If they could successfully train all these people, the Camp would have the beginnings of a proper core team.
This late-night conversation was not just meant to help everyone get acquainted.
It had another important purpose.
That was to assess their character and abilities.
So far, they looked promising. Everyone had something they were good at.
As for him...
He was good at discovering what other people were good at.
Just as everyone was getting into the conversation, their voices abruptly stopped, and the room fell utterly silent.
A heart-pounding sense of dread swept over them all.
Chen Fan rose and walked to the Wooden Hut's entrance. He pushed the door open, looked at the darkness rapidly sweeping in from the distant horizon, and said softly, "It's here."
Then, without the slightest hesitation, he quickly stripped off his dry clothes and changed into the soaking Hemp Robe by the door, which had yet to dry. Taking a spear from the nearby weapon rack, he stepped out into the heavy Rain.
Even after moving all the other Stations' resources to the Camp,
they still did not have much Clothing.
Changing before going outside ensured they would always have a set of dry clothes to wear indoors. Otherwise, staying in wet clothes all the time would leave them covered in heat rash.
Crippled Monkey was the first to react.
He quickly changed, grabbed his Godslaying Spear, and limped out into the rainy night, staying close behind Chen Fan. There were too many people in the Camp now. They all seemed to have pledged themselves to the Young Master,
but no one could truly know what lay in another person's heart. There was no telling how things might turn out.
He had to stay beside the Young Master at all times, lest someone strike him from behind.
The others quickly changed into Clothing as well and rushed out into the rainy night.
Atop the City Wall.
Chen Fan and the others stood behind the battlements with assorted weapons in hand, facing the pouring rain as they looked out beyond the Camp.
Eternal Night descended, and darkness completely engulfed the Camp.
Overhead and all around them lay unfathomably deep darkness.
Only the light of the Eerie Fire enclosed the entire Camp like an eggshell.
These weapons had all been brought by the other Station Masters when they joined him. They were ordinary weapons that could injure low-level strange entities, but would have little effect against high-level ghost beings.
Only weapon-type exotic treasures like the one Crippled Monkey held could remain effective against high-level strange entities.
"Rustle, rustle..."
Waves of rustling rose from the darkness beyond the Camp, like a swarm of insects passing through. They could not see into the darkness, but the sounds reached them clearly.
The sheer numbers suggested by those sounds alone were enough to inspire fear.
Zhou Mo instinctively held his breath and clutched his saber's hilt, terrified that the slightest noise might draw the strange entities in the darkness into the Camp.
Screeech...
A piercing, grating sound suddenly rang out in the darkness, like fingernails scraping repeatedly across a sheet of rust-covered iron.
"..."
Chen Fan frowned slightly and tightened his grip on his spear. Tonight was far too different from the previous nights. There had never been this much noise before. He had felt somewhat confident at first, but now even he did not know whether they could hold out.
The next instant—
A burst of laughter suddenly erupted from the darkness.
It was extraordinarily loud.
There was not a trace of joy in that laughter, only the madness of someone who had avenged a terrible grudge and wanted to destroy everything. Mingling with the rustle of Rain, it sent chills down everyone's backs. Wang Kui's legs were already trembling, his face on the verge of tears.
They had yet to see a single strange entity, but they were already under immense mental strain.
Then,
the deafening laughter that had swept over everything like a violent storm abruptly turned into low, broken sobs that lingered in their ears. The crying was quiet, yet it chilled them to the soul.
The laughter grew increasingly shrill, like countless female ghosts laughing over one another, flooding the Camp like a tsunami.
Just as everyone reached the limits of what they could bear,
the laughter stopped abruptly.
Then they saw dozens of strange entities charge out of the darkness into the Camp, rushing toward the City Wall with claws flailing. They were... humanoid strange entities, exceptionally tall, standing over three meters high, and as thin as bamboo poles.
Their arms were so long they nearly reached their ankles.
Their long, sharp fingers flashed with a ghastly white gleam.
They were a kind of strange entity none of them had seen before.
At the same time—
The two nearest Level-2 Arrow Towers atop the City Wall swiveled their crossbows in unison, aiming at the dozens of strange entities charging into the Camp. The crossbows mounted at their tops jolted violently.
A bolt nearly as thick as a baby's forearm shot from its string, becoming a black streak that pierced the heavy Rain with thunderous force and a shrill whistle.
Whoosh!
The bolt punched straight through the chest of the strange entity at the front, pinning it to the ground. The bamboo-thin creature twitched only a few times before going still.
Bolt after bolt shot out.
Soon, all twenty-odd strange entities had been killed. Only one reached the foot of the City Wall, but even its full-force claw strike failed to leave so much as a white mark on the Stone Wall.
"Phew..."
At that sight,
Chen Fan breathed a sigh of relief. Only now did his tightly wound nerves ease a little. He withdrew his hand from inside his clothes and smiled down at the twenty-odd corpses in the Camp. He even spotted an item glowing white beside one of the strange entities.
It was an exotic treasure.
Another exotic treasure had finally dropped.
After building all the traps and Wooden Huts during the day, he had had three eerie stones left.
When Wang Kui went to the two abandoned Stations to bring back supplies, he had also returned with 127 eerie stones. Those stones had originally been everything the others owned, but once their Stations were overrun, they became ownerless property.
He had reaped all the benefits.
He now had a total of 130 eerie stones.
He had kept those 130 eerie stones as an emergency reserve rather than using them immediately.
If too many strange entities came and the two Arrow Towers could not cope, he would build more. If powerful strange entities appeared that the Level-2 Arrow Towers struggled to handle, he would use those eerie stones to upgrade the towers to level 3.
He had room to maneuver.
Meet force with force, adapt to whatever came.
Only then could he handle things with ease.
The Farmland was on the Left Wing. These strange entities had ignored it entirely, so naturally they had not triggered the five Ground Spikes traps in front of it. Tonight, his primary task was to keep the Camp safe. Protecting the Farmland came second.
Once the Arrow Towers had killed this entire wave of strange entities beneath the City Wall,
everyone's hearts finally settled back down from their throats, and excitement gradually took hold. The Camp seemed... seemed... really safe!
"Station Master!"
Wang Kui leaned excitedly over the Parapet, looking down at the corpses below. "From what we've seen, we could hold them off even if there were twice as many."
He had originally called Chen Fan "Young Master," but Chen Fan had told them to simply call him "Station Master." "Young Master" was not appropriate.
So he had changed how he addressed him again.
"..."
Chen Fan narrowed his eyes slightly as he gazed into the depths of the darkness. Although the City Wall and Arrow Towers seemed effective, he did not let his guard down. He knew perfectly well that this was only the appetizer.
Even setting everything else aside,
that eerie laughter definitely had not come from these bamboo-thin strange entities. That meant a powerful strange entity was still lurking in the darkness, watching the Camp hungrily, ready to charge in at any moment.
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