Chapter 26: Artisan, Nightmare, Dread, Divine, Demon

What would a camp with over a hundred thousand people look like?

In truth, Luo Ming, Shi Qing, and the other six could not possibly imagine it.

But they were all leaders, each overseeing a camp of several hundred people.

They knew full well what a camp with over a hundred thousand people meant.

Vast quantities of food, extremely high security costs, countless amounts of cold-beast flesh…

“Wait, with over a hundred thousand people, could you even find a cave that big?”

Shi Qing couldn’t help but voice his greatest confusion.

Humans cannot endure sunlight; a hundred thousand people must hide somewhere.

Could you find a cave that big?

Summer insects cannot speak of ice; well frogs cannot speak of the sea.

Yang Ning and Li Hu both thought of these two sayings and shook their heads slightly.

Not all humans are doomed to live in shadows. One day, if any of you are lucky enough to earn the qualification to enter Beishuozhen, you’ll understand.

After speaking, Yang Ning paused, then added to himself: “Of course, for you six, that possibility is virtually nonexistent.”

Upon hearing this, Luo Ming, Shi Qing, and the other five immediately grew pale.

Compared to Shi Qing, Luo Ming understood Yang Ning’s words better.

Luo Ge’s camp was the only mid-sized camp around Hongmu Ridge.

The other eight camps had all previously approached him, seeking to merge.

But he dared not accept—or rather, could not accept.

Though he also knew that more people in a camp was always better.

But expansion required strength.

Strength meant access to more resources, the ability to feed more people, hunt more cold-beast flesh, and provide more cultivators.

Unfortunately, Luo Ge’s camp lacked the strength to support expansion.

Luo Ge’s camp had only five Digging Earth cultivators and forty-seven Woodcutting cultivators; the cold-beast flesh they harvested each month barely sufficed for their own people—adding other small camps would leave them with no meat at all.

Moreover, merging would mean more ordinary people, rapidly increasing demand for crystal fruits, forcing them to increase their expeditions to find more ice-jade trees—a process fraught with risk.

Most critically, the strongest in any small camp were no more than Woodcutting cultivators, utterly incapable of hunting—meaning their addition would not enhance hunting capacity, but instead strain the camp’s existing cold-beast meat supply.

So when other camps proposed merging, not just Luo Ming, but everyone in Luo Ge’s camp, nearly always refused.

Thus, the rule was: only with sufficient strength could you expand, then leverage population advantage to cultivate more strong cultivators, repeating this cycle to grow stronger and larger.

Blind expansion would only make a camp too big to manage, and even if it escaped slaughter by cold-beasts and wraiths, it would likely erupt into internal chaos and mutual slaughter.

Thus, by extension, the Beishuozhen that Yang and Li spoke of, though housing over a hundred thousand people, certainly did not recklessly recruit outsiders; the “qualification” they mentioned must be exceedingly strict.

Shi Qing need not even consider it; even Luo Ming, though a Digging Earth cultivator, was far weaker than Yang and Li, who were young yet far superior—Beishuozhen’s strength was evident enough to judge its standards, and it certainly wouldn’t want him.

Besides, they were both leaders of their own camps.

They could never abandon their families and companions to join another camp alone.

“Enough. Telling you all this is useless. Luo Leader, you just asked about that wooden puppet wraith—let me explain.”

Hearing Yang Ning was about to speak of wraiths, Luo Ming and Shi Qing immediately perked up.

“Long ago, Bingyuan was not like this.”

Back then, days lasted twelve hours, and temperatures were nowhere near as cold as today.

Most cold-beasts were not nearly as cunning or powerful as now; let alone eating humans, back then nearly ninety-nine percent of cold-beasts were merely food for humans.

And those wraiths? They didn’t exist back then.

During that era, humans could move freely, day or night.

Back then, Bingyuan was said to have four seasons, cycles of heat and cold, pleasant climate; humans wielded all manner of powerful tools, undisputed masters of Bingyuan; the land was fertile, crops grew everywhere, food was so abundant it spoiled; back then…

Clothing, food, shelter, travel—all perfect; humans lived in peace and contentment, civilization flourished.

During that era, there were not just camps of a hundred thousand, but even millions, and tens of millions.

Hearing Yang Ning’s description, Luo Ming, Shi Qing, and the others were utterly stunned.

The concepts of a hundred thousand, a million—these meant nothing to them.

The eight words: “day and night, move freely.”

To them, that was already a dream.

Ninety-nine percent of cold-beasts were merely human food?

Clothing, food, shelter, travel—all perfect; living in peace and contentment; civilization flourishing.

What kind of fantasy world could that have been?

Humans struggle to imagine things they’ve never seen or experienced, but that doesn’t stop them from yearning for and pursuing beauty.

To Luo Ming, Shi Qing, and the others, the world Yang Ning described was no different from a celestial palace or paradise.

“In relation to today’s Bingyuan, we generally call that era the Ancient Bing Era, or Pre-Civilization.”

No one knows what happened in the Ancient Bing Era, what befell the Pre-Civilization, or how our world became what it is today.

Some say humans angered the gods, and the Ancient Bing was punished by divine wrath; others say humans committed too many forbidden acts, causing cold-beasts and wraiths to emerge, and eventually climate and time itself changed—no one knows the true cause.

But one thing is certain: since the fall of the Ancient Bing Era, civilization collapsed, and wraiths and cold-beasts became humanity’s nightmare.

Though this was merely setup, Yang Ning spoke with deep emotion.

Clearly, even he, who had never lived through the Ancient Bing Era, longed for it intensely.

“No one yet knows how wraiths came to be, but we can be certain they originated in the Ancient Bing Era, for only from them can we find evidence of that lost age.”

“Wraiths are divided into five types: Artisan, Nightmare, Dread, Divine, and Demon.”

“Artisan wraiths are one such type—they were once highly skilled craftsmen from the Ancient Bing Era, who now kill in bizarre, unpredictable ways, using mysterious methods.”

“The wooden puppet wraith that emerged from Hongmu Ridge was likely an ancient puppeteer from the Ancient Bing Era, skilled in crafting and controlling all manner of puppets, fond of carving human-shaped wooden puppets to mimic humans, gain trust, then lurk in shadows to control them and kill.”

Here, Yang Ning paused, then added: “All wraiths evolve through constant killing.”

“Take this wooden puppet wraith as an example: its puppets now only possess Woodcutting-level strength, but as it kills more people, both it and its puppets grow stronger.”

“Beishuozhen once hunted a mid-tier Artisan wraith—we named it the Tailor Wraith.”

“It wielded a pair of shears capable of slicing dozens of Digging Earth cultivators into fragments in an instant;”

“It also possessed a set of needles and thread, which, right before my eyes, sewed shut all seven orifices of a Cold-Resisting cultivator.”

“And shortly after, that Cold-Resisting cultivator suffocated to death.”

Cold-Resisting…

Hearing these three words for the first time, Luo Ming and Shi Qing, though they had guessed, still wore puzzled expressions.

“Above Digging Earth is Cold-Resisting. The name comes from the fact that at this realm, one can withstand daytime cold and venture outside.”

(End of Chapter)