The cold wind threaded through branches draped in hanging vines, drawing out a sound like the wailing of ghosts.
Hou San was like a bird that had been startled into a corner and driven to the edge of its wits.
He knelt on the cold, damp earth, his entire body shaking violently.
Just as he had abandoned all hope — even beginning to wonder whether he should find a crooked tree and end it himself —
Shh...
A dead leaf drifted down from above.
Hou San stiffened and looked up.
A figure shrouded in black robes descended from the treetops dozens of zhang overhead — silent as a weightless feather — and landed steadily before him.
"M-My lord!"
Hou San's last psychological defense collapsed in that instant.
Scared out of his wits, he kowtowed frantically into the mud like a pestle grinding grain, slamming his forehead against the ground until it split and bled — and feeling none of it.
Weeping and wailing, he raised a money pouch stuffed with Primeval Stones high above his head with both hands, his voice shrill with desperation.
"My lord, spare my life! It's this worthless one's fault! I'm useless, I'm trash!"
"I haven't touched a single stone — it's all here, every last one! I beg your boundless mercy — take it all, just please, spare this miserable life of mine!"
Faced with this groveling that had sunk to the very dust, Lin Mu beneath the black robes did not even lift an eyelid.
He made no move to take the pouch. He simply looked down at Hou San with cold eyes.
After a long moment, he reached into his sleeve without particular thought and produced a hundred Primeval Stones, tossing them in front of Hou San with a clatter — the way one might toss scraps to a beggar.
"Can't even handle something this simple. Useless."
Lin Mu's voice was hoarse and cold, carrying the contempt of someone looking down from a great height.
"Forget it. Take that money and go back to whatever hole you crawled out of. Never show your face in Black Blood Stockade's territory again. And if even half a word of this leaks out..."
"You will die."
Those four words fell, and the air around them seemed to drop ten degrees.
But to Hou San, they were music drifting down from the heavens.
"Thank you, my lord, for sparing this one's life! Thank you, my lord!"
Hou San was overcome with gratitude.
He didn't even dare reach for the hundred Primeval Stones scattered on the ground, terrified that any movement might make the man change his mind.
He scrambled to his feet on all fours, wishing he had three more legs, and half-crawled, half-stumbled into the depths of the dense forest — vanishing without a trace in the blink of an eye.
The night wind stirred Lin Mu's wide black robes.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, watching the direction in which Hou San had disappeared. Deep within his gaze, a flash of killing intent — cold and absolute — flickered and was gone.
Dead men kept secrets best. Silencing him was, without question, the cleanest way to tie up loose ends.
Yet after standing motionless in place for a long while, Lin Mu's tightly clenched knuckles slowly relaxed.
The killing intent that had coiled in his chest finally dissolved into the night wind.
He shook his head. In the darkness, he let out a breath — barely audible.
"I am not him, after all."
Standing in the night wind, Lin Mu faced his own heart without flinching.
He acknowledged it. He could never be like Fang Yuan — absolutely cold, like a machine without feeling.
If he forced himself to kill a nameless nobody who no longer posed any threat, his state of mind would inevitably develop a hairline crack — subtle, but real.
Blindly imitating Fang Yuan's ruthlessness, trying to copy what he could not naturally embody, would not bring him any closer to that essence.
It would only cause him to lose himself, breed inner demons, and end up a pale imitation — the sorry result of trying to paint a tiger and producing a dog instead.
"Different souls must walk their own paths."
Lin Mu opened his right hand.
Resting in his palm was a Gu worm radiating an enticing crimson light and a warm, gentle aura.
Rank 2 — the Red Iron Relic Gu.
Looking at this extraordinary Gu worm that had cost him so much scheming to obtain, Lin Mu knew clearly: this was the last time he would use his foreknowledge of the original story to follow in Fang Yuan's footsteps.
From here on, in these ten-thousand-li mountains, there was no guide to consult. No walkthrough to reference.
He would have to fight, scheme, and use his own eyes to see through this brutal world — every step of the way.
Gazing at the Relic Gu in his hand, a satisfied cold smile curved the corner of Lin Mu's mouth.
Since Hou San had not won the bid, where had this Gu worm — the centerpiece of the entire auction — actually come from?
The answer was simple: Wild Dog.
That low-ranking rogue cultivator called Wild Dog, whom Lin Mu had recruited as a hidden piece in the ruined temple some days ago, had now played a decisive, anchor-holding role.
This was Lin Mu's meticulous, interlocking scheme — a feint down one road while advancing down another.
Dustlord's — Hou San's — appearance on the second floor, his overbearing and domineering posture, had been nothing more than a smokescreen Lin Mu had deliberately set loose.
The entire point was to draw every eye in the room — including Jia Fu's — along with every ounce of wariness and attention, onto this "out-of-nowhere river dragon of a Demonic cultivator."
Had Dustlord actually won the Relic Gu, a sharp operator like Jia Fu would inevitably have investigated the origin of that inexplicably large sum of money afterward — and Lin Mu's involvement would have been dangerously easy to uncover.
Instead, Lin Mu had played a masterful trick of hiding the light beneath the lamp.
He had let Hou San stand at the front and draw all the fire — projecting an air of absolute determination to win.
Meanwhile, the one actually holding the slip of paper bearing Lin Mu's bid was the utterly unremarkable rogue cultivator — Wild Dog.
While every genius and Demonic cultivator in the room was busy calculating each other's limits, Wild Dog dissolved into the crowd like a drop of water into the sea, and quietly slipped that decisive slip of paper into the sealed box.
This stratagem — feigning an advance down one road while secretly advancing down another — had not only secured the treasure through an absolute information advantage.
It had also washed Lin Mu's hands completely clean, leaving not a single trace of his involvement.
"Good."
Lin Mu felt the warm pulse of the Red Iron Relic Gu against his skin and tucked it safely into the deepest part of his Aperture.
Having obtained a supreme treasure capable of instantly elevating one's cultivation by a full minor stage, any ordinary person would have rushed to find a secluded spot and refined it on the spot.
Lin Mu did not.
A sharp light passed through his dark eyes.
Taking advantage of the deep night, Lin Mu quickly shed the concealing black robes and changed back into the Deacon's robe that marked his station.
He straightened his collar, brushed away dust that wasn't there, and drew from within his robes a token carved with intricate patterns.
Half an hour later.
Outside the quiet study on the third floor of the Three Star Cave treehouse — where the finest sandalwood incense burned in a steady, fragrant thread.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three measured, unhurried, courteous knocks.
The study door swung open.
Jia Fu — who had just finished tallying the day's market accounts and was about to press his fingers to his aching temples — looked at Lin Mu standing in the doorway with a mild smile, and blinked in surprise.
"Brother Lin? At this hour — what brings you here? Has something gone wrong at the camp?"
Jia Fu stepped forward to receive him.
"Brother Jia worries too much. The camp is perfectly fine."
Lin Mu did not beat around the bush. He reached into his robes and produced the purple jade token, setting it lightly on the desk.
"I wanted to ask, Brother Jia — do you happen to have any more of the... Red Iron Relic Gu that was auctioned on the second floor today?"
"This younger brother is being presumptuous. I wonder if I might shamelessly make use of the twenty-five percent discount you so generously granted me — and ask to purchase one more... privately?"