Inner Sect Has Beast

Li Mo forcibly suppressed his stray thoughts.

The inner chambers housed cultivators from the Pawnshop. In theory, they should have been the safest place—at least for the time being, he did not need to worry too much.

The incident of regional lockdown mentioned by the servants had happened several months ago. If the Pawnshop were going to explode into chaos, it would not happen so soon.

"I have to master Paint Green Clothes. Universal Skill alone isn't enough to protect myself."

Li Mo took a deep breath. To verify whether it was possible to nurture Spirit Stones, he continued sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed, absorbing the wandering Spiritual Qi outside.

Without the Spiritual Qi released by the Glass Jar, there was indeed very little Misty Spiritual Energy in the outside world. Usually, he could only absorb a wisp every half an hour.

At the same time, he branded his skin once again, hoping to grow a second layer of Human Skin as quickly as possible.

Branding the same organ would not nurture a new Divine Ability, but the Leakless Body would certainly be strengthened, perhaps even developing new uses.

Human Skin appeared on the fourth page of the Book of Fortune.

This time, Li Mo's cultivation state was clearly worse than before. His thoughts were in turmoil, and with the second layer of Human Skin growing, he kept getting distracted by the sounds outside the door.

During the day, he deliberately observed the cultivators entering and leaving the inner chambers.

As long as the inner chambers had not suddenly become deserted, it meant the danger had not yet arrived there.

Li Mo deeply felt how cultivation was like walking on thin ice. Even the Childhood Stage was so difficult, and it came with unimaginable Death Sickness.

He remained in the inner chambers for another dozen or so days.

The inner chambers had not been sealed off, but the number of cultivators was visibly decreasing. The entire Pawnshop seemed shrouded in the shadow of panic.

Li Mo understood that he had to leave seclusion. He needed to visit the storeroom.

According to the servants, the storeroom was specifically for storing supplies, but servants were forbidden from approaching it. Guards stood watch day and night.

Before leaving, Li Mo took two Crystals from his Storage Bag and turned them over in his hand.

The Crystals glimmered with seven colors. No trace of Spiritual Qi could be seen on their surface, and their structure was fairly solid—at the very least, mortal strength could not shatter them.

But perhaps limited by his cultivation, after the crystals accumulated to a certain extent, they stopped growing and remained the size of peach pits.

Ancient Spirit Stones were far purer, like warm, lustrous mutton-fat jade. They were more than twice the size of Li Mo's Crystals.

Li Mo had never seen present-day Spirit Stones, nor did he know whether the Crystals produced with the Leakless Body met the standard. Still, they should have been more than enough to trade for Beast Blood.

He put away the Crystals and walked out of the inner chambers.

Through the Leakless Body, Li Mo restrained the aura he emitted as much as possible, causing the spiritual power fluctuations of Childhood Stage Layer 1 to slowly fade away.

Only Universal Skill was difficult to conceal. It seemed one truly could not cultivate too many Spells at once; abnormalities in the body were easily exposed.

Li Mo did not hurry to the storeroom. Instead, he observed the Pawnshop from every angle.

There were dense patrols of guards, their expressions grave. Blood still seeped from their ears, and the arms holding their long spears had likely been modified.

"Pierced eardrums?"

A flash of astonishment crossed Li Mo's eyes. What kind of danger required the guards to deal with it by losing their hearing?

He carefully moved through the Pawnshop along the paths. Some areas had indeed been sealed off. He only occasionally saw a cultivator, and most hurried along with anxious faces.

Even the servants had vanished without a trace. Apart from the guards, only scattered cultivators remained in the Pawnshop.

Li Mo wanted to step forward and ask, but whenever cultivators saw someone approaching, they immediately withdrew warily.

He was somewhat helpless about that. After all, he had joined the Pawnshop too recently and had spent most of his time cultivating in the inner chambers. He had no connections at all.

Yet on his way to the storeroom, Li Mo encountered a familiar figure.

Ma Ergao wore servant's clothes. Only a few months had passed since they last met, yet he had become skin and bones, even his eye sockets sunken.

Li Mo greeted Ma Ergao, and only then did the latter come back to his senses.

"Brother Ergao, why aren't you apprenticing at the Miscellaneous Hall anymore?"

Ma Ergao's expression was numb as he answered hoarsely, "Hei Wa, I wasn't capable enough. I couldn't learn how to sculpt statues, unlike you..."

Li Mo had never seen Ma Ergao so talkative before, and he could not help studying him.

He discovered that Ma Ergao seemed not to have slept for a long time, leaving his consciousness in a constant daze.

Ma Ergao noticed the Spirit Tablet at Li Mo's waist and barely roused himself. "You've made something of yourself. Hei Wa, if you ever get the chance to return to the village, help me look after my younger brothers and sisters."

"No problem."

"By the way, is the Miscellaneous Hall doing all right?"

Ma Ergao suddenly became somewhat panicked. With unfocused pupils, he muttered, "Hei Wa, I don't know. I really don't know!"

"Da Wei was crushed to death while sculpting clay statues overnight. Then the next day, he turned into a statue, and every night at Zi Shi, he comes alive again."

"After the overseer took Da Wei away, I... I saw that things were wrong. I happened to be old enough to apply as a servant, so I left the Miscellaneous Hall."

Ma Ergao's face was full of guilt and embarrassment, and the information in his words was terribly fragmented.

Li Mo could sense that Ma Ergao's mind was stretched taut. The slightest rustle of wind or grass might make him collapse completely.

"Do you know how Zhu Zi is doing?"

"Hei Wa, whatever you do, don't ask around. There's a beast in the Pawnshop, a beast!!!"

Ma Ergao easily stuttered whenever he grew nervous. As though afraid of passing his bad luck on to Li Mo, he turned and hurried off in the opposite direction.

Li Mo felt as though a fishbone were lodged in his throat, but he heard Ma Ergao muttering incoherently, "If you recognize the beast, you'll die. The beast will come knocking..."

Li Mo's scalp went numb. When he turned back to look at Ma Ergao again, his figure had already vanished down the mountain path, and everything had returned to deathly silence.

He cursed under his breath. What exactly did beasts mean to Smelting Town? Beasts were nowhere to be seen, yet everyone turned pale at the mention of them.

Li Mo guessed that most cultivators probably did not even understand the stakes involved.

The people who truly knew might only be the Pawnshop's four overseers and Shopkeeper Tian. They seemed to be deliberately erasing the existence of beasts.

With countless thoughts churning through his mind, Li Mo arrived before the storeroom beneath the bright sunlight.

Artifact Repository

The Artifact Repository was where the Heart Beast Sect stored Magic Tool Blanks and spirit materials for refining artifacts. Seeing this, Li Mo knew he had come to the right place.

Compared with the desolation within the Pawnshop, there was actually a throng of people at the storeroom entrance. There were more than ten cultivators of considerable strength just around the outer perimeter.

A faint layer of Spiritual Qi enveloped the storeroom. It should have been some kind of formation.

Li Mo even spotted the One-Eyed Doctor from the Miraculous Hands Medical Hall. It seemed Smelting Town had already begun responding to the Pawnshop's crisis.

He could not help relaxing. What he feared most was the higher-ups doing nothing when trouble struck.

Li Mo increasingly felt that the Pawnshop had spread a huge net around the storeroom, and its target was that so-called beast.

He looked toward the enormous Inner City Wall, which almost completely obscured the buildings atop the mountain.

The beast definitely had not come from outside the city. After all, entry into and exit from Smelting Town were strictly controlled, so it had most likely escaped from the Inner City.

The Outer City was already so strange. One could only imagine the Inner City.

"Sigh, I should master Paint Green Clothes first."

Li Mo unconsciously touched the Storage Bag tucked against his chest. The two crystals inside shone like gemstones, but he did not know whether they truly counted as Spirit Stones.

He released Misty Spiritual Energy, keeping his cultivation at the Entry Level of the Childhood Stage.

Though his age was still somewhat conspicuous, few cultivators paid attention to others at the moment. They were all making arrangements around the storeroom.