"Brother Lin, honestly! Since you had a flying mount, why didn't you say so earlier? That alone would have gotten us into the escort team. Instead, you let that old Qian fleece me out of twenty spirit jade for nothing!"
At noon the next day, a long caravan wound along the mountain road, spirit horses, dire wolves, and other spirit creatures pulling carriages laden with guards, soldiers, and retainers.
Jiu Qilin was still aching over the money he had spent and spoke to Fang Qianyuan with more than a little resentment.
Fang Qianyuan thought little of it, but seeing how much Old Nine truly cared about that money stirred a strange mix of feelings in him.
He had long known that rogue cultivators lacked money, but seeing that poverty turn them into penny-pinchers who frittered their lives away filled him with regret.
With all their time and energy spent on worldly trivialities, toiling all day to make a living, how could they hope to advance their cultivation or seek the Dao?
Wealth, companions, methods, and a place to cultivate-these necessities had held true throughout the ages. A noble disposition alone could not make them irrelevant, so mediocre people still made up the bulk of the world.
"What a racket!" Apparently tired of listening to Old Nine complain the entire way, someone nearby suddenly gave a disdainful snort. A spirit tamer in old-fashioned attire then walked past them.
"Hey, I'm talking to Brother Lin here. What the hell's it got to do with you?" Old Nine retorted, though he was not genuinely angry.
He had only just met the man, an expert rogue cultivator who had answered the recruitment call just as they had. People called him Wild Crane Daoist.
In Jiu Qilin's words, the man put on airs of lofty