The Training Begins
He handed the Storage Bag, which was full of things, to the group of nine summer campers.
"My grandma said you can't go out without food, so these are all dry rations prepared by the Spirit Cuisine Hall. Each Storage Bag the same types and quantities of food. We heard you might be staying there for quite a while, so we prepared a lot. Five for each of you nine."
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Southern Spirit Domain, Yuanling City.
An hour had passed since sunrise. Most ordinary people in the city were either at home cooking or at work. Nine out of ten people on the streets were cultivators.
At the city gate, several cultivators belonging to the city lord's mansion were lounging around on guard duty at the sentry post.
Most of these people are elderly cultivators at the Qi Refining Late Stage or Foundation Establishment Early Stage. They belong to the City Lord's Mansion and obey its orders. The City Lord's Mansion usually assigns them fixed duties to perform on a rotating basis, such as patrolling the city or standing guard at the city gate. These are routine duty tasks with little difficulty, so the pay is not much. However, compared to the rogue Rogue Cultivator who have to take on all sorts of random tasks to earn every Spirit Stone, these tasks are more stable. In addition, the City Lord's Mansion occasionally issues some special tasks to them, and the rewards for these tasks are relatively high. Therefore, quite a few rogue cultivators have joined the City Lord's Rogue Cultivator.
However, the number of permanent staff needed by the city lord's mansion is limited, and unless a rogue Rogue Cultivator possesses some skill, it is virtually impossible for them to enter.
The few Rogue Cultivator at the city gate usually do nothing but keep watch. After all, they don't need to collect the Spirit Stone entering the city. Their job is simply to observe whether anything unusual is happening outside the city and to maintain order around the city gate.
That's what they say, but they've been keeping watch at the city gate of Yuanling City for years and have never seen anything unusual. Besides, even if something were unusual, what would it have to do with them? If there were any anomalies that they could detect, then the city's magic array wouldn't be able to detect anything. The nearby Rogue Cultivator would usually take care of it easily. If something could evade the city's magic array, their cultivation level wouldn't allow them to find out. So, their main purpose in being here is to have someone to report and run errands for when something happens.
Day after day, it's hard not to slack off at this job.
Inside the sentry post, a middle-aged cultivator yawned listlessly and asked the person next to him lazily, "Are we going to the Many Treasures Pavilion after our shift? I heard they got some new stock recently."
The person next to him glanced at him and said, "That's been a while, hasn't it? It was two months ago. I reckon you'll be getting new stock again in a few days."
The middle-aged cultivator sighed, "I found a new Cultivation Method that was said to be particularly suitable for advanced cultivation, so I went into seclusion."
Seeing his sighing and the lack of any Spiritual Qi fluctuations indicating advancement, it was clear he had been deceived. The person next to him could only comfort him, saying, "People like us don't have many shortcuts to take. Spirit Stone are the most reliable. Earning more Spirit Stone to buy better quality pills is much more practical than trying to learn Cultivation Method whose background you don't know."
The middle-aged cultivator nodded silently. "That's right. After this experience, I dare not trust any unknown Cultivation Method from outside anymore..."
The two chatted idly and agreed to visit the Many Treasures Pavilion after their shift.
Lin Xiao and his group entered the city gate at a leisurely pace and passed by the sentry post.
Due to the protective array of Yuanling City, Lingxian Sect has never purchased sect properties within the city to serve as fixed teleportation points for its disciples. After all, if they frequently use the Heaven and Earth Shift Disc to enter and exit Yuanling City, no one knows whether they will be detected and targeted by the protective array.
Therefore, their base was always outside the city, Liao Pantu specially set up a space next to his cave abode as a teleportation point for them.
As for why he needed to create another space instead of using his cave abode directly, it was because Liao Pantu didn't want his old home to become a place for every Lingxian Sect disciple to visit. Although he was hundreds of years old, he still needed privacy.
Compared to a few years ago, Yuanling City seems to be more lively now.
The massacre of the Wu Household family, a powerful Lineage in the city, did initially cause widespread panic and despair in the city for a period of time. However, at some point, rumors began to circulate that the Wu Household had obtained some High Antiquity secret treasure, which led to their annihilation.
This news initially went unnoticed, but as time went on, it attracted more and more cultivators to come.
Later, people discovered that the variety of cultivation items in Yuanling City became increasingly abundant, and many simple and practical gadgets were even unseen in other cities in the Southern Spirit Domain. Gradually, many cultivators settled down in Yuanling City.
With the arrival of new people and the passage of time, the shadow cast over Yuanling City by the massacre of the Wu Household gradually faded.
Walking on the bustling, wide street, the group couldn't hide their excitement, looking around at the scene that was so different from the bustling streets of the Mortal Realm.
However, their demeanor went unnoticed by others. The people in the city were already used to it, since most of the young disciples from small Lineage or Rogue Cultivator who had just arrived looked like this.
Apart from Yuan Jinsheng, the rest of the nine people were teenagers and young women in their teens and twenties. The young people walked in twos and threes, lingering in front of the stalls selling all sorts of strange and unusual trinkets on the street.
Seeing that it looked novel and fun, they asked about the price, found it reasonable, and then took out their Spirit Stone to buy it.
After strolling through several long streets, each person had spent about a dozen Spirit Stone and had collected a lot of miscellaneous little items in their Storage Bag.
Yuan Jinsheng followed behind and occasionally made a move.
Although he wasn't particularly interested in these things, he did have a son of the same age as them.
Although Yuanling City is considered a remote city in the Immortal Cultivation Realm, it still has quite a few secret realms suitable for low-level cultivators, so the number of low-level cultivators coming and going in this city is still considerable in the Mortal Realm.
Therefore, even though Lingxian Sect organized so many sect cultivators in the Mortal Realm to refine various low-grade goods and dump them here, given the low output in the Mortal Realm and the high consumption in Yuanling City, Yuanling City could basically absorb all the goods sent by the Lingxian Sect, and the amount of goods that needed to be circulated out was not very large.
In addition, the goods provided by the Lingxian Sect included not only common items but also many uncommon and even innovative products, which resulted in very good profits for the Yuan Household, Many Treasures Pavilion, and Su's General Store, who cooperated with the Lingxian Sect, in recent years.
As a result, Shopkeeper Zhong of the Many Treasures Pavilion was promoted by his employer to become the general manager of the Southern Spirit Domain, and from then on, Many Treasures Pavilion throughout the Southern Spirit Domain was under his management.
Therefore, Shopkeeper Zhong has been quite busy these past two years, as he has to patrol shops in other cities, review accounts, inspect goods, and so on, so he is often not in Yuanling City.