Chapter 54: "Absurd, Just Absurd!!"
The Arrow Towers atop the Wall thundered to life.
Bolts sliced through the curtain of rain, each one flying with unerring accuracy, skewering the Mourning Ghosts the instant they crossed into the Camp’s perimeter.
They fell.
And yet—twitching, clawing—they rose again.
Splitting apart.
Mourning Ghosts multiplied endlessly, dividing into more and more copies. Beyond the Camp, through the shrouding Gray Mist, still more Mourning Ghosts emerged, drifting ever closer.
Their movements were slow, but their ghastly presence—pale, expressionless, utterly silent—combined with their swelling numbers and the relentless drumbeat of rain, created a suffocating, mounting pressure.
...
“...”
Chen Fan frowned, standing atop the Wall, peering into the gloom. The Mourning Ghosts were converging from every direction, flooding the Camp until it seemed they might swallow the earth itself. He doubted those two tiny patches of Farmland would survive the night.
If only the Camp were flanked on three sides by mountains, so he’d only need to build a Wall on one—how much easier that would be. The pressure now was nothing compared to such a scenario.
But that was just wishful thinking.
Hadn’t Big Fish’s village been wiped out in a single night, when Ghostbeasts leapt in from every cliff?
Disaster could descend from above, swift and merciless.
In the next instant—
A flash of white light streaked across the top of the Level 3 Arrow Tower beside him. The Arrow Rain Storm activated. Arrows fanned out high into the air, then fell like a rain of bamboo spikes, blanketing the ground outside the Wall.
Within moments, a swath of the battlefield was swept clean.
Mourning Ghosts weren’t resilient—their bodies couldn’t withstand much. A single well-placed bolt was enough to drop one.
But their endless splitting made up for any weakness.
Bang.
A Mourning Ghost, leading the pack, shuffled right up to the Wall. Its face was deathly white, devoid of emotion. It hefted the white lantern in its hand and hammered it against the Wall, hard.
Lowered it, raised it, struck again.
On the third swing, a bolt punched through its brow.
As it crumpled, the lantern’s glow extinguished—and with it, the endless splitting ceased.
Chen Fan leaned over the Wall, peering down at the two fresh craters that marred the stone where the blows had landed. The Wall was three meters thick; a couple of fist-sized dents were nothing. If these things wanted to break through, they’d have to keep pounding for a long time.
But...
More and more Mourning Ghosts slipped through the Arrow Rain, crowding at the base of the Wall, slamming their lanterns against the stone. Dents sprang up everywhere, all around.
On every side.
The Camp was surrounded.
Looking out, Chen Fan could see lines of Mourning Ghosts queuing in the Gray Mist outside, packed so tightly they couldn’t even jostle forward. It was a traffic jam of ghosts, stretching deep into the Eternal Night. Out there, in the darkness, even more of them waited.
...
“It’s ramping up.”
Chen Fan’s expression darkened as he watched the ever-growing tide of Mourning Ghosts. There was good news, and there was bad.
The good news: the Mourning Ghosts were oddly well-behaved. No frantic scrambling, no trampling over each other’s heads to scale the Wall. They queued up, waiting their turn—model ghosts.
The bad news: there were simply too many, and the Wall was being chipped away, bit by bit.
Thankfully, he’d stockpiled enough Ghoststones.
Eight hundred and forty-five Ghoststones—more than enough to last the night.
The next instant—
The Wall, on all four sides, flickered in his vision, lines of white outlining the structure in a ghostly, virtual blueprint—something only he could see.
-
[Restoration requires 7 Ghoststones.]
-
“Restore.”
The moment the blueprint solidified, the broken white lines rejoined. The craters left by the Mourning Ghosts vanished in an instant, the Wall returning to pristine condition.
He was beginning to understand how repairs worked.
The less damage the Wall took, the cheaper it was to fix.
The worse the damage, the higher the cost.
If things got bad enough, restoring might even cost more than rebuilding from scratch.
So!
If he wanted to keep repair costs down, he had to restore the Wall constantly, before the damage grew too severe.
Atop the Wall, Crippled Monkey and the others lashed spears and broadswords to the ends of long poles, stabbing down at the Mourning Ghosts below.
These monsters were low-grade; even ordinary weapons could harm them, though not as decisively as a crossbow bolt.
Chen Fan glanced back into the Camp at the Altar—a structure for healing wounds. The logic seemed universal.
He used Ghoststones to repair the Wall.
He used Ghoststones to heal injuries.
So, in theory, the Altar should be able to restore the Wall too.
The free daily quota was already used up.
With a handful of Ghoststones crushed, the ghostly outlines of Copper Pipes appeared in the Camp, solidifying on the ground in neat, factory-like rows, linking the Altar directly to the Wall.
Click.
A faint snap.
Milky-white fluid flowed from the Altar, through the Copper Pipes, all the way to the base of the Wall.
Bang.
A Mourning Ghost at the base had just raised its white lantern to strike the Wall again—a new dent had barely formed before it was instantly repaired.
“It works!”
Standing atop the Wall, Chen Fan leaned out, eyes shining with excitement. It really worked. As long as the Altar was stocked with Ghoststones, the Wall would auto-repair.
No manual intervention needed.
And the Altar’s Ghoststone consumption was even lower than manual repairs.
He forged another Copper Pipe, this time connecting the Altar to the Ghostfire.
Now the Altar could draw Ghoststones directly from the Ghostfire. As long as the Ghostfire held enough Ghoststones, he wouldn’t have to run around refilling anything.
He called it—
“The Wall Auto-Repair System.”
Unless some Ghostbeast managed to smash the Wall down in a single blow, as long as he had Ghoststones, he was untouchable.
Just then—
Boom...
A section of wall collapsed.
That was—
The Breeding Grounds wall had fallen.
The Impostors inside burst out like wild horses, stampeding from the Breeding Grounds and merging with the Mourning Ghost horde, pressing toward the Wall.
“What the hell?”
Chen Fan’s brow furrowed. He’d been just about to extend the Altar’s Copper Pipe to the Breeding Grounds wall. With the Mourning Ghosts’ attack strength, there was no way that wall should have fallen so quickly.
Then, the answer struck him.
A big one had arrived.
Out in the Gray Mist, just beyond the Camp, stood a Mourning Ghost with a hunched, ancient frame, clutching a lantern that glowed an eerie green. Its eyes were lifeless. Other Mourning Ghosts made way for it, forming a conspicuous pocket of emptiness around it.
Before Chen Fan could react, the hunched Mourning Ghost raised its ghostly green lantern.
A beam of green light, thick as a man’s arm, lanced out, striking the Breeding Grounds wall dead-on. The three-meter-thick wall caved in with a deep crater. Another beam followed, and the wall collapsed into rubble.
Ruined.
“Absurd, just absurd!!”
Chen Fan’s face went pale, his breath coming faster. That familiar sense of despair from the night of the Ghostbeast Swarm swept over him again. Just two blasts of green light, and the wall was gone.
Even with auto-repair, he didn’t have enough Ghoststones to keep up with that.
He needed time to think.
But the Mourning Ghost’s lantern gave him no such luxury. Another beam of ghostly green light shot out, aiming straight at the last remaining wall of the Breeding Grounds.