Doomsday Lord

A few hours before noon, Cheng Yang arrived at Crane Summit. Once he did, Hu Zhuang and his comrades surrounded him.

They were in much better spirits than the day before. They must have killed quite a few monsters last night to have gained this much confidence.

“Hey, Ox, Liu Wei. How was your evening? Did you run into any trouble?” Cheng Yang asked.

“It wasn’t bad, but the situation here is troublesome, my Lord.” Lau Hui reported. “There are too many monsters nearby, and sometimes high-level monsters will wander into our hunting grounds. More importantly, we didn’t have any potions and only Liu Wei for healing, so it was a tough night.”

“There’s no good solution to that other than to keep moving forwards.” Cheng Yang said. “After we build the Wall, focus on leveling up the village and rescuing survivors. If you can’t beat the monsters with quality, run them down with quantity.”

“Cheng Yang, do you think you could bring some of the talents in Phoenix Village here for a while?” Liu Wei asked. “It would provide more security, and if you brought Priests, it would be safer and more efficient when hunting monsters.”

“For now, we can’t allow too many people to leave Phoenix Village. Standard-Grade soldiers won’t be able to help much, and everyone at the High-Grade is tied up right now. Even you have responsibilities elsewhere.”

Cheng Yang thought it over for a moment.

“Ox, since you volunteered and aren’t doing much, you’ll stay here. We can find the other territory Altar so you can level up and then give you top-notch equipment. Then, even if you encounter a Pinnacle-Grade monster, you’ll be able to defeat it.”

“Can I bring my battalion here?” Lau Hui asked.

“No. Not only is it too dangerous, but they need to watch the Bone-Eating Ant Nest. However, I can bring Pang Sun.”

“That’s fine, but does that mean you’re going to replace me?”

“The battalion will be fine for a while without you, so there’s no need. Once the soldiers here adapt, you’ll be able to come back.”

Lau Hui agreed to stay, but he wasn’t confident he could deal with a Pinnacle-Grade monster. Even if he leveled up, his class wasn’t DPS focused. If a strong monster showed up, all he could do was run. The only reason he felt safe at all was that Cheng Yang told him the chances of a monster that strong appearing was extremely low this close to the village.

With that decided, Cheng Yang led the soldiers to Yicheng. Since they had made several trips already, the path was clear, and it was faster than before.

The lumber mill they found yesterday still had a lot of wood. The only troublesome part was that most of the goods were buried under rubble.

While the soldiers were uncovering the wood, Cheng Yang cleared the nearby monsters. Now, with Liu Wei as a guard, the soldiers would be able to work without him. This allowed him the time to search for the other Territory Altar.

Cheng Yang didn’t know where the second Territory Altar was located since Yuan Jianzhe hadn’t controlled it in his previous life. Instead, a group from another major city had occupied it.

There was a lot of tension between the two, so Cheng Yang never visited. But, he knew more or less where it was since there had been several small scale wars between the two villages.

By the time Cheng Yang finished clearing nearby hordes, the soldiers had made three round trips, collecting over a hundred units of wood. Once they did, Liu Wie built the Wall. With this, Crane Summit had nearly fulfilled the requirements to level up.

Now that the situation was stabilized, Cheng Yang left Liu Wei in charge and took Lau Hui to search for the second Territory Altar.

Lau Hui was much slower than Cheng Yang, so he was permitted to sit on Enlai’s back during the journey.

The faster way to reach the other Territory Altar was crossing through Yicheng since the territories were more or less opposite each other. However, Cheng Yang decided to go south of Crane Summit first then go around the city.

He didn’t do so because he was trying to avoid the city. It was because he knew the location of an instance dungeon near Crane Summit.

The entrance was around five kilometers away from the village, but since he’d run this dungeon before, he was able to locate it quickly.

“Yoko, did you see this instance dungeon in your visions too? Isn’t that basically omnipotent?” Lau Hui was dumbfounded.

“It’s just the location of a few treasures.” Cheng Yang said with a laugh, “It’s not like I know everything.”

“Do you know about any other Territory Altars then?” Lau Hui asked, full of expectation. “You never share anything about your visions until the moment before you reveal something major.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t. All I know is that they crop up around any medium or large city from before the apocalypse. Even if I didn’t know about the other Territory Altar here, the size of Yicheng would give away the presence of another.”

“Do they always follow that pattern?”

“Not always. Sometimes a Territory Altar would pop up even if there wasn’t anyone around.”

After that, Cheng Yang left Lau Hui with Enlai and entered the instance dungeon. Since it was an Easy-Difficulty clear, there wasn’t a reason to bring the others.

The world around Cheng Yang blurred before changing to that of a dense maze of trees and thorns. This was the Shattered Midnight Forest.

Fortunately, although it seemed like a maze, there was only one path through the instance. If not, the difficulty of the Shattered Midnight Forest would skyrocket.

Since there wasn’t a trick to the maze, Cheng Yang simply pushed forwards, killing any monsters he encountered.

To other groups, clearing an instance dungeon was a matter of life and death, but for Cheng Yang, it was as simple as waving his hand. For him, clearing instance dungeons wasn’t the hard part, finding them was.

Although Cheng Yang had found five already, that was because he already knew where they were. If he wanted to find any more after clearing the second one near Yicheng, he could only depend on luck.