The next morning, Yue Wen received word that the job was his.
As soon as he gave them his quote, everyone in the group knew there was no competition. He was taking the job for just a thousand yuan. What was there to fight over?
The job might take two or three nights. That worked out to only three to five hundred yuan a night, and he'd have to stay up late for it. A guy could make more money working as a male model in a bar.
Yue Wen simply smiled at his fellow cultivators' outrage.
After all, he could earn Demon Suppressing Coins from killing monsters. Compared to that, real money wasn't all that important. He'd just have to make everyone else work a little harder.
Let my fellow cultivators suffer; I'll take the blame.
He arranged to meet the employer that evening, so Yue Wen could spend the day taking care of his own business at the firm.
First, he put together a recruitment notice.
"Seeking one assistant exorcist. Must be a cultivator; any realm is fine. Open to all genders and ages. Expected monthly salary: 3,000 to 100,000 yuan (3,000 base salary, with task earnings split fifty-fifty). No upper limit. Apply now."
After finishing the notice, Yue Wen read it over and added one more line.
"Limited positions. First come, first served."
With a base salary of only 3,000 yuan, he'd have trouble recruiting even an intern, let alone a cultivator. So he could only offer a generous cut of the earnings. At other firms like his, even a partner wouldn't get a fifty-fifty split.
"This should be appealing enough, right?" Yue Wen murmured.
After all, he had no cultivation requirements at all.
Cultivators in Jiang City weren't exactly that hard to find.
Five hundred years ago, Blue Star had been a purely technological civilization. Then the concentration of spiritual energy suddenly rose dramatically, and before long, all things in the world began to manifest spiritual power.
Heirs of ancient Immortal Gates emerged from seclusion, claiming that spiritual energy rose and fell like the tides: three thousand years of rising, three thousand years of decline, and three thousand years of drought.
One rise and fall spanned ten thousand years.
Now that the era of spiritual-energy drought had finally passed, the human world was entering a full three thousand years of rising spiritual energy, all the way to its peak.
At first, people had been overjoyed, calling it the "Revival of Spiritual Energy."
But they soon discovered that this revival had brought enormous chaos to the world. It wasn't just humans who could awaken their spiritual nature. The creatures of the earth stirred, mountains and rivers became primordial wastelands, and all manner of living beings gave rise to Demonic Evils.
The greatest threat came from the barriers between worlds, weakened by the surging spiritual energy.
The many realms beyond the human world stirred in turn. Powerful demons and monsters from other realms descended, nearly bringing Blue Star, whose cultivation civilization was only just beginning, to the brink of annihilation.
For almost a century, the human world was all but destroyed. The survivors continued to live in the shadow of that calamity, terrified and unable to find peace.
The Revival of Spiritual Energy was renamed the "Spiritual Energy Calamity."
In the end, humanity's cultivators gradually amassed enough strength, and a group of Immortal Gate heirs followed hidden maps to find the legendary Four Seas Dragon Palace. There, they uncovered a vast trove of immortal treasures left behind from the previous age of spiritual energy.
That was what turned the tide and restored order to the human world.
Even now, vast stretches of Wasteland Zones and forbidden areas still lay beyond the satellite cities, and Demonic Evils of every rank still existed. But at least people in the cities could live and work in peace, and had returned to the technological comforts of the past.
Demons and monsters from other realms could only descend when a Spatial Rift happened to open. There hadn't been a large-scale invasion from another realm in many years.
Over the past few centuries, cultivation had flourished more and more. People born with spiritual potential who could cultivate were still one in ten thousand, but on a planet with a population of over ten billion, that still meant several million. Add in the evil cultivators who had gained their abilities through postnatal alterations, and the number was even larger.
Naturally, the lower the realm, the more cultivators there were. Of the nine realms, the bottom three made up more than seventy percent. And there were plenty of cultivation "enthusiasts" who spent their whole lives stuck in the First Realm.
Yue Wen's requirements were modest. He didn't actually need the assistant to do much—he just needed to satisfy the Supervision Bureau's regulations.
An enthusiast would do.
Before long, the day had passed. Yue Wen spent the whole time cultivating alone at the firm, and not a single person came by.
The Yue's Cultivation Firm still wasn't well-known enough.
A little utility pole was crammed with notices for "Rich Men Seeking Sons," "Cheap Exorcisms," "Home Visits Across the City," and "Lose Weight Without Dieting." You wouldn't believe there was a real business among them.
Yue Wen remained optimistic, though. Once he hired an assistant and got his official business license, he could use some more advanced ways to advertise with a clear conscience—like handing out flyers on the street.
When the time seemed right, he locked up the storefront, climbed onto his little electric scooter, and set off.
He headed east, toward the edge of Satellite City Seven. In the distance, he could already see a vast, hazy curtain of light stretching from heaven to earth, boundless and all-encompassing.
The satellite cities encircled the main urban area, and formations protected the satellite cities. Beyond the light curtain of this protective formation lay the endless Wasteland Zone.
The formation couldn't keep out every Demonic Evil. Some could still slip through the gaps on their own. But if an intruding evil's aura grew strong enough, the formation would activate, preventing large-scale monster tides and protecting the city as a whole.
East City Cemetery lay on the outskirts.
Dusk had dimmed the sky. Beyond a few wooded areas separated by the hillside, rows of gravestones rose from the ground. Many were blank, or bore only the date of death, in case a family member ever came to claim them.
Ordinary people actually had a harder time surviving in this era. The number of accidental deaths each year was considerable.
When the Revival of Spiritual Energy first began, some ordinary people had been terrified of cultivators wielding such immense power. They worried that the spread of these abilities would throw society into chaos. Experts at the time even promoted the idea that "if everyone cultivates, things won't descend into chaos."
The thought was laughable.
A small cottage stood on a slope beside the cemetery. It was where the gravedigger lived. Yue Wen rode his little electric scooter up with a sputter, parked, and locked it.
A scruffy, balding old man came out of the cottage and greeted him with a cheerful smile. "Young man, you're here to clear out the evil spirits, right?"
"That's right, sir," Yue Wen replied.
"My surname's Huang. I manage the cemetery. I'll leave things to you for the next few nights. If you get tired, you can come inside and rest." The old man showed Yue Wen around the little cottage.
"Don't worry, Uncle Huang. You can leave it to me," Yue Wen said with a smile.
The cottage was simply furnished, with just a few household appliances and a small, yellowed bed.
"Only ordinary people are buried here, so there shouldn't be any powerful Demonic Evils. You'll be fine." Old Huang pointed to a drawer. "There are a few stacks of yellow paper inside. Use them whenever you need."
"Got it." Yue Wen nodded.
The old man was well prepared, but Yue Wen had never learned talisman techniques, so he had no use for them.
"There are a few cucumbers in the fridge. Help yourself whenever you want." Old Huang pointed again.
"Got it." Yue Wen nodded once more, thinking the old man was pretty thoughtful.
"There are a few dirty books on the shelf. Feel free to..." Old Huang pointed toward the bookshelf.
"No need for that." Yue Wen hurriedly shook his head.
Good grief.
Did everything in this cottage have to match your surname?
I'm a respectable man, sir.
"Fair enough. The internet's become popular again these days." Old Huang sighed and smiled, as if lamenting that the new era no longer had a place for an old-timer like him.
As dusk gave way to night, Old Huang left Yue Wen the keys, which had a little yellow duck attached, then rode off on a yellow electric scooter with a sputter.
Left alone in the cottage, Yue Wen flipped through a few books on the shelf, purely out of curiosity.
As expected, they were all books with titles like I Couldn't Possibly Be a Goddess, My Wife, Slay the Demons, and The Fairy Has Spoken—stories that sounded anything but respectable.
After killing some time, he waited until it was completely dark, when the Yin beings would start to stir.
Yue Wen left the cottage and headed into the cemetery.
Compared to tangible monsters, "Nightmares"—evil spirits formed from the lingering mental energy of living beings—were far more elusive. They left no trace in daylight, but could manifest again in the darkness.
Yue Wen hadn't gone far when he saw a mass of green ghostly fire drifting over from the distant woods. Though he'd seen one before, he put on his Demon-Slaying Mirror to be safe, focused, channeled his true energy, and identified it.
Besides revealing an evil spirit's aura, the Demon-Slaying Mirror could identify its origin and estimate its combat strength, providing a great deal of crucial information. The weaker the evil spirit's spiritual power, the more information the mirror could reveal.
A message immediately appeared in Yue Wen's mind.
[Lantern Monster: A Nightmare Object formed when a fragment of lingering resentment from a corpse clings to a piece of tattered paper. Without a doubt, it is the weakest evil spirit in the world. An adult's combat strength is roughly equivalent to a quarter of that of a healthy old woman.]
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