Black Sabbath

Huang Wulang sucked in a sharp breath and looked at Qing He Miao in shock.

He could supply large quantities of salt on a steady basis, and he could get his hands on spices too.

With such far-flung reach, the power and channels behind him were not something that could be obtained through talent alone, unlike martial arts.

It was simply unheard of.

"This... Daoist priest, you've truly taken me by surprise."

He could not help murmuring:

"Just what kind of power does your family possess? Forgive my ignorance, but 'Qing Miao' is your Daoist name, is it not? May I ask your secular surname?

"I've never heard of any great clan in this dynasty with... such power. I'm afraid even ordinary imperial relatives might not be capable of it, would they?"

"Imperial relatives? We really aren't."

Qing He Miao laughed and teased:

"None of my ancestors were ever emperors, though I do happen to know a prince. Unfortunately, he doesn't know me."

Huang Wulang's heart pounded at those words, but he did not dare dig deeper.

Heaven knew whether that prince's surname was Zhu or Li.

The dynasty had changed, it was true.

But in this era, people still looked back fondly on the Tang Dynasty's golden age, and the various powers all flew the Tang imperial banner to one degree or another.

This was probably a little sensitive.

"Haha, you jest, Daoist priest."

He gave a couple of awkward chuckles and wisely let the subject drop, steering the conversation back to business:

"Let's talk about the salt and spices instead. If it's truly as you say, Huang Family Fort is willing to do everything in its power to cooperate on this deal! We can take our time discussing the details!"

The two exchanged smiles, both knowing the partnership was settled.

As for where the goods actually came from?

What a joke!

In these times, official salt was held in the iron grip of the military governors and separatist powers.

Who sold official salt like this?

They were already in this line of work, and he still dared ask where it came from?

Like a child. Didn't he know the rules of the jianghu?

Huang Wulang clearly knew the rules.

Besides, when he saw the first batch of "samples" Qing He Miao brought out with his own eyes a few days later,

the refined salt packed in an unassuming cloth sack, yet as white as snow, all his questions were replaced by even deeper shock and awe.

Chapter 57: Black Sabbath

After seeing the quality of the salt, Huang Wulang knew.

This business was too big for him alone to swallow.

But as long as he clung tightly to Qing He Miao's coattails and got a share of the profits, it would be enough to multiply the Huang Family's strength and wealth several times over!

He began taking the initiative to contact more reliable, more powerful partners, preparing to make a major push.

And so, after all the time since he had transmigrated, in the first year after the instance opened,

Qing He Miao discovered that things had developed quite differently from what he had initially envisioned.

He still had not obtained any top-tier cultivation manuals or secret techniques from either world's systems, nor had he encountered the "protagonists" of either world.

Even the days of grinding experience every day and leveling up at breakneck speed after the instance opened had failed to materialize.

Instead, he gradually embarked on a life of smuggling along the Taihang Mountains Eight Passes, the ancient tea-horse road through the Taihang Mountains.

Through Huang Wulang's efforts, Qing He Miao soon received an official document and a token from Great Liang.

An appointment letter stamped with the seal of the northern field headquarters' military supply commissioner's office.

And a dark iron waist token.

The document stated that "Qing Miao" had been appointed supply inspector for a certain northern circuit.

The official title was actually a combination of "supply commissioner" and "inspector," both of which were low-ranking, ungraded honorary posts or assignments.

A supply commissioner was roughly a military officer's title.

They were generally appointed temporarily in wartime or by a local military commander to check and allocate military supplies.

An inspector, meanwhile, was a local civil official responsible for supervising the territory under his jurisdiction and reporting unlawful acts.

When the two posts were combined, it was usually a case of a local civil official being temporarily called into service by a military commander.

However, Qing He Miao's so-called "direct superior" was probably basking in the sun at some office in Tokyo Bianliang right now!

Essentially, no one was in charge of him.

The mountains were high and the emperor was far away.

Here in Hebei, especially around the Taihang Mountains,

this appointment was essentially a blank pass for "legitimate" travel.

If no one looked into it and no one truly exercised authority over him,

that meant that with this token, he and his men could enter and leave northern military camps, markets, and passes within Great Liang's territory "in the proper and rightful manner."

To conduct inspections... or rather, they could carry all kinds of supplies back and forth with a legitimate pretext.

Of course, the customary gifts to the various local authorities still had to be paid.

Once fattened up, being slaughtered for meat was also hard to avoid.

All of that depended on one's personal abilities.

But in any case, he had transformed himself into an official under Zhu Wen.

He had successfully come ashore in the instance.

"It's just that this 'shore'..."

Qing He Miao rubbed the cold iron token, somewhat wistful:

"I'm afraid it's thin ice floating on the water. In another two years, Zhu Wen's leaky boat won't even be able to save itself, and this shore will be due to sink too."

He clearly remembered that, whether in real history, the general course of The Ravages of Time was much the same.

He would not be able to remain a corrupt official under this feudal system for many more years either.

Aside from the change in status, he also observed a remarkable phenomenon.

Creatures called disaster victims really did seem to be like NPCs in a game.

After one batch was dealt with, it would not be long before new ones always spawned.

Yet Qing He Miao could not bring himself to let these people starve to death.

The land was strewn with wailing victims, the city awash in blood; saving the common people took but a single thought.

People could not... at least, they should not be allowed to starve to death.

It annoyed him to no end.

But the corresponding profession of "bandit" was not like that.

After he had joined forces with Huang Family Fort to wipe out Mount Luba and reaped a haul,

then taken the initiative to clear out a few smaller groups of newly emerged bandits nearby,

no new bandits appeared for a long time afterward.

In particular, as his reputation spread, new bandit troubles seemed to spring up more and more slowly.

That directly made his envisioned "monster-grinding" plan less than smooth.

Come to think of it, shouldn't these things be like chives?

In troubled times, as starter-village materials for wandering heroes, shouldn't one crop grow back after another was cut down?

"It's really not that I'm not trying..."

Qing He Miao sometimes felt helpless too:

"It's just that even in ancient times, when you want to appear sane and maintain certain basic limits, it's this hard to find a reasonable excuse to keep killing people."

He could hardly slaughter innocents indiscriminately just to level up, or join a separatist force as a soldier and go to war.

They were all his own ancestors, and he could not bring himself to do it.

Even so, there were far more opportunities to gain experience in ancient times than in the modern world.

With what he had accumulated during his time in the instance, along with his own diligent, unceasing training, he had still easily gained another two levels over the year, reaching LV 13.

And upon reaching LV 12, the system had unlocked another chance to draw a Stand, right on schedule.

This time, light flowed across the wheel, and when it stopped, it revealed a figure of a gloomy, uncanny aspect—[Black Sabbath].

"Automatic type, shadow travel, Soul Attack..."

After drawing the Stand, Qing He Miao carefully recalled its performance in the original work.

As he remembered it, this was a long-range, automatically controlled Stand.

It was humanoid in form, and its activation conditions and behavior could be set in advance.

When the conditions were met, it would activate and carry them out automatically.

The Stand itself could move at extremely high speed only between the "shadows" of objects, shifting position almost instantly where shadows intersected.

By touching a shadow, it could pull at and restrain its target's soul, creating a powerful suppressive effect.

The good news was that, as a purely long-range automatic Stand, even if it was destroyed by an external force, it would cause him no direct damage or backlash.

Like an automatic trap that could be set in advance, it was impossible to guard against when used well.

And even if it failed and was destroyed, there was no danger of its user being injured.

The downside was that, correspondingly, he could not sense the Stand's status in real time.

He lost the precision of direct control and the ability to adapt on the spot.

He could only learn the general course of its actions through preset commands and vague feedback afterward.

Testing showed that, once activated, Black Sabbath was a tall humanoid shrouded in a dark robe, its face impossible to make out, radiating an icy, silent aura.

When it merged into the shadow of a wall, a tree, or a human body.