Inner Sect Has Beast

Li Mo forcefully suppressed his distracting thoughts.

The inner room housed the pawnshop's cultivators; in theory, it should be the safest place, at least for now, no need to worry too much.

The area lockdown the menial had mentioned happened a few months ago—if the pawnshop were going to implode, it wouldn't happen overnight.

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

Li Mo took a deep breath. To test the possibility of nurturing spirit stones, he closed his eyes again, crossed his legs, and absorbed the free-floating spiritual energy from the outside.

Without the spiritual energy released by the Glass Jar, the Misty Spiritual Energy in the outside world was indeed very scarce; usually, it took half an hour to absorb a single strand.

At the same time, he branded his skin again, hastening the growth of a second layer of human skin.

Branding the same organ wouldn't birth a new divine ability, but the Leakless Body would certainly be strengthened, perhaps even extending into new functions.

The fourth page of the Book of Fortune revealed [Human Skin].

Li Mo's cultivation this time was noticeably less effective than before; after all, his thoughts were in turmoil, and with the second layer of human skin growing, he kept getting distracted by sounds from outside the door.

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

As long as the flow didn't suddenly dry up, it meant danger hadn't yet reached the inner room.

Li Mo deeply felt the precariousness of cultivation. Even the Childhood Stage was this difficult, and it came with the unimaginable Death Sickness.

He stayed in the inner room for another ten-plus days.

The inner room itself wasn't sealed off, but the number of cultivators was noticeably decreasing; the entire pawnshop seemed shrouded in a shadow of fear.

Li Mo knew he had to leave seclusion and go check the warehouse.

According to the menial, the warehouse was specifically used to store supplies, but menials weren't allowed near it, and it was guarded day and night by sentries.

Before leaving, Li Mo took two crystals from his Storage Bag and toyed with them.

The crystals were prismatic, showing no trace of spiritual energy on the surface. Their structure was fairly solid—at least an ordinary person's strength couldn't shatter them.

But perhaps limited by his cultivation level, once he accumulated a certain amount of crystal, it stopped growing, maintaining the size of a peach pit.

Ancient Spirit Stones were far purer, like a piece of warm, moist mutton-fat jade, more than twice the volume of Li Mo's crystals.

Li Mo had never seen a modern spirit stone, nor did he know if the crystals he nurtured through the Leakless Body met the standard, but they should be more than enough to trade for Beast Blood.

He put away the crystals and walked out of the inner room.

Through the Leakless Body, Li Mo did his best to suppress the aura he emitted, causing the spiritual energy fluctuations of Childhood Stage Layer 1 to gradually fade away.

Only Universal Skill was hard to conceal—it was clear that one shouldn't cultivate too many spells at once; the body's peculiarities were easily exposed.

Li Mo didn't rush to the warehouse. Instead, he observed the pawnshop from various angles.

Patrolling sentries were densely packed, their expressions grim, with blood seeping from their ears. The arms holding their long spears appeared to have been modified.

"Pierced eardrums?"

A flash of shock crossed Li Mo's eyes. What kind of danger required the sentries to lose their hearing to deal with it?

He carefully threaded his way through the pawnshop along the paths. Some areas were indeed sealed off. Cultivators were only occasionally seen, and most were in a hurry.

Even the menials were nowhere to be found. Apart from the sentries, only a handful of cultivators remained in the pawnshop.

Li Mo wanted to step forward and ask, but whenever a cultivator saw someone approaching, they immediately backed away warily.

He felt a bit helpless about this. After all, he had only joined the pawnshop for a short time, and he'd spent most of it in seclusion in the inner room, so he had no connections at all.

However, on his way to the warehouse, Li Mo ran into a familiar figure.

Ma Ergao was wearing menial's clothes. In just a few months, he had become skin and bones, even his eye sockets sunken.

Li Mo greeted Ma Ergao, and the latter finally snapped out of it.

"Brother Ergao, why aren't you an apprentice in the Miscellaneous Hall anymore?"

Ma Ergao's expression was numb as he hoarsely replied, "Hei Wa, I'm not skilled enough. I can't learn to carve statues. Not like you..."

Li Mo had never seen Ma Ergao so rambling. He couldn't help but study the latter.

He noticed that Ma Ergao seemed to have gone without sleep for a long time, leaving his consciousness in a constant daze.

Ma Ergao spotted the Spirit Tablet at Li Mo's waist and mustered a bit of spirit. "You've made it, Hei Wa. If you ever get a chance to go back to the village, look after my younger siblings for me."

"No problem."

"By the way, is the Miscellaneous Hall doing okay?"

Ma Ergao grew somewhat panicked, his pupils unfocused as he rambled, "Hei Wa, I don't know. I really don't know!"

"Da Wei was crushed to death while shaping mud statues overnight, and the next day he turned into a statue. Every night at Zi Shi, he comes back to life."

"After the steward took Da Wei away, I... I saw things were wrong. I was just old enough to apply for a menial position, so I withdrew from the Miscellaneous Hall."

Ma Ergao's face was full of guilt and shame, his words fragmented and scattered.

Li Mo could feel how tightly wound Ma Ergao's nerves were—any slight disturbance could cause a complete breakdown.

"Do you know how Zhu Zi is doing?"

"Hei Wa, don't you dare go asking around. There's a beast in the pawnshop, a beast!!!"

Ma Ergao tended to stutter when nervous, and as if afraid of passing his bad luck to Li Mo, he turned and hurried off in the opposite direction.

Li Mo felt a lump in his throat, but he heard Ma Ergao muttering incoherently, "Recognize a beast and you die, the beast will come knocking..."

Li Mo's scalp went numb. When he turned back to look at Ma Ergao, the latter's figure had already vanished along the mountain path, everything returning to dead silence.

He cursed under his breath a few times. What did beasts really mean to Smelting Town? Why was there no sign of beasts anywhere, yet everyone turned pale at the mere mention of them?

Li Mo guessed that most cultivators probably didn't fully understand the stakes involved.

Those who truly knew the truth—likely only the four stewards and Shopkeeper Tian at the Pawnshop—seemed to be deliberately erasing the existence of beasts.

Lost in thought, Li Mo walked up to the warehouse under the bright sunlight.

[Artifact Repository]

The Artifact Repository was where the Heart Beast Sect stored artifact embryos and refining materials. Seeing this, Li Mo knew he had come to the right place.

Compared to the desolation inside the Pawnshop, the warehouse entrance was bustling with activity. Even on the periphery, there were over a dozen cultivators of considerable strength.

A faint layer of spiritual energy shrouded the warehouse, likely some kind of formation.

Li Mo even spotted the figure of the One-Eyed Doctor from the Miraculous Hands Medical Hall, which showed that Smelting Town had already begun responding to the Pawnshop's crisis.

He couldn't help but feel relieved—nothing was worse than the higher-ups doing nothing when trouble struck.

Li Mo increasingly felt that the Pawnshop had laid out a wide net around the warehouse, with the so-called beast as its target.

He looked up at the massive Inner City Wall, which almost completely blocked the view of the buildings atop the mountain.

The beast definitely couldn't have come from outside the town—after all, entry and exit to Smelting Town were strictly controlled—so it was most likely that it had escaped from the Inner City.

If the Outer City was already this eerie, the Inner City was unimaginable.

"Ah, first things first—master Paint Green Clothes."

Li Mo subconsciously touched the Storage Bag at his chest. The two crystals inside sparkled like gems, though he wasn't sure if they counted as spirit stones.

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

Though his age was still somewhat conspicuous, few cultivators paid attention to others right now; everyone was busy making arrangements around the warehouse.