Endless Winter: My Camp Upgrades Infinitely Chapter 1223 - 409: The Dilemma of Two Towns, the Longyou Model, the Golden Order Prison Warden, Lin Kai’s Reminder_2

Previously on Endless Winter: My Camp Upgrades Infinitely...
Jiangxia and Muyin towns grapple with profound developmental crises, stemming from devastating losses in their populations and cultivation ranks after years of warfare and internal strife. In Jiangxia, the half-year battle against Dajue Temple claimed Lord Jiang Yinglong's life and decimated over sixty percent of Cold Resistance and Earth-digging Realm cultivators, leaving fewer than two thousand at Cold Resistance and about seventy thousand at Earth-digging. Muyin, plagued by external aggression from the Northern Three Towns and factional conflicts since Murong Ding's death four years ago, has shrunk to just fifteen hundred Cold Resistance cultivators and over fifty thousand Earth-digging, reliant solely on Murong Chui for Xianyang-level power. Though Great Xia resolved their survival threats via territorial reallocations at the Hongmen Banquet—granting Jiangxia Baisong while it ceded lands—the towns still falter in securing cultivation resources, as evidenced by clashes between Jiangxia and Great Xia hunting teams in He Yin Village.

The sole reason must be that Jiangxia faces tremendous pressure from hunting, to the extent that nearly all their low, middle, and high-level teams have been deployed, covering the full 110-kilometer stretch near Moao Mountain and conducting hunts at an intense pace. Without this, given Jiangxia’s scarce hunting teams under Baisong’s command, encounters with Great Xia’s teams in the Snow Forest wouldn’t happen so frequently.

Countless elements in the world connect in intricate ways.

A camp progressing steadily and properly maintains a specific rhythm for hunting. Similar to the Great Xia Hunting Department, which establishes regular monthly targets for every low, middle, and high-level team it oversees.

These targets aren’t chosen haphazardly. Since hunting leads to damages and unavoidable deaths among members, the endurance of the hunters must factor in as well.

In the end, hunting teams consist of real people, and you can’t dispatch them for endless pursuits without boundaries, can you?

Thus, when a camp abruptly ramps up its hunting and foraging efforts, it usually stems from a single cause—the camp’s stockpiles of resources fall short, put differently, the provisioning mechanism is breaking down.

The gains from an individual’s routine hunting and gathering, be it daily or monthly, tie directly to their own power, so typically, there’s a standard estimate for how many people an Earth-digging Realm or Cold Resistance Level individual can sustain, along with the cultivation supplies they contribute to the camp.

This forms the essence of the supply system.

For nearly a decade, the Great Xia camp has grown, and with Lord Xia Hong keeping a sharp eye on the broader statistics, he tasked Civil Affairs Director Zhu Yuan long ago to investigate and confirm this information.

Naturally, plenty of uncertainties exist, like the steadiness of the nearby surroundings, dangers in hunting zones, living standards, the camp’s ability to transform goods into output, improvements in group hunting and foraging skills, and more...

By weighing all these aspects thoroughly, Zhu Yuan, using Great Xia as a model, determined that an average Earth-digging Realm, varying by prowess, sustains roughly 5 to 20 individuals, while exceeding 30 proves quite challenging; a Cold Resistance Level handles 30 to 100 people.

These figures approximate Great Xia’s present conditions and shouldn’t apply straight to other camps, yet they offer at least some useful insight.

Based on Great Xia’s most recent updates, Jiangxia has been shifting residents from nearby village camps to the town since May to offset last year’s conflict casualties. The town’s populace now tops 900,000.

With fewer than 2000 Cold Resistance Level folks and over 70,000 Earth-digging Realm members tasked to uphold more than 900,000 lives, this stands as the main driver behind Jiangxia’s skyrocketing hunting demands.

Xia Hong has even gotten confidential updates claiming that Lord Xiahou Zhang grabs a massive saber each night and ventures deep into Moao Mountain to pursue elite Cold Beasts. This fact alone highlights the desperate straits Jiangxia endures.

Likewise, Muyin struggles just as severely.

Mirroring Jiangxia, Murong Chui began relocating people from his territory’s village camps to the town in May to rebuild numbers. Muyin Town’s total residents now surpass 750,000.

Featuring over 1500 Cold Resistance Level individuals and more than 40,000 Earth-digging Realm members to back 750,000 people, Muyin’s predicament outstrips even Jiangxia’s in severity.

Here, support goes beyond basic survival. If it only involved handing out enough food to prevent starvation, the town could manage without much strain.

Support entails offering every person opportunities for cultivation and advancement, a worthwhile existence, enabling the town to evolve sustainably and robustly. Not boosting natural growth rates, but preserving them at minimum, preventing any decline.

Should it dip into negatives, the town would be inching toward gradual extinction!

Facing such circumstances, how could Jiangxia and Muyin not fret?

Absolutely, they’re frantic like ants scampering on a scorching griddle.

Because he grasps this critical vulnerability in both towns, Xia Hong felt bold enough to suggest merging the Three Towns and pooling resource zones right now.

Proposing merger without strings attached would make Great Xia appear as the aggressor toward the pair. In their present state, Jiangxia and Muyin couldn’t possibly dispatch folks to forage and hunt in Great Xia’s zones.

Yet, attaching the clause of claiming a cut from the hunting teams alters everything entirely.

From the two towns’ viewpoint, they contribute nothing; they simply unlock the resource zones at the mountain pass, letting them draw revenue from Great Xia’s teams. It’s a deal promising gains without risks.

Regarding Xia Hong’s opening offer, permitting residents of both towns to trade and buy freely from Great Xia’s Camp Supply Department, their swift rejection revealed they fully perceived his strategy.

This amounts to Great Xia openly attempting to lure away talent from the two towns. No wonder that, though Xiahou Zhang and Murong Chui hesitate to outright defy Xia Hong, they’ll likely clamp down on their underlings upon returning. Still, the success of those clamps hinges on the allegiance of the Cold Resistance Level and Earth-digging Realm members there.

Murong Chui and Xiahou Zhang both recognize the vital worth of this revenue share to their towns, leading them to spar verbally at length with Xia Chuan and Qiu Peng, eventually hiking Xia Hong’s original one percent to two percent.

They even first targeted pushing it to two and a half percent. But Qiu Peng furiously warned of consulting Xia Hong to scrap the Three Towns merger plan. While Xiahou Zhang and Murong Chui saw the bluff in Qiu Peng’s threat, considering how this partnership pressed harder on their towns than on Great Xia, they conceded in the end.