Chapter 103: The Heart of a Second-Tier City

Chapter 103: The Second-Tier Heart of the City

As the situation between the Elite Society and the Lords’ Association began to stabilize, the atmosphere around Li Hongshen gradually returned to normal. With this renewed calm, he once again placed his promotion on the agenda.

But before that, Li Hongshen focused on upgrading the Heart of the City, raising it to the same tier as the Tribal Altar.

In the final year of his sixth five-year cycle, during the long summer season, he chose an auspicious day—clear skies, gentle breeze, and radiant sunshine. As before, under the watchful gaze of Li Fuzhen, he walked to the center of Hong City and placed his hand upon the crystalline pillar at the city’s heart.

At the base of the crystal pillar stood the Tribal Altar, and above it, the Heart of the City displayed its current status:

“Name: Hong City”
“Lord’s Altar: Tier Two”
“Heart of the City: Tier One”
“Psionic Scale: 29”
“Technology Scale: 11”
“Area: 6.9 (24.6) square kilometers”
“Population: 58,031”
“Warriors: 11,024”
“Spellcasters: 16”
“Buildings: …”
“Resources: …”

Thanks to Li Hongshen’s vigorous promotion of the birthrate plan—allowing citizens to marry at sixteen without any birth control measures—the women within his domain were almost constantly expecting. Whether it was due to his ‘Resource Abundance’ lord talent or sheer circumstance, his people simply bore more children than others.

Coupled with a relatively advanced medical system that enabled rapid recovery for mothers and high infant survival rates, only a handful of accidents had occurred over the years.

Though the population had exploded, one-third of the citizens were infants, leaving only the remainder as the working-age population. This was partly because Li Hongshen set adulthood at fourteen years old; if he had lowered it to twelve, as some other lords did, his usable population would have been even greater.

Fourteen was agreed upon after consulting with his senior officials—most of his citizens reached heights of 1.7 to 1.8 meters by that age, with some training even pushing them to 1.9 meters. Tall, muscular, and robust, these were the fruits of his two lord talents.

With a focused thought, the panel began to glow as the Heart of the City’s tier slowly ignited, eventually revealing the emblem for Tier Two. The area was updated to include the newly developed city expansion.

During this process, luminous patterns spread outward from the center, tracing the path from the inner city to the outer walls, stretching to the moat, and then looping back—a grand display of energy and regulation.

Unlike before, these patterns were now thicker and more pronounced. Over the past years, his nearly invisible system had shifted from merely providing strands of data rules to alternating between data and energy rules.

Li Hongshen had grown accustomed to this arrangement. He speculated that before promoting Ma Wu, he had received tangible items from the system, but after that early promotion, external overseers began monitoring him in real-time, causing the system to hesitate.

Now, the system no longer dared to hand out physical objects directly; instead, it discreetly distributed rules—though only in small strands each time—beyond the purview of those external observers.

Each lord’s set of rules was akin to a personal secret, the core of their domain, seldom revealed to outsiders. Although many high school lords shared similar rules, some, like Li Hongshen, were gifted unique talents from their parents, keeping their domain’s rules hidden.

Rules resembled code—difficult to understand at a glance, but functional when applied. While external teachers rarely took interest in students’ domain rules, the ability to copy source points from templates sufficed for most.

Upon the Heart of the City’s advancement to Tier Two, as before, a beast tide was triggered. This time, Li Hongshen divided the city’s defense into three phases.

The first phase relied on the walls for defense, allowing new warriors to experience siege defense firsthand and validate the walls’ effectiveness.

The second phase involved Li Hongshen and veteran warriors leading new recruits out in batches for direct face-to-face combat. Though this caused some casualties and required effort, the primary goal was achieved—all warriors confronted the sharp claws and teeth of the wild and truly felt the harshness of the Great Wilderness.

The third phase saw Li Hongshen leading nearly a thousand of his Tiger-Wolf Cavalry in a grand offensive, demonstrating to the new arrivals on the wall what strength and military might truly meant, setting a model and goal for them.

This time, a new unit was added: an air force composed of over twenty Tier-Two Storm Eagles, each bearing elite marksmen selected from the tribe. Under the command of Li Zhong, they launched black powder bombs from the sky and fired arrows at wild beasts, using their reach to draw enemies away, exposing them to the fury of their tactics.

Within Li Hongshen’s domain, the Imperial Crocodiles were stationed in the moat—typically hauling goods and people back into the city, they served as the first line of defense during beast tides.

For these creatures, the beast tide was a feast. The nearly twenty-meter-wide moat posed a formidable barrier to many wild packs, and with the Imperial Crocodiles’ enormous appetites, predators often fell into the water of their own accord.

The crocodiles’ task was to consume these fallen beasts, keeping the moat clear—a contribution of great value.

Once the beast tide subsided, Li Hongshen drove the crocodiles from the moat, encouraging his people to make full use of them, helping the beasts slim down while retrieving blood crystals from the water—a painstaking process he had painstakingly taught them: to consume carcasses and regurgitate the crystals.

As for the giant pandas, they presented a significant dilemma. Some tribal members suggested forming a panda cavalry, but Li Hongshen lacked confidence in this idea.

After all, legends spoke of a great warrior who fought the Yellow Emperor and failed because of these creatures. With a strong sense of self-awareness, Li Hongshen dismissed the idea of a panda cavalry outright.

Through several experiments, he found the best role for the pandas was as revered beasts within the domain. They boosted the morale of his people, and a few moments spent petting them greatly reduced mental fatigue.

When necessary, these pandas could be brought to the walls for battle support. Though they appeared cute and docile, their strength was formidable. Li Hongshen personally witnessed a panda swatting a charging wild beast away with a single slap—a scene both brutally violent and yet strangely satisfying to him.

In his eyes, the giant panda was the perfect tool bear.

With the Heart of the City’s promotion to Tier Two complete, Li Hongshen turned his attention to upgrading the domain itself. The immediate priority was to obtain blueprints for a Tier-Three Altar.

Apologies for the brief update today, and for posting so late. Though my updates are few and tardy, I shamelessly ask for your votes—bold and unabashed, as always.

(End of chapter)