The City Lord's Manor of Stone Forest City was nothing like Zero Wing City, which had been constructed from scratch. Rather than a fortress, it resembled a sprawling courtyard compound, enclosed by thick stone walls. Heavy, rustic iron gates stood shut tight, flanked by two full squads of Tier 2 NPC guards. Even expert players wouldn't be able to set foot inside.
The moment Shi Feng approached the iron gates, the Tier 2 NPC guards flanking them swung the doors wide open and stood at attention on either side, respectfully welcoming him in.
"As expected, the City Lord's Manor's defenses here are considerably stronger." Shi Feng glanced at the curtain of water that had formed just inside the entrance, marveling quietly to himself.
The Abyssal Barrier!
This was something Zero Wing City simply did not have.
In the Divine Realm, the gap between a town and a city was enormous — the two were even captured in entirely different ways. To seize a guild town, all one needed to do was snatch the Town Token from the guild headquarters. But once it came to a guild city, one had to conquer the City Lord's Manor itself.
On the surface the difference didn't seem all that large, but in reality they were worlds apart.
First, there were the defensive magic formations. A guild headquarters' defenses generally had to be set up by the guild itself, and high-grade defensive formations were extremely difficult to obtain. The City Lord's Manor, however, came with a naturally occurring defensive magic formation that was actually stronger than the one protecting the outer city walls — its only drawback being that the mana fueling it was weaker, so it couldn't last as long as a city's main defensive formation.
Second, renovating a guild headquarters within a town would not alter the town itself in any way. Renovating the City Lord's Manor, on the other hand, could enhance the entire city.
This was because the City Lord's Manor served as the core of the whole city — the stronger the manor grew, the stronger the city became in turn.
However, upgrading the City Lord's Manor was no simple matter. It required vast amounts of capital as well as all manner of supremely rare resources and treasures.
This was precisely why guild cities developed so slowly, unlike guild towns, which only needed sufficient reputation, money, and a large player population to grow.
Generally speaking, cities that had been promoted in the Divine Realm were stronger than those built from the start, and those promoted using Gold-grade tokens were stronger still.
The Abyssal Barrier was the best proof of that.
In his previous life, Shi Feng had struggled to develop a city all the way to mid-tier before finally obtaining the Abyssal Barrier, yet now a simple promotion had granted it automatically. The gap was genuinely staggering.
Although the Abyssal Barrier was nothing like a defensive magic formation in that it couldn't block attacks from the outside, its usefulness was no less significant. The barrier could intercept invisible attacks and sever all contact between the City Lord's Manor and the outside world.
Any player inside the City Lord's Manor would be completely cut off from external communication without permission — making it an excellent tool for dealing with spies within a guild, preventing them from relaying intelligence in real time.
For this reason, many guilds held important meetings inside the City Lord's Manor, as it could, to a certain extent, prevent rapid information leaks and keep enemies from immediately countering their plans.
Now that they had the Abyssal Barrier, Zero Wing finally had a reasonably secure location. They would no longer need to fortify every single one of their future operations, which had previously prevented them from carrying out many ambitious plans.
Shi Feng then walked deeper into the City Lord's Manor. Inside the walls lay a garden of lush greenery and wildflowers, filled with birdsong and fragrant blossoms — giving the impression that the place could be taken over with ease. It was nothing like the heavily fortified City Lord's Manor of Zero Wing City.
Shi Feng was already accustomed to this kind of sight.
Although Stone Forest City had been promoted rather than built from scratch, it was still a newly promoted city at the end of the day. Bringing its City Lord's Manor up to the level of Zero Wing City's would require enormous investments of capital and resources. This was precisely why all the major superpowers wanted to attack while Stone Forest City had just been promoted.