"Ah..."
"How much longer is this war going to drag on?"
Inside a cave dwelling somewhere in the mountains outside Befeng City, a Late Qi Gathering cultivator let out a sigh after taking stock of all his possessions.
His name was Luo Miao, a Rogue Cultivator from the Befeng City region. He was at ninth-level Qi Gathering and knew a very rudimentary method of alchemy, capable of refining two kinds of healing pills for the Qi Gathering Mid-stage.
However, their success rates were rather low. With good luck, a single batch might yield one or two pills; with bad luck, all he would get was a furnace full of useless slag.
Even so, he had managed to gain a foothold in the Befeng City region through this craft.
The profits from selling pills in the Eastern Wilderness each year not only covered his cultivation needs but sometimes even left a little surplus. Compared to other Rogue Cultivators outside the city, his life was already quite decent.
However, with war raging without end in recent years, every trade route into the Eastern Wilderness had been completely sealed off. Forget selling the products of the hundred arts—even entering to visit family was forbidden.
This might not have affected the great cultivators and alchemists in the city much. Their foundations were deep enough that they could endure for several years, even a decade or more.
Moreover, they could still receive major orders directly from the Eastern Wilderness, ensuring an uninterrupted income.
But for low-level Qi Gathering Cultivators like them, their circumstances had become increasingly difficult.
Since the cultivation goods they produced could not be sold outside, they could only slowly be absorbed within the Befeng City region.
Yet the demand from cultivators here was limited. Once the market became saturated, their goods were