Whoos.h.!.+

I appeared in the adventurer"s inn in Sky City. I immediately went to repair equipment and replenish my potions and magic consumables. In fact, I was way too lazy to make my own Magic Consumables nowadays. My NPC storekeeper, White Fox, had already copied my Rank 10 Cooking skill, so she would purchase cooking material and produce large amounts of Rank 7, Rank 8, and Rank 9 Magic Consumables every day. My shop had become a well-known Magic Consumable vendor, and our prices were stable and fair. Furthermore, whenever someone bought Magic Consumables from my shop, that beautiful NPC would bow toward them and say "Thank you for your patronage”. At that time, they would be able to peek at this beauty"s snowy white peaks from the gap beneath her collar. As a result, we soon had many happy repeat customers.

"Is there anything I can do for you, master?" White Fox asked as she looked at me.

I stared at her collar before finally saying, "Nope, I"ll be leaving first…"

……

I checked my friend list and saw that Lin Yixin was still online. I sent her a message:

"Yiyi, has your territory refreshed yet?"

"Yeah!" Lin Yixin couldn"t disguise the delight in her voice. She laughed and said, "I"m in my territory right now, looking at the construction interface. Oh, but I"m in a pickle right now! Even though there aren"t many resource monsters around my territory, I don"t even have the manpower to transport these resources back anyway! This system is being far too miserly with me! How could they only give me 10 Rank 1 Elven a.s.sa.s.sins!? Their transport capacity is so lousy! If I have to rely on them, I"ll never be able to develop my city!"

I chuckled: "Didn"t you go find that girl from Blazing Hot Lips, Stranger of Three Lifetimes? That girl is really lovable. If she happens to have any tools that an elven town can use, she"ll definitely sell it to you…"

Lin Yixin"s voice grew a bit pained: "I already spoke to Stranger. She said that she"s so poor right now that she can barely keep the gas on. She had troop cards, but they were all for barbarian towns. She didn"t have a single elven troop card, and she had used all of her Resource Bags too. Uhm… Little Cheat, do you have anything good for me?"

I sent her another message: "That"s hard to say. I need to go check my city"s warehouses first. If I have anything for you, I"ll pay you a visit! There isn"t anyone else in your territory right now, yes?"

"Yeah, it"s only me!"

"Alright, go do what you need to do first!"

"Okay!"

……

I pulled up the territory interface and instantly teleported myself to Dark Moon City. I transformed into a beam of light and appeared in the middle of our city. Dark Moon City had become a Rank 3 Undead Castle, so the walls had transformed into pitch-black walls of bone. Its fearsome appearance alone told me that it had gotten a lot st.u.r.dier. Furthermore, the tenacity, defense, and attack of the arrow towers around the city had also increased. We could also finally start ma.s.s-producing Rank 3 troops.

However, I had absolutely zero interest in them. These Specters had the h.e.l.lish Wail ability, which could cure its comrades, but Dark Moon City only had a couple hundred undead troops. Producing Specters wouldn"t move the needle for us. It would be better to save resources and continue ranking up the castle. Once it hit Rank 6, we could start ma.s.s-producing Dark Knights, and that was the true path to domination!

Of course, the strongest troops a territory could produce were its Rank 10 troops. However, raising the rank of a territory was a slow and painful task, and I didn"t know when Dark Moon City would become a Rank 10 castle.

Oh well, easy does it, Dark Moon City was already the first player territory to hit Rank 3. Moreover, the production output of Dark Moon City was way higher than Candlelight Shadow"s barbarian city. Our superiority was clear.

I went to find the citylord of Dark Moon City, Dark Knight Udal. He strode up to me and handed me yesterday"s daily revenue report for Dark Moon City.

[City Income]

Teleportation Formation: 1742892 gold

Repair Fees: 1102931 gold

Potion Sales: 749209 gold

[City Expenditure]

Defense Upkeep: 1000000 gold

City Tax: 1500000 gold

[Total Revenue] = 1095032 gold

……

Ugh, I finally understood what it meant to be buried under taxes!

We worked so hard to conquer this territory, and I worked even harder to raise Dark Moon City to Rank 3! The city was filled with players who teleported here, shopped here, and repaired their items here, but we only earned 3.5 million gold from them. To make matters worse, we were taxed 1.5 million gold coins right off the bat!

Darn it, and we knew exactly where these taxes would go to, those meaningless things...

However, I was broadminded enough to forgive the developers. I mean, earning 1.1 million gold a day was pretty d.a.m.n good. Half of it went straight to the guild coffers, and we"d use this money to pay the salaries of our outstanding professional players. They could also exchange their guild contribution points for RMB. I used another portion of those earnings as resources for buying more city defenses and upgrading the castle itself. After that, I was left with about four hundred thousand gold coins every day, and all of this went to the Frost Cloud workshop. For now, all of this cash was kept inside my card. They put me in charge of this city, so those were the breaks. The rest of the girls didn"t really know how to develop a city anyway, so I ended up reaping all the benefits.

……

I tasked the city to produce more Dark Insects before I ordered Udal to take his troop of Dark Knights and sweep the surrounding areas free of resource monsters. I only needed to personally deal with these resource monsters if there was a boss among them. If that wasn"t the case, I"d be slowly dying of boredom. It was no fun being stuck in one area.

I took out four 5000x4 Resource Bags and took a look at the cards I had stored. There were two that Lin Yixin could use:

Beautiful Dryad x100: Rank 7 Elf Castle unit, Attack★★★★★★★, Defense★★★★★★, Transport Capacity: 700.

Minotaur Guard x200: Rank 4 Elf Castle unit, Attack★★★★, Defense★★★★★, Transport Capacity: 400.

……

Hmm, I had 300 units altogether. These two cards were dropped from boss resource monsters, and they had been rotting in the warehouse all this while. Luckily, Lin Yixin had managed to get an Elf Castle in the end, so I hadn"t kept these two cards for nothing!

Tsk tsk, these cards were really quite awesome, especially the "Minotaur Guard x200" card. I had gotten that from a Dark Gold chest. If I pa.s.sed these cards to Lin Yixin, I believed that her territory would be able to catch up to Candle Dragon City and Red Lip Nation even sooner.

I put these two cards and four Resource Bags into my inventory and left the city, sprinting toward the huge orange dot on my minimap. That was Lin Yixin"s new territory and she had christened it Cathaya City. It looks like this territory had followed the tradition of Lin Yixin"s naming habits.

After running for half an hour, I reached the borders of Cathaya City. I was surprised to see a delicate and enchantingly beautiful warrior staring down a bunch of goblins in the distance. That couldn"t be anyone else but Lin Yixin!

Thud!

Icicles hurtled through the air as Lin Yixin"s pet, the Ice Fox, helped to attack the resource monsters. A bunch of short Elven a.s.sa.s.sins were standing about 100 yards away from Lin Yixin. As the Rank 1 units from the Elf Castle, it was clear that these small elves were incredibly weak. But Lin Yixin was being way too overprotective right now! Her motherly approach to handling her guild could really drive me crazy!

I rushed forward and used a Thousand Ice Slash to help Lin Yixin bring the battle to a close.

"Ah, you"re here…"

Lin Yixin wiped away the sweat that beaded her face. As she looked at the resource piles which definitely didn"t number over 500 units, she smiled in satisfaction as she said, "This is great, I got a bunch of resources again~~"

I turned my nose up at her and said, "You useless beauty…"

"What the h.e.l.l, what are you trying to say huh…" Lin Yixin replied with an annoyed laugh. "Little Cheat, what good things did you bring for me?"

"I"ll say this first. I brought several things, and they"re so good that it"ll drive you crazy. But you"ll have to promise me two things before I give them to you. One, you aren"t allowed to go crazy. Two, you need to think of how you"re going to repay me…"

"Okay, okay, show me the goods first and then we"ll talk!"

"d.a.m.n. Why are you acting like some mountain bandit? You even want to test the goods first, huh…"

Since I knew that I wouldn"t be able to change Lin Yixin"s mind, I took out the Resource Bags from my inventory and pa.s.sed them to her. The beautiful girl"s sparkling eyes were immediately filled with shock and joy when she saw what I had pa.s.sed her. Her tiny mouth dropped open and she gasped, "Resource Bag… with 5000 of each resource in it. And there are even four of them. Ooooh… What am I going to do…"

I grinned as I patted her shoulder and said, "Yiyi, look at how much I love you. I"m even willing to give these hard-earned Resource Bags that I had been saving to you. Don"t you think you should give your heart to me…"

Lin Yixin glared at me with bloodshot eyes. "You think you can ask for my heart with just four Resource Bags? Your valuation of me is far too low, isn"t it?"

My grin grew even wider as I fished out another two items from my inventory. In the next instant, two elven troop cards were floating in front of Lin Yixin. Lin Yixin immediately froze in place, an indescribably complex look appearing in her eyes.

She finally spread out her arms to hug me as she pecked me on the cheek. She had actually chosen to give me a kiss this time. This was the first time this had happened. After she had given me that little kiss, she stared at me with eyes full of worry. She asked, "Lu Chen, if you show such favoritism toward me and give me all of the good things you got from your territory, won"t Sister He Yi give you a good beating if she finds out…"

I nearly vomited blood. "Sister Yi isn"t that violent. Do you think that everyone is like you…"

Lin Yixin was feeling very embarra.s.sed right now. She glanced down at the two cards in her hand and said, "These troops are way too precious for me in my current situation. Oh what do I do? This isn"t something that can be resolved with just one or two meals…"

I patted her on the shoulder and said, "Alright, alright. Hurry up and use the cards and go back to your city and start making more production units. Boost your territory"s production output first. I"m counting on you to make Cathaya City into Dark Moon City"s reliable ally. We"re going to conquer everything under heaven, right?"

"Mn!"

Lin Yixin nodded before she used both cards. Soon, 100 Dryads and 200 Minotaur Guards appeared behind her. The Dryads were a sort of mutant plant who were all female. They looked like young girls from the waist up, but they looked like trees from the waist down, so they looked a little grotesque. If not for the fact that they were 34Ds, I would find it quite hard to look at them.

After that, I turned my eyes from the Dryads" chests to Lin Yixin"s chest before I audibly swallowed a mouth of saliva.

Lin Yixin glared at me before hitting me with her tiny fist. Her entire face was starting to turn red and she shouted, "What are you comparing right now, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!?"

I replied, "Nothing…"

Lin Yixin"s face had now turned bright red as she looked at me expectantly. "So what were the results of your comparison?"

"Yiyi, you don"t lose to those 34Ds one bit…"

"Hmph!"

There were also two hundred Minotaur Guards in her entourage and they all looked like wild beasts. As a result, Lin Yixin"s troops were temporarily composed of beauties and beasts.

As she ordered her high-rank troops to transport all of the resources she had just earned home, Lin Yixin invited me to pay a visit to her Cathaya City. As I looked it over, I couldn"t help but blurt out, "It looks like the Great Northern Wilderness! An impoverished, barren Rank 1 territory where you can"t even find chicken s.h.i.+t…"

"What the h.e.l.l!"

Lin Yixin was struck dumb by my words. She glared at me so fiercely that I would be reduced to puddles if her eyes could kill. However, those beautiful eyes might be able to lure men to their deaths, but they couldn"t smite me where I stood. Hah!