Watchtower

"Alright!"

Little Qiu hurriedly scrambled up from the Farmland and raced toward the open city gate, practically rolling and crawling. This time, no Strange Entities rushed into the camp again.

When Little Qiu, covered head to toe in mud, returned inside the City Wall, panting heavily, and climbed up the stone steps, he saw everyone looking at him. Every gaze was incredibly complicated—there was admiration, respect, and...

A look he had never seen before.

In all his life, he had never experienced a moment like this.

He could not help but straighten his chest, raising the white-glowing item in his hand as he grinned at Chen Fan. "Chief, I got it."

"Well done."

On the City Wall in the rainy night.

Chen Fan accepted the Exotic Treasure from Little Qiu with a complicated expression. "Why did you think of running toward the Farmland just now instead of inside the City Wall?"

"There wasn't enough time."

Little Qiu only felt that his throat was a little sore, though he did not know whether it was because he had shouted too loudly earlier. Now that the moment had passed, his legs felt weak and powerless. "The Strange Entities were faster than me and closer to me. If I ran toward the City Wall, I definitely wouldn't have gotten away."

"Even if they didn't catch me, they definitely would have caused the City Wall to be breached."

"Brother Wang has treated me well. Chief, you took me in during the Rainy Season. Everyone is trying their best to survive the Rainy Season. I didn't want everyone to die because of me. If someone had to die, then me alone would be enough."

"And I thought that with the Arrow Towers here, the number of Strange Entities must have been constantly decreasing. As long as I rushed to the traps and held on for a while longer, maybe we could weather this crisis."

"..."

Chen Fan did not say much. He merely took the Exotic Treasure from Little Qiu's hand, stepped forward, and patted his shoulder. "Your name is Little Qiu, right? Your decision was decisive. You did very well this time."

In truth.

The situation Little Qiu described, where the city fell and everyone perished, would not have happened.

If there truly had not been enough time, Chen Fan would have closed the city gate.

But...

He had not expected Little Qiu to handle it so perfectly. Decisive judgment, and more importantly, that spirit of sacrificing himself for others. Speaking from the heart, very few people could keep from running toward the City Wall in that situation just because they feared getting everyone killed.

Chen Fan definitely could not have done that.

He could keenly sense that because of Little Qiu's actions, everyone now carried a different feeling in their hearts. It was the outward manifestation of emotions being stirred. If another crisis came, perhaps the others would make the same choice as well.

Humans were social creatures.

Emotions were contagious.

For now, no Strange Entities continued rushing into the camp. Chen Fan narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked into the darkness beyond the rainy night. He felt that what had happened earlier might not have been a coincidence. Could it really have been such a coincidence that the moment Little Qiu left the City Wall and reached the edge of the camp, the Strange Entities in the night launched their attack?

And besides.

The Strange Entities in this wave resembled Mantismen. They were extremely fast, even faster than the Bamboo-Pole Strange Entities in the first wave.

They were clearly unsuited for attacking a city and better suited for pursuit.

In contrast, the Bamboo-Pole Strange Entities, over three meters tall, were more suitable for attacking a city.

He strongly suspected that the Strange Entity outside—the one that had let out that eerie laughter at the beginning—might possess a certain degree of intelligence. It might even be able to see the camp's layout and was prepared to launch an encirclement at any time.

But its intelligence should not have been high. Or rather, the intelligence of controlled Strange Entities should not have been high.

Otherwise, they would not have stepped straight into the traps so foolishly.

"..."

He lowered his head and looked at the Exotic Treasure in his hand, narrowing his eyes slightly. It was a piece of Wraith Hide as thin as a cicada's wing. It felt somewhat similar to the Ghosthide Map, and engraved upon it in scarlet lines was a building.

A structure resembling an Arrow Tower.

Only taller.

And narrower.

It was a building blueprint, an exceedingly rare Exotic Treasure. Among the many Exotic Treasures, building blueprints absolutely counted as rare. This was also the first building blueprint he had obtained.

-

"Exotic Treasure Name": Watchtower Blueprint.

"Exotic Treasure Grade": White. "Exotic Treasure Effect": Can be used to build a Watchtower. The Watchtower provides vision within 50 meters outside the camp.

-

Without the slightest hesitation.

He immediately crushed the building blueprint in his hand. Unlike other Builders, he did not need to study it. After crushing the blueprint, a new constructible building, "Watchtower," instantly appeared on the Endless Night Lord Panel deep within his mind. Building it required only 10 Eerie Stones.

He currently still had 130 Eerie Stones.

The next moment—

A towering phantom ten meters high, made of countless white lines and incomparably narrow, floated in the air. As the 10 Eerie Stones in his palm shattered and turned into milky-white liquid that flowed into it—

The phantom of the tower gradually solidified and stood beside the Wooden Huts within the city.

Its base was only one meter wide and long.

Wide at the bottom, narrow at the top.

At its very peak was embedded something resembling a luminous pearl.

The instant the Watchtower solidified, his vision expanded at once. Outside the camp had originally been pitch-black darkness, as soul-gripping as an abyss, but now the fifty-meter area beyond the camp's edge had changed from black to pale gray.

Beyond fifty meters remained dense darkness.

He could clearly see that within the pale gray fog, hundreds of Strange Entities were moving in groups, swiftly passing by their camp and heading deeper into the darkness, like a massive animal migration.

They flashed past.

He could not see them clearly.

But.

Four Bamboo Pole Entities were carrying a blood-red sedan chair. They had not joined this animal migration, instead stopping steadily thirty meters away from the camp. Around them gathered roughly a hundred Strange Entities.

There were three types in total.

Bamboo Pole Entities and Mantis Entities.

Chen Fan had named them himself. The third type was the Monkey-Head Entities he had first encountered. Monkey-Head Entities were also the fewest in number.

Among that group of Strange Entities, one Bamboo Pole Entity and one Mantis Entity were clearly much larger than others of their kind.

"..."

Chen Fan took a deep breath. Standing atop the City Wall, he looked toward the gray fog beyond the Eerie Fire. The Watchtower had given him more information, and a fifty-meter field of vision was an enormous help to him.

He finally understood what had happened.

If nothing unexpected had occurred.

Those two larger Strange Entities should have been minor leaders. The reason there were so few Monkey-Head Entities was because he had killed many of them, and the reason there was no minor leader among them was because he had killed that leader as well.

After dying, it had even contributed two Exotic Treasures to him: the Ghoststone Vein Seed and the Godslaying Spear.

The fellow inside the sedan chair should have been the one who had laughed at the beginning. After discovering that its subordinate had died, it had come to seek revenge on him.

Luckily.

A trace of relief flashed through his heart. The Watchtower clearly showed him exactly how many Strange Entities were passing by his camp. If all these Strange Entities charged into his camp without a care, he would undoubtedly die!

There was no way he could defend it.

Only this group of Strange Entities remained restlessly stationed outside the camp. The other Strange Entities ignored the camp as they passed by, as though they were hurrying along in frantic haste.

Two Level-2 Arrow Towers were definitely no longer enough.

Back then, the two Level-2 Arrow Towers had not killed that Monkey-Head Entity leader on the spot, allowing it to escape the camp and bleed to death dozens of meters away. Now there were two leaders like that, plus an even stronger chief leader.

Level-2 Arrow Towers were definitely not enough.

He had to have Level-3 Arrow Towers.

Luckily, he had saved enough Eerie Stones to upgrade the Arrow Towers.

(End of chapter)