"Good stuff!"

"You weren't hurt, were you?"

Chen Fan looked at Crippled Monkey, who stood nearby holding a Spear.

"No."

Crippled Monkey shook his head, panting hard and still shaken. "Young Master, that strange entity was at least level 3. If it weren't for these two Arrow Towers, we might have died here today."

"Let's get to work."

He said nothing more, merely signaling for Crippled Monkey to throw the Beast Traps into the darkness and begin tonight's hunt.

Now that the big creature had been driven off, they could get on with their work tonight.

The Arrow Towers could only attack strange entities within the Eerie Fire's range. They were good for defense, but fell a little short when it came to going on the offensive.

About two hours passed.

Chen Fan frowned slightly. After a pause, he said, "We probably won't catch anything tonight. Let's head inside and sleep. We'll see what happens after dawn."

Two hours had passed without a single Beast Trap stirring.

Not one Monkey-Head Ghost had appeared.

Something wasn't right. He couldn't tell whether they had killed all the Monkey-Head Ghosts nearby or whether that big creature had called them away.

He knew too little about what went on in the Eternal Night.

More importantly, there was so much about this world he didn't understand. He needed a Private-School Teacher. He had to find a way to abduct one and bring them here. Information was crucial.

He had just crafted five Beast Traps, yet before he could even get started, there were no strange entities left to catch.

But...

Weren't the strange entities in the Eternal Night supposed to be endless? Even if he couldn't catch any Monkey-Head Ghosts, there should have been other strange entities. How could there be nothing at all?

Drowsily, Chen Fan drifted off to sleep on his bed.

He had three Eerie Stones left.

If he didn't find a way to earn more, he wouldn't even be able to keep the Eerie Fire burning.

Crippled Monkey slept on bedding laid out on the Wooden Hut's floor.

"Young Master!"

"Young Master!"

Still groggy, Chen Fan was woken by Crippled Monkey's urgent calls.

"What is it?"

Chen Fan rolled out of bed, rubbed his eyes, and walked out of the Wooden Hut. Why did Crippled Monkey always wake up before him? The man looked so scrawny, yet had far more energy than he did.

The next moment—

As Chen Fan stepped out of the Wooden Hut, he suddenly broke into a grin.

A dozen or so meters from their Camp, last night's Monkey-Head Ghost lay motionless on the ground, already dead. It had clearly fled into the darkness with severe injuries last night, only to collapse after a few steps.

Several glowing objects lay scattered beside it.

Unless he was mistaken, they were the exotic treasures the Monkey-Head Ghost had dropped upon dying.

Crippled Monkey stood outside the Wooden Hut, calling out with excitement written all over his face. Dawn had only just broken, and the darkness had recently receded. In this dim early light, there was no chance anyone would be passing their Camp.

"Coming!"

Unable to stop the corners of his mouth from rising, Chen Fan strode over to the Monkey-Head Ghost, picked up the two glowing objects, and tucked them into his clothes. Fortunately, Crippled Monkey had woken early, or someone else might have taken them.

Of course...

That wasn't particularly likely anyway. Few people passed through their area.

"I'll dig out the Eerie Stones."

Looking very excited, Crippled Monkey detached the knife from its wooden stick and began dissecting the corpse.

An ordinary low-level strange entity had only one Eerie Stone inside its body, but this Monkey-Head Ghost clearly had more than one. After cutting open its head, Crippled Monkey used the knife to dig one Eerie Stone after another out of the flesh.

The whole process looked like... removing tonsil stones, one after another.

It was incredibly satisfying.

Soon, all the Eerie Stones had been extracted and arranged neatly on the ground.

Seventeen in total!

Together with his remaining three, he now had twenty Eerie Stones.

"Not bad."

Chen Fan nodded in satisfaction. "Put this Monkey-Head Ghost's corpse away. Hide it in the haystack behind the Wooden Hut with the other Monkey-Head Ghost corpses. It might come in handy later."

Even if it proved useless, they still had to hide it. If a passerby saw this clearly unusual Monkey-Head Ghost corpse, they would surely wonder whether it had dropped something valuable, inviting unnecessary trouble.

Most strange entities wouldn't eat the corpses of their own kind.

Humans couldn't eat the corpses of strange entities either.

Apart from certain organs that could be used as ghost materials, most corpses were burned on the spot.

Only then did he look at the two exotic treasures in his hands, both glowing with White Light.

No exotic treasure could be crafted by human hands.

Neither was worth very little, either. In particular, the Building Replication Stone that had dropped after he killed the Mother and Daughter yesterday had left him with high hopes for these two exotic treasures.

"It'd be great if they could expand my territory or provide a steady supply of Eerie Stones."

Chen Fan pressed his palms together and murmured a prayer.

He was a little short on space.

The safe zone around a Level-1 Eerie Fire was ten meters in diameter. With the Arrow Towers, Wooden Hut, and Eerie Fire already occupying that area, there wasn't enough room left for a patch of Farmland. But if the Farmland wasn't placed within the Eerie Fire's range, strange entities would ravage it when the Eternal Night fell.

Originally, he could have used the Beast Traps to keep hunting and earn a steady supply of Eerie Stones.

But the Monkey-Head Ghosts hadn't appeared at all last night, cutting off that source. Although he had just gained a sizable haul of Eerie Stones, it wasn't sustainable. How he would obtain more in the future remained a problem.

The first exotic treasure was a seed-type treasure, just like the Monkey-Head Mushroom Seed.

It was wrapped in a thin membrane.

-

"Exotic treasure name": Eerie Stone Vein Seed.

"Exotic treasure grade": White.

"Exotic treasure effect": Must be planted in Farmland. Matures in three days and produces Eerie Stones upon maturity. Requires strange entity corpses as fertilizer.

-

"Good stuff!"

Chen Fan smiled. Even if the other exotic treasure was trash, this one alone made it worthwhile. It seemed he would have to put building Farmland on today's agenda.

He wondered how many Eerie Stones it would yield.

Fortunately, he had kept all those Monkey-Head Ghost corpses. They could serve as fertilizer now.

He looked at the other exotic treasure.

-

"Exotic treasure name": Godslaying Spear.

"Exotic treasure grade": White.

"Exotic treasure effect": Deals substantial damage to low-level strange entities. Can change size at will.

-

"Not bad."

With a thought from Chen Fan, the miniature Spear in his hand instantly grew into an imposing full-sized weapon. Its supposed ability to change size at will only meant it could switch between its normal and miniature forms.

It couldn't grow dozens of meters long.

That made it a watered-down version of size-changing.

It was a weapon for individual combat.

It was certainly much more effective than the crude Spears they had made from wooden sticks and knives.

"It's yours."

Chen Fan tossed the Spear into Crippled Monkey's arms, then strode toward the Eerie Fire. Although Crippled Monkey had a bad leg, both his physical strength and combat experience were a little better than Chen Fan's.

The Spear would be more useful in Crippled Monkey's hands.

Once he was back at Camp,

he took a deep breath, laid the twenty Eerie Stones on the ground, and slowly closed his eyes.