Taking Stock of the Gains

On the City Wall of Cave One, at Nameless Mountain.

After bathing and burning incense, Chen Fan brewed himself a cup of hot tea at his usual unhurried pace. He leaned back in his rocking chair and waved for Wang Kui to begin his report.

It was time for his favorite part: taking stock of the gains.

Wang Kui had long since grown used to it.

Every continent lord had some personal quirk. His Domain Lord's was perfectly normal.

"Domain Lord."

Wang Kui leafed through the ledger in his hands and began. "We've finished accounting for everything recovered from Provocateur Continent. First, the Eerie Stones."

"We found 102.8 billion Eerie Stones in total. The first shipment brought back 46.8 billion, leaving 56 billion."

"Including the military operation Mortal Domain launched against the One-Eyed Strange Entity Clan, we spent 20.7 billion Eerie Stones in all."

"As of now—"

"The number of Eerie Stones Mortal Domain has available is...

161.8 billion."

"Not bad."

Chen Fan nodded with some satisfaction and sipped his tea. War, he thought, might not always be a losing proposition. The Heavenly Dao Cannon was called a beast that devoured gold, and every shot sent costs soaring.

But with a sound deployment, they would not need to fire many shots.

More importantly,

the war had ended quickly enough that the enemy had barely fought back. Most of their Eerie Stones had remained untouched in their Warehouses. If the fighting had dragged on, even a victory might have left the enemy continent with no Eerie Stones to claim.

There were also the congratulatory gifts from those other continents.

Those amounted to a considerable sum.

At 161.8 billion Eerie Stones, they had passed his safety threshold for continental reserves. He had set that threshold at 100 billion Eerie Stones. With that