Poison God's Heritage

"And that is rather normal, the price of that thing is far higher than anything they'll have left after the corpse had attacked their base. Only Du Shen had enough points from clearing that wave to actually buy the item. Not to mention, it would take a good foresight to even notice something like that in the seemingly infinite wares of the merchant.

Du Shen already noticed it and figured out that he could take control of a powerful corpse," the commentator said.

"Surely this won't come and bite him back in the ass," The commentator said.

"You mean that the presence of that corpse is further increasing the value of his base," Eccentric Long said.

"Indeed, with the corpse as an ally though he'll find it easy to go through the rest of the stages, it will still be annoying if he gets to face another invader wave, what would you do if you were forced to face against… let's say, at least three more of those corpses?"

"I would probably panic, but for Du Shen, he had already made plans, you can see it yourself, he has a landmine full of those explosions that rendered the first corpse useless, but still, we can only watch and see," Eccentric Long explained.

"Right, then tell me, do you notice anything different in the bases of cultivators?" the commentator asked.

Eccentric Long looked and then his eyes widened, "That is very sneaky… that would be catastrophic for Du Shen if he doesn't notice soon," Eccentric Long said.

"Exactly, since he is the only one with that layout, he will definitely be overwhelmed in no time, as for the rest of the cultivators, even if they didn't notice, they should still be fine since most of their defenses are around their base," the commentator said.

"Oh, I guess he took note, look at him panicking," Xiao Du said as he smiled.

***

"Bloody fucking hell! Are you kidding me?!" I cursed as I noticed the absurdity of the situation I'm in.

This was too sudden, too sneaky in fact, this wouldn't have caught my eyes if I were focused on building shit. But thankfully, I looked away when I wanted to rest my eyes and noticed this absurd change to the terrain.

The entire terrain I was in, spread wider and longer.

This wouldn't have been an issue for everyone who was building around their main base. But for me, this might actually be the end.

I had presumed that the waves will only emerge from the portal up ahead. However, now with the field growing to the shape of a massive square instead of a rectangle with the base in the center. This is the most obvious tell that more gates will start appearing and spawning monsters.

With only one fortress in the path of the first gate, my base which has practically no defenses is weak to invasion.

"Oi, this wasn't in the rules!" I told the merchant, who simply shrugged, "I'm merely a merchant."

"Bullshit, I already know that you're the Cryptic Sun," I said.

The merchant's eyes rose up, then a wide smile appeared on his face, "How did you find out?" he asked.

"The hell you mean how did I find you, you're literally exuding no Qi whatsoever, not a smidgen of Qi in your breath, way of talking or even when you were making upgrades and creating the turrets, all of it was without any effort. Hell, not even my poison affected you when it is heavily premating the atmosphere,"

"That's still not enough to prove that I'm the Cryptic Sun," he said.

"Well, your attitude does that in your stead, all those oldies have the same air about them, believe me, I know, I met five of the already, Also, there is no way anyone can split himself hundreds of millions of times over every area of the trial without at least being at your level," I said.

"Well, you're the first to figure that out, everyone else is treating my incarnations as a slave. Anyway, why do you think I'm being unfair?" he said.

"I never said you were being unfair, just this is bullshit, how much time do I have left?" I asked.

"Twenty three hours and some change," he replied.

I grit my teeth, there was no way for me to rebuild three more fortresses in that time. Since I'll need one in each of the four cardinal directions.

"What is the total cost of everything I have built right now?"

The Cryptic Sun answered, "a hundred and seventy-nine thousand points," he said.

"Damn…" I cursed.

The Cryptic Sun smiled as he said, "I know what you're thinking, but I'm not going to copy and paste your buildings for you, a part of the challenge is to build it yourself, all I can do is repair them and place materials," he said.

"It's fine I don't even have the cost to make three fortresses anyway…" I thought for a moment then decided on something a bit drastic.

Since I can't rebuild the fortresses in time, I'll have to at least put some defenses in case more gates were to show up.

I flew above the main base and began looking around it. With a bird view, I was able to make an estimate of where the gates will appear, and where the monsters will come. So I began by planting turrets along the presumed path.

After setting up a dozen or so turrets and upgraded my main base, I had to reluctantly upgrade the turrets using points and not my own hands.

This made the merchant smile as I had finally chosen the upgrade ability which was incredibly costly to upgrade about thirty six turrets.

My points tanked down like an anvil in water. But I still had enough to buy more materials to create more cannons and upgrade the base once more.