I woke up early in the morning thanks to the ringing of my phone. I swiped and saw that it was Lin Yixin’s number. It was weird that she would call me at 7 am.

“Hello? Yiyi, what’s up?”

“Hmph, you’re actually asking what’s up…” She was huffing with rage. “What’s up with the picture on the forums?”

“Fuck…” I was a bit speechless. “That doesn’t have anything to do with me, okay? It’s not like I did it on purpose. Besides, it didn’t benefit me in any way either. When I came back to the workshop, I even had to give a half-an-hour-long explanation…”

Lin Yixin couldn’t resist a giggle. “Did Sister He Yi slap you into a wall so hard that you couldn’t even crawl out of it?”

I bet I looked like an emoji with black lines going down its face. “Fuck, she’s not that savage.”

“Hoho.” Lin Yixin let out a provocative laugh. “This is going to be troublesome now. I haven’t even woken up and the Eternal Moon Corporation's Planning Department called me. They asked why this photo was there and said that since I was the spokesperson for Heavenblessed’s China server, I shouldn’t let these kinds of photos leak out…”

“They really are meddlesome. What’d you say in response?”

“I just hung up on them…”

“...”

“Well, since the Eternal Moon Corporation doesn’t want your private life to be exposed, let’s just find a more secretive place next time…”

“Next time?”

Lin Yixin was probably angry out of her mind. She continued with a voice full of killing intent. “Forget about it! Hmph, hmph!”

“Fine. Wanna have dinner together?”

“Where? I heard that a brand new restaurant opened close by!” she said excitedly.

Me: “...”

……

I now thoroughly understood what it meant when people said “when two foodies come together, the entire world brims with happiness”. I totally get it!

Lin Yixin urged me to get out of bed to manage the territory. I noticed that the territory maintenance should be about done so I got up and washed up. I went out to buy breakfast and placed it on the table when I got back. The workshop’s girls should still be sleeping at this time. I was originally going to wake them up but when I opened He Yi’s door, I saw that she was hugging her pillow, sleeping sweetly bathed in sunlight. She was curled up like a lazy little cat so I didn’t have the heart to wake her up. I silently closed the door and returned to my room. Time to get to work!

Connected to server, logging in!

Swhoosh!

Inside Sky City, I went to repair my equipment, then replenish my pot supply. After I finished the basics, I opened the guild territory system. I saw an “Undead City 001” option there. That was our new territory!

As the guild’s vice leader and the territory’s administrator, one of my privileges was immediate teleportation to my territory. It only required 10 seconds of channel time before I was teleported into the city.

Whoosh!

I turned into countless specks of starry light and flew toward the territory. In the next second, I was inside the Undead Castle. This place had already been refreshed once but it still looked the same. The city walls were still surrounded by fences. It was an extremely simple and crude set-up. Its defenses were practically non-existent, with the exception of the archer tower’s respawned NPC archers.

At the moment, there wasn’t a single person in sight. Everyone had left this map and no one would come here this early in the morning. This Rank 1 guild territory hadn’t opened its teleportation formation yet so unless someone was bored out of their mind and willing to waste two hours to get here, I doubt anyone would bother coming here.

……

I walked in the city’s great hall and discovered that it was completely empty. There was only a tall armored general standing there. The moment I came in, this NPC immediately got on one knee and said in a deep voice, “Dark Knight Udal greets my lord! I am the city lord appointed by this territory and I will be assisting my lord in its administration and promotion!”

Alright then, this guy is like a chief administrator of this territory. He didn’t look like one though. He wasn’t a fatty, but an actual tough undead knight. Also, a Level 135 shadow-rank NPC, not bad!

I nodded, then brought up the territory administration interface. It was quite barren. The territory only had a potion shop, a smithy, and other basic buildings. There wasn’t a single structure unique to this undead city.

“My lord!” the dark knight clamored. “Dark Insects are the foundation workers of Undead Castle. They are the ones who construct the buildings. A Nest of Corruption is required in order to produce Dark Insects. I recommend that you build a Nest of Corruption first.”

“Mn.”

I looked at my choices and there really was a Nest of Corruption for one of my options—

Nest of Corruption: Basic structure. Produces Dark Insects. Resource Requirement: 2000 Gold, 2000 Wood, 2000 Stone, 2000 Crystal. Time Required: 10 minutes.

……

I checked the city’s current resources. It only had 5000 of each four basic resources. It didn’t seem to have that many resources on hand.

Whatever. I selected Nest of Corruption and pressed Construct!

A rotting expanse of land immediately appeared within the territory. A pitch-black nest was slowly wriggling into existence. It was pretty scary. It was fortunate that I didn’t tell the workshop girls to come over yet. They wouldn’t be able to stomach their lunch otherwise.

Exactly 10 minutes later, the Nest of Corruption was finished!

The only selection I saw for the Nest of Corruption was Dark Insect. Each Dark Insect required 100 of every basic resource so I recruited 10 of them. These bugs were also the production force of the city. The more Dark Insects there were, the greater the city’s productivity!

Ding~!

System Notice: Congratulations, you have recruited “Dark Insect” x10. As the first territory to have 10 Dark Insects, you have obtained the reward: “Skeletal Spearman” x20!

……

Skeletal Spearmen?

I was startled. Twenty smelly Skeletal Spearmen appeared within the territory. They were all cyan skeletons holding corroded iron spears. They were considered to be long-range units and were Undead Castle’s Rank 1 troops. A while later, I realized that the productivity of the territory’s early stages would be extremely low. Resources would have to be obtained from fighting wild monsters but players couldn’t carry those resources. Only the territory’s own troops had that ability!

Skeletal Spearman: Attack★, Defense★, Transport Capacity: 100.

……

This meant that each Skeletal Spearman could only carry 100 units of resources home. The system gave me 20 Skeletal Spearmen, which meant that I could bring home 2000 units at a time. It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t little either.

The building that produced troops in the undead city was the Nest of Graves. It required 4000 of each resource to construct. I, myself, was powerless at the moment, so it was obvious how important these 20 Skeletal Spearmen were. If not for these Skeletal Spearmen, I’d have to rely on the city’s own slow productivity to construct the Nest of Graves. That alone would take three days.

……

I happily assigned the 20 Skeletal Spearmen to go on a campaign and made Dark Knight Udal lead the expedition!

“My lord!” Dark Knight Udal rumbled. “A band of Fallen Devils carrying goods has appeared southwest of the city. Let’s go destroy them!”

I opened the world map and really did find a blood-red spot there. The mark on the map was the coordinates of those Fallen Devils.

I brought along a group of little brothers and headed out to participate in a slaughterfest. A bunch of chattering red-skinned little imps carrying backpacks appeared at the edge of the forest. The way they dashed about seemed like they were high on drugs or something.

I wasn’t willing to lose a single Skeletal Spearman so I lead the attack myself. There were 10 Fallen Devils total and they were all Level 125 shadow-rank mobs that weren’t even a threat to me. I ran into their party and unleashed a Martial God–empowered War Crush!

Boom!

Power surged and a large chunk of the Fallen Devils’ HPs instantly vaporized. I neatly drew all their aggro and the faraway Udal commanded the 20 Skeletal Spearmen to attack. Although the damage they dealt wasn’t amazing, it was still passable in my books.

The Heaven-stealing Sword danced about wildly, reaping the lives of these Fallen Devils. I was glad that I took charge of this myself. If I allowed the Skeletal Spearmen to advance first, at least 5 to 10 of them would’ve died. I couldn’t handle that kind of loss, especially since the territory was at the early stages of development. I absolutely could not lose my precious troops in vain.

In the blink of an eye, the Fallen Devils were all dead on the ground. These territory-type mobs didn’t drop any equipment or magic stones. Instead, each of them carried about 1000 units of resources, enough to keep my Skeletal Spearmen busy for a long time.

I summoned the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf to escort my transport team. I had to protect these Skeletal Spearmen. I couldn’t rule out any surprise attacks from the players of Hegemon Palace, Flower Room, and the like here. My heart would ache if they killed a few of my Skeletal Spearmen.

……

We had to transport the resources dropped by the Fallen Devils five times before we finally brought them all back to the territory. This, plus the territory’s own production allowed me to construct the next building—

Nest of Graves: Basic structure. Produces undead-type units. Resource Requirement: 4000 Gold, 4000 Wood, 4000 Stone, 4000 Crystal. Time Required: 30 minutes.

……

This building took 30 minutes to construct. Let’s go loot more monsters with my little skeleton brothers then!

In that half an hour time, the few red dots around the territory were cleared off the map. We killed two Scavenger Devils and a group of Lesser Devils which gave us a bit more than 5000 units of each resource.

I suddenly heard a ding. The Rank 1 Nest of Graves was finished!

I opened the building details and saw that it could only produce one kind of troop—

Skeletal Spearman: Attack★, Defense★, Transport Capacity 100. Resource Requirement: 200 Gold, 200 Wood, 200 Stone, 200 Crystal. Time Required: 150 seconds.

……

I selected 25 Skeletal Spearmen. Each Skeletal Spearman took 2.5 minutes to produce. Fine, I’ll take it slow!

I looked at the map and suddenly saw a huge red dot appear. The territory system then sent out a warning. “A wave of powerful enemies is approaching.”

Finally some fun!