Hiding Among the Natives

Li Qingyun had quite a rich deal of experience with how to blend in among the local indigenous people.

Putting on an identity, finding a broker, viewing a house, he spent hundreds of gold pieces on the spot right then and there, and that very night bought a small two-courtyard compound in Little Fortune Alley within the city.

The money in his hands, along with his clothing and the like, naturally all came from "borrowing as one goes."

On the road coming to Wanfu City, he happened to encounter a large family lying dead across the path, their corpses mostly mutilated and with their organs hollowed out; they must have run into vicious bandits or wild beasts.

At the time Li Qingyun had found it somewhat strange: if it were the work of highwaymen, why would a chest of wealth be left behind in one of the carriages, along with no small amount of scattered gold and silver items? Now he naturally knew why.

Amidst the pile of corpses with their wretched looks of death, he casually picked out a few sets of clothes, as well as the scattered valuables and so forth, and then came to Wanfu City in the guise of the down-and-out scholar Li Qingyun.

Buying a house in Little Fortune Alley was naturally no difficult matter.

Because the Nine Sons Heaven revered the saying "bearing children gains the Dao," the dwellings and courtyards among the common folk were also built larger and larger.

Little Fortune Alley ought to be considered a residential area leaning toward the impoverished district within the city, but the houses of each and every household here were still mostly two-courtyard compounds, with main rooms, wing rooms, side rooms, and the like adding up to at least twenty-odd living quarters.

The house Li