Looks Like You've Already Chosen Your Own Death (Please Keep Reading)

Zhang Rui went back and continued taking his son to the fortress ruins to move stones, working harder than ever this time.

Water and food were the most precious things in the Dark Age, and also the things people needed most.

If Lincon could solve those two problems, he would be able to establish himself firmly in this era. No matter how large the fortress grew in the future, at least he would not have to worry about anyone rebelling over survival.

"Water is easy enough to solve, but food is far more complicated than a single issue like water."

Lincon had no desire to continue carving the Shrine for now. Instead, he sat on a small stool, stroking his chin as he thought carefully.

If it were just him alone, dried Carrion Rat meat and Beautiful Abalone Mushrooms would be enough for his daily needs. As long as one person was fed, there was no one else to worry about.

But once the population grew, those things alone would be nowhere near enough.

For Lincon, as long as he had the right seeds, producing crops like wheat and potatoes would not be difficult.

After all, as a Plant Cultivator, the last thing he could do was starve to death.

But the only difficulty was that ordinary plants simply could not survive under Dark Erosion. Even if they were grown, no one would dare eat them.

Darkness eroded and corrupted the soil while also polluting the water sources, and plants could not grow without either of those things.

Plants grown from such soil and water naturally contained the decayed substances of darkness, making them highly toxic to humans.

So if he wanted to solve the food problem, he first had to solve the problems with the soil and water.

After thinking for a while in the courtyard, Lincon picked up a hoe and headed to the lake west of the fortress.

He looked over the lake, then walked back from its shore until he stopped when he was only a kilometer from the fortress.

"About twelve hundred meters."

"If I want to reclaim farmland suitable for planting, it can't be too close to the fortress, or it will be hard to tend. But it can't be too far from the water source either, or the plants won't grow properly."

As Lincon calculated in his head, he had already picked out a suitable area.

"Come to think of it, the Sunlight Sunflowers need water too. No wonder they've looked so sickly these past few days."

Only then did Lincon realize that he seemed never to have watered those Sunlight Sunflowers.

Although Sunlight Sunflowers were not ordinary plants, they still needed sufficient water and nutrients to grow over the long term.

With that realization, Lincon had an even better reason to divert water from that lake.

But before that, he had to completely eliminate the pollution in the lake.

Lincon returned to the lake and sat beside the Shrine he had set up earlier, staring at the water for a while.

Although he had marked an anchor point here with the Shrine, he still could not include this area within the territory shown on his panel.

That involved a Lord's prestige and the number of subjects under him.

To expand his territory here, he needed to raise his prestige to one hundred thousand and have ten thousand subjects under his command.

At that point, his territory could expand ten kilometers in every direction with Longwind Fortress at its center, enough to encompass the lake.

Since the lake had no name, Lincon simply gave it one himself and called it Longwind Lake.

Although Longwind Lake could not be considered a large lake, its actual surface area was not small.

He had once considered throwing a large number of Purification Stones into it to purify Longwind Lake's water.

But as soon as the idea emerged, Lincon quickly dismissed it.

There was no other reason. Purifying a lake on such a scale would be an enormous undertaking, far beyond the Sunlight Sunflower field from before.

If his Plant Cultivator level reached fifty, he might be able to give it a try. But right now, neither his time nor his mental strength could meet the demands of such a project.

"Looks like I'll have to think of another way." Lincon rubbed his brow and muttered to himself.

He slowly walked back toward the fortress, but just as he was about to reach the entrance, he stopped.

A strange man was standing in front of the fortress with his back to him.

The man wore a set of exquisite, expensive-looking clothes. Tall and lean, he was studying the endless Sunshine Sunflower Sea outside the city with great interest.

Lincon glanced at the Ancient Maple Guardian beside the gate, disguised as an ordinary maple tree, then calmly brushed past the man.

But after taking only two steps, the person behind him called out.

"Wait. Let me ask you, is this place called Longwind Fortress?" The man's voice was slightly hoarse, like grains of sand rolling through his throat.

Lincon turned around, only then getting a clear look at the man's face.

It was not a handsome face. His eyes were narrow, the ends of his brows sharp, and his hooked nose gave him an inherently vicious and dangerous air.

"Need something?" Lincon raised a brow.

"You only need to answer yes or no!" The man's tone gradually turned hostile. "I don't want to waste time on unnecessary matters. Tell me honestly, and we can both avoid a lot of trouble."

"Idiot."

Lincon could not be bothered with him and turned to leave.

But the moment he turned around, a chill suddenly targeted his neck, stabbing toward him from behind and to the side.

It was the unique icy sharpness of a cold weapon, like a bone-devouring venomous snake—sinister and dangerous.

Lincon shifted his footing, as though he had suddenly tripped over a stone, and narrowly avoided the venomous snake's bite.

After his first attack failed, the man did not give up. He swiftly drew another dagger with his left hand, intending to deal Lincon a fatal blow.

But just as his hand reached halfway out, his back suddenly went cold. An unprecedented sense of danger rose within him, frightening him into immediately withdrawing and retreating. Only after putting enough distance between himself and Lincon did that feeling slowly fade.

A bead of cold sweat formed on the man's forehead.

"An accomplice?"

He gripped his dagger tightly, his peripheral vision constantly scanning around him as he searched for the danger that had made his skin crawl.

Deep down, he did not believe that dangerous feeling had come from Lincon.

Even Lincon's evasion of his first attack had only happened because he had conveniently tripped over a stone and gotten lucky.

The one he truly needed to watch out for was the person hiding in the shadows.

Yet while the man focused his attention on his surroundings, he failed to notice that the person he had attacked had already slowly turned around and was staring at him as if he were dead.

"Do you want to kill me?" Lincon's voice was as cold as frozen earth beneath a ten-thousand-year glacier, and even the air carried a bone-chilling chill.

The man did not realize anything. After confirming there was no one else nearby, he merely assumed the feeling had been an illusion caused by his failed attack.

He gave a cold snort, and a cruel gleam like that of a hunter eyeing prey flashed in his eyes.

"Now, even if you aren't the person from Longwind Fortress, I'll still chop you into pieces and leave you for the creatures in the darkness to gnaw on."

At his words, a strange curve suddenly appeared on Lincon's expressionless face.

"Not bad. Looks like you've already chosen how to die."