Well then.
Even Li Wei was caught off guard for a mont — but he had to admit, Li Yue's threat was remarkably effective.
The three of them went pale and imdiately looked to Li Wei. Li Wei gave them a smile that was perhaps a touch too radiant. Everything Li Yue had said was exactly what he'd been planning to say — just not quite so bluntly.
Because with hardened survivors of the apocalypse, reason and sentint ant nothing. You needed a bigger mountain to press them under.
The more afraid they were, the more desperately they would crave a powerful, absolutely reliable iron-fisted duke to rule over them.
And the Frost Duke was the perfect card to play.
The three of them hesitated for a few seconds, then hurried back inside. What conclusion they would reach, Li Wei genuinely couldn't predict.
What he hadn't expected was that in less than three minutes, the underground base's doors swung fully open.
Five people ca jogging out this ti, bowing and smiling, inviting Li Wei and the others inside.
Li Wei didn't go. Agreeing to submit was one thing, but these natural persons were no fools — who knew if there were ard n or heavy weapons waiting inside?
So without waiting for Li Yue to say anything, he improvised:
"We won't be going in. We know the rules — natural persons stay inside, Ability Users stay outside. But we have a Blood Resistance Potion developed by the Frost Duke that can suppress the Blood Plague in Ability Users and restore them to normal permanently. Do you want it?"
"Also — report your current total number of natural persons, the male-to-female ratio, the number of engineers, and whether you have any technicians capable of dismantling and relocating a small nuclear power plant. The small nuclear power plant in the underground base numbered 379 is close to failure. Can you send a team to relocate it before the end of the month? We can provide escort along the way."
"And following the usual arrangent, we'll provide protection — but you must supply 100 healthy natural persons as paynt. Can you give us an imdiate answer on all of this?"
Sure enough, at Li Wei's words, the five natural persons' expressions shifted with a hint of unease. They might not have truly known the Frost Duke's specific rules, but they were convinced — Li Wei had spoken with enough authority and detail to be believable.
"Please be at ease. We understand the rules as well. Our underground base currently has 892 natural persons and 108 Level 2 Ability Users. We have a complete underground power grid and an underground ecological farming system. Food reserves are adequate — what we lack is ammunition. We also need the Blood Resistance Potion. We can organize a team imdiately to inspect Base 379, and if the situation is manageable, proceed with dismantling the small nuclear power plant."
"As for the protection fee, we will have one hundred natural persons ready by early tomorrow morning. We do have one additional request, if we may — could you take the 108 Level 2 Ability Users with you as well? Having them remain in the underground base is far too great a risk."
"Fine. No problem." Li Wei turned. "Xiao Yue, you and Xuanxuan stay here for now. I'll head back and have Nelson arrange buses to co collect everyone first thing tomorrow morning."
And so the matter was settled for the ti being.
The Scavenger Camp couldn't absorb many more people, and taking those Level 2 Ability Users would already push it past its limit.
So a branch base would have to be established here.
It was necessary — though eventually the two would need to rge. Combined, the two bases held just over a thousand people, roughly the size of a large village. Splitting forces between them wasn't sustainable.
And there would be more challenges ahead — though in truth, there probably weren't many left.
Right. Stop thinking like that.
Li Wei then broke down one Silver Clearance Token into two Black Iron tokens, giving one to Zhao Xuanxuan. Her Profession Card was still only at 3 2 2 — this would give her a modest boost and the ability to hold her own independently.
After that, he set off back with He Yuying. It was eighty kiloters — no ti to waste. He had a great deal to arrange tonight.
While Li Wei was making his cheerful way ho, roughly 150 kiloters west of that small city, there was a town nestled against a hillside with good water access and convenient transport links.
The town had clearly been rebuilt recently. Both its layout and architectural style leaned heavily toward underground developnt.
Anyone from Li Wei's group would have recognized it at a glance as another Pioneering Mission branch.
But unlike Li Wei's Scavenger Camp, every surface structure in this town had been demolished and cleared away. A concrete periter wall two kiloters in circumference had been built around the town's green park — three ters high, fifty centiters thick, with no supplentary fortifications whatsoever.
In truth, it was barely a Level 2 wall.
Inside the wall stretched vast fields — roughly thirty-three acres of farmland.
Between the fields sat an open area the size of a basketball court. There, a reinforced underground entrance converted from a parking garage was visible, fitted with an alloy door of unknown origin — a full ter thick, the kind that even a Level 5 Rock Giant couldn't force open.
Directly above the underground base stood a solid, modified bastion fort.
Its style defied easy description, but every wall was at least 150 centiters thick. The bastion rose three stories, each five ters tall, riddled with firing slits from top to bottom. Between the siege crossbows — nearly a hundred of them — and the even more powerful heavy ballistae positioned for both anti-air and ground coverage, the structure offered virtually seamless fire suppression.
It was, without exaggeration, a textbook fortification purpose-built for slaughtering large-scale zombie hordes.
At this mont, surrounding the camp inside and out, dozens of handcarts and electric trucks moved back and forth transporting supplies. Over a hundred freen, along with nine players, worked in organized shifts, ferrying goods from the underground entrance down below.
The underground space was enormous — originally a two-level parking garage plus a civil defense shelter, expanded further over ti, with a total area of one hundred thousand square ters. Staggering.
And inside, a small nuclear power plant had been dismantled and reassembled — giving the place virtually every condition it needed to take off in the future.
At this mont, atop that modified bastion, a middle-aged man with a prominent scar across his face stood gazing toward the eastern horizon, as though sothing mysterious lay out there.
Beside him stood an elderly man with streaks of white in his hair and beard, his eyes sharp and bright, his bearing unmistakably that of a seasoned expert — every movent carrying the weight of long experience.
Had Li Yue or Liang Yuzhi been present, they would have recognized him imdiately. This was a Five-Star Cross-Border Player — not only stronger than either of them, but with a more impressive record and a more developed territory to his na.
Both n were wrapped in a faint grey mist — the distinctive state of a Conspiracy Card in use.
"It's basically confird. Three hundred kiloters further east is the Fla Duke's territory. Another two hundred kiloters beyond that is the dark horse Li Wei's camp."
The white-haired elder spoke calmly. The scarred man's eyes glead.
"So the Fla Duke is the mid-ga boss that's destined to lose control next October?"
"You can't think of it that way. There are too many variables. This is an evaluation, not a ga — if you treat it like one, you'll lose badly."
"My advice is this: don't think about raiding Li Wei's ho yet. Focus on developnt. That kid is fearless and reckless, and those two won with him are equally reckless. He's pushed the difficulty to 180 — the Radiation Storm is going to bury them. And even if they sohow survive, they'll be gutted. His approach is completely unorthodox. Don't you dare try to copy it."
"Year one must be solid. Year two must be ruthless — and fast. Do you know why five different departnts all sent Five-Star Cross-Border Players this month without coordinating? There's really only one reason. Co next spring, I want you to gather your elite players and march east with — and wipe out the Fla Duke directly."
"But isn't he a boss?"
"So what? Kill him and be done with it. You should know — this world once had eight billion people. Fifteen years of apocalypse killed countless numbers, but even so, there are still survivor camps hidden in every corner, organized and protected by powerful Ability Users like the Fla Duke. But sooner or later, every one of them faces the loss-of-control problem. That's what the All-Heavens Lord Alliance has always been working toward."
"Bottom line — kill the Fla Duke, and you get at least five Five-Star Universal Gold Cards and at least five hundred natural persons. Isn't that worth it?"
"I'll say one thing that's slightly out of line: one Fla Duke is surrounded by at least three Pioneering branches. The third one has already collapsed. So right now, you and Li Wei are essentially destined rivals. If his camp isn't taken out, yours will be."
"Developnt is a zero-sum ga. Fall behind once, fall behind forever. Resources are finite. Universal Gold Cards are finite."
The elder spoke with a hint of feeling.
"I heard that the Widow from our departnt is with Li Wei?" the scarred man asked carefully.
"She is. But don't count on convincing her to defect — she's not an ordinary player. The penalty for defection at her level is essentially the sa as death. In any case, work within the rules. Don't play dirty tricks. Winning that way isn't worth anything." The elder's tone was dismissive.
"Understood." The scarred man nodded. He had been sitting in sixth place for the past few months, but he wasn't the least bit anxious. Steady and thodical, step by step — that was fine by him.
Hm?
Suddenly, a line of text appeared silently before all nine players in the camp — including the scarred man and the elder.
[Due to changes in the surrounding environnt and ecology, the current Pioneering branch's future developnt has entered a bottleneck. Within the next year, the maximum obtainable Pioneering Points will be severely cut.]
—
What?
The scarred man could barely believe his eyes. What was this? In broad daylight — was this so kind of joke?
He stared in shock at the elder beside him, only to find that the man who had been speaking so confidently monts ago wore an expression of equal bewildernt, his eyes full of shock and incomprehension.
"Elder Chu — what's happening?"
The elder took a long mont to collect himself, visibly shaken.
"The Fla Duke has been eliminated."
"But — how is that possible?"
"With just two half-crippled Five-Stars?"
He muttered to himself, unable to accept it. That wasn't so random enemy — it wasn't just a mid-ga boss, it was a Five-Star boss, one that almost certainly had special abilities.
He would bet that even the Scorpion and the Widow, back when they completed their own Pioneering Missions, had never encountered anything like this. This was the kind of feat only the top five on the leaderboard had any business attempting.
In that mont, only one word rose in the elder's mind.
Damn.
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