Chapter 63: Dustless Construction
After a long journey, the Trike rolled to a gentle stop beside the old Camp.
“...”
Chen Fan gazed at the scattered Ghostbeast corpses lying within the familiar periter, his expression conflicted. He stood in silence for a long while. This Camp—he had poured so much of himself into building it.
Last night.
The old Camp had co under attack from Ghostbeasts.
It hadn’t been a large horde—just thirty or forty Monkey-Head Ghostbeasts. They’d failed to inflict any real damage.
But today’s real objective wasn’t about the Camp. It was about “laying pipe.”
Strictly speaking, there was no need to return. He’d already laid ten kiloters of Copper Pipe the previous day; all that remained was to extend the line further along the sa route. But it was his first day away from the old Camp, and he couldn’t resist the urge to check in.
“Let’s just take the Ghoststones,” he said.
He glanced at Crippled Monkey, who was untying the ropes to haul the corpses, and shook his head. “We’re only here for a look. Once the road is finished today and we install the Gentle Breeze Array, travel between sites will be much faster. Let Zhou Mo and the others haul the bodies back to the Rear Base later.”
They hadn’t brought a flatbed cart, so dragging the corpses now would only slow them down.
The Gentle Breeze Array was a Unique Treasure he’d obtained after slaying a Mourning Ghost Leader.
Once installed in the Ghostfire, it would envelop the Camp in a gentle wind, slightly increasing movent speed.
“Let’s go.”
...
They returned to the spot where he’d finished laying pipe the day before, ten kiloters out.
The Trike rumbled across the Wasteland.
Chen Fan worked thodically, slotting Copper Pipe segnt after segnt beneath the barren earth. It was mindless labor—repetitive, demanding more from the body than the mind.
At last—
The Trike rolled into the canyon.
The Copper Pipe snaked through the gorge and reached the abandoned village.
Now, all that remained was to set up a new Ghostfire, and the two Camps would be connected.
“Station Master!”
Zhou Mo jogged over, breathless. “We’ve cleared out most of the area. Are we really setting up a new Camp here?”
“...”
Chen Fan stood on the bare ground, surveying the flattened ruins all around. He shook his head. “No.”
Instead, he took the Level 3 Arrow Tower he’d built atop the bunker the previous night and upgraded it in one go—all the way to a Level 5 Gun Tower.
It cost him 400 Ghoststones.
To upgrade to a Level 5 Gun Tower, two requirents had to be t:
—
“First: Spend 300 Ghoststones.”
“Second: Consu either a Mourning Lantern, a Ghost Eye, an Octagonal Shell... any one of twenty-seven different items.”
—
Any one of those twenty-seven materials, combined with 300 Ghoststones, was enough to complete the upgrade.
Naturally, he chose the Mourning Lantern.
After the upgrade—
At first glance, not much seed different.
Like the Arrow Bastion, it remained a squat, one-ter cube of brown stone brick. One side bore a rectangular slot—where once a crossbow had glead with cold steel.
Now, that slot held a white paper lantern.
It looked utterly harmless.
—
“Arrow Tower has been upgraded to Level 5: Gun Tower. Must be fixed in place; cannot be moved. Power greatly increased.”
“Please select an Upgrade Path.”
“1: Increased rate of fire.”
“2: Enhanced firepower.”
“3: Reduced energy consumption.”
—
He chose the second path: enhanced firepower. Right now, that was what he needed most.
He rapped the back of the Gun Tower, revealing a recessed slot, and fed in ten Level 2 Ghoststones.
The next instant—
The white lantern in the slot flared with a brilliant white light.
BOOM!
A milky-white beam, thick as a grown man’s forearm, blasted from the slot, smashing into the canyon wall opposite. The impact thundered through the air; stone chips and dust exploded outward.
The beam lasted a full second, detonating again and again as it bored into the rock.
After each blast, the Gun Tower paused a few seconds before firing again.
White beams hamred the cliff face, one after another.
His goal: to hollow out a cave in the mountainside—a new Rear Base.
...
A cup of tea later.
“...”
Chen Fan stood motionless, his face unreadable.
The Level 5 Gun Tower’s firepower was even greater than he’d imagined. Compared to the Level 4 Arrow Bastion, it was an entirely different beast.
But...
This mountain was tougher than he’d expected. He suspected it was even harder than a Level 1 Wall. After an entire cup of tea’s ti, all he’d managed was a shallow pit in the cliff.
At this rate, hollowing out a cave would take forever.
“Well, tougher isn’t a bad thing.”
He didn’t mind. The harder the mountainside, the better for security. It just ant that the initial excavation would be a pain.
Gun Towers couldn’t be moved once placed.
This one, set atop the bunker, would remain here—so there was no point wasting resources building extra Gun Towers just for digging.
...
Another hour passed.
The barrage continued without pause.
At last, the rough outline of a cave began to take shape.
At his command, the Gun Tower fell silent.
Zhou Mo and the others, tools in hand, hurried to clear out the rubble and dust from the cave mouth.
A preliminary cave: five ters high, twenty ters wide, three ters deep.
Next step: build the Wall. Once the Wall was up, he could mount Gun Towers on top—accelerating the excavation and ensuring the towers wouldn’t go to waste, since they were fixed in place.
“...”
Chen Fan crushed a Ghoststone in his hand.
A ghostly outline of the Wall, traced in white lines, appeared before him. He carefully dragged the Wall’s projection over the cave entrance, aligning it with the opening.
“Hm?”
A flicker of surprise crossed his eyes.
After all, a Gun Tower wasn’t exactly a precision tool. There was no way he’d managed a perfect twenty-ter-wide cave—more likely 19.6, or maybe 20.7 ters.
He’d planned to use the Gun Tower to trim away any uneven sections.
But to his surprise—
The Wall could fuse seamlessly with the mountain itself.
The Wall’s projection showed the cave mouth was 20.4 ters wide, but there was no need to widen it to a full 21 ters. That extra 0.4 ters of Wall would simply mold itself to the rock.
Of course, he still had to pay the cost of a full ter’s worth of Wall for that last 0.4 ters.
Not bad.
It saved him the trouble of fussing over the details.
In no ti at all—
A twenty-ter Wall appeared at the cave entrance, fitting almost perfectly.
The next mont!
Ten Level 5 Gun Towers materialized in a neat row atop the Wall.
Chen Fan glanced at the Green Lantern in his arms, hesitated, then tucked it away again. Using one of his four free upgrades just to push for a Level 6 Gun Tower here would be wasteful.
The ten Gun Towers swiveled in unison, their rectangular slots aid deep into the cave.
At his signal,
The bombardnt resud.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM...
The sound echoed through the canyon like blasting caps in a quarry, the ground trembling with every detonation as stone dust rained from above.
Flocks of birds burst from the forested slopes, wheeling through the sky overhead.
There really were a lot of birds here.
And thanks to the rain, barely any dust lingered—so in a way, you could call this a dustless construction site.
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