Chapter 44

"Tomorrow will be the sixth day since we arrived in this dream world."

Wu Pifu watched the Peace Hotel, which was under heated construction. Even though it was already evening, because there were torches for lighting, these craftsmen and villagers still looked as if they were working with all their might.

In fact, the craftsmen and villagers had already been divided into three teams, implementing three shifts to build the Peace Hotel.

For no other reason than that the pay was too high.

Because Lin Heier and Xu Rongyu had confirmed repeatedly that they could obtain at least ten thousand grams of gold every month. This sum of money might not be much for a large organization or a country, but for the Red Lantern Society, it was a huge fortune. Seventy percent of it belonged to the three of them, and since the three of them had nothing to spend it on at this time, it naturally piled up on this Peace Hotel.

The wages for these craftsmen and villagers to build the Peace Hotel were more than thirty times what they would get for the same labor elsewhere. Working here for one day was equivalent to working day and night for a month elsewhere!

If it weren't for Lin Heier's solemn, repeated, and serious reminder not to give these craftsmen and villagers wages beyond their limits, let alone thirty times, even three hundred times would probably have been no problem.

This was an era where the material poverty of the lower-class people and the lower-class society was unimaginable.

These villagers couldn't even scrape together two meals a day. Their staple food every day was a thin soup of wild vegetables; it could hardly be called a meal. Everyone was sallow and thin, with bent backs.

The craftsmen were slightly better off, but only slightly; there was only thin porridge in their stomachs.

In fact, according to Xu Rongyu, to build this Peace Hotel, one only needed to provide food for the villagers. In this season between harvests, just providing food would be enough to make these villagers flock to it, and this would not attract outside attention.

But how could Wu Pifu follow such a suggestion?

He was already afraid that he wouldn't attract enough outside attention.

Up to now, he didn't know what conditions were needed to upgrade the shelter, but increasing his influence in this world was never wrong. And since he was building a Peace Hotel, and he was to play the role of an invincible swordsman, then being generous and open-handed was part of the persona.

Literature is for the poor, martial arts for the rich; without money, it is impossible to practice martial arts. If you can't even get enough to eat, and you still want to forcibly circulate your true qi, that is truly courting death.

Therefore, having money, being powerful, and being a master of the martial arts world—once such a persona is established, it can save a lot of trouble in this era, especially trouble at the official level. As for the martial arts world... the biggest bandit leader outside the pass and his hundreds of core members were buried right here; were there any who were blind enough to cross him?

On the contrary, those in the martial arts world were very likely to come here upon hearing the name. Experts, masters, and even grandmasters might appear. However, this was actually a good thing for Wu Pifu. He was currently in a period of rapid advancement, and battles with these national martial artists could allow him to become strong quickly. As for injuries, that was not something he needed to worry about.

Therefore, thirty times the wages, full bowls of thick white rice or noodles and steamed buns, plus chopped meat mixed with stir-fried vegetables and wild greens, and an egg for each person. What made these villagers and craftsmen the most envious was that they actually had four meals a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and if they worked at night, a midnight snack!

They had never heard of such an employer!

People at this time were simple-minded, and even if they had some small thoughts, they were mostly the simple thoughts of farmers. So, encouraged by such wages and food, these villagers and craftsmen worked as if they were risking their lives.

As a result, it made the four of them—Wu Pifu, Ya Made, Xu Shilan, and Xu Rongyu—appear idle. They didn't even need to supervise; there were village elders among the villagers. If anyone dared to slack off at this time, their fellow villagers could poke them to death with their fingers.

The idle Wu Pifu and the others found some stones and sat in the distance. There was nothing important to do, so they chatted and rested. Wu Pifu practiced martial arts whenever he had free time, and Xu Rongyu naturally followed him like a lackey, also receiving a few pointers, which made him so happy he scratched his head and began to practice the stances.

As the outer cover of the sleep pod opened, Amadai slowly opened his eyes in it. For the first ten seconds, he was still a little confused, and then his brows frowned. Obviously, after the freezing was lifted, the injuries all over his body began to ache.

At this time, Xu Rongyu was standing there practicing his boxing stances, while Wu Pifu had just finished a set of Green Python Molting Art, his whole body steaming with heat. He looked at the construction site, then at the night in the distance, and turned to speak to Ya Made, who was tinkering with some metal parts, and Xu Shilan, who was flipping through an account book.

Both of their movements paused slightly, and then they each busied themselves again. Ya Made said casually, "That's right, tomorrow is the sixth day."

Xu Shilan pondered for a moment and said, "According to your description, will nightmares attack starting tomorrow?"

Hearing the word "nightmare," Xu Rongyu's breathing immediately became disordered, and the boxing stance he was holding fell apart. He simply stopped practicing, adjusted his breathing, and sat on the ground to listen to the three of them talk.

Wu Pifu shook his head and said, "It's just that the probability of an attack will increase. It's not certain that a nightmare will inevitably attack after five days, and it's not absolutely safe within five days either. This matter is uncertain."

The other three listened to Wu Pifu's words. Ya Made suddenly blurted out, "Then this shelter... what is the meaning of the word 'shelter'?"

Taking the name literally, since it is called a shelter, it should possess some kind of protective function, right? And the shelter was not a name chosen by maintainers like Wu Pifu, but a name defined by the main brain. Yet, looking at its functions, there was no sense of protection at all; it was even their Achilles' heel.

A level-one shelter requires guarding for ten days every thirty days, a level-two shelter is shortened to seven days, and the guarding time for level-three and above shelters is unknown. And after these maintainers stay in the dream world for more than five days, they will be sensed by the nightmares of this world, and then the probability of being found by nightmares will gradually increase.

During this period, if you are discovered and hunted by a nightmare, you cannot even expose the location of the shelter, otherwise the nightmare will follow the shelter to the real world and hunt you down by waiting for you... Thinking about it this way, what exactly did this shelter protect? It was actually their biggest Achilles' heel. Wu Pifu also didn't know what this shelter protected, but he still said, "Thinking so much is useless. We know too little about the dream world, about all these changes, and even about the main brain. What is a nightmare? What is a weirdness? What is pollution? What is the 'end of the week'? And what does this shelter mean? We know nothing at all. So, no matter how much we guess now, it's useless. Surviving, becoming stronger, and surviving better—that is what we need to do now."

Ya Made and Xu Shilan both nodded in agreement.

That night, nothing happened. The next day, Wu Pifu began to patrol and inspect the construction site and the surrounding land. Another day passed without incident. By the time they reached the seventh day in this world, Wu Pifu was even more cautious. Ya Made also joined the patrol. The two of them patrolled and inspected for twenty-four hours without sleep, but they passed another day safely, and not even a hint of anything appeared.

At noon on the seventh day, a countdown reminder from the main brain appeared in the minds of all three, telling them that their guarding mission in this world was completed and they could return to the real world at any time.

Wu Pifu breathed a sigh of relief. He looked at Ya Made and Xu Shilan and said, "Fortunately, our luck was good this time. It's not that you will encounter weirdness or nightmares every time you guard. Especially, don't run around blindly; that is the safest way."

Ya Made didn't care, while Xu Shilan was lost in thought. Wu Pifu said, "Then, have you decided what building to buy? As it stands, building a force cannot be achieved in a day or two. Historical events can only be achieved at least four months later when Cixi flees west. So, how about we first establish a level-one shelter and draw a random reward?"

For the first random draw when establishing a shelter, the main brain likely has some screening mechanism; it is usually a cultivation technique, and one that fits you. Wu Pifu himself was like this, and his several predecessors were also like this.

The current Ya Made and Xu Shilan are actually still ordinary mortals. They don't even have the most basic baseline reality 0.9 cultivation technique, which is a very dangerous thing in the dream world.

Ya Made naturally nodded repeatedly and said yes, but Xu Shilan directly shook her head and denied it.

"No, we will not establish a shelter in this world. Brother Wu, take us to the Mud Buddha Yaksha world," Xu Shilan said immediately.

Wu Pifu and Ya Made looked at her in surprise at the same time.

!

Xu Shilan asked seriously, "Brother Wu, are cultivation techniques easy to obtain?"

The pig-headed man reached out with one hand and firmly grasped the bone-crushing hammer. Just because of this delay, Wu Pifu had already rushed in front of the frog-headed man. When the frog-headed man reached out with both hands to grab him, he held the boning knife in one hand and stretched out the other hand as a claw. A Tiger Demon Claw was imprinted on the web between the thumb and index finger of the frog-headed man's hand, which was twice the size of a normal person's. He gripped hard with the single claw, his fingers stabbing deep into the flesh of the frog-headed man's palm, and then pulled hard on the tendons and bones of the web, pulling the frog-headed man's upper body to be level with him.

Xu Shilan sighed and said, "A false transmission is worth ten thousand books, but a true transmission is just one sentence. Even technology is like this, let alone these supernatural cultivation techniques where great power belongs to oneself. If you want to obtain them in this dream world, the difficulty is probably dozens or hundreds of times harder than establishing a shelter. And the channel through which we are most likely to obtain extraordinary cultivation techniques is only the first shelter."

This was the reason why Wu Pifu proposed to establish a shelter immediately. He looked at Xu Shilan in confusion, and Xu Shilan said frankly, "But it is very clear that the cultivation technique strength of the baseline reality 0.7 dream world far exceeds that of the baseline reality 0.9 dream world, right? If there were no other way, we would naturally have to establish our first shelter here, but don't we have you? You can take us to the baseline reality 0.7 dream world."

Wu Pifu was stunned for a moment, then immediately realized, and nodded with great joy, "Yes, yes, yes, you are right. We really shouldn't establish a shelter here."

Wu Pifu hadn't thought in this direction before, but now with Xu Shilan's reminder, he immediately understood what she meant.

The deeper you go into the dream world, the more dangerous it is, but at the same time, the extraordinary power is also more powerful.

And for the first shelter established by a maintainer, the random draw obtained, due to the screening factors of the main brain, can basically obtain a set of cultivation techniques from that world that fits you.

Other newcomers naturally have no other way; they either rely on random penetration to gamble with their lives, or they can only establish their first shelter in the baseline reality 0.9 dream world, just like Wu Pifu. And only with this shelter can they continue to penetrate downward in order.

But if there are senior veterans, and they have a shelter in a deeper dream world, they can take newcomers directly to a deeper dream world and establish their first shelter there. In this way, they can naturally obtain more powerful cultivation techniques.

Although the danger is also great, because the first shelter is in a deep dream world, the guarding mission will be life-threatening, especially since you need to guard immediately within a month of obtaining the cultivation technique. This is actually a double-edged sword.

"...However, since Brother Wu already has a shelter in this baseline reality 0.7 dream world, then we can also establish our first shelter in this world. We can fight side by side with you and support each other. Isn't this the best choice?" Xu Shilan said with a smile.

Wu Pifu and Ya Made naturally realized this as well.

"That's the way, that's the way!" Ya Made laughed and agreed repeatedly.

Wu Pifu immediately gave Xu Rongyu instructions on management matters, then took the two of them to the no-man's land in the wilderness. With a flash, the three returned to Gaia, and without stopping, they immediately lay down in the hibernation pods.

"Main brain, activate dream world shelter return, target..."

"Mud Buddha Yaksha dream world!"

(End of chapter)