Lord of the Myriad Worlds

Chapter 241: Negotiations Again

Li Wei glanced at Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi, then softened his expression and smiled. "Little Yue, Auntie, Leon, Xiao Zhang — feel free to train the Freemen as you see fit. Help them get used to the rhythm of cold-weapon combat as soon as possible."

"As for me — I'll stay at camp again this month, handling daily patrols and security."

With that, Li Wei issued the monthly main tasks. Lines of information surfaced silently before the seven of them — this time, the Freemen couldn't receive them.

["Head of Household Li Wei has issued new Monthly Main Tasks. Given the current camp's overall strength and the critical importance of this month's tasks, issuance costs 500 Contribution points."]

["Head of Household Li Wei is assigned the captain-tier main task: defend the camp, scout the surroundings, and ensure camp security. Base reward at month's end: 500 points. In addition, all Contribution earned by Freemen goes to him."]

["Family Elder Li Yue is assigned a captain-tier main task. Base reward at month's end: 500 points."]

["Family Member Liang Yuzhi is assigned a captain-tier main task. Base reward at month's end: 500 points."]

["Family Members Leon, Thomas, and Zhang Jinjun are assigned vice-captain-tier main tasks. Base reward at month's end: 300 points each."]

["Family Member Zhao Xuanxuan is assigned a standard monthly main task. Base reward at month's end: 200 points."]

["Territory Freemen are assigned daily tasks. They may earn Territory Contribution, and once they accumulate enough, they may exchange it with Head of Household Li Wei for one-star Profession Cards and other valuable supplies. (This information is visible to Freemen.)"]—

The moment the monthly main tasks were issued, Li Yue, Liang Yuzhi, Zhang Jinjun, and Leon — along with the ten strongest selected Freemen — jumped onto the bus and departed immediately. Not a moment wasted.

Thomas picked up his tools and went to find Li Wei to discuss the wall construction.

"Old classmate, Nelson only gave us blueprints for the composite gravity wall itself — he didn't draw up an overall layout plan for the camp's main perimeter. What are your thoughts on that?"

Thomas asked. Only Li Wei could make the call.

In other words: Nelson handled how to build the wall stronger, Thomas handled the actual construction to make sure it wasn't shoddy work. Only Li Wei could decide where to build it, how long the perimeter would be, and what exactly it would enclose.

He had actually given this serious thought before, and had discussed it with Nelson more than once. But as an ordinary person, Nelson couldn't offer much beyond technical input. In his view, the underground base to the northwest was still the more permanent solution.

He'd even floated the idea of building a fully sealed fortified tower.

But the cost of that was simply too high.

"The Central Green Park and Farmland No. 5 can be abandoned. We should be able to harvest the crops there before the radiation storm hits."

"The hydroponic technology and poultry-raising techniques we brought back from the underground base can be used in our own base. So food is no longer as urgent an issue. Even if Farmland No. 5 gets destroyed, it won't be a major problem."

"So this wall should be centered around the camp building. We can also bring Farmland No. 4 inside the perimeter."

"Specifically — build a wall with a perimeter of three hundred meters. That's the target."

Li Wei had finally made his decision. Three hundred meters was actually quite small — the wall Thomas had built back in the rookie mission world had been longer than that. But you had to eat one bite at a time. Overreaching would cause problems. Without knowing the scale of the monster siege, it was better to be conservative.

"Understood."

Thomas nodded and went off to get started. The composite gravity wall would stand roughly eight meters tall and six meters wide. The outer layer required stacked stone fixed with cement, with rebar forming a massive cage to create a four-meter-wide energy-absorbing layer. The middle section was a one-meter-wide reinforced concrete core for compression resistance, with an elastic force-dissipating layer behind it — primarily car tires and steel plates.

Overall, it was designed to withstand the full-force impact of a stone giant.

In the meantime, Li Wei's group needed to first hunt down and eliminate the other Ability Users and mutated creatures. The stone giants — the most destructive of all — would be dealt with last.

During that period, they had to prevent any Ability Users or mutated creatures from having a breakthrough moment under pressure.

That was roughly the plan.

Li Wei figured that if the branch mission's extra difficulty could be kept at 90% right up until the monster siege, the number of five-star targets during the siege shouldn't exceed three. Because if it exceeded three, their camp would inevitably be destroyed — even Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi couldn't hold that off. Unless Liang Yuzhi also recovered — but that was something that still needed careful consideration.

That woman had no genuine intention of cooperating.

Let her stew for now.

Li Wei returned to the camp building, geared up in his full equipment, and began his routine night patrol.

He couldn't go out on expeditions. He couldn't leave the camp.

Before, that hadn't mattered much — but this month, if someone raided the camp while he was away, how unfair would that be?

He moved swiftly and silently. Adai wasn't with him — the bird was currently fast asleep somewhere in the building. It rarely took flight at night. During the day it wasn't much more motivated either, mostly just perching on the rooftop and pretending to keep watch.

It only really flew out twice — once in the morning and once at dusk — each time covering a circuit of about fifty kilometers.

So it looked lazy, but was actually quite reliable. A fifty-kilometer radius caught most threats well in advance.

Li Wei's nightly patrol covered a ten-kilometer radius centered on the camp building.

Calling it a patrol was generous — "fully armed cross-country run" was more accurate.

After a twenty-kilometer jog to warm up, he'd return to the edge of town, where construction rubble was piled high — concrete, broken timber, bricks, the occasional uncollected rebar, and all manner of other debris.

This was his standard training ground.

Yes — training was still necessary.

Pushing Agility to its cap of 31, or reaching 51 in the Hunter Destiny Grid and 50 in the Woodcutter Destiny Grid, didn't mean you could rest on your laurels. It wasn't a permanent solution.

Hunting had no end. Neither did training.

What Li Wei was working on now was combining his balance, explosive power, and evasion into a unified whole under Perception +1 — reaching a deeper understanding of his own body.

For instance — on this kind of complex, broken terrain, drawing the Three-Star War Bow at full sprint and putting an arrow through a cricket hiding in the grass.

Who could say that wasn't hunting?

Of course, most of the time Li Wei was shooting at fixed targets — fixed targets four hundred meters away, using arcing shots.

He usually missed every single one.

But he enjoyed it.

Because he'd found that arcing shots followed patterns.

Whether he hit didn't matter. What mattered was what it taught him about arrow construction — finding the center of gravity in the shaft, experimenting with fletching cuts and placements, and all the fine craft details that came with it.

On top of that, after enough of this arcing practice, Li Wei would occasionally call Adai over. By sharing vision with the bird, he could dramatically improve his accuracy on arcing shots.

His current personal best: at four hundred meters, with shared vision from Adai, fifteen arrows in ten seconds, all on target.

Essentially a small arrow storm.

The cost: 200 Stamina points burned instantly, and a ten-second recovery period before he could function normally again.

These training sessions usually wrapped up around midnight. That had been the routine for the past ten-plus days.

Twenty kilometers of running, parkour and throwing knives across the rubble field, then a hundred arcing shots.

Once he'd tracked down all the wooden arrows he'd fired, Li Wei would draw a bucket of well water, wash up, then take out a clean cloth to maintain his armor and Three-Star War Bow.

After that he'd eat something, rest briefly, whittle some hardwood arrows and suitable shafts or wooden spears, and craft hardwood arrows, two-star sniper armor-piercing arrows, three-star sniper armor-piercing arrows, and occasionally — at Zhao Xuanxuan's request — carve some well-balanced two-star axe handles and two-star hammer handles.

Around four in the morning, when Thomas emerged from the building to start work and Zhao Xuanxuan dragged herself up with bedhead and bleary eyes to begin her day at the forge, Li Wei would finally go to bed — falling asleep instantly to the rhythmic clang of her hammer, impossible to wake.

But at eight sharp, when the cook aunties came with breakfast, Li Wei would wake up on time. By the time he finished eating, Adai had already completed its morning circuit and returned — dropping fifty suspicious images before going back to sleep. Li Wei would compare these against the images collected over previous days, building a three-dimensional terrain model of the fifty-kilometer radius around the camp.

It was a difficult project, not something that could be finished quickly — Adai often recorded the same location multiple times. Whenever that happened, Li Wei would slip out during the day to fill in the gaps himself, which also let him grind some scouting experience.

The rest of the time, he did only three things: eat, sleep, and help Zhao Xuanxuan at the forge. A full and satisfying routine.

Just like that, twenty days passed.

Nothing had happened — and yet Li Wei felt a growing unease.

It had now been over forty days since they'd wiped out those teams of Ability Users.

Why hadn't the Flame Duke to the west made any move? Was he building up to something big?

He wasn't worried about the underground base — given his confidence in Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi, he didn't fret much about that. Under the rules, they couldn't stab each other in the back, so under normal circumstances they'd hold things steady regardless.

What worried him was his own side. If the Flame Duke tracked the electric buses' transport route and found the camp, that would be a real problem.

With just him, Thomas, Zhao Xuanxuan, and a bunch of elderly and weak Freemen — could they hold?

When something unusual happens, something's wrong.

So that day, when Liang Yuzhi returned with a transport load, Li Wei borrowed a One-Star Conspiracy Card from Zhao Xuanxuan, seized the moment, and initiated a conspiracy with Liang Yuzhi.

He couldn't hold out any longer. He needed to talk to her.

Liang Yuzhi immediately exited the conspiracy state, slapped down a Four-Star Sincerity Card, and snapped at him with barely-concealed aggression.

"The hell do you think you're doing, trying to talk to me with a One-Star Conspiracy Card? Say what you have to say. If you want to cooperate, do it on my terms — the same deal I offered before."