"One thousand taels, right? All right, I'll make a note of it for you!"
Ji Yu recorded Ye Li's information as he said,
"This sum needs to be paid out to you all at once. It's a rather large amount, so let me apply to the gang first."
"It should come through tomorrow. Just wait patiently for one night."
Ye Li had no objection. He smiled and thanked Ji Yu for his help, then got up to leave.
Throughout the whole process, Feng Yue saw nothing but Ye Li's beaming smile.
If he could keep a straight face knowing a thousand taels of silver would hit his account tomorrow—at least a million—then he could probably be diagnosed with depression.
With this silver, he could buy a large quantity of Body Tempering Pills for his cultivation.
One Body Tempering Pill was worth 20 experience points, while one Dragon Tiger Pill was worth 6.
Add to that 1 point of progress for half an hour of hard cultivation, and 2 points of progress from passive breathing exercises each day.
One Body Tempering Pill a day, three Dragon Tiger Pills, and seven shichen of cultivation.
His daily experience gain could reach: [20+6×3+(14-6)+2]=48 points
At least 1,440 points a month!
Reading comprehension: What is the author trying to express in the few lines above?
Answer: The author's yearning for home!
Anyway, after a round of top-tier mental combat involving the four basic arithmetic operations, Ye Li had arrived at a conclusion that even Einstein couldn't find fault with:
If he maintained his current cultivation speed, he would reach the middle stage in no more than forty days!
It was like one of those classic questions: would you choose five trillion or Frieza's five hundred million power level? There was no point comparing them.
In this world of high martial arts, the fist was power!
Money was only a number. It became real only when converted into strength.
As long as he kept cultivating, he could keep borrowing. The debt would always lag one step behind him!
Once he reached the Post-Heaven Realm, or even the Xiantian Realm, it would be like having the power to print money. He could get as much as he wanted with a single word.
The neighbors were already taking out loans to cultivate immortality. He, too, had to prepare to take out loans to practice martial arts!
To be honest, Ye Li was mentally prepared.
If the gang wouldn't lend him money tomorrow, he'd swallow his pride and ask Wang Xian's wealthy father for some support.
Or he could make the rounds at a few more places under the name of a genius, drum up some venture capital, and get himself a startup angel round.
His past life as a streamer begging for donations had taught Ye Li that if you were going to sell yourself, you had to be willing to throw caution to the wind!
While he was still building up strength to make that snowball grow, Ye Li absolutely wouldn't let external conditions slow his cultivation.
If the overall environment wouldn't cooperate, then he'd rely on his own initiative to change it!
A living person couldn't die of thirst just because there was no toilet, could he?
With a faint anticipation of tomorrow's money, Ye Li said goodbye to Feng Yue and headed toward Yunjin Street.
After all, he was responsible for managing the area. Even if he usually left everything to others, he still had to stay nearby. It wouldn't do if an emergency came up and no one could find him.
Besides, Yunjin Street wasn't far from the courtyard house on Changyuan Street, so he could get home quickly after work.
As he walked toward Yunjin Street, Ye Li lowered his head in thought.
"During the day, I'll rent a courtyard and cultivate normally. As for taking Dragon Tiger Pills, I'll wait until I'm back at the courtyard at night."
After all, taking Dragon Tiger Pills made Niu Da grow like crazy.
If he ran into an emergency during the day, there was no telling whether he could pull himself away from his reverie and his reunion with his two-dimensional waifu to deal with the problem.
Even if he could move normally, fighting with a poker-thick rod sticking up was just too bizarre. It would be a real test of Ye Li's mental fortitude!
As he walked toward Yunjin Street, Ye Li suddenly noticed something unusual.
In the middle of the road, a white-clad man who looked under thirty stood amid the crowd, holding a long sword. With an indignant look, he said,
"Fellow townspeople, Great Xia is in dire straits these days. I'm sure you all feel the same!"
"Guangming is full of corrupt officials and petty tyrants, exorbitant taxes and levies, and gangs everywhere. How is this any kind of place for ordinary people to live?"
"If you're dissatisfied, why not hear me speak about the current state of affairs?"
"You can ask me anything you like. Whether it's matters of state or conflicts in the martial world, I know a thing or two about them!"
Ye Li looked at the white-clad man giving a speech in public, his face showing utter shock.
He was criticizing the government in public, and the Guangming constables weren't doing anything about it?
Just how powerful were this guy's connections?
Looking more closely, Ye Li noticed that the white-clad man's blood energy blazed like a rainbow, impossible to hide.
Judging by his realm alone, he was at least at the Body Tempering Realm. And the fine sword in his hand looked like no ordinary weapon.
"Which rich young master has so much free time he'd rather spout this nonsense in public than cultivate?" Ye Li muttered, the corner of his mouth twitching.
But he didn't dwell on it.
Even the constables weren't getting involved. Why should he care?
He quietly skirted around the white-clad man and hurried away.
But his hasty departure didn't escape someone else's notice.
Wei Chi was among the students of Chuangyuan Martial Hall, practicing the most basic stance work, but his gaze followed Ye Li as he walked away.
"Azure Dragon Gang uniform. I've never seen that face before. At the early Body Tempering stage—is he a new core disciple?"
His distraction made the young woman supervising them knit her brows.
"Wei Chi, stop getting distracted by other things. Your aptitude is so poor that you only broke through to Body Tempering by sheer luck. Now you need to work hard at cultivation. Don't let your mind wander!"
Hearing the girl's advice, Wei Chi said woodenly, "Thank you for the guidance, senior sister!"
He silently withdrew his gaze and focused on his cultivation again, sensing the circulation of his blood energy.
If someone had a scanning-type trait, they would have discovered that inside the wooden-faced boy's body, wrapped in the Qi-Blood Network, his blood energy had long since condensed like lead and mercury, while his flesh and blood had been forged like iron. He was already close to the late Body Tempering stage.
He was nothing like the so-called lucky breakthrough to the early Body Tempering stage the girl had described.
[Heaven Rewards Diligence]—that was Wei Chi's trait. As long as he worked hard, he would be rewarded!
His constitution was poor, but thanks to the steady accumulation of his cultivation, he could see tiny improvements every time!
His only regret was that, although hard work brought rewards, each breakthrough made the gains from every cultivation session more and more meager.
The saying promised that hard work would be rewarded, but whether the reward was 100, 10, or even 0.01, it was still a reward.
That was also why his trait was only blue!
"Simple cultivation brings less and less improvement to my realm. Without outside help, it'll take at least a year of hard work to break through to the late stage!"
Wei Chi considered the matter silently, beginning to calculate where he could get the resources he needed for cultivation.
His desperate need for resources reminded him of the last time he'd obtained martial resources: he had killed a Body Tempering martial artist from the Lone Wolf Gang.
Taking his enemy by surprise and relying on a sharp weapon, he'd needed only a single slash to tear through the other man's Qi-Blood Network and gut him.
Afterward, he'd ransacked the man's home and found more than a hundred taels in banknotes, along with a manual on fist techniques.
"So, should I go back to my old ways?" A glint of greed flashed in Wei Chi's eyes.
Even if he killed someone, no one would ever suspect that the culprit was him, the untalented "early Body Tempering" kid!
"But I'll have to be careful." Thinking of what he'd seen recently, Wei Chi's greed abruptly receded.
Guangming City wasn't exactly peaceful these days.