56: Chapter 56 Control and Planning

Twilight descended, and Li Changqing sat in a modified post-apocalyptic off-road war vehicle. As the wheels started to turn, it slowly drove toward Sanjiang Town.

The vehicle moved along the potholed, cracked, and ruined road, and a strange sensory impact that he had never experienced before suddenly washed over his entire body.

There was no stability and smoothness provided by Spiritual Qi when flying with a sword, nor the lightness and ease that came with the Dao rhyme of heaven and earth under the blessing of a Talisman. Instead, there was the chaotic vibration brought by the operation of steel machinery, bumpy all the way, coarse and real.

The vehicle speed gradually increased, and the scenery outside the window retreated rapidly.

Dilapidated and collapsed buildings stood scattered, broken walls and ruins were desolate, mutant monsters wandered aimlessly among the ruins, and the roadsides were piled with rusted and scrapped vehicle wrecks.

The off-road vehicle drove deep all the way and finally entered the territory of Sanjiang Town.

The ancient town, which once had a prosperous population of tens of thousands, had long lost its original appearance after being ravaged by more than a decade of apocalypse.

The living area where humans could move was extremely compressed, and now only one-tenth of the original jurisdiction remained.

Tall, broken concrete walls and twisted, bent abandoned steel frames crisscrossed. The survivors took materials on the spot to pile up layers of simple defensive fortifications, enclosing the narrow settlement layer by layer.

The vehicle stopped steadily, and Li Changqing faintly instructed Captain Xia Dong to summon everyone in the settlement to gather in the open square.

In a short while, more than three hundred survivors gathered.

The fragmented discussion of the crowd rose and fell, and everyone's eyes wandered repeatedly between Captain Xia Dong and the unfamiliar Li Changqing, their eyes full of doubt and unease.

However, seeing their own leader and several top Evolvers of the settlement standing respectfully behind this visitor in green robes, no one dared to speak rashly, and no one dared to be offensive.

After more than a decade of cruel apocalyptic elimination, those who could survive were all worldly-wise and shrewd people.

Young and middle-aged people accounted for the vast majority in the settlement, and the old, weak, sick, and disabled were less than 20 percent.

There is no luck in surviving in troubled times; those who remained either possessed the strength of an Evolver or relied on the protection of the strong to survive in desperate situations.

Li Changqing walked forward slowly and stepped onto a protruding concrete ruin platform.

His cold eyes slowly swept across the dark crowd below.

The chaotic and noisy discussion just now was cut off by an invisible force and disappeared without a trace.

The surroundings were silent, with only the night wind passing through the broken walls and ruins, making a wailing low sound, desolate and bleak.

"My name is Li Changqing."

He spoke, his voice steady and unpretentious, yet carrying a faint foundation of Spiritual Qi, easily overwhelming the whistling wind and falling clearly into everyone's ears:

"From today on, the old rules of Sanjiang Town are abolished. My words are the only standard here."

As his words landed, the crowd instantly stirred with restless whispers. Several of Captain Xia Dong's old subordinates who had followed him for many years felt resistance, their fingertips quietly tightening on the weapons at their waists, their expressions guarded.

Li Changqing turned a blind eye to this, raised his fingertips slightly, and a wisp of extremely condensed, fine Sword Qi shot out instantly.

A hundred meters away, the old bank concrete wall at the edge of the square, which was more than ten meters high and half a meter thick, broke at the sound.

The cut was as flat as if cut by a knife, extremely crisp.

Immediately afterwards, he tapped his fingertips lightly and took out a Low Grade Wind Talisman from his Storage Pouch, activating it casually.

A flash of spiritual light passed by, and the foul, turbid air that had lingered in the settlement for years, as well as the dust and dirt floating in the sky, were swept away in an instant. A refreshing new breeze blew across the whole town, and the filth dissipated.

Such miraculous means instantly shocked all the survivors in the audience, and all the resistance and doubts in their hearts were instantly suppressed by the extreme shock.

Li Changqing had his own considerations in his heart.

Conquering the three hundred people in Sanjiang Town was not a whim. The path of immortal cultivation emphasizes following the trend, accumulating merit, and polishing the Dao Heart.

The two rare treasures he possessed both originated from this world, which was enough to prove that Tianlan Star was by no means an ordinary Dharma-ending plane; it had unfathomable heritage and hidden mysteries.

More importantly, it was the travel anchor point of the myriad worlds disk.

Cross-world travel was originally a random landing point. Without a fixed anchor point, he would land randomly in a certain area of Tianlan Star.

Taking root and building a city here was also to build a stable cross-world coordinate for himself.

"I intend to open up a stable paradise in this wasteland, rebuild the city, and protect the living beings here."

Li Changqing's voice was deep and firm, steadily smoothing out the panic in everyone's hearts, "Starting tomorrow, everyone will migrate. I will personally choose the site and start construction. The new city will be named—Changqing City. From now on, you can all call me City Lord."

Captain Xia Dong was the first to react, bowing his head, kneeling on one knee, his attitude extremely respectful: "Greetings, City Lord!"

The other three hundred survivors followed closely, and the neat worship sound resounded through the square: "Greetings, City Lord!"

This kneeling was not just a forced submission due to force, but also the heartfelt allegiance of the desperate beings to a stable path of survival.

At night, Li Changqing lived alone in a well-preserved old-fashioned Western-style house in the town.

He summoned Captain Xia Dong and the other three alone, and gave them the evolution potion and four Low Grade Body Tempering Medicinal Pills to help them break through their Bottleneck and improve their cultivation.

Only core confidants whose Divine Soul was completely controlled and whose loyalty was unwavering were worthy of his full cultivation and the bestowal of resources, so he could firmly grasp them for his own use.

Deep in the night, everything was silent.

Li Changqing's heart moved slightly, and his figure instantly peeled away from the Tianlan Star plane and returned to Xuanling Island in the Tianyun Realm.

The time flow of the two worlds was the same, but the time difference was opposite. At this moment, it was midnight on Tianlan Star, but it was only the afternoon in the Tianyun Realm.

At dawn the next day, the sky was slightly bright.

Li Changqing compared the topographic map, personally walked through the hundred miles of wasteland around, surveyed the mountains and landforms on the spot, and finally decided on the treasure land for building the city—a wide, large plain a hundred miles east of Sanjiang Town.

This place was more than sixty miles long and fifty miles wide, with flat and open terrain and access to all directions. It was the best choice for building a large city.

This place was only thirty miles away from the notorious Ten Thousand Mountains.

In the eyes of ordinary survivors, this was an out-and-out dead zone.

The Ten Thousand Mountains had been a dangerous and fierce place since ancient times, and after the apocalypse arrived, it completely turned into a forbidden zone for humans. The mountains and forests were humid and closed, miasma was rampant, and strange poisonous plants and rotting corpses bred all kinds of poisonous miasma, of various types and unpredictable dangers.

Some miasma was fragrant, causing people to lose their minds and faint upon smelling it; some had a pungent stench, and flesh and blood would melt upon contact for a moment; the most terrifying was the five-colored divine miasma, which was gorgeous and eye-catching, turning everything within a hundred meters into blood in an instant, with no solution or rescue.

Poisonous fog, poisonous insects, and poisonous miasma were layered on top of each other, covering the heart of the entire mountain range, with no sun all year round, no birds crossing, and no living people.

The strange beasts in the mountains had experienced the apocalyptic mutation, with soaring ferocity and doubled combat power, making these mountains a purgatory that no one dared to set foot in.

But this dead zone that others feared like a tiger was, in Li Changqing's eyes, an undeveloped supreme treasure trove.

The Ten Thousand Mountains were rich in products, with countless wood, Ore, Spirit Medicine, and strange beast resources. Building a city here could control the main road into the mountains and occupy excellent geographical advantages.

The mountains surrounded and hid the wind and gathered Qi, with abundant water sources and a livable environment. The Chaos energy wandering in the mountains and forests was rich and mellow, which was not only suitable for human habitation but could also accelerate the cultivation speed of the Evolvers here.