Meeting a Prospective Bride

The doors of the sect's grand hall stood wide open. The wooden doors had been polished perfectly smooth, even gleaming as though they had been rubbed to a sheen over many years.

A plaque hung high above the entrance, still blank.

At a glance, it really did look rather imposing!

Lin Xiao looked at the size and shape of the base of the building floating in the air.

It was a proper square.

Lin Xiao gauged the position and distance by eye, then set the sect's grand hall down near the grass hut, about a hundred meters from the Ten-Li Peach Blossom Tree facing the entrance to the mountain path.

[Sect grand hall placement complete. Please name the hall, Host.]

Lin Xiao, who was hopeless at naming things, smiled.

Wasn't naming the sect's grand hall easy?

Lin Xiao decisively entered four characters:

[Lingxian Grand Hall]!

[Confirm this name?]

Confirm!

[Naming successful. Congratulations, Host, on successfully constructing the Lingxian Grand Hall.]

[Ding-Congratulations, Host. Your sect grounds have been upgraded, and the sect's defensive function has improved along with them. Based on the current level of the sect grounds, the range of the sect's defenses has been expanded to a radius of three hundred meters around the sect grounds (sect grand hall).]

[Ding-Congratulations, Host, on completing the [Sect Construction: Sect Grand Hall] mission. The center of the sect grounds has automatically shifted from the original sect grounds to the sect grand hall. The mission rewards have been issued to your private storage. Please check them, Host.]

The mission rewards he had long been waiting for had finally arrived!

Lin Xiao eagerly opened his private storage.

His eyes skipped over the items already there and went straight to the new ones at the end.

Spirit Stones x100, spirit silkworm eggs x20, Mo Mulberry seeds x10, First-Tier Spirit Vein Fragment x1.

It had actually given him a hundred Spirit Stones!

The sect grand hall mission was pretty generous!

Lin Xiao looked at the other items.

Spirit silkworm eggs, Mo Mulberry seeds... Was it telling him to raise silkworms?

Surely it wasn't so he could roast silkworm pupae and eat them?

Silkworms were probably for spinning silk to make clothes.

And this First-Tier Spirit Vein Fragment.

Good heavens.

A Spirit Vein!

Wasn't that the thing that produced Spirit Stones?

Lin Xiao suddenly felt that he might soon get his first taste of wealth in his cultivation career!

But this was only one fragment, and he still didn't know how many he needed in total.

It was a little early to celebrate.

Mm, he had to keep a low profile.

Now that he had plenty of Spirit Stones, Lin Xiao decisively spent fifteen of them to renew his automatic cultivation.

For the next half month, he wouldn't have to worry about automatic cultivation.

Then he turned his gaze to the newly completed sect grand hall.

The contrast between the exquisite, majestic hall and the low, cramped grass hut beside it was striking.

Lin Xiao stood in front of the hall, brimming with a sense of accomplishment.

But he didn't push the doors open and go inside.

For something like touring the grand hall, it would be more enjoyable to wait until everyone could come together later.

Seeing that it was getting late, Lin Xiao was just about to turn around and call the others who were cultivating.

Then he heard someone calling from the Three-Way Junction.

"Brother Xiao-"

Lin Xiao turned to look. Who else could it be but Qin Jianghe?

Seeing with his own eyes that Qin Jianghe was indeed fine, and that even from a distance he looked quite happy, Lin Xiao finally put his mind completely at ease.

He walked up to him and asked:

"Where did you go today, you rascal? Weren't we supposed to meet at the market?"

Qin Jianghe sheepishly rubbed his head and chuckled, then made faces at him and said in a low voice:

"Brother Xiao, my mother took me to meet a prospective bride this morning! Hehe, she didn't tell me a thing early this morning. As soon as we got to town, she took me straight to the matchmaker's house. My mother said the girl was from Great River Township, which is nearby, so she must have arrived early. It wouldn't have been right to keep her waiting, so I didn't have time to find you and let you know.

"Don't be mad at me, Brother Xiao."

Lin Xiao scoffed and laughed:

"It's a good thing you went to meet a prospective bride. Why would I be mad? It's just a bit of a shame. I made a whole lot of money yesterday, but you missed seeing it."

Hearing this, Qin Jianghe's eyes widened and lit up.

"Really, Brother Xiao? How much did you make? Is our sect about to strike it rich?"

Lin Xiao cleared his throat softly and said:

"Not that much, just about three thousand copper coins."

"What? Three thousand copper coins! Good heavens, I've never seen three thousand copper coins in my life!" Qin Jianghe grabbed Lin Xiao's arm and shook it.

"Brother Xiao, Brother Xiao, hurry up and take them out so I can see for myself!"

"Tomorrow, tomorrow. I don't have the money on me right now. First, tell me how your meeting went."

As soon as Lin Xiao brought it up, Qin Jianghe's dark face flushed red.

"That girl was pretty nice. When she smiles, she looks like someone blessed with good fortune, hehe."

Seeing Qin Jianghe's silly expression, how could Lin Xiao not know that he was certainly very pleased with the girl?

He had only met her once, yet he was already this silly. Where was the shrewdness a sect's finance elder ought to have?

Lin Xiao rather felt as though he was hammering iron that refused to turn into steel.

"Stop grinning like an idiot. You like her, but what did she say?"

At that, Qin Jianghe looked even more bashful. He lowered his head in embarrassment, then spoke in a voice as faint as a mosquito's buzz. Even with Lin Xiao's sharp hearing, he would have missed it if he hadn't listened carefully.

"She said she thought I was pretty good too, that I looked like a dependable person, hehe."

Looking at his silly expression, Lin Xiao seriously considered whether he should remove him from his position as finance elder while he was discussing marriage.

At that moment, the others in the grass hut, perhaps having heard the commotion over here, came crawling out one after another.

"Brother Xiao! You're back! How did it go? How did it go?" On seeing Lin Xiao, Jiang Youfu was the first to come racing over.

And indeed, now that he was at the Qi Refining First Layer, although the fat on his body still jiggled wildly as he ran, his speed was beyond comparison with what it had been before.

Seeing Jiang Youfu about to charge straight into him, Lin Xiao hurriedly stepped aside.

The others also hurried over and warmly greeted Lin Xiao and Qin Jianghe.

"How did it go, Sect Master? Finance Elder?" Liu Yunan teased them, mischievously addressing them by their titles.

Everyone still thought the two of them had come back from town together.

Lin Xiao mercilessly exposed Qin Jianghe:

"That rascal didn't come with me. He went to meet a prospective bride early this morning! Sigh, poor me, stood up and left to hawk my wares in town all alone-"

"Well, well! Look at you, going to meet a girl already!" Liu Yunan gave Qin Jianghe, whose face had gone bright red with embarrassment, a light punch.

Hu Liang rubbed the back of his head with a goofy look.

"I want to meet a prospective bride too, but my mother says I'm not grown up yet."

Several boys of twelve or thirteen eagerly discussed meeting prospective brides, while the two fifteen-year-old "older youths," Sun Yigao and Lin Yun, hid off to the side as though pretending they didn't exist.

Sun Yigao pretended to admire the peach blossoms, while Lin Yun casually looked around.

Because it was market day, Old Master Lin had simply given Lin Lei and Lin Yun half the day off, so Lin Yun was also on the mountain cultivating with everyone now.

"Huh?!"