Soaring Prices

That night, Zhang's Mother pulled out all the stops and laid out a lavish dinner.

Lavish, though, only meant four dishes and a soup.

Yet there were vegetables, meat, and egg-drop soup on the table. For an ordinary family, it was already on the level of a New Year's Eve Dinner!

Zhang Yuan cleaned every last dish.

His mother's cooking was nothing special, but it was the flavor he knew best.

A flavor that belonged only to home.

After dinner, Zhang Yuan returned to his room and pulled a cloth pouch from his breast.

He began taking stock of the day's gains.

Three silver banknotes, worth fifty, fifty, and twenty taels respectively—a total of one hundred and twenty taels of silver.

He could finally pay off the tooth broker's usurious loan!

The loose silver added up to more than ten taels as well. Zhang Yuan planned to give it to his mother for daily expenses.

With this unexpected windfall, he could finally breathe easy for the time being.

Only for the time being.

The expense of martial training was a bottomless pit. Who knew how much silver it would take to fill it?

For now, Zhang Yuan could only take things one step at a time.

Lastly, he pulled a purse from the cloth pouch.

He had seized this purse from Chen Deping, Chen, the Great Landowner. The situation had still been perilous at the time, so Zhang Yuan had not had the chance to inspect it.

He tugged open the drawstring and poured out everything inside.

To Zhang Yuan's disappointment, the purse Chen Deping had kept so carefully on his person contained only a Tianhuang Seal and a folded sheet of yellow paper.

The seal was exquisitely made, with Chen Deping's name engraved on its base. It was clearly the great landowner's personal seal.

The material alone was quite valuable.

But unless Zhang Yuan had been kicked in the head by a donkey, there was no way he would take it out to sell!

Tossing the personal seal aside, Zhang Yuan unfolded the yellow paper.

A crude map appeared before his eyes.

"Eh?"

The moment Zhang Yuan looked at it, it felt familiar. He immediately spread it out across the table and examined it carefully.

He recognized that this map bore at least seventy or eighty percent resemblance to the Treasure Map on his chest, though it was far from complete. The former looked like a clumsy imitation of the latter.

And the route marked on this map perfectly matched the road the Chen Family had previously carved through the mountain!

So that was it.

Just as Zhang Yuan had guessed, the Chen Family's abnormal actions were closely tied to the treasure of Thousand Peak Mountain.

Only, Chen, the Great Landowner probably had not known the real reason even at the moment of his death.

Heavenly Man!

Remembering what Chen Deping had said before he died, an even greater question rose in his heart.

What kind of being was this "Heavenly Man," to make the Linhe Chen Clan curry favor with it at all costs?

They had done something so inconceivable that it had triggered an uncanny calamity and even implicated the County Town!

Zhang Yuan rubbed his brow and held the map over the oil lamp.

He burned it until nothing remained.

Then he smashed Chen Deping's Tianhuang Seal, ground it into granules and powder, and threw it into the latrine.

In truth, personal seals like this were often connected to their owner's wealth and served as proof for claiming certain items.

Chen Deping had not carried much silver on him. His female relatives, residence, and shops were all in the city.

With the great landowner having vanished from the face of the earth, this seal might well have been tremendously useful.

Yet Zhang Yuan felt not the slightest greed and destroyed it utterly!

He opened the Divine Nest Panel.

Host: Zhang Yuan

Realm: First Order (Bright Force)

Divine Nest: Level 1 (45%)

Host: Level 2 Black Giant Ant (18%) / 4x Strength

Host: Level 2 Jade Mantis (5%) / Intermediate Blade Technique Proficiency

Host: Level 1 Golden Grasshopper (1%) / 2x Agility

Vitality and Blood: 46/112

Source Essence: 15.9

There were no major changes to the data on the panel. Only the Source Essence had surged to nearly sixteen points.

This was the result of sacrificing more than a dozen members of the Chen Family, including a martial artist.

He had suddenly become rich!

After giving it some thought, Zhang Yuan first invested 5.9 points of Source Essence into his Third Host, the Golden Grasshopper.

He poured the remaining ten points into the Divine Nest itself.

5.9 points of Source Essence should be enough for the Golden Grasshopper to evolve to Level 2.

Once it did, the boost of fourfold agility would be enough to match his current strength and cultivation.

Meanwhile, all three chambers of the Divine Nest were now filled. Upgrading and expanding it was imperative, so he had to take that into account as well.

But if his gaming experience from his previous life still applied, the Source Essence required to upgrade the Divine Nest itself should be far greater than what was needed to upgrade a Host—ten points of Source Essence would probably not be enough.

The current Divine Nest had already reached 45% evolution progress.

That evolution progress had actually come from containing three extraordinary genetic organisms. Otherwise, it would have required even more Source Essence!

The problem was that such a huge incident had occurred on Thousand Peak Mountain. Whether he would be able to enter the mountain to hunt again in the future was still uncertain.

The conditions for acquiring Source Essence were actually quite strict. The prey had to be personally killed by Zhang Yuan.

Animals and savage beasts counted, and so did enemies and opponents. But if he spent money to buy livestock, slaughtered it, and offered it as a sacrifice, the Divine Nest simply would not recognize it.

Zhang Yuan had already tested this!

Such rules undoubtedly greatly limited the ways he could obtain Source Essence. There was no shortcut to take.

He could only proceed slowly.

The next morning, Zhang Yuan left home and went to the tooth broker in the city.

To repay his debt.

He had borrowed fifty taels of silver from the tooth broker, and the daily interest was two percent.

That was actually considered rather merciful.

But Zhang Yuan truly could not bear such mercy.

He had only done it because he had no other choice.

After paying the principal and interest, Zhang Yuan smoothly recovered the deed to his house that had been mortgaged to the tooth broker.

The tooth broker's shopkeeper was a lean middle-aged man. He was somewhat surprised that Zhang Yuan had repaid the debt so quickly. His eyes shifted as he smiled and asked, "Honored guest, may I ask whether your household needs maids or servants?"

"You are an old customer, so I can offer you a discounted price!"

Maids and servants?

Zhang Yuan did not know whether to laugh or cry. "Not for now, thank you."

The poor pursued learning, the rich pursued martial arts. His martial training expenses were enormous now, and he still had to support both himself and his mother.

How could he possibly have the spare means to buy servants?

One had to know that a household had to pay a head tax for maids and servants—a fixed expense of three taels per person every year. Add in food, clothing, monthly allowances, and other costs, and it was simply not something an ordinary household could afford.

This tooth broker really knew how to do business!

The shopkeeper smiled broadly. "You are too polite. If you need anything in the future, just come to our establishment."

Zhang Yuan nodded.

He then went to the pharmacy to buy the medicinal ingredients needed for his training.

To Zhang Yuan's surprise, several medicines he frequently bought had gone up in price, and by quite a lot!

What was more, the pharmacy owner had the attitude of take it or leave it.

Zhang Yuan held himself back and still paid the silver to buy a batch.

He could not stop taking medicine!

He knew very well that the soaring medicine prices had a great deal to do with the County Town currently being sealed off.

As Zhang Yuan walked along, most of the shops on both sides of the street were still open.

But every shop that sold rice, grain, salt, or oil was packed so tightly with people that not even water could pass through.

Many people were scrambling to buy necessities for survival.

The prices of such goods had risen sharply as well, leaving everyone grumbling bitterly.

He could not help looking toward Thousand Peak Mountain, only for his view to be blocked by the towering city walls.

The future was unknown and unforeseeable!