Chief Steward Wang's gloomy figure vanished into the night, and the suffocating pressure disappeared with her.
Seeing there was no more excitement to watch, the Chore Disciple around them prepared to crawl back into their own dogholes.
Zhou Xuan looked at the bunch who'd been enjoying the show moments ago and forced himself up from the ground.
His face still wore an expression of lingering terror. In a weak voice, he called, "Senior Brothers, wait a moment!"
The people who'd been about to leave stopped and looked back at him, their eyes holding a trace of impatience and confusion.
"Need something?" one of the nearby Chore Disciples asked with a frown.
Zhou Xuan squeezed out a smile uglier than a grimace. He pointed to his wooden hut, now reduced to a heap of rubble, then to the gruesome mess of flesh and blood on the ground.
He said feebly, "Senior Brothers, look at me. I'm badly hurt, and my house has collapsed, too."
"During the day, I helped everyone quite a bit, handling all that dangerous waste. Could you lend me a hand and help clean things up a little?"
His voice was full of pleading, and his eyes made him look weak, pitiful, and helpless.
But when the dozen or so Chore Disciples heard him, their expressions instantly turned strange.
They exchanged glances as if they were looking at an idiot.
"Help you clean up? Did the explosion scramble your brains?"
"Exactly. Can't you see what's on the ground? It's bad luck. Whoever touches it is doomed!"
"You did all that earlier because you wanted to. Who asked you to help? And you call that helping? You were practically rushing to your death!"
One voice spat out the words with biting sarcasm.
"Let's go. This place is cursed. Who knows if there are more Waste Pills that might explode?"
The Chore Disciples couldn't even be bothered to roll their eyes at him. They avoided him and the wreckage as if Zhou Xuan were the source of some plague.
They turned around and walked away without looking back, their feet flying. They vanished into the darkness in no time, faster than rabbits.
In the blink of an eye, the broken hut, which had been surrounded by people moments ago, stood alone. Zhou Xuan was the only one left, solitary in the evening breeze.
"Heh."
The fear and helplessness on Zhou Xuan's face vanished without a trace, replaced by icy mockery.
He silently flipped off the direction the group had gone.
"A bunch of idiots. Ungrateful bastards!"
He muttered a curse.
Expecting these people, struggling in despair and numbness, to show any humanity was pure fantasy.
If they didn't kick him while he was down, he should count himself lucky.
Still, this was for the best. He wouldn't have to worry about anyone seeing what he was doing while he cleaned up.
Zhou Xuan paid them no more mind and turned back into the ruins.
He didn't hurry to clear away the broken planks. Instead, he went straight to the center of the explosion, crouched down, and expressionlessly examined the bloody chunks of flesh scattered across the ground, too mangled to tell apart.
The air reeked of scorched flesh and blood, so thick it made him want to vomit.
He reached out and picked a small fragment of bone that hadn't completely carbonized from a pile of black ash. Holding it before his eyes, he examined it.
"One Mid-grade Spirit Stone."
Zhou Xuan's gaze was deep as he muttered under his breath.
"My life was worth a Mid-grade Spirit Stone?"
He couldn't help but sneer.
A Mid-grade Spirit Stone was worth a hundred Low-grade Spirit Stones!
In the Spirit Sword Pavilion, even ordinary Inner Sect Disciples received only five to ten Low-grade Spirit Stones in monthly Sect offerings, along with a few bottles of worthless pills.
A hundred Low-grade Spirit Stones was an enormous fortune—enough to make their eyes turn red with greed!
"That idiot Zhao Long was willing to pay such a high price just to kill me?"
Zhou Xuan's brows drew together slightly, then relaxed. A trace of disdain crossed his face.
"No, that's not right."
He shook his head and muttered to himself, "With Zhao Long's greedy, self-satisfied nature, how could he possibly be willing to hand over so many Spirit Stones?"
"This sounds more like an empty promise, a pie in the sky, meant to trick a dirt-poor fool like Li San into risking his life for him."
"Poor bastard. He was used as a weapon, and he died without ever realizing he was just a dupe, cannon fodder."
Zhou Xuan casually tossed the bone fragment aside. His killing intent toward Zhao Long grew even stronger.
But soon, another thought occurred to him.
"I've heard that the true prodigies of the Sect—the True Inheritor Disciples—get ever more generous treatment the higher they rise."
He scratched his head. The world at that level was still beyond his reach.
Chore Disciples, Outer Sect, Inner Sect, True Inheritors.
The gap between them was wider than the heavens and the earth.
They said that each Peak Master and the elders of the various halls had only three chances in their entire lives to take on True Inheritor Disciples.
Those people were the Sect's future foundation. The resources they enjoyed were more than ordinary disciples could even dream of.
"Forget it. Why think so much?"
Zhou Xuan shook his head, tossing those stray thoughts aside.
"Besides, for me, what use are Spirit Stones when Demon Cores are so much better?"
The fire of getting rich rekindled in his eyes.
No matter how pure the spiritual energy in a Spirit Stone was, to the system it was just Gold Touch Value calculated by total quantity.
Demon Cores, on the other hand, were the kings of value for money!
The night passed without incident.
Or rather, Zhou Xuan hadn't slept at all.
He spent most of the night clearing away the remains of the wooden hut. He gathered up all the fragments of Li San's bones and threw them into the distant Incineration Pit, destroying the evidence.
As for himself, he found a fairly intact plank in the ruins, leaned it against the corner of a wall, and made do for the night.
The next morning, when the first dim ray of sunlight fell into the lifeless mountain hollow, Zhou Xuan climbed to his feet.
He dusted himself off. There wasn't a trace of exhaustion on his face; instead, he looked full of energy, his eyes bright enough to startle someone.
Today was the monthly day off for the Chore Disciples of the Miscellaneous Affairs Department.
He told the manager in charge of the records that his hut had collapsed and he needed to go down the mountain to buy some lumber for repairs.
The manager had witnessed the whole thing the day before. With a grimace, he waved Zhou Xuan away, clearly hoping he'd hurry up and get lost.
After getting permission to leave, Zhou Xuan went straight down the mountain without the slightest reluctance.
As he made his way downhill, the ever-present stench and Poison Mist gradually faded, and the fresh scent of plants and trees washed over him.
The spiritual energy was nowhere near as dense as it was at Pill Peak, but it was still a hundred times better than that godforsaken place in the Miscellaneous Affairs Department.
Zhou Xuan took a deep breath and felt every one of his thirty-six thousand pores open up.
At the foot of the Sect's mountain was a market set up especially for Sect disciples.
Before coming here, Zhou Xuan had heard the old-timers in the Chore Servant Courtyard mention it.
They said it was one of the busiest and most lucrative places in the entire Spirit Sword Pavilion.
The Sect not only tolerated it, but actively encouraged it.
That was because the Deacon Hall, which managed the market, took a ten-percent cut of every transaction, large or small, as a management fee.
For many disciples, it was also a convenient place to go.
The tasks issued by the Sect were too hard. What if they couldn't complete one?
Go buy what you need at the market!
They were short on pills for cultivation and had no Spirit Stones. What could they do?
Go sell things they couldn't use and trade them for what they needed!
As he walked, Zhou Xuan worked out his plan to make a fortune.
The refurbished goods in his Universe Bag were all low-grade Dharma Artifacts, but he had them in quantity.
He could sell a Green Edge Sword for three to five Low-grade Spirit Stones, a Sharp Metal Talisman for one or two, and that Black Iron Shield should fetch at least seven or eight.
All told, he should be able to scrape together twenty or thirty Low-grade Spirit Stones without a problem!
That would be his first pot of Metal!
With that money, he could buy Demon Cores and exploit the system's information advantage to rack up Gold Touch Value like crazy!
"Heh heh heh."
At the thought of it, Zhou Xuan's mouth stretched into an uncontrollable grin, and he let out a strange laugh.
Several passing Outer Sect Disciples glanced at him with disdain.
Before you continue