brimming with excitement.

Zhang Rui shoved his son's head down. "I can see it. Did you really need to tell me?"

The Ancient Maple Guardian's massive, oppressive form was like a mountain pressing heavily upon the three of them.

More importantly, such a monster was actually bowing to Lincon.

At first, they had thought some high-level dark creature had entered the fortress.

Yet only Lincon knew that the Ancient Maple Guardian merely looked intimidating. In truth, it could only be considered a D-rank creature.

It would be useful against ability users, but it would not pose much of a threat against dark creatures.

If it had to be compared to a Weird Calamity or an Anomaly Calamity, it would probably need to evolve into a Twisted Treant with dark power first.

Lincon raised a hand, and the Ancient Maple Guardian lowered itself even further.

He patted its enormous head and had the Ancient Maple Guardian stand guard at the city gate.

Longwind Fortress's gate had long since fallen into ruin. It could barely even be called a gate anymore. Repairing it would be slower and less convenient than finding a carpenter and blacksmith to build a new one together.

It would be great if I could find some useful craftsmen, Lincon thought.

He turned to look at Zhang Rui and the other two, who were standing there at a loss.

They watched as the Ancient Maple Guardian lifted its feet and walked step by step toward the fortress entrance, the shock in their eyes nearly overflowing. They only came back to their senses when Lincon had already approached them.

Zhang Rui hurriedly pulled his wife and son over to bow to Lincon.

"My lord!" Xu Wan held Zhang Han down as she called out as well.

Lincon smiled but said nothing. He merely ruffled Zhang Han's hair before leaving directly.

The three watched Lincon's departing figure. Zhang Han looked toward his father.

"Is this lord the new city lord?"

Zhang Han was young. Although he was far more mature than children his age before the Cataclysm, many of his ideas were still vague.

In his mind, only the city lord of Black Iron City and the ability users under him possessed unimaginable power.

Zhang Rui sighed and patted his son on the shoulder.

"My lord has always been the city lord."

"But why was my lord the only person in the city before we came?"

"Who told you that a person alone can't be a city lord?" Zhang Rui grabbed his son's hand. "Come on. Help me clear the ruins in the city."

After receiving Lincon's orders, Zhang Rui immediately began making preparations when he returned home.

He found several barely usable wheels in the ruins and made a simple cart that could carry stones, greatly improving their clearing efficiency.

Although Zhang Han was still young and could not provide much help, Zhang Rui still hoped he would become familiar with these tasks as soon as possible.

This was no longer the peaceful era from before the Cataclysm. To receive the protection of the strong, everyone had to show their own value.

He hoped his son would understand this principle early, so that even if Zhang Rui died someday, Zhang Han could still take care of his mother.

It was not that Zhang Rui had a pessimistic mindset. As a former messenger, he had seen too many people die in accidents.

Through his interactions with Lincon, he could tell that Lincon was not a cruel or tyrannical person. That meant that as long as people like them remained useful, they would not be abandoned so easily.

The large and small figures soon became busy.

However, before the ruins of Longwind Fortress, the strength of just the two of them was truly limited, so their progress was extremely slow.

Every night, Zhang Rui could hear Lincon outside from time to time, clearing dark creatures.

Gradually, they had settled in Longwind Fortress for a week. During that time, they had never encountered dark creatures at night.

As time passed, people's vigilance would inevitably weaken. So whenever Zhang Rui saw Lincon heading out to clear dark creatures, he would cautiously open his door and take the initiative to greet him.

The Purification Shrine outside gave off a faint yet warm glow, filling him with a strong sense of security.

Even in Black Iron City, protected by B-rank ability users, he had never felt this way.

And ever since Lincon assigned him the task of clearing the ruins, he had given him no other instructions.

Zhang Rui sat by the doorway for a while. Watching Lincon's lantern-bearing figure disappear into the darkness once more, he returned inside and shut the door.

Xu Wan was mending Zhang Han's damaged clothes. Seeing Zhang Rui return, she hesitated for a long while before speaking worriedly.

"The food we brought is almost gone."

Zhang Rui froze at those words, and his brows soon furrowed.

He had been clearing the ruins these past few days and had overlooked the matter.

Food and water had always been the greatest problems of the Dark Age.

Not long ago, Zhang Rui had sought out Lincon over the issue of water. Lincon had merely given him a stone and told him that throwing it into water would produce clean water.

At first, he had only half believed it. After all, a single stone being able to purify a bucket of clean drinking water was something no city in the Dark Age could possibly achieve.

However, after fetching water from the lakeside and tossing the Purification Stone into it, he watched the murky water become clear with his own eyes, and the last traces of doubt in his heart vanished completely.

"I'll go ask my lord tomorrow and see whether he has a solution."

In Zhang Rui's heart, Lincon had already become an omnipotent existence. Since he could solve even the difficult problem of water, food should surely be easy enough.

Thus, Zhang Rui appeared before the gate of Lincon's courtyard the next day.

That figure was still seated outside as usual, carving shrines.

Sunlight fell upon the Sunlight Sunflowers in the courtyard, gathering into specks of fluorescent light like stars in daylight, warm and bright.

"Is something the matter?" Lincon asked without looking up when he heard the movement.

"My lord, my family is almost out of food."

At those words, Lincon's hand holding the carving knife abruptly stopped.

He opened his mouth, intending to say that Zhang Rui could hunt Carrion Rats for meat in the dense forest to the southwest, but the words had barely reached his lips before he forcibly swallowed them back.

The pale, ghostly figure from his memories emerged, hanging over his heart like a shadow.

Even he did not dare enter that dense forest again. Sending Zhang Rui there would be no different from sending him to his death.

Lincon quickly ran through his options, then turned and went into the house to retrieve the container used to cultivate Beautiful Abalone Mushrooms.

"Take this for now. The mushrooms inside are edible. I'll find a way to solve the food problem."

Zhang Rui took the container and found the soil inside covered in white mycelium. It crisscrossed densely like a spider's web, while snow-white, crystalline mushroom caps of varying sizes poked out from the soil.

"Later, you can also scrape off the spores of the Beautiful Abalone Mushrooms and cultivate the fungal colony yourselves," Lincon continued.

Zhang Rui's eyes lit up. His entire family had not eaten fresh vegetables in a long time, much less this kind of mushroom vegetable.

"Thank you, my lord!"

Before coming here, they had thought that even survival would be a problem in Longwind Fortress. They had even prepared themselves for their entire family to die in the darkness.

Yet every problem they encountered had been easily resolved by the lord before them.

As expected of someone who had lived alone for three years surrounded by darkness.

At that moment, Zhang Rui's respect for Lincon reached its peak.