"Forget it, you're not exactly a normal person anyway. You can't be compared to the general public."
Xia Qiming sighed and accepted his fate. To live a few years longer, it was better not to compare himself with these monsters.
Even the best of his generation, like Ye Bufan and Xiang Longwu, had never made him feel as powerless as he did now.
After finishing his cigarette, Xia Qiming picked out two documents from the stack on his desk and threw them to Chen Xu.
"During this time, our exploration team, with the cooperation of Daxia's experts, has explored the geographical distribution of Hanyuan.
Except for the central main city, that fortress is covered in high-level arrays that block all outside observation, so we have no way of knowing what's inside.
The other areas have been mostly explored, but, well, see for yourself."
Chen Xu took the documents and began to read.
According to the report, Hanyuan was centered around that mysterious main city and expanded outward in concentric rings, with a total of nine rings.
The outermost rings, the ninth and eighth, were flat permafrost zones.
Living in the permafrost zones was a type of creature with different forms, or perhaps multiple species? Daxia collectively referred to them as cold ghosts, or ice ghosts.
These cold ghosts had varied appearances, but upon death, they would first turn into ice sculptures before rapidly melting into a puddle of black water that merged into the permafrost.
Furthermore, the permafrost zone periodically generated a strange ice mist.
In addition to reducing visibility, that ice mist also interfered with mental perception.
Most lethally, cold ghost swarms would randomly generate within the ice mist. Their presence was completely masked by the mist, and their figures could only be observed at close range.
But by the time they were seen at close range, it meant one had already entered the cold ghost's encirclement. Under such heavy obstacles, the situation was usually dire.
The next layers, the seventh and sixth rings, were the moat rings.
The seventh and sixth rings were both circular moats. The difference was that the seventh ring contained what looked like ordinary transparent liquid with a lot of crushed ice floating on the surface, and it was inhabited by fish-shaped and water snake-shaped cold ghosts.
As for the moat of the sixth ring, the water was as black as ink, making it impossible to investigate the conditions beneath the surface.
Daxia had collected some samples and sent them to the academy for analysis, only to find that the black water was filled with highly aggressive microorganisms that would frantically attack anything with a temperature higher than their own.
The fifth ring was a massive wall, fifty meters high and three hundred meters thick. One could only wonder what kind of terrifying enemy such a gargantuan wall was built to withstand.
This also served as a reminder to Daxia that Hanyuan, which could contend with such a terrifying enemy, was certainly no minor player.
The fourth, third, and second rings, along with the central main city, were all urban areas.
Inside were buildings of various styles and designs. One could even see Eastern temples and Western churches sitting back-to-back.
The city simultaneously possessed bus stations and old wooden stables.
Buildings from different cultures and time periods appeared together in a single city, and the various oddities within caused the academy staff endless headaches.
Moreover, due to the eerie nature of the urban areas, the exploration team only recorded data from high altitudes and did not directly enter the city.
Yet, after recording for five or six consecutive days, they found no signs of any biological activity within the urban areas.
The more they learned, the more confused they became.
This caused Daxia, which had originally wanted to level Hanyuan in one go, to slow down its pace of conquest.
Facing an opponent so full of mysteries, going all-in was by no means a wise choice.
Thus, while the academy integrated and analyzed the existing intelligence in hopes of extracting useful information, Xia Qiming had to temporarily set aside the previous steamrolling plan.
Instead, they needed to formulate a new, steady, and gradual plan of advancement.
After reading the report, Chen Xu frowned again. He had not expected Hanyuan to be so bizarre.
"Had Daxia not explored it before? I thought it was like Mohai, where the situation inside was perfectly clear."
Mohai and Hanyuan were places known to everyone in Daxia, as they were the only two dungeon invasion incidents that had occurred within Daxia's borders.
Chen Xu had assumed that, like Mohai, the Daxia authorities already had a certain level of understanding regarding the situation in Hanyuan.
But looking at Xia Qiming's initial conquest plan and the current exploration report, Daxia's previous knowledge of Hanyuan could only be described as the tip of the iceberg.
"Explore? With what manpower? It was already a blessing that Hanyuan Base could withstand the onslaught of the cold ghosts."
Regarding this, Xia Qiming was also quite helpless. "Once the number of cold ghosts reaches a certain point, they charge outward. After death, they turn into black water and flow back into the permafrost, only to be born again from the ice mist shortly after, repeating in an endless cycle.
Initially, we all thought there was some kind of strange artifact in Hanyuan whose power cultivated these weird creatures. We thought that as long as we destroyed that artifact, Hanyuan would be dealt with.
But after this exploration, we realized that the trouble with Hanyuan far exceeds our expectations."
After finishing the report, Chen Xu placed the document back on the desk.
"Well? Do you have any suggestions? To reformulate a new plan, I've been thinking day and night for the past few days, and I'm worried sick."
"Me?"
Seeing Xia Qiming looking at him, Chen Xu quickly turned to look behind him, only to find no one there.
"Teacher Xia, you're asking me? I only have a few tricks for clearing dungeons. Spam troops, steamroll, then spam more troops, steamroll again, and finally spam even more troops and keep steamrolling.
If I still can't clear it, then I'll just keep spamming troops and steamroll over it."
"Rather than asking me for suggestions, you might as well find me a few dungeons with lots of monsters so I can recruit some new blood for my undead army.
When the time comes, whether it's Hanyuan or some Fire Abyss, I'll flatten it for you by burying it in skeletons."
In response to Chen Xu's answer, Xia Qiming closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his hand. He really was exhausted; why did he even ask this freak for advice?
It was like asking Superman how to solve a problem, and he would just tell you to use super strength to flatten it because it was simple and efficient.
Rubbing his face, Xia Qiming decided to give himself a break. Between the continuous work and the blow to his morale from Chen Xu, he was no longer in the right state of mind to continue formulating the Hanyuan battle plan.
Forcing himself to continue would be irresponsible to the soldiers.
However, he did not forget to pull up information on several dungeons from the Fuxi sub-system and send them to Chen Xu.
"These are conquest-type dungeons that were recently discovered and haven't been cleared yet. Do whatever you want with them. With your strength, you probably don't need help from anyone else."
Chen Xu opened his smart terminal and saw that there was only information on four dungeons. Even if each of those four were like Black Anomaly, they would produce at most four hundred million corpses, which was far from Chen Xu's goal of one billion.
Thus, Chen Xu spoke up. "Teacher Xia, are there no other dungeons? My troop count isn't enough; I'm in urgent need of replenishment."
"Your troop count isn't enough? If you add up all the other Necromancers on Blue Star combined, they might not have as many summons as you."
"Heh heh, well, I have ascended to mythic-tier after all. The level is different now. How could such a small number of troops be worthy of a mythic-tier powerhouse?"
"This is all that has been discovered around Daxia. However..." Xia Qiming suddenly thought of something and stood up to walk over to a nearby bookshelf.
"However what?" Chen Xu was puzzled and leaned in.
Xia Qiming pulled out a map and pointed his finger at a region to the southwest outside Daxia's borders.
"However, you can go abroad. The South Realm over there is always crying and begging us to support them. The aristocratic clans there have a monopoly on dungeon resources. They can't produce any talent themselves, yet they pin their hopes on Daxia.
In the past, we supported them a few times, but after seeing their true faces, we stopped all contact."
"With all that infighting, doesn't the World Will do anything? I thought all class-holders were its employees."
"What's there to manage? The population over there is probably less than that of two cities in Daxia combined. The Heavenly Dao is heartless. As long as the overall direction of humanity is fine, it couldn't care less about such things."
"Wait, Teacher Xia, did you just say we've stopped all contact with them?"
Chen Xu suddenly caught onto the keyword.
"Yes. They always want us to clean up the messes they make. How could there be such a good deal? Daxia has only just stabilized itself; why would we waste effort to make them happy?"
"And you said it won't care?" Chen Xu extended his index finger and pointed upward.
"Yeah, based on my understanding of it, it probably won't. Why? Do you have some wicked idea again?"
Seeing Chen Xu's strange expression, Xia Qiming couldn't help but ask.
"Heh heh heh... Then it should be no problem if I just steamroll right through them, right?"
"Steamroll? Didn't you say you've always been steamrolling?" Xia Qiming was confused.
"Wait, you're not thinking of steamrolling the South Realm, are you?!"
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