[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-endless-winter-my-camp-infinitely-upgrades":3,"chapter-endless-winter-my-camp-infinitely-upgrades-endless-winter-my-camp-infinitely-upgrades-chapter-484":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Endless Winter: My Camp Infinitely Upgrades",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2266910,4425,"Chapter 484: The Five Towns in Panic: The Alliance Begins to Crumble, Tan Rou","endless-winter-my-camp-infinitely-upgrades-chapter-484",484,"\u003Cp>Summoning a god is easy; getting rid of him is hard.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When Shangguan Yang and Yang Fa heard this, their expressions instantly turned grim.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Because Qin Feng’s seven words perfectly exposed the greatest pain point of Jinshan and Beishuo Towns right now.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The year before last, in the 134th year of Mo Ao, May, the Chuishan Rift occurred, and Daya emerged as the ultimate victor; wielding the might of four towns, it forcefully brokered the Nine Towns Alliance, and on the third day of the sixth month of that same year, the alliance treaty was formally sealed in Chuishan Town City.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The five most important clauses of the treaty were: jointly acknowledge the alliance leader, fly the same banner, strengthen people and armies, jointly resist external vassals, and bind the alliance in eternal oath.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the time, the five towns agreed to sign the treaty partly out of fear of Daya’s then-dominant power, and partly because the treaty terms were not excessively harsh—even from a long-term perspective, they seemed beneficial to the five towns.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But looking back now, they were all traps.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For example, the first clause, jointly acknowledging the alliance leader, contained a line stating that in all matters concerning external domains, all eight towns must obey the alliance leader’s orders. This seemed reasonable, but no clear standard was ever defined for what constituted “external domain matters”; over the past two years, Daya has repeatedly used this pretext to meddle in the affairs of the five towns.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Another example is the third clause, strengthen people and armies: to enhance the overall strength of the nine towns, Daya proposed two specific measures: first, shared resource zones—any high-level hunting team holding the alliance token may freely enter and harvest from any town’s resource zones; second, Daya opened Wanbao branch stores in every town city, making its high-quality cultivation resources available to the people of the southern foothills.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>These two measures seemed harmless enough, but the fatal flaw was that no clear limit was ever placed on the number of high-level hunting teams each town could have.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the first month, Daya was still restrained, issuing only 900 alliance hunting tokens total, with each of the nine towns receiving 100—equivalent to just 100 high-level hunting teams per town, free to harvest and prospect without territorial restrictions.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But in the second month, Daya suddenly, in the name of the alliance leader, announced two clear standards for high-level hunting teams: each team must have at least twenty members, and every member must be at least Yuhan-level.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>These standards weren’t unreasonable; they did improve output and reduce casualties, and all five towns could meet them. Though they grumbled internally, they ultimately accepted them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But no one expected that setting these standards was merely Daya’s opening move.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the third month, the follow-up came.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Daya suddenly began mass-producing alliance hunting tokens and declared that any hunting team meeting the two standards could freely apply.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, each town had far more than 100 high-level hunting teams; the initial 100 tokens per town had always been insufficient to meet demand. So when Daya announced this, the high-level teams beneath the five towns immediately reorganized en masse to meet the criteria and applied for alliance tokens.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This phenomenon was perfectly natural.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A team holding an alliance hunting token, free to enter all resource zones across the southern foothills, earned vastly more from daily hunting, harvesting, and prospecting than a team confined to a single fixed area.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The original 100 alliance tokens per town had been fiercely contested; the first to obtain them were mostly connections and powerful teams, while those left out had long been seething with resentment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So when news of Daya’s plan to issue more tokens spread, the mood among the people below was predictable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The high leadership of each town had already sensed something was wrong by then. Daya had been expanding eastward for over four years, especially since the opening of Hongmen Port; the five towns had a fairly clear understanding of Daya’s strength.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They all knew that if alliance hunting tokens were issued without limits, the five towns would suffer catastrophic losses. So they jointly opposed Daya, demanding a cap on token issuance and equal distribution of any future increases.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And here, the trap was sprung.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“When the alliance treaty was signed, it was clearly stated that opening the southern foothills’ resource zones was to strengthen people and armies and enhance the overall strength of the nine towns. Now, the alliance leader issuing more tokens is precisely to fulfill that goal. The application standards apply equally to all nine towns—including Daya. What’s wrong with that? Are you saying Daya is too strong, so we must accommodate you?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I’ll say this plainly: either no more tokens are issued at all, and we maintain the status quo, or we open the floodgates entirely. You choose.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>These were Xia Chuan’s exact words, and within three days, this speech had spread across the entire southern foothills.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Instantly, the five towns erupted in fury; faced with the overwhelming public outcry, how could the five town lords and their high leadership dare to continue opposing?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, the unrestricted issuance of alliance hunting tokens began.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>From that moment, the five towns’ nightmare was fully underway.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>By the end of the year before last, alliance hunting tokens had been issued up to a total of 3,000; the three northern towns plus Yangqu and Longgu each had barely over 200; Chuishan, Jiangxia, and Muyin each had over 300; the remaining thousand-plus tokens were all held by Daya alone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As of this month, the total number of alliance hunting tokens has exceeded 6,000, with Daya alone holding more than half. Combined with the latest intelligence the five towns received—that Muyin, Jiangxia, and Chuishan had secretly merged into Daya—this means Daya now controls over two-thirds of all alliance hunting teams.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Hunting tokens were merely the tool; the real issue was that teams holding them could freely enter and harvest from all resource zones under each town’s control. As a result, vast quantities of cold beasts, spirit plants, and other precious resources flowed steadily into Daya.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The five towns did benefit, but how could their own three hundred-odd high-level teams compete with Daya?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thanks to these continuously increasing tokens, Daya’s new products have emerged nonstop over the past two years; new cultivation resources keep appearing on the Wanbao shelves, its development pace truly advancing by leaps and bounds.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The five towns have made progress, but they are utterly incomparable to Daya.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As for the Wanbao branch stores, the five town lords originally thought that once their town cities had Wanbao branches, they could directly purchase Daya’s cultivation resources, saving the trouble of traveling to Hongmen City—reducing merchant transport costs and preventing population loss.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the result? The Wanbao branches in each town city only served individual customers.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In other words, merchant trade still had to continue in Hongmen City, while the town city branches only dealt with individuals, and even slightly valuable cultivation resources remained strictly limited in supply.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The most vicious part? Daya set the prices at the Hongmen Wanbao headquarters twenty percent lower than those in the town city branches.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, neither of their two clever plans—reducing costs or preventing population loss—succeeded.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On the contrary, over the past two years, Daya has used the Wanbao branches to continuously infiltrate—and even subvert—the five town cities, leaving the five towns utterly exasperated.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, they tried many countermeasures, but all ended in failure, crushed beneath Daya’s terrifying financial and material power.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Eventually, they had no choice but to shut down the Wanbao branches again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Surprisingly, Daya actually complied with the five lords’ demands and immediately closed all five town city Wanbao branches.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the result, just like with the token increases, was instant public outrage: some residents fled to Hongmen City to settle, others outright defected to Daya. Seeing this, the five towns’ high leadership panicked.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, after only ten days of closure, the Wanbao branches reopened—at the demand of the five town lords.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Just the two clauses—jointly acknowledge the alliance leader and strengthen people and armies—have already thrown the five towns into chaos; the original treaty contained dozens of other detailed clauses.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Under Daya’s relentless, aggressive maneuvers under the alliance’s name, the five towns’ situation over the past two years is easy to imagine.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But to be fair, the most venomous clauses in the original treaty were the second and fourth: fly the same banner and jointly resist external vassals.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>These two clauses were designed to work together: the second clause required each town to contribute Yuhan-level troops to form a joint alliance army; the fourth clause designated the Dongchuan and Yinhed Valley regions as jointly governed alliance territories, to be garrisoned by the alliance army, because these two regions were the entry points for the Chen Cang and Cai Qiu vassals into the southern foothills.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the beginning of the year before last, the alliance army totaled thirty thousand: Daya contributed one-third, or ten thousand; the three northern towns each contributed over three thousand, totaling ten thousand; the remaining ten thousand came from the other five towns, each contributing two thousand.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With this composition, although Daya’s troops formed the majority of the alliance army, they were not yet overwhelmingly dominant, so the five towns paid little attention.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But starting in April last year, the situation changed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The reason lay with Cai Qiu and Chen Cang: upon learning of the Nine Towns Alliance, each sent fifteen Xianyang-level experts southward in April last year—intent obvious.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The problem? Dongchuan and Yinhed Valley were already jointly governed alliance territories; so many Xianyang-level experts arriving openly were immediately detected by the alliance forces on both sides.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The very reason the nine towns formed the alliance was to resist external vassal invasions—how could they allow so many Xianyang-level experts from the two vassals to enter?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Xiang Fuhai, the Grand Commander of the alliance army in Jinyang City, and Mu Longhe, the Grand Commander of the alliance army in Dongchuan City, each led fifteen thousand alliance troops to block the vassal envoys.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fighting broke out immediately. Though the vassals’ envoys were all Xianyang-level experts, there were only fifteen of them; even a plain fifteen-thousand-strong Yuhan-level army could not be defeated by them, let alone with Daya supplying the alliance army with divine crossbows and Golden Body Pills—two devastating weapons.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The battles in both regions were eerily similar: each inflicted heavy losses on the vassals, killing or wounding over five Xianyang-level experts, at a cost of only about twenty percent casualties.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In fact, had Yang Zun and Shangguan Yang not received word and rushed over to mediate and halt the fighting, several of the vassals’ Xianyang-level experts would likely have died.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Though the fighting stopped, the enmity was now complete.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The vassals’ Xianyang-level experts were all haughty, disdainful of the nine towns of the southern foothills; having suffered such a crushing defeat, they would never let it pass. Yang Zun and Shangguan Yang had traveled great distances not to help, but to mediate—violating the original alliance treaty. Daya’s subsequent reaction was, of course, even worse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After rescuing the vassals’ Xianyang-level experts, Yang Zun and Shangguan Yang spent the following days in deep unease; after all, they had broken the treaty first, and feared Xia Hong would use this as an excuse to strike back.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But for two or three days, Daya took no action. The two assumed Xia Hong feared Chen Cang and Cai Qiu, and gradually relaxed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But as this incident spread rapidly across the southern foothills and continued to ferment, the situation changed completely.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>While the high leadership of each town may have had their own thoughts on Beishuo and Jinshan Towns violating the alliance’s purpose, public opinion was uniformly hostile—everyone condemned the town lords for turning against their own.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The public outcry was immediate—and Daya’s response followed swiftly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Xia Chuan did not pursue the matter of the vassals’ Xianyang-level experts. Instead, in the name of Alliance Leader Xia Hong, he summoned the five town lords to Chuishan Town City, using the battle as justification to demand the alliance expand its army and reinforce both Dongchuan and Jinyang Cities to prevent future incidents.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The five towns naturally refused, especially after the past year, during which they discovered many of their Yuhan-level troops sent to the alliance army had been subverted by Daya, bringing their families out of the town cities. They dared not send more.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But even if they refused, Daya’s timing for demanding reinforcements was perfect. Yang Zun and Shangguan Yang already felt guilty; amid the raging public anger, they dared not even propose refusal. Jinyang belonged to Jinshan Town, Dongchuan to Beishuo Town—neither had anything to do with Wuchuan, Yangqu, or Longgu. Those three towns had no reason to oppose.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, in response to Xia Chuan’s demand for reinforcements, the five towns’ final stance was clear: they would not oppose, but they would not send any troops—they simply could not.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unexpectedly, Xia Chuan did not press further. He said that since the five towns could not provide troops, this reinforcement would be handled by Daya, Jiangxia, Muyin, and Chuishan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In June of that year, Daya sent two thousand reinforcements; the five towns didn’t care.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In August, Daya sent another two thousand; the five towns still didn’t care.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In October, Daya sent five thousand more; the five town lords began to sense something was wrong, but still did not intervene.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In December, Daya sent another three thousand, bringing the total alliance force in the two regions to 42,000, with Daya alone accounting for nearly 30,000. Only then did the five town lords suddenly realize: Daya was using the guise of expanding the alliance army to seize control. They immediately rushed to unite and tried to halt Daya’s reinforcements.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But by then, it was far too late.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In December last year, Xia Chuan pretended to agree to their demands, but from the beginning of this year, Daya continued to reinforce the two regions via alliance hunting tokens.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>High-level hunting teams, holding alliance tokens, entered Beishuo and Jinshan Towns under the pretense of hunting, then slipped into Dongchuan City and Jinyang Village, transforming into soldiers overnight. In just six months, the total garrison in Jinyang and Dongchuan neared fifty thousand.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This August, Daya went even further.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yuwen Tao, Director of the Military Department, led ten thousand troops out of Chuishan Town City, marched north through Yangqu and Longgu, left five thousand troops upon reaching Jinshan, then continued with five thousand more through Wuchuan Town, finally arriving at Dongchuan City in Beishuo.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yuwen Tao marched openly, showing no caution whatsoever; along the entire route, he did not notify any of the five town lords, nor even avoided passing near their town cities.\u003C\u002Fp>",2461,"2026-06-19T20:30:17.581Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","9a6b59180c0fa4f361e3ecb015e0c4a2af8dae6bd1082ba8860af0eeb6f9b04b","endless-winter-my-camp-infinitely-upgrades-chapter-485","endless-winter-my-camp-infinitely-upgrades-chapter-483",521,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fendless-winter-my-camp-infinitely-upgrades-cover.jpg"]