The next day, bidding farewell to the overly enthusiastic Zhao Ziwei, Mo Fan politely declined the offer to "get to know the weirdo neighbors."
Armed only with that battered dagger, he plunged headfirst into the rolling depths of Hundred Forging Peak's back mountain.
"These psychos can toss and turn however they want. I just need to find a remote corner. As long as no one bothers me, it'll be my holy land of the undead to make my fortune."
Walking along, Mo Fan beautifully mapped out the blueprint for his future underground arsenal in his mind.
However, half an hour later.
Mo Fan stood on a bare ridge, looking at the so-called "back mountain" before him.
His expression was uglier than if he had eaten ten pounds of bitter melon, even faintly showing a sickly green hue of someone who had just survived a disaster.
"Is this fucking... a place for humans to live?!"
He originally thought this place would at most have some abandoned mine shafts and weeds.
But after he activated [ Death Vision ] for a carpet sweep, he realized just how horribly wrong he was.
This seemingly desolate mountain wilderness was simply a lawless, lethal, super-massive composite minefield!
Less than ten meters to his left, at the entrance of an abandoned mine shaft, lay the remnants of an extremely unstable miniature trapping and killing array.
Although the Spirit Stones on the array core had dimmed, stepping on it would absolutely result in being minced into meat paste by the residual sword Qi.
And in a bush to his right, the soil presented a bizarre scorched black color.
Buried underneath were over a dozen waste pills—casually discarded by some previous "thorn" after a failed experiment—whose spiritual structures were on the verge of collapse.
In the thermal imaging of Death Vision, those waste pills looked like high-explosive landmines ready to detonate at any moment!
Even the seemingly flat mountain paths were riddled with fragile hollows formed by the long-term extraction of earth vein energy.
One misstep would send someone plummeting into a bottomless underground river.
"These exiled bastards are simply a bunch of terrorists with zero civic virtue! Littering dangerous contraband everywhere!"
Mo Fan swallowed hard, cold sweat instantly cascading down his forehead.
His proud camping strategy was built on the premise of being able to see through the enemy and evade risks in advance.
But facing these pure traps and indiscriminate toxic gas residues, his meager soul strength was completely inadequate.
What if he came out for a walk at night and accidentally stepped on a half-finished bomb buried in the dirt by some "senior brother"?
With his fragile frame, he probably wouldn't even get a chance to be resuscitated before being blasted to smithereens.
Abandon illusions, face reality.
"Wandering blindly in an unfamiliar death zone is the most classic way for horror movie extras to die."
Mo Fan made his decision very prudently.
He turned around and retraced his steps, extremely carefully, practically tiptoeing, retreating footprint by footprint.
An incense stick's time later.
Inside Zhao Ziwei's rugged stone courtyard, the youth who was sprawled out snoring on that scrap iron bed was shoved awake.
"Brother Ziwei, wake up."
Mo Fan stood by the bed, piling an extremely sincere, even humbly seeking smile onto his face.
"Um... Little brother here is a newcomer, and the terrain of this back mountain is simply too complex. I have to trouble Senior Brother to help me pick out a treasure land with good feng shui."
Zhao Ziwei rubbed his eyes, froze for a moment, and then abruptly bounced up from the scrap iron.
His eyes instantly erupted with an unprecedented fanatical light.
"Aiya! Why didn't you say so earlier! Looking for a turf to build a cave dwelling? I'm super familiar with this!"
Normally, in this abandoned mine mountain, Zhao Ziwei did nothing but dig ores and blow up mountains; he was practically going crazy from boredom.
Having finally caught a fresh, live junior brother who needed his help, that sense of senior brother's responsibility and his destructive urge for infrastructure were instantly ignited.
He grabbed that pitch-black greatsword the size of a door panel, patted his chest, and promised:
"Let's go! Your Senior Brother will take you to pick the best one today! Guaranteed to make you live comfortably!"
With this "local snake" (guide) leading the way, Mo Fan's subsequent journey was practically like walking on flat ground.
"Xiaoqi, don't lean left. Buried there are the Miasma Poison Pills that Senior Sister Li failed to refine last time. If you step on them and they explode, you'll have diarrhea for three days."
"Hey, steer clear of that crooked tree. Underneath is a trap Senior Brother Zhang dug a while back, filled with barbed beast traps."
Listening to Zhao Ziwei list off the lethal traps scattered across the mountains like family treasures, Mo Fan secretly wiped a handful of cold sweat...
While also feeling a heartfelt admiration for this ADHD senior brother's "mine-sweeping experience."
The two searched the back mountain for the better part of the day.
Ultimately, under Mo Fan's strong insistence, they bypassed all areas where weirdo neighbors might exist.
In the deepest part of Hundred Forging Peak, near the edge of the back mountain's precipice, they found an ideal location.
It was a hidden canyon forming a "U" shape.
The canyon was enclosed on three sides by steep, hard grayish-black rock walls towering hundreds of feet high, leaving only an extremely narrow entrance barely wide enough for two people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder.
The interior terrain was flat, about the size of half a football field, and there was even a clear mountain spring seeping from a crack in the rock.
"Are you sure you want to choose this place?"
Zhao Ziwei scratched his head, looking at this canyon that was basically a dead end.
"This place is too remote, and there's only one way in and out. If you encounter danger, you won't even have a back door to run through. In feng shui, this is called 'dead ground'."
"Brother Ziwei, you are unaware. Since childhood, I've had a condition: neurasthenia, and I'm an extremely light sleeper."
Mo Fan lied without changing his expression, his face full of helplessness and the weariness of life.
"I just love this kind of dead corner backed by massive mountains on three sides with only one path. At night, as long as I set up a few small traps at the valley entrance, I can sleep incredibly soundly. Otherwise, I always feel a chill down my spine."
"Alright, we're all cultivators, everyone has some quirks, I understand." Zhao Ziwei grandly expressed his understanding.
Actually, the real reason Mo Fan took a liking to this place was exactly because of its "dead ground" attribute.
Easy to defend, hard to attack, absolute privacy! As long as the valley entrance was blocked, this was a natural, enclosed fortress.
Moreover, he had just investigated with [ Death Vision ]: the underground rock layers surrounded by mountains on three sides were extremely deep and stable.
With just a little tweaking, he could hollow out a massive, absolutely unknown undead arsenal deep beneath this canyon!
Guarding exactly against those weirdo neighbors who had too much free time!
With the site selection settled, next, Mo Fan truly witnessed what a "dimensional strike" unique to the cultivation world meant.
"Brother Xiaoqi, you rest. Leave building the house to me!"
Zhao Ziwei acted like a child who had found a beloved toy, rubbing his hands together excitedly.
Carrying that incomparably heavy pitch-black greatsword, he walked up to the hard rock wall on one side of the canyon.
Foundation Establishment spiritual power poured unreservedly into the sword blade.
A faint crimson fiery glow surfaced on the originally pitch-black greatsword.
"Hah!"
Zhao Ziwei gave a loud shout, and the greatsword in his hand turned into a violent afterimage.
No tedious surveying like in civil engineering, no long waits for laying a foundation.
Screech! BOOM!
That sword Qi, which cut iron like mud, sliced into the hard rocks weathered over millions of years as smoothly as a hot knife through butter.
Massive boulders weighing thousands of pounds, with cuts as smooth as mirrors, were sheared cleanly off the mountain by him.
Subsequently, Zhao Ziwei displayed his terrifying physical strength.
Grabbing those boulders single-handedly, he stacked them tightly together deep in the canyon, piece by piece, like building blocks.
Cutting, transporting, stacking.
Under the terrifying stamina and destructive power of a Foundation Establishment cultivator, a massive project that would originally require dozens of mortal craftsmen working for months was forcibly compressed to the extreme.
In less than half a day's time.
A sprawling stone courtyard—carrying a strong ancient rugged style with walls three feet thick—had already risen from the ground deep in the canyon.
The courtyard walls were towering, and he even thoughtfully laid out an open courtyard and several stone rooms with clear divisions of function.
Although there were no exquisite carvings or array embellishments, that cohesive sense of heaviness and security made one feel incredibly grounded.