The ultimate Valkyrie has fallen for me

The sun was gradually setting in the west, and the three savages were probably preparing to return. It seems that even savages fear the night in the wilderness.

Lu Yuan wanted to see where they came from, so he quietly followed behind them.

About two hours later, three wild men were seen entering a ravine between two mountain ridges.

"This is."

With the help of spatial detection and X-ray vision, Lu Yuan could see clearly inside the mountain valley. His eyes widened in surprise.

The village.

There's actually a village inside this mountain valley!

Inside were 'savages' dressed in animal skins. No, since it was a village, they shouldn't be called savages anymore, but rather wilderness dwellers.

Coming to his senses, Lu Yuan was greatly surprised to find that there were actually people living in the wilderness.

Strictly speaking, the area outside the base city and the citadel is considered wilderness. Some exiles, their descendants, or other people who do not have the right to reside in the city will gather on the edge of the city, thus evolving into villages and even towns.

But they still depend on the city; people like them who live deep in the wilderness are unheard of, let alone seen or even heard of.

For a moment, Lu Yuan couldn't help but wonder how they had survived in the wilderness.

"Quite a few."

Based on the number of houses and signs of habitation, it can be roughly estimated that this village has as many as seven or eight hundred people!

Lu Yuan thought for a moment and decided not to rush back to the base, so he stayed outside the village to observe.

Before sunset, the villagers who went out hunting and gathering returned one after another. Then, before sunset, a large stone was placed at the narrow entrance, which served as the door.

Lu Yuan counted again, and it was about the same as his previous estimate. Including men, women, the elderly and children, there were a total of 783 people.

Aside from infants and children, almost everyone cultivates martial arts. Indeed, in this wilderness, martial prowess is the primary element for survival.

However, most of them were only at the Qi Opening Realm, and there were only a dozen or so Battle Generals. Moreover, the highest level among them was only four stars, and the rest were all beginner Battle Generals.

This setup is similar to the strongholds of the seven major martial arts groups, but the problem is that those strongholds, in addition to martial artists, also have sturdy fortresses and powerful firearms.

Just like the strongholds of the Tianjing Group, they don't even need warriors at the general level; they can defend against most monsters simply with firearms.

Most importantly, those outposts were built around the base, not only relying on the large base but also being connected to each other, allowing them to support one another.

How could a village like this, isolated and helpless deep in the wilderness, possibly survive?

Moreover, judging from their age distribution, they are not simply a group of refugees, but have lived here for at least several decades.

This is simply a miracle.

There are no miracles in this world; there must be a reason behind them.

"A demonic beast?"

Besides humans, there are also some monsters in this village.

Clearly, these are their pets.

Even in the base city, there are humans who raise war beasts. It's perfectly normal for these "savages" to keep some demonic beasts.

The vast majority of them were of very low quality and were kept together, likely raised as meat reserves like pigs and sheep.

A few higher-level beasts, with more freedom of movement, act as hunting dogs in battle against the beasts.

Similar to the situation with humans, lord-level beings are very rare, even fewer than human warriors, with only five in total. The strongest among them is a black tiger, whose strength is only equivalent to a four-star warrior.

Overall, it's still not enough for them to survive in the wilderness for decades; there must be other reasons.

This reason is very important!

When humans establish settlements in the wilderness and expand their living space, the first issue they must address is security.

How to survive surrounded by monsters.

Therefore, it was necessary to build various fortresses, equip them with various weapons, and send warriors to garrison them. Although effective, the cost was too high.

In comparison, Lu Yuan's arrangement of the Eight Trigrams Formation was somewhat better.

However, it's fine for small bases and strongholds, but for cities, or even base cities with hundreds of millions of people, the materials required to build the formation to completely cover them with the Eight Trigrams Formation are enormous, which is not cost-effective.

Since Lu Yuan wanted to build a city, these things naturally had to be taken into account.

If we could find out the key to their survival in this village, we might be able to replicate it in our own base and even the city that follows.

After observing for several more hours, until night fell and most of the villagers, except for the guards, had gone to bed, Lu Yuan still found nothing.

Let's talk about it tomorrow.

It seems there won't be any gains tonight. Lu Yuan frowned and returned to the base with Dongdong.

Although he was no longer very afraid of the wilderness at night, if he suddenly didn't return home all night, Xia Banzhu and the others would probably start to overthink and even go crazy with worry.

To avoid being scolded by Xia Banzhu afterward, Lu Yuan couldn't become a "bad kid" who didn't come home at night.

It must be admitted that Xia Banzhu, as the base's chief steward, not only oversaw the base's construction in all aspects, but also Lu Yuan.

This isn't a housekeeper, he's practically Old Li's political commissar.

"Why are you only just getting back?"

Sure enough, Xia Banzhu was already waiting for him.

Seeing Lu Yuan return, he breathed a sigh of relief, then his expression turned serious again.

"It's nothing. We just walked a little too far today, so we wasted some time."

Faced with Xia Banzhu's questioning, Lu Yuan casually gave a vague answer.

He didn't tell Xia Banzhu about that desolate village, since he hadn't made any progress on his end yet.

The main reason was that he thought Xia Banzhu was too fussy. Once he spoke up, she would probably tell him to be careful about this and that, and not to do this or that.

"Then get some rest."

Xia Banzhu said something and then turned and left.

Did we go a little too far? You might be able to fool a child, but how could you possibly fool Xia Banzhu?

Given the speed of Blood Shadow Escape, how far must he have gone to arrive before returning late at night?

Clearly, Lu Yuan was hiding something from him.

However, Xia Banzhu had gotten used to this. He was a rein, but not a dog leash. He only needed to hold Lu Yuan back when he was about to rush off the cliff, rather than binding him tightly.

Before dawn the next day, Lu Yuan got up early, took Dongdong and left the base, heading straight for that desolate village.

When he arrived, most of the villagers were still asleep.

Lu Yuan wasn't in a hurry. He found a comfortable place to sit down, took out two biscuits from his spatial ring and stuffed them in, then took out a few pieces of energy-absorbing ore and threw them to Dongdong, quietly observing.

Another day passed, and still nothing was accomplished.

"I don't believe it!"

Lu Yuan frowned, and for the next few days, he came to monitor and observe every day.

Until the middle of the month, a clue was suddenly discovered.

Compared to usual, the villagers who went out returned earlier today, and they prepared a lot of meat.

Lu Yuan originally thought that this meat was their reserve food, but now it seems that this is not the case.

The cart was packed with two large carriages. Although they were "savages," they had modern tools, including even firearms, in addition to stone tools!

As for their origin, if they weren't found by luck, they were either robbed from martial artists who came out of the city.

It's impossible to pick up so many; it clearly belongs to the latter category.

Lu Yuan didn't care about this; what he wanted to know was where these villagers were going with so much meat.

Having already exceeded the range of space exploration, Lu Yuan hesitated for a moment, then transformed into a streak of red light and leaped up the mountain ridge, following from one side.