Building Module Blueprint

Wasteland.

Qiuhe Wang Family Station No. 16.

Zhou Mo led his subordinates through the torrential rain, following the coordinates on the Ghosthide Map for a long while before finally reaching this station.

Several lonely wooden huts stood amid the downpour.

Outside lay a patch of farmland, as well as an Eerie Fire.

Beyond that, there were no defensive structures whatsoever.

In fact.

Almost every station in the Wasteland lacked any defensive structures.

After all, outside the rainy season, Strange Entities almost never took the initiative to break into camps. If one encountered such a low-probability event, it would often trigger a chain reaction, and a few defensive structures would not mean much anyway.

"This guy really had good luck."

Standing outside the camp, Zhou Mo vigorously hammered his thighs to ease the exhaustion from the long trek. Looking at the rather crude camp before him, he could not help sighing. "No defensive structures at all, yet they still survived last night."

"They only made it because they ran into the station chief. Otherwise, they definitely wouldn't last through tonight."

"Let's go in."

"We can grab something hot to eat while we're at it, then continue on our way back to camp."

Their own station had gone through a brutal battle last night and had ultimately survived only because Heaven opened its eyes. This station did not even have a City Wall; it had endured entirely on luck.

"Old Chen?"

"Old Chen!"

As Zhou Mo walked into the station, he stretched his throat and shouted loudly. His voice burrowed into the houses through the heavy rain. Normally, barging into a camp like this was a grave taboo, but he could not worry about that now.

If he remembered correctly, this station's chief should have been called Old Chen.

However.

No one answered.

"Sleeping that soundly?"

Zhou Mo's brows furrowed slightly. He walked to a wooden hut, knocked on the door a few times, then forcefully pushed it open and called out, "Old Chen, you—"

His voice stopped abruptly.

His right foot, just about to step inside, froze stiffly in midair.

After a long while.

He finally looked at the two corpses hanging from the roof beam like cured meat and let out a complicated sigh. "Looks like your luck wasn't all that good either, Old Chen..."

The two corpses hanging from the beam swayed in the wind.

Clearly.

After Eternal Night descended last night, Old Chen and his men had been unable to withstand the pressure and had chosen to end their own lives by hanging themselves.

It was normal.

He could understand it completely.

A camp without any defensive structures, amid the rainy season's Eternal Night, was like a lone piece of driftwood in the depths of the sea. The raging wind and torrential rain stirred up waves, along with endless horrors beneath the surface, bringing a person the utmost despair—the despair of seeing no hope and waiting in vain for the sun to rise.

No one could withstand that kind of pressure.

The sea was beautiful.

Azure blue.

But the deep sea at night had nothing beautiful about it. Its utterly black surface, like Eternal Night itself, brought only despair and helplessness.

"..."

After remaining silent for a while, Zhou Mo instructed his subordinate, "Go outside and see whether there are any plants in the farmland. Move anything useful onto that cart in the corner."

Only then did he step forward and lower the corpses, checking their pockets for anything valuable.

He also stripped off their clothes and took them away along with the hemp ropes.

The Eerie Fire outside had already become exceedingly dim. With the station chief dead, the Eerie Fire was gradually going out as well. Before long, it would be completely extinguished.

There were less than two hours left before Eternal Night descended again.

Chen Fan woke up, threw off the blanket, and put on his clothes, which had yet to dry. After washing up simply with collected rainwater, he stood by the wooden door and looked outside, stretching lazily before turning to look at the stove inside.

Though there was a stove, the endless rainy weather still made it terribly damp and cold.

He had not slept very comfortably last night. The cold had frozen him badly.

The living conditions were a little poor.

He was alone inside the hut; everyone else was busy outside.

Walking out through the City Wall, he saw Crippled Monkey working in the farmland, burying the corpses of Strange Entities.

"Young Master."

Noticing him, Crippled Monkey jogged over, saying excitedly, "They're growing splendidly. They should be ripe by tomorrow."

"Mm."

Chen Fan looked toward the seedlings outside the City Wall, which had already grown to half a meter tall. He nodded with a light smile. "Carry on with your work."

By the timing, tomorrow would happen to be the third day.

That was also when this batch of crops would mature.

The fresh earthy scent in the rain cleared his mind considerably. Looking at the three Exotic Treasures in his arms—his gains from last night—the next thing he needed to do was raise the camp's strength again to deal with the danger they might encounter tonight.

The first Exotic Treasure.

Was a blueprint.

It was a building blueprint like the Watchtower, thin as a cicada's wing.

Only.

The structure on the blueprint was exceedingly crude. It was merely the phantom image of a Copper Pipe, like a sewer pipe, with no visible practical value at all.

-

"Exotic Treasure Name": Sealed Copper Pipe.

"Exotic Treasure Grade": White.

"Exotic Treasure Effect": This Exotic Treasure is a building module blueprint and can be adapted to all buildings.

-

"..."

Chen Fan crushed the blueprint in his hand. A change immediately surfaced on the Endless Night Lord Panel in his mind. This time, it had not added another building that could be constructed, but directly added an entire section.

-

"Currently Constructible Buildings."

"Eerie Fire, Arrow Tower, City Wall, Farmland, Wooden Hut, Sacrificial Tower, Watchtower, Beast-Trap Snare."

"Currently Constructible Building Modules."

"Copper Pipe."

-

The description for this building module blueprint was also quite concise.

"Copper Pipe": Can be adapted to all buildings. Constructing one meter requires 1 Eerie Stone.

Though he did not quite understand what it meant.

He understood one thing: practice was the sole criterion of truth.

He crushed an Eerie Stone. As milky-white liquid flowed through the air, the phantom image of a one-meter Copper Pipe slowly floated in midair. Its size could be adjusted at will; at its narrowest, it could be one centimeter wide, and at its widest, one meter wide.

He chose ten centimeters.

The instant the phantom image of this copper Copper Pipe appeared.

Every building in the entire camp simultaneously turned into building phantoms composed of white lines, just as they had been when first constructed.

The Eerie Fire, City Wall, wooden huts, and the rest all became building phantoms.

Yet Crippled Monkey and the others showed no reaction whatsoever. Clearly, only he could see this scene.

The sight before him was like.

Like...

Chen Fan narrowed his eyes slightly and guided the Copper Pipe toward the Eerie Fire. When the two building phantoms drew close to each other, they instantly fused together and rapidly solidified.

Only then did the entire camp return to normal once more.

The phantoms had dispersed.

And the Eerie Fire in the middle of the camp had changed as well. Its base had originally been a bonfire pile made of stones, its flames a cold white.

Yet now.

A Copper Pipe seemed to have been naturally embedded in the Eerie Fire's base, fused together with it and set into the ground. From another angle, one could faintly see the cold-white flames flowing back and forth within the Copper Pipe.

"..."

Looking at the sight before him.

Chen Fan stood frozen in place, a trace of disbelief flashing through his eyes. Could it be... could it be...

Without the slightest hesitation.

He spent another 20 Eerie Stones and created a Copper Pipe twenty meters long!

As the phantom image of the Copper Pipe floated in midair, all the buildings in the entire camp once again transformed into phantoms made of white lines.

(End of Chapter)