Why is my territory in a 2D anime art style?

Chapter 155 The Golden Flower Salute of the Rose Society

Li Heng led his caravan across the long wilderness and finally arrived at the outside of a huge territory. The city walls of this territory were more than ten meters high, and were bright yellow all over, shining like crystals in the setting sun.

Above the massive city gate is a stone plaque with the words "New Moon" written on it.

To the east of the territory, less than a kilometer away, lies a vast frozen lake, roughly one or two kilometers in circumference. At this moment, there are still quite a few people moving back and forth on the frozen lake, seemingly carrying something across it.

To the north of the territory lies a large hilly area, where many tall birches and spruces grow. However, the trees along the edges are so neatly arranged that they look as if they were planted by human hands.

"Brother, I want to go ice fishing too~" Li Ping stood up from the truck bed, leaned on the guardrail and looked at the distant frozen lake, his voice a little coquettish.

"If you pinch me again, I'll beat you to death!"

Li Heng shuddered and kicked out, but the agile Li Ping dodged it.

He didn't stop her, but sighed, "Go after you enter the city. Remember to come back early and focus on your cultivation. Don't just play around!"

"Got it!" Li Ping patted the railing, clearly excited.

The convoy drove in from the south gate and soon arrived at what looked like a gathering place for merchants. Li Heng handed the list in his hand to the person who came to receive it, and then left the place, heading straight towards the center of the territory.

In the center of the territory, there is an inner city, surrounded by a five-meter-high wall. The interior is no more than a hundred meters in diameter. There are two professionals standing guard at the entrance of the passage. When they see Li Heng coming, they immediately take the initiative to greet him.

"Heng-ge!"

"It's the two of you!"

Li Heng greeted them with a smile, then looked into the passageway and asked, "Is my third uncle inside?"

"Yes, yes!"

"Okay, I have something to report to him." Li Heng didn't ask the two to announce his arrival, but went straight in. What came into view was a large house that looked like a castle, with all kinds of plants planted on the outside, all of which emitted source energy and were obviously source energy plants.

After walking through the castle gate, Li Heng circled around and found the person he was looking for in a room. He quickly knocked on the open door and greeted them.

"Third Uncle!"

Li Jingyu sat behind her desk, looked up at the visitor, smiled, put down the ledger in her hand, and asked softly.

"Xiao Heng, come and sit down. How was your day?"

Li Heng also walked to the chair opposite the desk with ease, pulled out the chair and sat down directly.

"There are no problems on the road, but the purchase of source beast meat has been a bit slow lately. I heard that Ping An Trading Company has started to set targets for several routes. The sixth and seventh routes were already lagging behind, and last year a lot of low-level territories were damaged. Now Zheng Xifeng has gone all out, and the commission has started to drop. He has managed to pull back the customers we had worked so hard to win over."

"Mid-level territories have some capacity to absorb the market. If we rely on these old-timers to watch us fight a price war with Zheng Xifeng, we are destined to lose."

"Third Uncle, in my opinion, we should also take the initiative to support some newly awakened builders to open up territories in the wild this year, otherwise it will be really difficult to collect the source beast meat."

"We can't open the rift easily. If we encounter another level 7 lord-level source beast like the Earth Giant Bear King from last month, we'll lose more money than we gain."

Li Jingyu nodded, seemingly unsurprised, and unconsciously tapped his right hand on the table rhythmically.

"Your father, second brother, and I have already discussed this matter. We can't continue down the old path. In order to expand our territory, we swallowed up too many low-level territories. In addition, the ice fog tide destroyed several more low-level territories a few months ago, so things are indeed getting difficult."

"Moreover, Ping An Trading Company in Jiangcheng has also started stockpiling large quantities of source beast meat, which has quickly drained the surrounding source beast meat resources."

"If Ping An Bank continues to operate in this way, we will have to support lower-level territories in order to stabilize our current development."

Li Heng frowned: "Third Uncle, why is Ping An Trading Company doing this? Hasn't the City Lord heard anything?"

"Xiao Heng~"

Li Jingyu shook her head, leaned back in her chair, and spoke with a somewhat weary voice.

"You must remember, we are other people's henchmen, their scapegoats, not their partners. Before we successfully advance to level 7, we are nothing."

These words were laced with mockery, and Li Heng immediately fell silent. He understood perfectly well what his third uncle meant.

The three city lords are all level 9 territories, making them the three overlords within a radius of several hundred kilometers. Crescent City is just a small city that has only recently broken through to level 6. They are not worlds apart, but there is absolutely no question of cooperation between them.

They will only reveal information when they are useful to us, such as when the city lord sent people to check after the ice fog tide.

Ping An Trading Company was established by the three city lords. They collect large quantities of source beast meat because it is profitable for them, so why would they let people like them get a share?

These days, the fact that they haven't directly sent anyone to tell me not to steal their business is already a sign of their kindness, or perhaps they want to maintain a good image and not scare the surrounding territories, lest they feel lost about the future and become afraid to venture out and explore new lands.

After all, the current situation of Crescent City is, in a sense, the same as that of the three top territories.

Li Heng cleared his mind of the jumbled thoughts and spoke again.

"By the way, Third Uncle, I happened to see something when I came back today that you might be interested in."

"Oh?" Li Jingyu picked up the teacup beside him, took a small sip, and was quite curious.

Tell me about it?

Li Heng asked softly, "Do you remember a lord named Sui An from Line 7?"

"Sui An." Li Jingyu raised an eyebrow and repeated the name in a low voice. Suddenly, he seemed to remember it.

"Is it that low-level territory that, after being put on a bounty, managed to turn the tables and kill a level-four hunting party?"

"Yes, he advanced to level 4 today. The rift was quite small, so he should have succeeded now."

"Level 4?"

Li Jingyu frowned even more deeply: "When did he establish his territory?"

Li Heng rubbed his fingers together: "It should have been around August or September last year. I forgot the exact time, but it was probably no more than six months ago."

"Six months!" Li Jingyu slowly put down her teacup, her face still contorted in a frown. "Who on earth is supporting her? She's grown so fast!"

Li Heng moved closer and asked in a low voice, "Third Uncle, could it be the City Lord? Didn't you say his wife's surname is Sui?"

Li Jingyu's brows relaxed, and her figure seemed to loosen up: "Later, your second uncle secretly investigated again. He was very well hidden, and we can't be sure if he's related to the city lord's wife. But judging from your situation today, he most likely does have a background. Luckily, we didn't rush into action back then, otherwise we might not have come here to check things out."

"Should we pass this message up?" Li Heng pointed upwards, his voice even lower.

Upon hearing Li Heng's suggestion, Li Jingyu fell into deep thought before speaking again after a while: "Forget it, our names have been appearing in Jiangcheng too frequently lately, which is not a good thing. From now on, we should keep a low profile and accumulate strength, which is the only way. Let's just pretend we don't know anything."

One night passed.

Wang Zhen left, along with Erhu and Zhao Feng.

Zhao Feng planned to go back and bring Wang Hu's father, Wang Ping, to the territory so they could settle down there.

Erhu is preparing to bring his brother, sister-in-law, and father back. He has started preparations now. Although his brother and sister-in-law are ordinary people in Sui'an territory, there is not much they can do. But cleaning, moving things, and doing logistics are not a big problem.

In addition, Sui An had asked Erhu to contact some of his acquaintances a long time ago, and he had already contacted some relatively reliable people, most of whom were level three professionals.

Previously, since two level 4 professionals were enough to open the rift, these people were not in a hurry to recruit them.

Sui An's initial target was ten people. Their current job duties included increasing the number of professionals needed to open the rift, handling corpses after the rift, and daily shift work.

Many of them have already agreed.

Finally, Erhu helped to contact Ye Tengyang again to ask if he was willing to come.

From now on, Erhu will be the human resources manager of his territory, and these newly arrived level 3 professionals will be under his management.

如果叶腾阳能过来，那自己领地将会常驻1位5级、3位4级、12位3级、2位2级，还有4

An ordinary person.

If this number isn't enough to trigger the rift, then Sui An will have to consider recruiting level 4 professionals. Currently, he's not actually planning to recruit level 4 combat professionals, but he does want to recruit level 4 life profession professionals.

For example, a level 4 alchemist.

He also planned to spread the news of the alchemy workshop among the alchemists in the Chamber of Commerce through Wang Zhen.

Even if a low-level blue building can improve skill perception, those in the know will know that the improvement won't be too significant.

Fang Nian's rapid advancement was not solely due to the alchemy workshop; she exhausted her energy three or four times a day, relentlessly pushing herself to the limit to achieve this result.

However, most alchemists do not have their own exclusive workshops. There are only so many alchemy workshops in Jiangcheng. High-quality workshops are not released, and even if you want to rent a low-quality workshop, you have to wait in line.

There are still plenty of offers available now, so it's still quite tempting.

Sui An could rent it to him; he didn't necessarily need to join his territory. After all, what he needed now was a mid-level professional who would stay in his territory long-term; whether he was one of his own people wasn't that important.

Sui An arrived at the core of the territory once again. Last night, he retested the three purple buildings and the golden statue, and he instantly understood the consumption of a level four purple building.

First, there's the Golden Talisman. The cost of using the talisman now is 720 Originium per use, and the required materials have also increased to 10 portions of Intermediate Originium Material, more than doubling the total cost.

Sword Star's energy consumption has doubled. Originally, one sword strike would consume about 40 Originium, but now it would consume about 80, which is equivalent to 1.36% of the territory's core energy. Finally, it's not considered too much of a consumption.

All I can say is that a 6.25-fold increase in territory core energy storage is just too powerful!

The regular cost of the Illusion Altar has also doubled, now costing about 60 coins per use. Since it's impossible to test it precisely, this is just a rough estimate.

As for the energy shield and the Thousand Winds Barrier, these two are the most interesting changes this time.

First, the energy shield is no longer a perfect sphere. Its height has not increased to 100 meters, but is only about 80 meters. It has now become an ellipse.

Its energy consumption only increased by about 4 times, and it only consumed 1% in six hours. If we estimate it to be about 250 Originium per day.

Furthermore, it has a new feature called "Builder Mode".

After advancing to the intermediate level, the energy shield can add a passively triggered miniature energy shield to the builder, just like the secret treasure on Sui An's body, which will be automatically triggered when attacked.

However, this thing also has a cooldown period once it is triggered, but it is much faster than the secret treasure, which is 12 hours.

It will always be there as long as it is not triggered, provided that you do not leave the territory. Once you leave the territory, its energy will dissipate rapidly and it will not last long.

This would be a good thing for an ordinary builder, but it wasn't very useful for Sui An.

After all, he already had two level 4 blue treasures on him, plus talismans for protection.

However, the Thousand Winds Barrier remains a complete sphere, and its energy consumption follows the area of ​​its territory, estimated to be around 840 units per day.

Of course, he no longer keeps these barriers or energy shields on all day. Even if he does, he will only activate small barriers to cover the residential area.

After confirming the most important thing, Sui An glanced at the 3+ source stones he still had and turned his attention to the purple blueprint library.

After thinking it over, Sui An decided to set aside 20,000 source stones, since he had never directly faced the intensity of the rifts in a mid-level territory.

Even when I was at level three, the Blood Moon Rift run that consumed the most resources cost me over five thousand source stones.

It's hard to say whether 10,000 source stones will be enough, so to be on the safe side, he kept 20,000.

"I need to save up money to start hiring, otherwise I'm afraid I won't be able to open any rifts, and without rifts, there will be no Originium for gacha pulls."

"Let's start with 90 pulls to see how it goes!"

Select the wish as "Golden Flower Salute of the Rose Society" and start clicking the ten-shot button nine times in a row.

[Intermediate Source Material *86]

[Growing Jadeite *1]

[Solid Topaz *1]

[Flame Tetrahedron *1]

[Golden Flower Salute from the Rose Society *1]

"Huh, the wish actually dropped! It's been so long since I've had a guaranteed drop!"

Sui An was pleasantly surprised, suddenly remembering that when he first pulled from the purple pool, he got it on the pity system.

But at this moment, things were different from before. His surprise seemed to have weakened considerably, and he no longer felt the same excitement he had when he first drew the Sword Star Totem.

After all, he used to only have blue buildings, but now he even has gold buildings.

"Let me see the attributes!"

[Building Name]: Golden Flower Salute of the Rose Society [Building Type]: Single Building [Building Level]: Level 4 (can be upgraded to level 7)

[Building Quality]: Purple [Building Effect]: The Golden Flower Salute can consume source materials to condense attribute-less source energy crystal bullets. The builder can lock onto a designated target at a certain distance to attack, causing a large-area attribute-less source energy explosion damage when it hits.

Crystal bullets can be condensed into rose crystal bullets with additional effects by actively consuming fire, water, and metal attribute crystals.

The fire-attribute rose crystal bullet has increased explosive power and range, and has a chance to inflict a high-temperature burning effect on the target;

The power of the water-attribute rose crystal bullet is greatly reduced after it explodes, but it will trigger an extreme cold effect. The cold air can greatly reduce the target's speed and has a chance to freeze the target.

The metallic rose crystal bullet has extremely high penetrating power. After it stops penetrating, it will trigger an explosion effect, causing secondary damage.

The Golden Flower Salute takes six seconds to condense crystal bullets, and can store up to ten crystal bullets in advance.

【额外消耗】：中级源质材料、属性晶石【製造需求】：坚牢黄玉（0/1）、中级源质材料（0/10）、4级源石（0/8）、领地核心等级（1v4）

【升级需求】：坚牢黄玉（0/1）、中级源质材料（0/10）、5级源石（0/8）、领地核心等级（1v5）

"A cannon with a 6-second cooldown, it seems somewhat similar to that purple giant crossbow."

"It looks like a common type, unlike the Sword Star which is a special attack type."

Sui An quickly finished reading the instructions. Although the cannon looked fancy, the content was easy to understand.

Under normal circumstances, crystal bullets only require the consumption of source materials, and you can also spend money to make better special effect crystal bullets.

"One intermediate attribute crystal costs 150 source stones. Isn't that a bit too much? I wonder what the conversion rate is?"

Sui An glanced at the lottery interface and chose to exit. 90 draws had cost him 10800 Origin Stones, so he had no choice but to stop for now.

Anyway, the purple blueprint library has been open for a month, so there's no rush.

Sui An chose to build the [Golden Flower Salute of the Thorn Rose Society] on the city wall. This thing could not be placed in his own yard like Jian Xing, because it was a cannon platform without a tower, and it could not be launched into the air like Jian Xing.

Even if there were towers, it wouldn't make any difference now; they couldn't possibly be taller than the city walls.

"Damn it, when are they going to give builders a teleportation function, just like the building engineers? Otherwise, climbing city walls is exhausting!"

After a while, Sui An finally arrived at the edge of the fort.

Its base is a 3*3*0.5 square bright yellow base, with a rotating component in the middle and a huge black cannon barrel on top. There is also a bright yellow ring in front of the muzzle, with strange patterns engraved on it.

The entire cannon barrel is over four meters long, about sixty centimeters thick, and has an inner diameter of about thirty centimeters, making it look exceptionally imposing.

"My god, the cheat code finally gave us a building that looks much more respectable!"

In just a short time since I came up here, the gun emplacement has already stockpiled ten crystal bullets.

Sui An opened the auxiliary core and glanced at his inventory of intermediate source materials, finding that he was 10 units short, while his energy core source energy was down by about 3%.

This means that 10 ordinary crystal bullets require approximately 10 portions of intermediate source material, plus about 180 source stones.

To put it in perspective, the cost of one crystal bullet is about 27 Originium, which is significantly less than the 80 Originium cost of a single level 4 Sword Star Totem.

However, the Golden Flower Salute can condense at least four or five crystal bullets in 30 seconds, so it seems that it's about the same.

It's unclear how much energy the process of releasing the crystal bomb requires, but it's unlikely to double.

Sui An opened the control panel to connect to the Golden Flower Fireworks, selected to consume attribute crystals to activate the enchantment module, and a new interface popped up, which turned out to be an add interface.

After clicking, it automatically searched its resource library and showed that it had five low-level fire attribute crystals in its inventory. These were the harvest it had obtained from the He family's territory and had not been processed until now.

"As expected, even low-level attribute crystals can be enchanted."

After selecting the fire attribute enchantment, you can also directly choose to lock the materials and automatically enchant.

This means that you don't need to do anything complicated; once you set it up, it will run automatically, which is quite convenient.

However, since his Golden Flower Cannon already had 10 crystal bullets stored in it, this enchantment was not to remake it, but to start dyeing the existing 10 crystal bullets. However, the dyeing speed was still one bullet every six seconds. In the end, the five fire attribute crystals only generated five fire attribute rose crystal bullets.

"A low-level fire attribute crystal costs about 15 source stones, which means that the cost of this fire attribute crystal bullet has reached 42 source stones."

"I wonder how much firepower they have—"

His consciousness connected with the Golden Flower Fireworks, expanding the Golden Flower Fireworks' attack field of vision, and Sui An instantly fell into a daze.

"How far?"

"What kind of crystal bullet is this?!"

At this moment, Sui An's field of vision was extremely wide, as if he were equipped with a high-precision telescope, which could be adjusted to be near or far.

Unlike the Sword Star's top-down view, the Golden Flower Salute's field of view is only 90 degrees horizontally. If you want to deviate further, you have to move the turret itself.

The vertical field of view is 120°.

As for attack range, he can lock onto targets within one kilometer.

Note that this is not its maximum attack range, but its maximum target acquisition range, which is twice that of a level 4 Sword Master.

Last night he tested the attack range of a level 4 swordsman, and it had increased to 500 meters; the enormous flaming sword had also increased to 10.

The firebird's spread radius also reached 10 meters.

Now that the crystal bullet tells him it can lock onto an enemy within a kilometer, Sui An is momentarily stunned.

Whether it's locked or not, Sui An suddenly lost interest; he wanted to know the thing's maximum range.

He raised the Golden Flower Salute Cannon to its maximum elevation angle of 60° and fired it towards the wilderness to the north.

"boom!"

A tremendous roar rang in Sui An's ears, and a flame flashed past his field of vision in an instant. He couldn't even see the shape of the crystal bullet that was fired with his naked eye, yet it had already crossed a range of almost one kilometer.

Within the first kilometer, its trajectory was almost a straight line. However, after that kilometer, its speed began to decrease significantly, forming a downward arc. Its momentum seemed extremely weak, and it declined very quickly.

However, the crystal bomb seems to have a limited explosion time, bursting apart while still in mid-air.

This disappointed Sui An somewhat, as he had thought that the distance it could shoot would also be the distance it could explode. It was clear that the crystal bullet itself was also limited by time or distance.