Chapter 139 – Heshan Village
Cheng Yang suddenly laughed and smilingly said, “Okay, no need to explain yourself. I was just messing with you. Even if this altar could be save for three or four days, you still need to use it. Since it’s a affiliated station, the pseudo grace’s usage restriction was more limited than the grace of the main village. The grace of a level 1 main village can be used as long as the rank is below the peak-apprentice order. However, the pseudo grace was different. Only below the high-order apprentice can the level 1 pseudo grace be used. If you raise your strength to high-order, this pseudo grace will have no meaning.”
Niu Bing quickly said, “Even if we can’t use it, other people can.”
Cheng Yang shook his head resolutely and said, “You are the senior staff of Luo Feng Village, and also its backbone. Therefore, your strength is given priority for promotion. Moreover, it won’t be a waste to use it the pseudo grace on you, because the cultivation progress would be retained by half afterward. This will also allow you to advance to the peak-order apprentice in the fastest speed possible.”
After the duo heard this, they also understood Cheng Yang’s intention and no longer argue against it.
“Alright, let’s stop talking about this matter. When we occupied this territory altar, the village mayor’s post will be given to you, Xiyue.” said Cheng Yang
After pondering for a moment, Liu Xiyue also didn’t continue to refuse.
Afterwards, Cheng Yang gave out the orders, “Old Niu, stay here. This monster group is too huge for you to play a role.”
Niu Bing shook his head with a depressed expression on his face, “It’s fine. I knew I was just going to be a spectator for most of the ride when you ask me to come along this morning, anyway.” He was right in this regard. Most of the battles on the road was handled completely by Cheng Yang. Before this battle Liu Xiyue was similar to himself, during the battle both would stay far away to avoid getting involved. However, the White Tiger changed everything. It allowed Liu Xiyue to become a part of the main fighting force.
He didn’t comfort Niu Bing with words because Niu Bing’s next opportunity would similarly make many people go envy with green.
Next, Cheng Yang directly rushed into the group of enchanted beast, while Liu Xiyue followed closely behind him. There was Cheng Yang’s Ice Thorn to clear the way, so monsters began dropping like flies. Even if a powerful fish managed to slip through the net, Liu Xiyue was there to take care of it.
Even though this monster group was huge, its actual strength wasn’t comparable to some of the monster groups they had encountered previously on the road. The strongest enchanted beast in this group was only in the first late-order.
The slaughtering process carried on for more than 10 minutes. After Cheng Yang consumed a massive amount of mana potion, all the enchanted beast became his power value.
Cheng Yang immediately named the station Heshan Village, and then set Liu Xiyue as Heshan Village’s mayor.
Liu Xiyue used the pseudo grace on the spot, immediately elevating her rank to high-order apprentice. Her attack power also surged to 41 points. Now she has the ability to spike the majority of first peak-order enchanted beast.
In fact, high-order priest apprentice’s attack power was only at 20 points. However, on her was a silver-grade weapon, a silver-grade and two bronze-grade accessories. Coupled with the 14% attack power bonus from the priest statue, her attack power was able to break through the 40 points mark.
Now Liu Xiyue could absolutely be regarded as the world’s first priest. Her light healing has also been upgraded to level 3. It could now restore health that was three times the user’s magic attack, plus the bonus from the divine attribute from the statue made the healing was close to 140 points. In the whole territory, apart from Cheng Yang, her healing could fill up anyone’s health from near-death state.
After occupying the altar, Cheng Yang had to admit that he was at a loss on an issue. He didn’t know how to defend the altar. One method he could use was leave and let the enchanted beasts continue to occupy the altar like in the past. Besides from being unable to temporarily develop Heshan Village, there was no other bad effect since the enchanted beast wouldn’t destroyed the altar.
However, he had mentioned earlier that he wanted to save the refugees in Yi Cheng also. If they didn’t have an altar, their chance of survival was minimal. But if Cheng Yang and the others left this place, could those newly transfers be able to defend the altar?
Although according to the rules no strong enchanted beast would appear for the time being, but for the newbies, a first late-order monster was enough to be called a major disaster. Not to mention the walls has not even been built yet. Even if it was, a level 1 walls that’s only three meters high in front of first late-order monsters wouldn’t played much of a role since they could easily hopped over it.
Should this station be kept or not?
In the end, Cheng Yang decided to keep the station.
If he goes back and abandon the station, the next time he would have the spare energy to take care of this place would be in 10 days. That was equal to losing 10 days of development time.
In the early stage of the apocalypse, a 10 days gap was immense. Letting profession cultivate for 10 days could allow some to promote to medium-order, which was why advancing early would bring a formidable edge whether it’s for keeping up with the enchanted beast evolution or for oneself.
Moreover, a station like this in Yi Cheng would undoubtedly enlarge the strategic depth of Luo Feng Village and leave more room for Cheng Yang to maneuver.
As for how to hold onto this station, Cheng Yang already had a plan. He would let Niu Bing and Liu Xiyue stay behind to take care of it. In any case, the monsters that would show up in the vicinity wouldn’t be that strong. And with their ability, they could easily solved any problem.
Cheng Yang spoke his thoughts out while the two listened. Even though Liu Xiyue had hoped to return to Luo Feng Village tonight, she also knew that Cheng Yang’s arrangement was for the overall interests of the territory, so she didn’t complained.
“Don’t worry, I’ll come back tomorrow. Then we will take people around Yi Cheng to search for wood, so you can build the wall first. Once Heishan Village upgrade to level 2, Heishan Village can develop by itself.” said Cheng Yang.
Niu Bing felt greatly relieved, “Yangzi, I actually don’t mind staying here for a long time as long as you make arrangement for Pang Shan to come over. You know it’s not good for a married couple to live apart from each other……
Cheng Yang almost sprayed a mouthful of blood from his throat. This guy actually dared to refer his less than one month long relationship as a married couple. Usually, this brother of his appeared a bit dim-witted. How did all of a sudden he possessed such mad skills in hooking up with women?
Trying his best to zone out this nonsense, he directly led the two people east.
To the east of Heshan Village was the urban area of Yi Cheng. It took them less than half an hour to enter Yi Cheng City.
Yi Cheng City wasn’t the same as Xiangcheng City. There was no bottomless gully nor was there a channel cut off by monsters. It was merely an ordinary ruins. But unlike ruins of other towns and villages, there were no trees growing in this ruin, making this scene similar to an aftermath of an earthquake.
“Lord, what do you think think happened to these trees? Why doesn’t this place grow any of them? I remember in Huimin Town’s ruins, even a brick couldn’t be seen since everything was covered in dead leaves.” Niu Bing asked, curious. Since survivors could be met at any moment, Niu Bing changed the way he address Cheng Yang.
Cheng Yang disgruntledly replied, “You asked me, but who am I supposed to ask? This was all done by the gods. Who knows what they were thinking? However, I suspect gods made it this way to give people a greater chance at survival. After all, if the city was covered in ruins it would be hard to find food in it. Gods’ purpose for transforming the world is to make humans evolve, not kill them all.”
Niu Bing nodded, “That kind of made sense. How many survivors do you think are in Yi Cheng?
Cheng Yang said: “Before the end Yi Cheng had about 300,000 people. Now there should be about 140,000-150,000 people left. Furthermore, these people should already be on the brink of death. If they are not rescued in time, the death rate will further increased until they all die.”
Puzzled, Niu Bing said, “It shouldn’t be that many people, right? Xiangcheng City had roughly 1 million people and with the main city, the death rate was almost half. You mentioned that Yi Cheng did not have a main city, which means the survivors can’t transfer to profession. So how was they supposed to fight against the enchanted beast?”
Cheng Yang shook his head and said, “Actually the relationship between profession and the quantity of survivor wasn’t big. When the apocalypse started, as long as humans passed through the first few days, their chance of survival was quite large, especially so in the city’s ruins. Once the enchanted beasts gathered in groups, a certain amount of space will open up for people to move around. So long as a person is careful, seek a good hiding place, and collect food often, it’s not a problem to stay alive for a month or two. Even though the city has become a ruin, the food is still there. Convenience stores, restaurants, retail stores, and houses. Basically, there are many places for a person to find something to eat even if it’s uncooked.”
“What about after two months?” Liu Xiyue hastily asked with a worry expression on her face “We can travel to Yi Cheng now, but with the strength of the main city, even it had another month they might not be able to make a connection between the main city and Yi Cheng, right? Since Xiangcheng City’s main city don’t have the ability, it should be the same case with other main cities. So how do those counties without a main city survive? ”
Cheng Yang involuntarily sighed, “Who knows? Maybe they will starve to death in the ruins rubble or perhaps there will be other changes.”
Cheng Yang’s words made the two people silent .Now that the gods were in control of the world, so what was the point of them thinking and worrying about it? The fate of ordinary people wasn’t something that was in their control.
As they walked through the ruins, they saw many places that had been turned over. These places should had been visited by survivors.
The ruins had a big difference with the wild. Here monsters were in groups and the appearance of scattered enchanted beast was drastically reduced. Moreover, the enchanted beast’s respawn rate was extremely low. In the suburbs, Cheng Yang’s group encountered a group of enchanted beast almost every few hundred meters. Their strength was also about the same as in the main city’s ruins.