Lord of the Myriad Worlds

Chapter 237: Li Wei's Special Training

Li Wei spoke calmly, his gaze genuinely sincere.

"Young man, don't be too greedy." Liang Yuzhi smiled without a sound, as if she'd seen through him. "I noticed you're still missing a helmet. I happen to have a four-star quality one — with attributes —"

"Sorry. I said I have no interest in cooperating."

Li Wei cut her off, gave her one long look, then turned and walked away — and voluntarily exited the Four-Star Conspiracy state.

Liang Yuzhi stood there for a moment, clearly surprised. But in the end she said nothing, got in the bus, and left.

In the distance, Zhao Xuanxuan — taking a rest — looked over with curiosity. She badly wanted to know what the two of them had been discussing. Thomas and Leon probably did too. But there was no way to ask.

"Xuanxuan, make me a two-handed sword."

"Huh? Sure, but — I'm worried my skills aren't up to it. Why not have Li Yue make one for you? She's basically a genius at that kind of thing." Zhao Xuanxuan was a little surprised, but also worried. She knew her own level.

"Listen carefully. I want you to make it."

Li Wei looked at her calmly and repeated himself."Huh?"

Zhao Xuanxuan was baffled. She stared at Li Wei — this man she knew so well — and suddenly found him completely unreadable. What on earth are you up to?

What was he up to?

Actually, it was simple. If Li Wei's theory was correct, it would also prove something else: without a Pioneering Card nearby, no matter what you killed — four-star Ability Users, five-star mutated creatures — a Universal Gold Card would absolutely never drop.

Yes. That also neatly explained why, every time Li Wei went out hunting or scavenging, no matter what he encountered — the Rat King, the mutant crocodile, even the cat-type Ability User — a Universal Gold Card always dropped.

One hundred percent drop rate.

But over the past fourteen days, had Li Yue or Liang Yuzhi gotten anything?

Even if the distance was too great to receive information directly, there could be no delay in the difficulty changes displayed on the Pioneering Card.

And Li Yue had fully healed. According to Liang Yuzhi, she could now kill five-star Ability Users with ease. So why would she keep quietly working? The outside world was full of opportunities — ruins everywhere, mutated creatures easy enough to find.

Why weren't they going out?

In the town north of the Scavenger Camp, Li Wei had spotted at least a four-star mutated creature. Surely Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi had noticed it last month too?

Why hadn't they gone to hunt it?

Eliminate every other possible reason, and what remains must be the truth.

So it was clear: Liang Yuzhi was genuinely scheming.

And genuinely rattled.

As for Li Yue — her intentions were harder to read. But she'd undoubtedly already gotten what she wanted.

She might actually be his real competition.

—

Several more days passed in the blink of an eye.

Today was the twenty-second of the month. Clear skies, not a cloud in sight, the high temperature close to or hitting thirty degrees.

It had also been twenty days without rain, and there was no sign of any coming in the next few days.

The whole of June was looking precarious.

Li Wei was up at three in the morning, drawing water from the well to irrigate the farmland and vegetable plots. He worked straight through until nine in the morning before finishing. At this time of year, crops couldn't afford to go without water — it would cause reduced yields and declining quality.

Even in a world saturated with magical radiation, logic still applied.

"My lord, we've prepared your meal." A middle-aged cook came over carrying a food box. She'd noticed Li Wei hadn't come back for breakfast and had kept it warm for him. Truly a good person.

After thanking her, Li Wei ate slowly and carefully, then headed to the blacksmith shop near the parking lot, found a chair, and sat down to watch Zhao Xuanxuan work.

This had basically become his daily routine.

Beyond that, he refused to leave the town by so much as a single step.

His Contribution was already over seven thousand points — a commanding lead. Between the newly arrived Freemen and the electric buses, which were practically a cheat code, the family's rapid development was well-sustained.

Worth mentioning: the maximum Contribution cap available to the family had now reached 14,000 points and was slowly climbing every day — inevitable, really. As fixed assets increased, so did the cap.

As for the new Freemen — how to put it — they had the fervor of players flooding into a newly launched game server.

At first, they'd taken Li Wei and the others for NPCs. Li Wei had found that amusing.

But half a month later, the rumor hadn't died — it had actually grown more elaborate and convincing.

The Freemen had compiled a long list of "evidence" and all manner of wild conspiracy theories.

Some believed Li Wei and his group had become some kind of reincarnators or apostles. All sorts of nonsense.

After several hushed discussions, most of the Freemen had settled on a conclusion: they really might be NPCs — especially Li Wei, who was like the old village chief type, able to issue quests and give rewards at the monthly summary.

Though Li Wei could indeed issue quests…

The misunderstanding had grown rather enormous.

More than once in recent days, Li Wei had overheard Freemen quietly discussing how to raise his affection level. A few of the better-looking female Freemen had even made more than one attempt to offer themselves to him — apparently seducing an NPC was considered quite the impressive achievement.

He was exhausted just thinking about it.

Fortunately, there was plenty of work in other directions to channel their enthusiasm.

Like repairing the building, reconstruction, expanding the basement. The elderly Freeman turned out to be an engineer — he was planning to build a new underground base beneath the five-story building and install the airtight blast doors they'd salvaged. Li Wei's response was simple: as long as you don't bring the building down on top of us, do whatever you want.

Interestingly, the old man had also drawn up a city wall design for Li Wei — one capable of withstanding the impact of stone giants. Zhao Xuanxuan had been studying the blueprints for the past two days.

Now, as Li Wei finished breakfast, Zhao Xuanxuan walked over drenched in sweat, her shirt soaked through front and back. She really pushed herself.

She dropped into the chair across from him, grabbed a bottle of cold boiled water, and chugged it in one go — impressively unladylike.

Then she wiped her mouth and pulled out the wall blueprints, studying them intently.

"What do you think? Can you make sense of it?"

Li Wei asked. The pages were covered in formulas that made his head spin — the curse of a poor student.

But Zhao Xuanxuan was reading with complete focus, clearly getting a lot out of it.

"I can follow it, and I could handle the construction. But designing something like this myself? Not a chance. This is seriously impressive work. He even calculated that a four-star stone giant's full-force impact is roughly 500 tons — enough to flatten a pickup truck with one punch. And the wall he's designed can absolutely withstand that."

"But that's not the real issue. The issue is the materials. Building a composite gravity wall like this — one that resists impact, resists overturning, and absorbs and redirects force — requires a lot. Five hundred tons of specialty cement alone won't cut it. We've found the limestone deposit, and if we fire it, we can produce maybe another three hundred tons over the next two months. Li Wei, have you thought about this?"

Zhao Xuanxuan asked seriously.

Li Wei gave a slight shake of his head. He hadn't thought about it at all — and he didn't need to. Wall construction had Thomas, Leon, and even Li Yue. And at the end of the day, there was still Zhao Xuanxuan herself.

Worst case, there was that famous engineer among the Freemen.

His only job in this department was to stay out of it.

"How's that two-handed sword coming along?" Li Wei changed the subject.

Zhao Xuanxuan looked like she wanted to say something but couldn't. She was too reluctant to waste a One-Star Conspiracy Card — so for the sake of appearances, she had nowhere to vent her complaints.

"Not ready yet."

That was all she could say. Ugh. Asking her to forge a two-handed greatsword — hadn't Leon, that little snot, already looked down on her work? Li Wei was an agility-type scout hunter — he should stick to his bow and javelins. What did he need a two-handed greatsword for? And things were so busy right now, the Freemen's ironwork order list was backed up by dozens of items. Who had time to forge a two-handed greatsword?

Li Wei said nothing more after that. He closed his eyes to rest. About half an hour later, when Zhao Xuanxuan had eaten and drunk her fill and was getting up to get back to work, he rose and said, "I'll give you a hand."

Huh?

Zhao Xuanxuan gave him a suspicious look, not sure what to make of it. But she was too lazy to ask. She really did need an extra pair of hands. If the great Head of Household wanted to waste his precious time playing laborer, she wasn't going to coddle him.

And so Li Wei and Zhao Xuanxuan got to work in the blacksmith shop. There was no shortage of tasks — and they were all fiddly.

Melting down scrap iron, making clay molds, casting, forging.

The items they produced included iron spears, iron shields, iron fences, fine steel arrowheads, crossbows, fireplaces, ovens, iron pots, and more.

But the highest-volume item was a type of iron spike designed to be used as a trap. It could be laid flat on the ground, or assembled and fixed to city walls or the outer face of the building like iron armor.

This would deter mutated creatures that were especially good at climbing.

Zhao Xuanxuan had seen this modular spike trap used by veteran players on the Chaotic Killing Battlefield, and it had worked extremely well. She'd quietly learned the design and brought it here.

Li Wei was entirely in favor. In truth, he had no intention of interfering with what Zhao Xuanxuan chose to forge — none of it mattered, including the two-handed sword he'd mentioned.

He was simply using his Perception to try to help her.

He wasn't a blacksmith, but he could easily point out subtle flaws in how she swung the hammer, identify bad habits in how she generated force, catch minor errors in her fire and furnace temperature control — even adjustments to her breathing, shifts in her footwork, the stability and balance of her core. All the small details.

This wasn't about blacksmithing. It was more like putting a warrior through intensive training.

At first Zhao Xuanxuan bristled — who's the blacksmith here, you or me? But Li Wei kept hitting the nail on the head with every correction, and eventually she conceded.

Just like that, seven or eight days went by. The end of the month was here.

Li Wei hadn't left the blacksmith shop by a single step. Even during night watch, he sent Adai out to patrol the farmland while he stayed behind — as if he'd made it his personal mission to outlast Zhao Xuanxuan.

Until the last evening of the final day of the month. The three electric buses all came rolling back. Li Yue, Liang Yuzhi, Thomas, Leon, Zhang Jinjun, and all the Freemen returned. Only then did Li Wei walk slowly out of the blacksmith shop into the brilliant, sweeping sunset, and leave without looking back.

Inside the shop, Zhao Xuanxuan's eyes were slightly wet. At first she'd genuinely thought Li Wei was just messing around. But this month, she had worked the forge for twenty-six days. In the first eighteen days, her Blacksmith Destiny Grid had only increased by 1 point. In the eight days Li Wei helped — it had increased by 3 points. Her total was now exactly 25.

She wasn't a clueless newcomer anymore. She understood perfectly well how important Destiny Grid was.

Those eight days were worth more than two years of effort.

Before, she'd always had a vague, unclear sense of her own path forward — even in combat, she alternated between moments of brilliance and moments of chaos.

But now, Zhao Xuanxuan finally understood: she had found her way. It had nothing to do with forging, nothing to do with a blacksmith's experience, nothing to do with what tier of equipment she could produce. It was about this: when she gripped the hammer — how should it swing? What kind of force should it gather, layer by layer, building and building until it finally erupted? That was what mattered.

"Thank you for believing in me."

She thought it quietly. She also understood perfectly well that Li Wei's real purpose in training her like this was to make her, Thomas, and Leon — together with himself — a force capable of countering Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi.

So what?

Being worth using meant having value. The alternative was being deadweight — no ability, but still full of complaints.

What a joke that would be.