Volume 3, Chapter 43 – Spread 【2】

It was a fortress wall.

It clearly wasn’t finished yet, wrapped in scaffolding and green mesh. Only from the exposed sections could one tell the concrete pour was done; what it lacked was the outer armor plating and more firepower installed.

Even so, it was shocking enough. It stood at least forty meters tall… maybe closer to fifty. It loomed there like a celestial terrace, perfectly sealing the last remaining gap in this stretch of the Nanluo Mountains.

Its sheer psychological impact was overwhelming. Faced with such a spectacular fortress wall, this miracle built purely by human hands, even the most pessimistic person could squeeze a bit of strength out from the depths of their heart.

All the more since they hadn’t suffered a single demon beast attack on the way.

The real crisis had yet to appear before their eyes. All they needed was a little courage, and this wall gave them exactly that.

“They’re all stunned stupid.”

On the very top of the fortress wall, Song Ruhua spoke with genuine admiration.

“Junior brother, your grasp of human nature is almost catching up to Master’s, you know that?”

Song Ruhua had done similar work before and knew well that the hardest part of “receiving refugees” wasn’t the burden of supplies.

The reason was simple. People wouldn’t starve to death in a day, but if you couldn’t suppress the refugees from the outset and establish a basic order among them, fear could drive them into doing incredibly irrational things—and that damage would show up long before anyone ran out of food.

“Just a little trick.”

Beside him, Guo Rongzhi snapped his folding fan shut with a crisp pa , his expression still as cold and severe as ever.

“This gate is just giving them a mental cue so they can hypnotize themselves into believing ‘we can hold here’. Add in the fact they haven’t actually seen any blood yet, and of course it works this easily.”

“But what if demon beasts hit us right now?”

“This wall can stop demon beasts, but it can’t stop Demon Pools. Once the newborn Demon Pools seep in and people start dying across Xinzhou, we don’t have the manpower to manage that many people.”

“Don’t we still have the Chilong Army?” Song Ruhua couldn’t understand.

“There are a million refugees, senior brother.” Guo Rongzhi rubbed his forehead. “Imagine how long a ‘dragon train’ that makes. The Chilong Army has to protect that dragon. They won’t be able to help us here, not for a while.”

Song Ruhua frowned. “Then how do we keep the people steady?”

“Supplies,” Guo Rongzhi said. “It all comes down to supplies.”

All those methods, all that ‘reading the crowd’, all those rousing speeches—that’s just air.

Rеaⅾ οո КаtRеadіոɡCαfе

The world is material. People go hungry if they don’t eat, thirsty if they don’t drink. Without supplies, everything else is empty talk. What we really have to do is gather enough resources as fast as possible.

“So what do we do?” Song Ruhua’s face twisted with worry at once. “Xinzhou has trouble supplying even forty thousand people as it is. Can we even make it through the first day?”

In the past, Maozhou’s supplies had always come from Chilong Circuit. But now Chilong itself was about to fall. Refugees couldn’t lug production equipment along with them, and what they carried on the road wouldn’t last long.

“I’ve made three contingency plans,” Guo Rongzhi said, snapping his fan open again.

“First, I contacted the surrounding circuit cities in junior sister’s name. I need them to make a promise—if the demon tide really does choose this place as its main assault, they must take on airlift supply runs. After all, we’re drawing the hatred for their sake too.”

“Second, I’ve reached out to Lu Neizhi. He’s agreed to send in a transport unit by airdrop. Once the defensive line is solid, they’ll jump from inside the walls to outside, sneak into Chilong Circuit, and haul back whatever supplies get left behind.”

“Exactly!” Song Ruhua’s eyes went wide. “There’s no way they’ll get everything out of Chilong. Just living off whatever’s left behind and airlifted out should be enough for the short term!”

“And the third?” he pressed.

“The third will be trickier.” Guo Rongzhi frowned. “Chilong’s own supply mission wasn’t self-sufficient. A substantial portion was handed off to the surrounding villages and towns—those places turned in grain and provided labor to keep things running.”

“Those villages and towns are the real roots of Chilong Circuit. I’m considering whether we should move them too.”

At first, Song Ruhua didn’t understand why he sounded so conflicted. Then he thought it through.

If they could move them, it would obviously be good. Anyone who could survive in a village environment tended to be in their prime, and all of them were fighting-strength against demon disasters.

Not to mention they probably had large stores of grain, plus fertilizer and seeds—all of which were now strategic resources.

But was it worth it?

Those villages and towns were too far out. The stretch from Chilong Circuit to Zhen’nan Circuit hadn’t suffered much demon beast incursion yet, but those villages… they were facing the very first wave of danger once the demon tide fully formed.

If they went to move them now, was it already too late?

If they sent people in to rescue them, would that drag the demon tide toward them even earlier?

Those were all risks.

All of it needed to be weighed.

“Right now, Jiang Lai is handling it,” Guo Rongzhi said. “That Steward from the Demon-Subduing Office in Qidi… He was out on a scouting mission with a team. When I told him my idea, he volunteered to go investigate. I don’t know how it’s going.”

“How often did you agree to check in?” Song Ruhua asked.

Reаd οո КαtReаԁіոɡСаfе

“Every forty minutes to an hour, with twenty minutes of flex time in between.”

“What was the last report?”

“Large numbers of demon beasts gathering to the northwest and due north, no fewer than a hundred thousand—and still increasing.”

“Along the Jing River?”

“Mm. That’s the worst-hit zone where the blood mist converged. The beast packs there have absorbed the most blood mist.”

“And the southern side,” Guo Rongzhi went on, shaking his head. “It’s better down there. Less blood mist, and the area was under reclamation, so they’d already cleared the surrounding demon beasts. We expect less pressure from the south.”

“But that’s just the beasts. We don’t know yet whether more Demon Pools will form in the south.”

“If we’re unlucky, and there just happens to be an Illusory Realm hidden nearby, and inside it just happens to be an ancient Demon Kingdom waking from its long sleep…”

Guo Rongzhi shook his head, clearly not optimistic about the future.

He was making Song Ruhua nervous too. The latter cursed angrily, “It’s all those bastard officials’ fault. They knew Yao Qingyuan was going to rebel; why not kill him early and be done with it? Why drag it out to this point?”

The Blood Sea was never a threat inner circuit cities were supposed to face.

They’d raised a tiger to court disaster, letting something that should have been blocked north of the border slip down into the south. They’d dragged Bai Mountain Dojo into it too, costing him his junior-sister Dao partner.

Just thinking about it twisted Song Ruhua’s face. He wanted nothing more than to twist those officials’ heads off with his own hands.

Is all the blame really just on “the officials”?

Guo Rongzhi glanced sidelong at his senior brother and shook his head inwardly.

He knew Song Ruhua understood.

He’d just been trained too long not to blame that person directly.

Buzz, buzz—

Right then, a phone vibrated.

Guo Rongzhi picked up at once. “Jiang Lai?”

Reaⅾ οո ΚаtRеαⅾіոɡCafе

Nothing.

“Jiang Lai? Is that you?”

Guo Rongzhi frowned and pressed again.

Still no response.

At that point, he finally sensed something was wrong. His face hardened. He shut the phone off on the spot, flung it out into the air beyond the wall, and drew his sword to slice it into several pieces.

“What are you doing?”

Song Ruhua didn’t understand his actions.

And then his own phone started ringing.

Every phone on the wall started ringing.

“Hello?”

“Ma, is that you?”

“Who the hell is this? Say something!”

The garrison soldiers and laborers answered, only to find nothing at all on the other end. No matter how they questioned, there was no reply.

What…?

In Song Ruhua’s ears, all he could hear was their impatient voices, questioning over and over.

When he looked back at Guo Rongzhi—

His junior brother’s face was twisted with fear, one hand halfway extended and frozen in the air… Had Guo really meant to stop them?

Pffft!

Suddenly, a dull sound thumped from behind them.

Everyone turned—just in time to see a puff of blood mist burst from thin air.

Song Ruhua was close enough that something splashed across his face. He reached up, wiped some off, and looked down at his hand—only to see it slick with blood and pulp.

Reаd оո ΚatRеаⅾіոɡСаfе

“Destroy all comms devices!”

Guo Rongzhi finally roared.

“No more talking to the other side!!!”

Pffft, pffft!

His shout had barely fallen when blood mist exploded in a chain. In moments, only Guo Rongzhi and Song Ruhua were left standing on the wall.

The blast shockwaves flung a dozen-odd devices far away, some off the wall entirely, some bouncing and shattering on the stone.

But any that were still intact, that still had the bare minimum of dialing function—every last one lit up on its own, flipped open the address book, and started dialing.

“Hello?”

“Who’s there?”

“Dad, is that you?”

“Why won’t you say anything?”

A massive fear crashed down. Song Ruhua froze and started to shake, memories surfacing of the close brushes with death he’d had in his youth.

“Don’t answer!”

“Don’t say another word!”

Grabbing up the devices, Guo Rongzhi bellowed at whoever was on the other end, then sprinted back, seized his senior brother by the collar, and slapped him across the face.

“Ah!” Song Ruhua finally snapped out of it like waking from a dream.

“Go tell Master!”

Guo Rongzhi’s contorted face filled his vision.

“…I’ll handle the mess up here!”