Chapter 22: Base Camp
After a round of spending, Su Xiao only had 81 units of Living Ore left that he could use. In exchange, he had secured the foundation for development.
Su Xiao and Kaisa left the underground market together. After returning to the surface, they arrived at a civilian residence on the backstreet of District Four.
Su Xiao planned to use this place as a temporary stronghold and set a coordinate here.
Half an hour later, a large array diagram was concealed within the carpet, sinking into the ground below.
A crystal ball on the floor gradually dimmed and eventually also sank into the ground. This was a spatial prop, which Su Xiao had bought for 350 Soul Coins. He didn't care about the specific ability of this item; what he wanted was its spatial properties.
Through the array diagram, the wavelength of the crystal ball was altered to a directional frequency. Over the next three hours, as the array diagram assimilated it, this crystal ball would act as a coordinate, specifically an initial coordinate.
With the initial coordinate set, it would be much more convenient for Su Xiao to come to Freedom City in the future. As long as he was on this continent, he could use the Demon Race's spatial array diagram to teleport to this temporary stronghold in Freedom City.
This place wasn't far from the Borderlands District. In case of an emergency, the coordinate set here served as an escape route.
Contacting Bubu Wang and learning that Bubu Wang had succeeded, Su Xiao took Baha and Dorothy back to their hotel, drove the convertible armored vehicle, picked up Bubu Wang, and after letting Bubu Wang take the wheel, headed straight out of the city.
The journey was smooth, though Dorothy was amazed that a dog could drive. She initially thought Bubu Wang was an Aberrant Beast and lightly poked the back of Bubu's head, only to have Baha smack her on the back of the head with a wing. Dorothy quieted down.
Kaisa chose to stay in Freedom City, communicating via communicator if anything came up. He wanted to open up the situation here.
Tide Hunter was already approaching the Tribunal, meaning the showdown between Li Xiniwei and the old vampire of the Tribunal was about to begin.
Amu had long since returned to the Doom Fortress, 10 kilometers away. The pig-headed men bought from Freedom City were also being transported to the fortress.
An hour later, southeast of Freedom City, vehicles with searchlights mounted on their roofs illuminated the Doom Fortress and a large area in front of it. The smell of unburned compressed fuel mixed with exhaust fumes hung in the air.
Trucks loaded with pig-headed men were unloading. For this batch of purchased pig-headed men, Su Xiao planned to use the fortress to transport them to the Borderlands District. Although the Doom Fortress was a T5-level fortress, after removing unnecessary structures on the first and second floors and having the third floor packed with pig-headed men, it could barely fit them. Note: it was "fit," not "stand crowded."
At 2 AM the following night, Azba's subordinates completed the unloading in a rather violent manner. After receiving the final payment, the convoy left. The vassal tribes delivering the goods didn't suspect anything about Su Xiao using a T5-level fortress to transport these pig-headed men. In their view, a customer who could buy thousands of pig-headed men in one go using a T5-level fortress for "cargo transport" was perfectly normal.
Su Xiao didn't enter the fortress. It wasn't that he didn't want to return to the comfortable third floor of the fortress and rest while riding the mobile fortress; he simply couldn't get in. When he saw the few pig-headed men inside the first floor holding onto chandeliers with slightly panicked expressions, he immediately gave up the idea of squeezing in.
The smell inside the fortress at this point was indescribable. Once they reached the Borderlands District, it would need a thorough cleaning.
Half-closing the main gate, Su Xiao issued commands to the fortress through his mental energy. One by one, the fortress's mechanical tentacles extended, taking massive strides forward, causing rumbling sounds and slight tremors in the ground.
Su Xiao leaned back in the passenger seat of the vehicle to rest. Freedom City wasn't far from the Borderlands District; otherwise, he wouldn't have come here for supplies.
The reason Freedom City had so many hunters and scavengers was precisely this. Once the Aberrant Beasts triggered a beast tide, Freedom City would enter a state of combat readiness.
Don't think that fortress cities were particularly safe places. The truly safe and comfortable areas were the ring cities further back. The big shots all lived in the ring cities.
The journey was uneventful. When the rising sun was about to set again, Su Xiao finally arrived at the Borderlands District. He checked the time: 3 PM.
Due to the lack of industrial pollution, the air here was exceptionally fresh. Looking around, the mountains stretched endlessly ahead, with near-vertical rock faces towering high, covered in a type of highly toxic thorny vines. This terrain and the toxic thorns were created and cultivated when the Human Race was in power. To this day, the vassal tribes still benefited from this legacy.
Su Xiao didn't linger on the strange scenery. He traveled along the steep rock face for about three kilometers before arriving at a valley.
This valley created a wide gap in the continuous mountain range. No matter how you looked at it, this was deliberately left behind. It was like blocking water: if you only block it, it will eventually burst the dam. Leaving a place for the flood to discharge was the long-term solution.
In the middle section of the valley, there were several large holes, each over ten meters in diameter, filled with water. These were left over from when the Vassal Alliance had previously sent T2-level fortresses here to mine. They hadn't lasted long before being harassed and attacked by the Aberrant Beasts, forcing them to retreat completely, leaving only these water-filled mine shafts.
Under normal circumstances, the Aberrant Beasts, the Human Race, and the vassal tribes maintained a relationship of non-interference, maintaining a false peace. They would all build up their strength, then clash, and only after both sides were hurt enough to grit their teeth would they settle down.
History tells us that no intelligent creature ever learns any lesson from history. Repeating the same mistakes is commonplace, and occasionally, things get supercharged.
Su Xiao surveyed the lush, spacious valley ahead. On the south side of the valley was a steep rock face, over a hundred meters high, the front of a massive peak with an elliptical top.
On the north side of the valley was a gentle upward slope. The north-south width was too wide for a T5-level fortress to completely block. Even a T2-level fortress couldn't do it; a T1-level fortress might barely manage.
Su Xiao maneuvered the fortress to park against the steep rock face on the south side of the valley, making it fit snugly against the rock wall behind.
The main gate of the fortress opened. Amidst the shouts of the pig-headed men, Hausmann and Steel Fang, the pig-headed men streamed out of the fortress. It felt like a grain sack with a hole in the bottom corner, with the grain pouring out.
Some pig-headed men fell to the ground grunting, while others crouched and dry-heaved. Su Xiao ordered Hausmann and the other five pig-headed leaders to take the pig-headed men to the nearby dozen or so large water pits to clean themselves.
A total of 11,420 pig-headed men. Given their tough physiques, this short distance shouldn't have been a problem. However, three pig-headed men died, beaten to death in fights with each other. It was truly fitting that they were considered unwanted rejects. Even squeezed into such a state, they still had the leisure to fight, as if they were in a constant state of combat 24 hours a day.
Su Xiao walked to the innermost part of the fortress's first floor, raised his hand, and pressed it against the wall. Under his mental energy control, the gray-black flesh structure on the wall began to contract, while the outer metal structure dissolved and spread outward.
A few minutes later, an arched doorway about 10 meters wide and as high as the first floor of the fortress appeared before Su Xiao. Since the fortress was backed against the mountain, what was now exposed was the mountain itself.
To Su Xiao's relief, due to the various characteristics of the pig-headed men—aside from being unable to access the female pig-headed men who did the mining—they were all strong and robust. Thus, they were defaulted as soldier-type units.
Su Xiao activated War Lord, and two types of enhancement effects triggered simultaneously.