The two rounded a street corner, and a lavish shop with a gold-painted sign came into view.
The Hundred Treasures Pavilion.
Beneath the voluminous black robe made from a quilt cover, Lin He looked like a deformed freak with an enormous tumor on his back.
He lowered his voice, muttering so only the two of them could hear, "Wifey, this is the place, right? Just looking at the storefront, you can tell they fleece people."
"Shut up. Talk less and act mysterious."
Su Qiuran pinched his shoulder through the black robe, her voice equally low.
"Once we're inside, just pay up. Buy the most basic talisman-making book and the scraps. Remember, don't show any nerves."
Lin He grunted in acknowledgment and strode across the Hundred Treasures Pavilion's threshold.
The smear of chicken blood on his collar had long since dried black, exuding an undisguised air of murderous menace.
As soon as he entered, an attendant at the Hundred Treasures Pavilion started to approach, but at the sight of Lin He's appearance and his icy, keep-your-distance presence, he swallowed and stopped dead in his tracks.
Behind the counter, an old shopkeeper with a goatee raised his eyelids. His sharp gaze swept over Lin He before he put on a professional fake smile.
"Fellow Daoist, you're an unfamiliar face. Are you looking to strike it rich at the Mass Grave and stocking up on protective talismans? Fair warning, though: talisman prices have skyrocketed over the past two days, and our shop doesn't have much stock left either."
Lin He ignored him. Following Su Qiuran's instructions beforehand, he walked straight up to the counter, extended a thick hand, and said in a muffled, rough rasp, "Not buying finished talismans. Give me an introductory book on making them. The more basic, the better. And two stacks of the cheapest blank yellow talisman paper, plus one tael of low-grade cinnabar."
The old shopkeeper froze at his words, a flicker of surprise crossing his eyes.
All the rogue cultivators outside were scrambling for finished talismans to save their lives, yet this ferocious-looking fellow wanted to buy materials and learn to draw them on the spot?
Had the miasma at the Mass Grave addled his brains?
Still, he was running a business. Why turn spirit stones away?
The old shopkeeper turned and pulled a thin, yellowed booklet from the bottom shelf behind him, then deftly wrapped up two stacks of inferior talisman paper and a small jar of cinnabar and pushed them onto the counter.
"Introduction to Basic Talismans. It contains drawing methods for five kinds of ninth-grade, low-tier talismans, including the fireball talisman, cleaning talisman, and light body talisman."
"With the two stacks of yellow talisman paper and the cinnabar, plus a complimentary brush, that comes to twelve low-grade spirit stones." The old shopkeeper smiled and made a hand gesture.
Lin He inwardly cursed the crooked shop. This was fucking daylight robbery!
Twelve low-grade spirit stones were enough to keep every villager in Emerald Mountain Village eating and drinking lavishly for years!
But with Su Qiuran secretly twisting his flesh to hurry him along, he forced himself not to erupt. Affecting a rogue cultivator's careless manner, he pulled twelve low-grade spirit stones from his chest before he had even warmed them.
He slapped them onto the counter with a smack.
Then he swept up everything with one large hand, stuffed it all into his voluminous black robe, and turned to leave, crisp and decisive.
When they left the market, the sky had yet to brighten. This was always a time when unexpected trouble came easily.
Lin He's keen instincts suddenly stirred. He felt as though faint, elusive gazes were sweeping over him from behind.
The area outside the market had always been a hotspot for crooks preying on crooks, and he knew perfectly well not to flaunt his wealth.
"Hold tight," Lin He said softly.
Before his words had faded, the explosive power lying dormant within him awakened in an instant.
After two rounds of body tempering with essence of the sun, his flesh had long since passed beyond the realm of ordinary mortals.
His legs drove hard against the ground, and like a frenzied beast, he shot straight into the wild woods outside the market.
Inside the black robe, the terrifying acceleration jolted Su Qiuran so badly she nearly vomited. All she could do was cling desperately to Lin He's neck.
Lin He traversed the rugged terrain as though it were level ground, moving so fast that only a black blur was visible.
He made three full, wide circuits through the woods, sprinting relentlessly for nearly half an hour, until he was certain there wasn't so much as a ghost of a figure behind him.
Only after taking another long detour did he slip soundlessly back to their wooden house.
He shut the door with a bang and slid the wooden bolt into place.
Lin He pulled off the stitched-together black disguise robe, drew two great, panting breaths, and plopped down onto the long wooden bench. Picking up the cold water on the table, he gulped down a large mouthful.
"Damn it, I'm roasting. This body cultivator business really isn't work for humans. It all comes down to churning those two legs."
He lifted Su Qiuran off his back and set her back in her wheelchair. Her little face was flushed from the stuffiness too, and she gulped in fresh air.
But soon, her eyes lit up.
"Enough nonsense. Hurry, take out the spirit stones!" Su Qiuran rubbed her hands excitedly, looking every bit a little money-grubber whose eyes lit up at the sight of wealth.
Lin He chuckled and reached into his robe.
Clatter-
A pile of low-grade spirit stones shimmering with a soft luster tumbled onto the rough wooden table.
They had earned eighty from selling the supreme-grade azure jade spirit grain. With the three they already had, minus the twelve spent on materials just now, exactly seventy-one low-grade spirit stones lay neatly piled on the table.
It was the largest fortune either of them had seen since transmigrating.
"We're rich, we're rich! Money in this cultivation world can be hard to earn, sure, but when it's easy, the profits really are outrageous." Lin He beamed at the tableful of spirit stones, his eyes disappearing into his smile.
For once, Su Qiuran didn't throw cold water on his enthusiasm. The spirit stones' glow reflected in her peach-blossom eyes as she picked one up and rubbed it, her face rosy.
"With this startup capital, we've finally secured a temporary foothold in this brutal cultivation world."
"But this still isn't safe enough. We can't keep selling supreme-grade spirit rice seeds forever. If someone with an eye for it guesses we can mass-produce spirit rice seeds, those rogue cultivators will probably team up to surround and kill us."
"I need to try drawing talismans right away. If this path works out, we'll have a steady source of income."
She put her words straight into action.
Su Qiuran had Lin He clear the table, lay out a sheet of yellow talisman paper, and open the jar of cinnabar.
Then she opened Introduction to Basic Talismans.
Lin He stood beside her with his arms folded, watching with interest. "Wifey, from the webnovels I read in my previous life, drawing talismans is delicate work. You need your mind and Qi as one, and the failure rate is extremely high."
"You've only just broken through to the Qi Refinement first layer, so don't put any pressure on yourself. Just treat it as practice, something to hear a pop from. Failing eighty or a hundred times is perfectly normal."
"Shut up. Stop standing there making snide remarks." Su Qiuran rolled her eyes at him.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, sensing the faint but exceptionally pure wisp of spiritual Qi in her dantian.
A moment later, she abruptly opened her eyes, picked up the inferior complimentary brush, and soaked it in cinnabar. Her wrist lowered, and the brush tip touched the yellow talisman paper.
Lin He had expected her to tremble or produce some indecipherable scrawl.
But the next second, his eyes went wide.
Su Qiuran's expression instantly became utterly focused, the movements of her wrist carrying a perfectly natural rhythm.
Under her control, the inferior brush seemed to come alive.
The spiritual Qi within her flowed along her fingertips and the brush shaft, pouring into the cinnabar without the slightest obstruction.
The first stroke, the outlines, the turns, the finishing stroke.
The entire sequence flowed like drifting clouds and running water, completed in one uninterrupted sweep.
There wasn't the slightest pause, nor any sign of spiritual Qi dispersing. The whole process took fewer than three breaths!
Hum-
As Su Qiuran laid down the final stroke, the yellow talisman paper on the table abruptly burst with a faint red light.
Immediately afterward, a volatile fire-aspected presence was locked tightly within the intricate cinnabar patterns on the talisman paper.
The formerly ordinary sheet of paper instantly acquired a formidable pressure.
A ninth-grade, low-tier fireball talisman-complete!
"Holy shit?" Lin He was so shocked that he jumped straight off the bench.
"That... that's it? First try? Wasn't succeeding once in ten talismans supposed to make you a genius?"
Su Qiuran herself was stunned too.
She stared blankly at her right hand holding the brush, then at the perfect fireball talisman on the table.
"I... I don't know what happened either," Su Qiuran murmured. Rather than much joy, her voice was filled with a deep sense of absurdity.
"I just glanced at the stroke diagram in the book, and then it was like my mind already knew how. My hand just followed along and drew it..."
The room fell into a brief, deathly silence.
"Lin He." Su Qiuran raised her head, her beautiful peach-blossom eyes filled with complicated feelings and self-doubt.
"You said before that I could absorb a hundred percent of the spiritual Qi from spirit rice, that I had a genius spirit root seen only once in ten thousand years."
"Now I can draw talismans after a single glance... Doesn't this setup of mine look exactly like the template for some supreme genius from a cultivation aristocratic clan?"
Lin He fell silent. He put away his playful grin and walked over to Su Qiuran.
Su Qiuran gave a bitter laugh and reached out to slap her unresponsive knees hard. "But if I really am that kind of genius, how did I end up a cripple who can't even walk?"
"There has to be a reason behind this!"
Seeing the unwillingness to accept it in her eyes, Lin He felt something clog his chest.
He placed a hand on Su Qiuran's shoulder, his tone unusually solemn and earnest. "Wifey, don't dwell on it."
"Whoever tried to screw you over before, we'll keep that debt on the books for now."
"So what if you're a genius? That genius is now my wife, Lin He's wife."
"You just keep using your cheats, and I'll keep steamrolling. Sooner or later, we'll trample every genius in the Cangming Realm beneath our feet!"