Chapter 23: Moon Phase

Wade gently placed the curled-up, soundly sleeping Mia onto the ground.  

After playing until she was tired, Mia had fallen into his palm.  

Wade held the little ghost, waiting until she fell asleep before setting her down next to the scale.  

Out of habit, he rolled up a corner of the burial cloth to cover the ghost’s ethereal body.  

A ghost probably didn’t need a blanket to sleep, after all, ghosts wouldn’t catch a cold from the wind.  

Wade had just casually pulled the cloth over, but unexpectedly, Mia turned over in her sleep and curled up, pulling a corner of the linen cloth in twice.  

People living in cold regions all knew that you had to cover yourself when sleeping; it seemed she had kept this habit. Wade remembered this small detail and decided to find an opportunity to make her a little quilt suitable for her.  

With a proper bedding set, she probably wouldn’t keep crawling into Wade’s palm like that.  

However, with the things at hand, Wade couldn’t do anything.  

The cave was empty, and apart from a piece of rotten cloth, only some bones remained.  

To upgrade the furniture, he had to go outside to find materials.  

But until Mia fell asleep, the wind outside never ceased.  

Wade could feel it clearly; leaning against the edge of the cave, the vibrations of the wind came through the earth. One could imagine the scene outside, with yellow sand swirling everywhere.  

A strong wind swept across the wasteland. Before Wade went into hibernation last time, there was no wind on the plains. For a long time, Wade had not seen such a fierce wind.  

He calculated how long he had wandered on the plains, picked up a white bone, and started drawing and writing on the ground.  

On this wasteland, there was no sunrise or sunset, so he couldn’t determine a full day in a normal way. Instead, he used the time of one full hibernation cycle as one day’s length.  

He had used this method to keep records earlier.  

The error wouldn’t be too big because the time needed for each hibernation was basically the same.  

From the number of times he threw dice, it was possible to calculate that during his “dream,” after throwing about twenty-one thousand five hundred dice, he would complete one hibernation cycle.  

He always sat on the ground, gently flicking the dice to spin within a very small area.  

Picking up the dice, throwing them, and waiting for them to stop took about two seconds, at most three seconds.  

Simple multiplication showed that completing twenty-one thousand five hundred throws took roughly the same amount of time as twelve hours.  

Although he hadn’t repeated an entire day throwing anything during normal wakefulness, based on his own physical feeling, the times of waking and hibernation were equal.  

So his timing method was actually quite reliable.  

According to this timing, today was the fifty-seventh day since he resurrected as a skeleton.  

Wade drew the number fifty-seven on the ground. By the faint light emitted by Mia herself, he could barely make out the calculation.  

This place hadn’t experienced such a strong wind for at least fifty-seven days. Small winds were common, but they didn’t affect movement; strong winds were rare on the plains.  

Or rather, during the fifty-seven days Wade had been active, strong winds were rare.  

He already had a theory in mind to explain the cause of this strong wind, and he believed this theory was at least eighty percent reliable.  

The change in wind strength was very likely related to the blood moon in the sky.  

It wasn’t just his intuition or premonition; the changes of the blood moon followed a certain pattern.  

As an unemployed skeleton, Wade had too much time every day to sit on the ground and look up at the sky, observing that moon.  

Following his memory, he mapped out the moon’s changing pattern corresponding to the days.  

During the first fifty-seven days, the moon phase shifted from waning to waxing, slowly changing from a quarter crescent to a full moon. On the day of the full moon, Wade saw many skeletons crawling out of the mud and sand to fight.  

The magical power that day was unprecedentedly intense, and when the full moon began to wane, the magical power also receded.  

From this deduction, the change of the moon phase might directly influence the survival environment of the plains.  

It was like the rise and fall of the tides, like a regular magical tidal flow.  

From the new moon to the full moon, the climate on the plains was relatively stable. Wade had not seen extreme weather, and the wandering skeletons were not that active.  

But when the full moon turned to a waning moon, everything began to change. This strong wind seemed to come along with the moon phase change.  

Most likely, it was related to the discharge of magical power. During the previous fifty-seven days, magical power had been gathering, and the energy was absorbed into the sky, so the ground remained calm.  

But now, after the full moon, magical power started to discharge outward. The “tide” surged, and the strong wind swept the land.  

This theory perfectly explained the abnormal phenomenon.  

It seemed that the coming period would require extra caution.  

The previous fifty days might have just been the calm before the storm. The waves on the beach retreating didn’t mean the waves had stopped; they were accumulating higher waves.  

If one didn’t prepare and foolishly picked shells under the waves, when the tide came, they would be swept away, flung about, and dragged into the sea.  

Enough preparations had to be made.  

The moon phase shifting from waxing to waning was probably the most dangerous period on the plains.  

Wade was determined to reinforce and upgrade the cave. If the strong wind stopped, he would have to hurry outside to collect materials and useful things.  

It wasn’t that the outside was dangerous, so hiding in the cave was automatically safe.  

Everything the cave had was complete; nothing was lacking. Of course, he could hide here, but many things were missing.  

The first issue was reinforcement. Relying on Mia’s freezing on the main load-bearing structure was only a temporary measure and didn’t solve the fundamental problem.  

It was clear to see that the ice blocks connecting those white bones were melting little by little, and water droplets could be seen dripping down the bones.  

If the overall structure wasn’t upgraded, the cave would always be at risk of collapsing.  

As for finding a new place to live…  

If there were a better place than this, Wade wouldn’t have chosen here. He had investigated a large area, and considering all conditions, this was the best.  

Therefore, he could only think of ways to renovate.  

He also had to find food for Mia. He himself didn’t feel much, but Mia had transmitted a “hunger” sensation to him since her birth.  

The book also said that without enough magical power and soul energy for ghosts to feed on, ghosts couldn’t maintain their own existence and would eventually revert to the most basic magical power and elements, returning to nature.  

Now, Mia still had an undigested soul inside her, providing her energy, so there was no need to worry temporarily. But when that soul was fully absorbed, if no new food was found for her…  

Wade looked at the quietly sleeping Mia beside him and poked the little one’s cheek with his finger.  

After watching for a while, he silently turned back and slowly and carefully recalled the places he had passed, drawing a map on the ground, marking those places where he might find something useful.