Endless Winter: My Camp Infinite Upgrades

Chapter 463 The Golden Bone Forge: Reasons for Slow Progress, The Army's Departure and Arrival
The Zhenyuan camp has a troop strength of over 200,000.

The strongest force, the 50,000 Silver Scale Army, all had a strength of over 20 manes; the 150,000 Garrison Guards had a strength of over 10 manes.

With over 200,000 troops at the Cold-Resistant level, plus 148 at the Manifestation-level, Cai Qiu, a Tribulation-Realm cultivator, couldn't possibly ignore this place, so they were included as well.

Such a powerful force, and this is all the progress they've made in just two years?
The total area of ​​the Blood Miasma Plain is over 7500 square kilometers. What does 400 square kilometers mean? It's just over half a percent, less than six percent.

Before the first year of Xia Hongyuan's reign, he had also led teams to explore unfamiliar areas. For example, the development of Hongmuling was initially under his personal responsibility.

To be precise, the efficiency with which the Great Xia Dynasty developed Hongmuling at that time was comparable to that of Caiqiu today.

The problem was that at that time he was only at the Earth-Digging Realm, and the Great Xia was only a handful of people. If just two mid-level cold beasts came, they would have to run away. The reason why the mining efficiency was so low was simply because the area was weak.

If Cai Qiu had possessed similar strength back then, he probably could have easily swept through the entire Hongmuling area.

Several Tribulation Realm experts, hundreds of Manifestation Realm experts, and an army of 200,000 Cold Resistance Realm experts—this has absolutely nothing to do with being weak. Even if we take a step back and assume that the 200,000 soldiers are fully deployed, even if each person occupies only five square meters, just standing there without moving would still create a 1 square kilometer.

Two years, over 400 square kilometers—this description gives you an idea of ​​just how outrageous the pace of development is.

It's absolutely impossible that Cai Qiu invested too little or was too weak. The only explanation is that the Blood Miasma Plains is too dangerous, and the difficulty for humans to explore and develop it is far beyond the comprehension of normal people.

Just how dangerous must it be for Cai Qiu to have such difficulty moving forward?
On the second day of the eleventh month of the 297th year of the Caiqiu calendar.

Xia Hong, who had been resting in the main building of the military camp for a day, finally received a notification from Cai Yunlan at nightfall.

The army is about to set off!

Whoosh whoosh…

Red snow filled the sky, and the cold wind howled.

On the south side of the Zhenyuan camp, in the very center of the army that was about to set off, there was a giant furnace with a diameter of ten meters and a height of about twenty meters.

The furnace radiated a dazzling golden light, which even overshadowed the raging flames more than ten meters high at its base. Not to mention the 100,000 soldiers who were about to set off, the entire Zhenyuan camp was illuminated by the golden light emanating from the furnace.

Below the furnace is a cube-shaped coal furnace, each five meters long, wide, and high. Except for the side on top where the furnace is mounted, the rest is a semi-enclosed design. Only on the four horizontal sides, there is a circular filling port about half a meter in diameter. Thousands of shirtless laborers stand guard on the side, occasionally throwing in black, shiny, obviously purified and compressed high-calorie coal blocks.
Below the coal stove, there are twenty giant silver wheels, each two meters in diameter, clearly a means to ensure its smooth movement; as for its power source, it is the silver chains that bind the coal stove to all four sides.
The four chains were all over one meter in diameter and about one hundred meters long. After extending outwards, each end was connected to thousands of smaller silver chains. Finally, the chains fell into the hands of tens of thousands of soldiers, who were the true power source of the entire giant furnace.

Below, the coal furnace was ablaze with flames, the flames reaching over ten meters high and almost covering half of the furnace. Above the furnace, towering, silvery-white smoke was billowing out continuously. The already sparse blood-red miasma around them was becoming increasingly lighter in color under the influence of the smoke, indicating that its concentration was being diluted.

"Move out, advance!"

"Hey...whoosh...hey...whoosh..."

At the forefront of the army, Fan Qinghu gave the order, and 20,000 garrison soldiers, holding onto iron chains, roared in unison. With everyone working together, the huge furnace slowly started moving southward.

The remaining 80,000 soldiers consisted of 50,000 Silver Scale Army soldiers and 30,000 Garrison Guard soldiers. They were evenly divided into four formations, surrounding the furnace on all four sides, with an average of 20,000 soldiers in each direction, slowly advancing step by step in accordance with the furnace.

"This furnace, is it made entirely of the golden bones of a cold beast?"

Above the army, a hundred powerful cultivators at the Xianyang level stood in mid-air. Xia Hong stood in the front of the crowd, looking down at the golden furnace below. Suppressing his inner shock, he calmly turned to Cai Yunlan beside him and asked.

From the moment they left the main building of the military camp, Cai Yunlan had been paying close attention to Xia Hong's expression. Seeing that he hadn't shown any surprise at all, Cai Yunlan shook his head inwardly, secretly blaming Fan Qinghu's probing yesterday for being somewhat unnecessary.

Hearing Xia Hong's question, he nodded and said, "Brother Hong has a good eye. Silver is not like ordinary fuel. It is impossible to melt it to the point of vaporization with ordinary materials. This giant furnace, apart from the twenty giant wheels at the bottom and the four chains of the coal furnace, is made of silver of ten thousand folds. All the rest of the parts are made of beast king-level gold bones."

Leaving aside silver for now, Brother Hong should know that golden bones are the main ingredient for refining Bone-Transforming Pills and many other important elixirs, and are extremely precious. In order to make this golden bone furnace, Cai Qiu spent nine years and invested countless manpower and resources..."

The number is beyond countless!
Xia Hong stared at the Golden Bone Furnace on the ground, his surface calm and still, but his heart was in turmoil.

Even without actually fighting, he could roughly deduce from the speed at which the 20,000 garrison troops below advanced that the amount of silver they had consumed was at least over 10 billion catties.

As for the Beast King-level Golden Bones, which are even more precious than silver, the quantity was astonishing. He couldn't tell exactly how many were used, because he had never seen so many Golden Bones before.

As is well known, the stronger a cold beast is, the smaller its size will be. The skeleton of a normal beast king is at most one meter long, or even less.

The furnace in front of us is over twenty meters tall, and its volume is even more impressive.

The crucial point is that such a large furnace was used to melt silver...

This is the true essence of the regional military governors!
Let alone the Great Xia Dynasty, even if all the treasuries of the nine towns on the southern slope were emptied, they probably still wouldn't be able to afford even a base for this furnace.

Suppressing his shock, Xia Hong continued to ask, "Although this Golden Bone Furnace can dispel miasma and ward off monsters, such a huge amount of silver, plus this massive amount of Beast King-level Golden Bones, will immediately attract cold beasts from all directions if it is moved. Admiral Fan wouldn't drag it directly into the depths of the miasma zone, would he?"

Silver isn't just something humans want; the Frost Beasts want it too. Wherever there's a silver mine in the Ice Abyss, there's bound to be a Frost Beast clan. And the larger the silver mine, the bigger the Frost Beast clan it attracts.

With so much silver, plus a massive amount of beast king-level golden bones, let alone taking it to such a dangerous blood miasma area, even just finding a random wilderness area would probably attract a large number of cold beasts. Cai Qiu couldn't possibly be unaware of this.

"Of course!"

Cai Yunlan immediately nodded and pointed to the distance to the south, continuing, "Brother Hong, don't think that the thin blood-red miasma here will have no effect on us. That's because we have the cultivation level of Manifest Yang and are in the Silver Fog Zone, so we don't need pills and can resist it with our own strength!"

However, the soldiers below were different. They only had the Cold Resistance level of cultivation, and even in the Silver Fog Zone, they were still not enough to resist the invasion of miasma. They had to take a Heart-Clearing Pill every five days.

They absolutely cannot enter the true Blood Miasma Zone. We have experience with this before. Those with a strength of 60 or above at the Cold Resistance level can last about half an hour. After that time, they immediately lose their minds, then descend into a frenzied slaughter, ultimately dying from a burst of blood. Those with a strength of 30 to 60 can only last for a maximum of 300 to 600 breaths, and after that time, they suffer the same fate. As for those with less than 30, anyone who inhales even a single breath of that miasma will immediately go insane, and some will even die instantly..."

At this point, Cai Yunlan paused slightly, then added, "Moreover, what I'm describing is all based on their condition after taking the Qingxin Pill."

Xia Hong was startled by what he heard, but not too surprised.

The reason was that when he flew from the prefectural capital yesterday, he secretly applied some fire-condensing oil to his hands as soon as he entered the miasma zone. As a result, the miasma did not react at all after coming into contact with the fire-condensing oil.

Xia Hong had long been aware that the fire-condensing oil was not a panacea.

Even the system's main building, the Yangxu Cauldron, currently at level 5, can only suppress high-level monsters. It is not very effective against calamity-level monsters.

Even the Fire Condensing Oil was ineffective. This crimson miasma was clearly not ordinary monster energy. In the thinner areas, pills could hold them off, but in the thicker areas, it was unlikely that even a Cold-Resistant level cultivator could withstand it. "Therefore, the army brought the furnace here for two main purposes: first, to slowly dilute the crimson miasma on the outside with silver smoke; and second, to prevent the cold beast tribes within and around the miasma zone from attacking the furnace. They are not tasked with exploring inside."

In other words, those truly responsible for exploration were still the Xianyang-level beings.

After listening to Cai Yunlan's words, Xia Hong had a general understanding of the situation.

"Army halt!"

Just then, the army formation was halted by Fan Qinghu, who was at the forefront.

The army stopped, and Xia Hong looked south, then froze in shock.

The reason is not complicated: at this moment, the army had only traveled five or six miles south after leaving the Zhenyuan camp.

Looking south, Xia Hong estimated that this place was at least five kilometers away from the actual blood miasma zone.

Four kilometers away, the thick smoke from Baiyin could not even have drifted past. Even if it was dangerous, it shouldn't have stopped at such a distance, right?

Xia Hong frowned. Seeing that none of the group of Xianyang-level cultivators in front of him, including Cai Yunlan beside him, showed any unusual expression, his expression changed slightly, and a glint flashed in his left eye.

Looking further south, his expression froze instantly.

The reason is simple: the blood miasma zone that was clearly five kilometers away in his eyes just now appears to be less than five hundred meters away from his army, or one kilometer away, under the gaze of his Eye of Truth.

"As expected of a scion of a powerful domain, he certainly has some skills!"

Cai Yunlan, who was keeping a close eye on Xia Hong, noticed the change in his expression and couldn't help but sigh inwardly before softly saying, "It seems Brother Hong has already discovered that this Blood Miasma Zone can be deceiving..."

Nightmare!

Xia Hong nodded, not responding to Cai Yunlan's words, but the words "Nightmare" immediately came to mind. He had experienced this kind of deceptive method twice before, once in the Sumeru Nightmare of Shuanglong Mountain, and the other time in the city wall of Beishuo Town.

"So behind this Blood Miasma Zone lies an extremely powerful Nightmare Demon?"

Xia Hong made a brief guess in his mind, but quickly shook his head. He had too little information at the moment, and it would be too arbitrary to make a judgment based on just this.

"Perhaps it's some other powerful monster that just uses similar methods to Nightmare Demon. We need to go in first and figure out what the Bloodfrost Beast and Copper Bone Corpse Demon are all about before we can get the right answer."

Xia Hong shook his head slightly. Fan Qinghu in front of him had already begun assigning tasks to his subordinates, and Xia Hong listened attentively.

Fan Qinghu's arrangement was not complicated. A total of 100,000 troops, plus 100 Xianyang-level soldiers, were sent out. The entire army stood still, and 50 Xianyang-level soldiers were left to guard the area. Only the last 50 were called to Fan Qinghu's side.

These fifty people were clearly the main force responsible for entering the Blood Miasma Zone this time.

Xia Hong was naturally among these fifty people.

"The blood miasma area we're clearing out this time is numbered 21, which is the area in front of us, four kilometers wide and five kilometers deep. It will last for two months in total. As with the previous rules, you can only stay there for a maximum of five days at a time. The Golden Bone Flute, the Pure Jade Pill, the High-Grade Mystery-Detecting Stone, the Azure Xun Treasure Bow, and the accompanying fifty Silver Dragon Arrows—these five emergency supplies should have been distributed to you last night. There will be many unexpected events once you go in..."

As Fan Qinghu went on and on about all sorts of precautions, Xia Hong's expression became slightly strange.

This pre-departure training instantly gave him the feeling of leading a team to explore Hongmuling in his early years.

Ultimately, the Xianyang level is just a slightly stronger human. Facing an extremely dangerous place like the Blood Miasma Plains is actually similar to when he faced Redwood Ridge when he was in the Digging Earth Realm.

Cai Yunlan gave Fan Qinghu the five things he mentioned last night.

Emergency response refers to measures taken in the event of an unexpected situation.

The Golden Bone Flute, as the name suggests, is a flute made from the golden bones of the Beast King, and is clearly used for sending messages for help;

The Qingyu Pill is an advanced version of the Qingxin Pill. The Xianyang level cannot stay in the Blood Miasma Zone for more than five days. If the time limit is exceeded due to any unforeseen circumstances, one Qingyu Pill can last for half a month. Fan Qinghu gave each person ten pills.

The advanced ghost-detecting stone is easy to understand; it is a blue-green stone that is more advanced than the ordinary red ghost-detecting stone and is more sensitive to ghosts and monsters.

As for the Azure Sun Treasure Bow and the Silver Dragon Arrow, those are quite interesting!

Xia Hong took down a strong blue bow from his back, his eyes brightening slightly.

"The Azure Wind Treasure Tree in the Bone-Eroding Path is indeed used to make bows. The azure vines connecting the tree trunk are perfect for bowstrings. It's just a pity that Cai Qiu doesn't seem to value material research. He only did simple processing on these azure vines before using them to make bows. They can only withstand a maximum of 3 jin of pulling force, so they can only be used for emergencies..."

A pulling force of 3 jun is naturally enough to crush a cold-weather-grade object.

But what they're going to enter now is the Blood Miasma Plains.

Judging from the tense and wary attitude of Fan Qinghu and the others, the beasts and monsters inside were obviously extremely powerful. It was wishful thinking to expect a bow with a mere 3 jin draw weight to have any miraculous effect.

“Yesterday, we saw 148 Manifestation Yang level cultivators in the hall. The weakest of them all had a strength of over 9 jun. The 50 people who came today are among the stronger ones, all with a strength of over 15 jun. Based on this, the previous estimate that Cai Qiu only had a maximum of 300 Manifestation Yang level cultivators is most likely wrong. Those Manifestation Yang level cultivators who are too weak are not qualified to come here at all…”

Xia Hong took a deep breath and looked at the Blood Miasma Plain that was so close to him on the south side. His gaze gradually became serious.

"A 20-square-kilometer area, in any normal territory, let alone 50 Manifestation Yang level cultivators, even a single Manifestation Yang level cultivator going in alone, could turn the world upside down in no time. But this is the Blood Miasma Plain..."

Having just experienced that bizarre and deceptive tactic, Xia Hong naturally no longer views the Blood Miasma Plains with common sense.

"The methods of nightmare and monstrousness are inseparable from space. Since the Blood Miasma Plains has such abilities, what you see from the outside with your naked eye is definitely completely different from what you feel after you actually go inside!"

What exactly are the Bloodfrost Beast and the Copper Bone Corpse Demon...?

Xia Hong pondered for a moment, his expression solemn, but a strange sense of excitement rose within him.

He hadn't felt this sense of danger in a long time!

(End of this chapter)