245: Chapter 245 Honing Battle Tactics, Fertile Soil

"Listen to me, brothers and sisters, everyone listen to me!"

Fan Sinian stood in the center of the crowd, the gold and white breastplate on his body already repaired.

He patted the solid breastplate, which gave off a dull resonance. "Yesterday, the eight of us captains entered the dungeon together and reached the fifth floor. Brothers, give us some applause!"

The surrounding crowd responded with enthusiastic applause.

With a brilliant smile, Fan Sinian continued to shout at the top of his lungs:

"Based on last night's situation, the Calamity Creatures on the first three floors, including the elite monsters, all dropped Level 2 materials."

"On the fourth and fifth floors, Level 3 materials appeared. So, this is a tiered reward system—the higher the floor you clear, the higher the quality of the equipment dropped!"

As he spoke, he held up four fingers.

"If we can reach the seventh floor, we can get Level 4 materials. Brothers, that's Level 4 materials!"

"Currently on the market, all Level 4 equipment is being sold by Brother Lin. You can check the online trading prices yourselves to understand—the starting bid for a Level 4 set is six figures!"

"But if we can get them ourselves, won't the snowball start rolling?"

The eyes of the onlookers visibly grew heated.

Several people had already begun looking down to check their stardust balance.

A few others had just taken out stardust loans at the bank window and bought new equipment.

They gripped their newly acquired weapons, their expressions full of eagerness to try.

The Rift Anchor can accommodate a maximum of ten people per entry.

Therefore, forming a group of ten to pool the entry fee wasn't particularly difficult.

Soon, people began patting each other's shoulders, recruiting for teams.

Fan Sinian was standing on his tiptoes, searching for the other captains, when his gaze suddenly froze as it swept across the periphery.

He parted the passengers blocking his way and squeezed out of the crowd.

"Brother Lin! Want to join us?"

As he said this, he spotted another familiar figure.

Xiao He was squatting in front of a stall not far away, holding a handful of pitch-black silt and gesturing something to the stall owner.

Without a word, Fan Sinian rushed over in a few strides and scooped him up from the ground.

"Hey, hey, hey, what's this? I'm busy!"

The silt in Xiao He's hand almost flew out. Just as he tried to protect it, he was hoisted up by Fan Sinian's waist, his legs flailing in the air. "Put me down quickly, what are you doing?"

Fan Sinian didn't set Xiao He down until they reached the middle of the carriage, pressing a hand on his shoulder. "Old Xiao, let's run the dungeon together. You spend all day in the territory researching plants and flowers. If you don't improve your strength, what will you do when you go to the battlefield in the future?"

"Stop it, I'm just logistics. What battlefield?"

Xiao He brushed his hand off and straightened his crooked collar, his tone carrying a hint of helpless amusement. "Planting, brewing, and seedling cultivation—those are my jobs. Asking me to carry a blade and hack monsters isn't helping; it's causing trouble. Not going, not going!"

"Oh come on, Brother Lin is leading the team today, it's a guaranteed success!" Fan Sinian promised, patting his chest.

Lin Xiao stood aside and spoke up at the right moment: "Wait a second, when did I ever say I was going into the dungeon with you guys?"

"Huh?" The smile on Fan Sinian's face stiffened, and he quickly pleaded, "Brother Lin, don't be like that. All nine of us captains are counting on you!"

Lin Xiao shook his head. "A full team can indeed go further, but profit distribution is an issue."

His tone was flat, yet every word struck precisely at the heart of the problem.

"In the Rift Space, the number of Calamity Creatures is fixed, which means the materials dropped on each floor are very limited."

"With ten people, everyone participating in the battle, how would we divide it if top-tier equipment drops?"

Hearing this, Fan Sinian waved his hand and instinctively replied, "Psh, what's so hard about that? Whoever contributes the most gets it..."

But halfway through his sentence, he felt something was off.

He turned his head to look at the Rift Anchor behind him, then back at the smiling Lin Xiao.

His heart cried out in alarm.

Damn!

If he entered a raid with Brother Lin, wouldn't he fail to even get a sip of the soup?

"Wait a minute." Fan Sinian suddenly narrowed his eyes, staring at Lin Xiao with a look that suggested he'd seen through something. "Brother Lin, how do you know the rules so clearly? Could it be... you've already snuck in?"

"What do you mean 'snuck in'?" Lin Xiao chuckled. "I placed the Rift Anchor myself. Can't I go in to see the scenery?"

He had cleared more dungeons than Fan Sinian had eaten grains of salt; he knew the structure of this Rift Anchor without even looking.

Lin Xiao did not continue that topic.

He opened his backpack and took out a brand-new shield.

Level 3, made of refined steel, it came with a decent Constitution attribute bonus and a special trait.

The shield's surface was engraved with simple patterns, and there was a ring of reinforcing rivets around the edge.

He held the shield by its handle with one hand and held it out to Fan Sinian.

"Go on yourselves, I won't be participating."

This was the shield Lin Xiao had promised earlier.

Fan Sinian hurriedly reached out both hands and caught the heavy shield.

The coldness of the steel seeped through his gloves into his palms, and his Adam's apple bobbed. "Whoa, it has to be Brother Lin!"

At this time, Chen Pingan and the others also rushed over from various carriages.

It was the same personnel configuration as yesterday.

"The same advice applies."

Lin Xiao's gaze swept across the faces of the captains in turn. "Don't push yourselves. The deeper you go into the Rift Space, the higher the difficulty. The fifth floor is your current limit; do not explore any further!"

"I'm not trying to dampen your morale. Yesterday, you recklessly pushed to the fifth floor while injured. You were lucky and everyone made it back. If your luck had been bad, there might not even have been a chance to collect your bodies."

The carriage fell silent.

Even the whispers of the onlookers grew quieter.

Lin Xiao's tone was as flat as usual, but every word was like a bucket of cold water poured over the feverish emotions that had just been incited.

"The reason I'm having you explore the Rift Space is to hone your combat techniques and your ability to cooperate, not to see who can clear it the fastest."

"Solo combat and team combat are completely different. You need to know your teammates' positions, who is tanking damage, who is providing output, when to retreat, and when to push forward."

"These things aren't learned on the fly on the battlefield; they are developed through repeated training and coordination in daily life. The peril-filled apocalypse won't play jokes with you."

"Once your coordination becomes more proficient and you have a certain amount of combat experience, then consider exploring the deeper levels of the Rift Space."

"Understood!" Fan Sinian was the first to respond. His voice was still loud, but the playfulness from before was gone.

The other captains also nodded one after another, as did the crowd of passengers present.

Lin Xiao stepped aside to clear the path.

Fan Sinian raised his new shield and stood firm before the Rift portal.

The eight-man team formed a semi-circle in front of the anchor, each checking their equipment and skill status.

Fan Sinian was the first to press his palm against the portal, his figure swallowed by the eerie light.

Chen Pingan and Fang Yuan followed immediately after.

Then came Liu Bi, Xu Shan, Zhou Jun, and CPUs Kongzhen.

The onlookers watched as Sergei's back disappeared into the portal.

Many people stood in place, looking up at the portal with its flowing eerie light, seemingly hesitating whether to also form a team and give it a try.

Lin Xiao withdrew his gaze and noticed that Xiao He was still standing nearby.

"Old Xiao, why aren't you going? You could just follow behind and AFK to leech some kill rewards."

Xiao He waved his hand, his smile carrying a hint of open-mindedness. "I won't cause trouble. Their injuries haven't fully healed yet, so they'd have to divert energy to protect me. If anything went wrong, I'd probably regret it for the rest of my life!"

Having said that, he gestured with his chin toward a stall on the other side. "I saw they were selling seedling tools over there. I heard from Boss Octopus that those undersea tribes have special cultivation techniques. I want to go learn a bit."

When mentioning planting, Xiao He clearly became more talkative.

He held up the silt in his hand, pinched a bit with his fingers, and brought it to Lin Xiao. "The batch of stardust fertilizer we stockpiled before is long gone. Now we just sprinkle stardust directly as base fertilizer."

"The effect of stardust is indeed good—fast absorption and strong fertility. Anything you plant grows vigorously, but you can't control the degree of mutation. If you sprinkle too much, the crops grow wild and completely deviate from their original traits."

"A few days ago, there was a batch of goji berries where the mutation was too high. The stems and leaves were lush, but not a single fruit could be seen. Sigh, it was all wasted."

Xiao He couldn't help but sigh.

Seeing this, Lin Xiao immediately comforted him: "Don't worry, everything has to be tried slowly. You mustn't be too hasty!"

He paused, then changed the subject.

"In this leaderboard settlement, you didn't make it into the top ten. Your territory facilities weren't upgraded, so the scale of the Planting Boxes couldn't be expanded."

"Later, we'll see if there are other ways. The Planting Box is your core production tool; if the scale doesn't go up, the yield won't go up."

Xiao He nodded. "Brother Lin, actually, I came here for this very reason."

He explained, "The advantage of the Planting Box lies in shortening maturation time and increasing the mutation chance, and most mutations are positive."

"But using stardust directly as fertilizer has a similar effect, it's just that the direction of mutation is hard to grasp."

"So I was thinking, could we mass-produce a type of Cultivation Soil with the right proportions? Using it as a medium for planting, combined with regular stardust top-dressing, we might be able to stabilize yield and quality without relying entirely on Planting Boxes."

"Can it be done?" Lin Xiao frowned, feeling that the difficulty was quite high.

Xiao He was silent for a moment.

Then, with a firm gaze, he said, "It can definitely be done!"