After seeing Elder Seven off, Chen Fan climbed the Northbank Defense Line's wall alone. He stood there gazing toward the sea, the briny smell carried by the wind clearing his head considerably.
The temperature was gradually falling.
The rainy season had passed, ushering in a new year.
After a long pause, he willed a copper pipe formed from white lines into existence. The instant it solidified, it fell toward the ground. He caught it quickly and raised it overhead.
Then he switched it to its "phantom" state.
The copper pipe hovered steadily in midair in its phantom state.
Thinking it over, Chen Fan passed his hand back and forth through the phantom copper pipe. It was as though they occupied different dimensions; he could not touch it at all. In this state, the pipe had no load-bearing capacity whatsoever.
In other words.
No attack could damage this copper pipe.
The phantom state could be considered the ultimate form of defense.
But.
One structure could interact with this copper pipe: a max-level Gondola. A Gondola could hover on the surface of any structure. Even if the copper pipe was in its phantom state, it could interact with it as long as it was a structure.
And so, a vague plan began forming in his mind.
An hour later.
At the Mortal Domain's harbor.
Dozens of Mortal Domain War Pavilion members hurried to the harbor after receiving the summons. When they arrived, the first thing they saw was an enormous Sky-Piercing Pillar standing alone on the wasteland.
It was several hundred meters tall.
Even a dozen people stretching out their arms could not encircle it.
It had not been placed alongside the two hundred-odd Sky-Piercing Pillars nearby.
Besides that.
Eight parallel phantom copper pipes floated in midair, with eight High-Speed Rail carriages