My Apocalypse System Arrives 10 Years Early

Chapter 440: Chapter 293: Rock Fortress Fireworks, Night Raid

The humus layer squelched underfoot as the Vine Armor around Yaki Toto’s neck began to emit a faint green glow.

He swung his blade, hacking through the hanging aerial roots of a Strangler Fig. The moment his blade tore through, a dozen or so Fluorescent Poison Dart Frogs shot out from a hole in the tree.

”Get down!” Lei Xiaohui flicked her Flaming Soft Whip into the air, and a sky full of whip afterimages sent all the poison frogs flying. The intense heat burned them to charcoal, and they rained down with a soft rustle.

Zhang Youyou looked on with admiration. They both had a Fire Superpower, yet Lei Xiaohui could wield her whip with such incredible precision. She, on the other hand, couldn’t. All she knew was how to unleash a Sea of Fire, direct and unsubtle.

Little did she know, Lei Xiaohui was secretly admiring Zhang Youyou as well. When Lei Xiaohui was at Tier One, her firepower had been nowhere near as strong as Zhang Youyou’s was now.

And little did Lei Xiaohui know that Zhang Youyou had taken a shortcut: Dual Cultivation.

The Dual Cultivation method Li Xiang had given her was called ”Star Dome Concerto: Simurgh’s Nine Melodies.” It was a unique technique handpicked by his system, something unheard of in the outside world. Even in his past life, no one had ever practiced it.

He mulled it over. ’I should try it myself sometime.’

Lost in thought, Li Xiang suddenly put a hand on Lei Jiaming’s sniper rifle. ”Three o’clock. The fungal mat is receding.”

As soon as he spoke, the dark green mycelium receded like a tide, revealing a layer of rock that had been corroded into a honeycomb-like structure.

Twelve crystal spikes burst from Luo Feifei’s Electric Light Illusion Armor and stabbed into the ground. Frozen Qi spread through the fissures in the Earth Vein, freezing the main body of the mycelium solid as it tried to escape, turning it into an ice sculpture.

”It’s gotten dark. Let’s all get some rest.”

Night fell, making the jungle even more dangerous. They had been fighting and traveling for nearly a full day, covering over a hundred kilometers, and everyone was exhausted. Li Xiang had them stop, planning to rest for the night and set out again in the morning.

He used his Earth Superpower to clear an open space and, in just a few short minutes, erected a temporary fortress. The walls were reinforced with the Rock Armor Technique, making the structure incredibly sturdy and safe.

He used materials found on-site. Since the surface soil was contaminated, he brought up rock layers from deep underground to build with, so the material was quite clean.

Yaki Toto watched Paya’s miracle, his admiration mixed with wistful thoughts. ’If my tribe were still here,’ he thought, ’and if we were fortunate enough to have Paya’s help, everyone could sleep in safe stone houses without worrying about being carried off by wild beasts.’

Li Xiang’s ability was truly the best skill for setting up camp on the march. As long as there was soil and rock, finding shelter was never a problem.

With so many people, both men and women, Li Xiang felt the fortress was too small and the living conditions too poor. So, he expanded it, adding several more rooms. In the largest hall, he raised a large round table and nine Rock Armor stools. He also created stone beds in the bedrooms.

”Brother Xiang, don’t forget to make some bathrooms,” Yao Yao came over and whispered.

”Oh.” ’How careless of me,’ Li Xiang thought. ’How could I forget something so important?’ Extraordinary Beings still needed to use the restroom, after all. What goes in must come out. Only by reaching the Saint Tier, where one could subsist on the miraculous particles of the world, could a person achieve the legendary state of living without food.

He then built two restrooms on either side of the fortress—one for men and one for women.

”And a big bathtub,” said Yao Yao.

Li Xiang replied, ”A bathtub’s easy, but we don’t have that much water.” The river outside had turned black and murky—a ”Black Water River.” He had water stored in his system’s inventory, but it was all bottled purified water. It wasn’t that he was unwilling to use it for a bath, but pouring it out bottle by bottle would take forever. The alternative was to take out case after case and slash the bottles open with a dagger.

’Or,’ he considered, ’I could use my Extreme Speed of Mach 11 to fetch water from a clean river far away.’

Just as he was pondering how to solve the water problem, Luo Feifei pointed outside. ”It’s raining. I can gather the water vapor from the air and condense it into a stream.”

”With Goddess Feifei here, we have nothing to worry about! Quick, quick, let’s get that big bathtub!”

Yao Yao, Zhao Xueqing, and Lei Xiaohui were masters of flattery. Li Xiang had a feeling they had Luo Feifei wrapped around their little fingers.

So, Li Xiang built them a large bathtub.

”Bigger, bigger.”

In the end, it was almost the size of a small family swimming pool. ’Are you all planning to bathe together?’ Li Xiang wondered.

If a construction crew were to do all this, they wouldn’t have achieved such a ”luxury finish” even in ten days or half a month. But for Li Xiang, it was just a matter of minutes.

Back in the main hall, everyone gathered around to rest, eat, and drink.

But the food they had was all dry and bland. Li Xiang glanced at Yaki Toto, noticing how thin he was, clearly lacking fats and oils in his diet. ”Let’s stew a pot of meat,” he said.

With nothing to do for the night and everyone exhausted from the day, they all enthusiastically agreed.

As for safety, there was no need to worry. Li Xiang had his Earth Vein Perception Ability, and Luo Feifei had her Insight Superpower. She had also raised a misty field she called ”Yunmeng Marsh” to envelop the fortress. They would be alerted to any abnormalities.

”The ancient noble houses feasted from cauldrons to the chime of bells,” Li Xiang said. ”I don’t have a pot that big, so a cauldron it is.”

Li Xiang’s system inventory contained many refined ores. He had also extracted a large amount of Vanadium-Titanium Ore from beneath the North American Blanken Bat Cave. So, he ”performed another miracle” on the spot, using his Crystal Vein Armor superpower to conjure a large Titanium Alloy Cauldron. It was three-legged and two-handled, shimmering with a silver light.

Everyone gasped in amazement, especially Yaki Toto, whose reverence for this Paya of his reached new heights.

Li Xiang took out about fifty-five pounds of beef brisket—the kind with a good mix of fat and lean meat. He cut it into large chunks with his dagger, tossed them into the cauldron, and took out several cases of purified water to cover the beef. Then he brought out a large pile of wood, chopped it into logs, and stuffed them under the cauldron.

Without needing to be told, Lei Xiaohui and Zhang Youyou rushed to light the fire. Li Xiang opened a chimney in the fortress’s roof, and Xu Xuan used his Wind Superpower to funnel the smoke outside.

The tableware was also made of titanium alloy: bowls, chopsticks, soup spoons, a large ladle for the chef...

Smoke curled into the air. Once the water came to a rolling boil, Li Xiang skimmed the scum off the top, sprinkled in a packet of fine white salt, added some spices, light soy sauce, and a few bottles of beer, then let it continue to stew over a high flame.

Worried the fire wasn’t hot enough and that it would take too long to cook, Lei Xiaohui and Zhang Youyou took turns using their Fire Superpowers to add more heat from below.

”Should I add tomatoes or potatoes?” Li Xiang’s inventory wasn’t short on vegetables either.

”Tomatoes! Tomatoes are delicious.”

”Tomatoes are sweet and sour, way more flavorful than potatoes.”

Following everyone’s suggestion, Li Xiang took out twenty or thirty large tomatoes. Luo Feifei condensed water vapor from the air to wash them, while Yao Yao and Zhao Xueqing helped cut them into small pieces with their daggers and sprinkled them evenly into the cauldron.

Lei Xiaohui and Zhang Youyou took turns applying their fire. Their heat was so intense that in less than half an hour, the beef was stewed to fall-apart tenderness. A thick tomato sauce coated the amber-colored brisket as it bubbled in the Titanium Alloy Cauldron. The fats and fruit acids burst into amber bubbles under the high heat, releasing an intoxicating aroma.

The method may have been simple and crude, but you couldn’t go wrong with such high-quality ingredients.

Yaki Toto’s mouth watered as he stared at the tempting pot of food, and he had to swallow hard several times.

Li Xiang picked up a small piece with his chopsticks and tasted it. The scarlet-gold tomato juice had seeped into the very grain of the brisket, and every fiber was saturated with a concentrated sweet and savory flavor. It was as soft and tender as melted maple syrup in his mouth, yet left behind the springy resilience of the tendon between his teeth.

”Dig in, everyone!” Li Xiang personally ladled a large bowl of beef stew for each person. He gave Yaki Toto several extra fatty pieces and urged everyone to start eating.

”Thanks, Brother Xiang.”

”Thanks, Boss.”

”Thank you, Paya.”

It had to be said, after such a long and tiring day, eating a pot of tomato beef brisket like this in the middle of a dangerous rainforest was pure bliss.

Yaki Toto had never eaten such delicious Chinese food in his life; it was so good he could have bitten his own tongue off.

For a time, the fortress was filled with cheerful chatter and laughter.

Yaki Toto didn’t understand Chinese, so he couldn’t follow the conversation, but that didn’t stop him from joining in with a good-natured, hearty laugh.

The nine of them finished the entire cauldron of beef stew, nearly fifty-five pounds of brisket. Of course, the main consumers were Li Xiang, Lei Jiaming, Yaki Toto, and Xu Xuan. The girls all ate relatively little.

After they finished eating, all the bowls, chopsticks, and spoons were placed back in the cauldron. Luo Feifei condensed water vapor from the air into a stream, using it to wash all the cookware and tableware. Finally, she manipulated the dirty water, sending it up through the chimney and out into the rainforest.

As for the clean cookware and tableware, Li Xiang didn’t intend to take them back. ’I’ll just leave them here,’ he decided after a moment’s thought.

They wouldn’t dismantle the fortress when they left, either. They would leave it for some future fateful traveler to inhabit.

In fact, in the future, a tribe of local natives would indeed occupy this place and turn it into their base.

The girls went off, laughing and giggling, to take their bath. With Lei Xiaohui and Zhang Youyou there, hot water wasn’t an issue. The men remained in the main hall, chatting about anything and everything, while Li Xiang took the opportunity to give them some pointers on their Cultivation.

Yaki Toto had made great progress, but since he had only just broken through, his Realm wasn’t yet stable. There was much he didn’t understand, and he lacked a great deal of knowledge about Cultivation, so Li Xiang focused his guidance on him.

The ”Old Shaman” was wearing the Vine Armor he had created himself, which naturally couldn’t compare in defense to Li Xiang’s Obsidian Battle Armor. So, Li Xiang took a spare Tier Five Obsidian Battle Armor—just an ordinary model—from his inventory and tossed it to Yaki Toto.

To Li Xiang, it was worthless and not particularly useful, but to Yaki Toto, it was an incredibly precious treasure.

One had to understand that Extraordinary Battle Armor was rare, even more valuable than an Extraordinary Weapon of the same tier. In his past life, even powerful Eighth and Ninth Tier Extraordinary Beings found it extremely difficult to get their hands on a Tier Five set of battle armor.

Yet now, Li Xiang was just giving one away.

”Thank you, Paya.” Yaki Toto knelt on one knee, bowing to Li Xiang.

Li Xiang motioned for him to rise, telling him there was no need to kneel at the drop of a hat. He then taught him how to absorb Extraordinary Items into his Spiritual Power vortex to nurture them, and how to retrieve them quickly.

Yaki Toto was thrilled to receive the Spirit Armor. He kept putting it on and taking it off, feeling years younger.

In truth, he was only thirty-six years old. It was just that the harsh environment and the ravages of time had carved too many wrinkles into his face. Now that he was an Extraordinary Being, as his Cultivation progressed, he would sooner or later return to his original healthy, smooth complexion.

Li Xiang sat up straight.

”What is it, Brother Xiang?”

Li Xiang said, ”Something big is coming. It’s still far, about ten or twenty kilometers away.”

The massive creature was moving along the ground, sometimes burrowing into the sludge, which was why Li Xiang’s Earth Vein Perception Ability was able to detect it.

A moment later, Luo Feifei and the other girls emerged, fully armored. They had been halfway through their bath when Luo Feifei detected the enemy, so they had all hastily donned their Battle Armor and prepared for a fight.

Because they were in such a hurry, none of the girls had time to put on any underwear. That’s right—they were naked inside their armor.

”Can’t even get a moment’s rest,” Li Xiang sighed, leading everyone outside.

If it were something small, even a Jaguar, the fortress was sturdy enough to hold it off. But the massive creature outside was a gargantuan King of Anacondas, two hundred meters long with a body as thick as a train.

Seven hundred meters away, the humus layer exploded. The never-before-seen King of Anacondas burst from the earth, hundreds of human arm bones protruding from between its rotting scales. These bony hands grabbed onto the branches of Strangler Figs for leverage, causing the entire section of rainforest to tilt.

”Demon!” Yaki Toto roared.