"Ah, I was such a fool, truly..."
A little under half a shichen later.
Lin Yi trudged along the street with his head hanging, a bitter look on his face, sighing every few steps.
To think that a lifetime's hard-won reputation would come crashing down on a tiny concealment array.
His good name, ruined in his twilight years.jpg...
Well, though he supposed he had never possessed anything so grand as a "twilight reputation" back at the Drunken Moon Tower anyway.
But soon.
The faint smile that had spread across Shen Danruo's lips after she was caught off guard rose before Lin Yi's eyes, and the gloom in his heart gradually dispersed a little.
So be it.
He might as well consider it playing the clown once more before parting with an old friend, just to earn her a smile.
Then he strolled on a while longer, covering the nearby districts with the densest foot traffic—don't forget, this trip he was also tasked with recording imagery.
Only when he reckoned he had gathered enough samples did he come to a stop outside a trading house.
The storefront was imposing, its entrance over two zhang high, a plaque hung high above inscribed with the words "Liu Family Trading House" in Tianling script. The establishment cut quite a bit grander a figure than the Drunken Moon Tower.
The large characters on the plaque in particular must have received the blessing of some array, for though no light fell directly upon them, they still gleamed brilliantly. Stare too long, and it was like looking straight at some general whose bulk rivaled the sun...
After a moment.
Lin Yi drew his gaze back from the plaque and stepped inside.
Earlier, to avoid arousing Shen Danruo's unnecessary suspicion, he had asked her for only five hundred bottles of Primordial Origin Pills—now was the perfect chance to buy a few more.
Seeing Lin Yi enter, a red-robed young man standing by the door came forward at once:
"Might this senior care to purchase anything? Our Liu Family Trading House is a famous old establishment of Jiuwu City. Medicinal pills or talismans, spiritual materials or Dharma artifacts—every sort of goods, we have them all."
Lin Yi answered with an "mm," not at all surprised by the young man's pitch.
After all, surnames were limited in number, running a trading house was hardly an obscure line of business, and shops sharing a surname could be found almost anywhere.
A business that dared hang a bare surname as its signboard in a given region was, more often than not, the property of a locally famous prominent clan.
Shops of meager strength either took some relatively niche signboard or simply went with the full name, personal name and all—say, "Lin Yi Trading House," and so on.
As for grand titles like Treasure-Gathering Pavilion or Tower of Myriad Treasures, usually only giant merchant chambers at the cross-province, even cross-immortal-dynasty, level were entitled to bear them.
As far as Lin Yi recalled,
the Liu family behind this trading house, while not one of the three great families, was strong enough overall to rank in the city's top ten; rumor even held that a Golden Core late-stage cultivator dwelt within the clan.
Then he gathered his thoughts and asked the young man: "Little brother, does your store carry Primordial Origin Pills? This old man wants two hundred bottles, to take back for the juniors of my sect."
The young man's eyes brightened slightly: "Primordial Origin Pills? Yes, yes, we have them!"
Primordial Origin Pills were cheap by the bottle, but once the quantity piled up, it was another matter entirely.
Two hundred bottles sold for forty spirit stones, and given the young man's standing in the trading house, he encountered business of that size only two or three times a day at most.
At that thought, his expression grew keener still, and he moved to lead Lin Yi toward the transaction room where the trading house handled the handover and settlement of goods: "Esteemed senior, please follow—"
But before he could finish.
At the trading house entrance.
"Hm?"
Several cultivators of varying bearing suddenly let out a soft sound of surprise in unison, turning their heads toward the distant sky.
Immediately after,
Lin Yi and a handful of other passersby also sensed something and looked in the same direction.
Last of all came the bewildered red-robed youth.
After a moment.
Whoosh—
From the direction everyone was watching, five sword lights appeared, tearing in at breakneck speed.
Strangely enough, though they were still extremely far off, Lin Yi felt from those sword lights an indescribable, flaunting edge.
The five sword lights flouted the ban on flying anywhere but the flight corridors, swept across nearly half the city, and finally dropped down into a certain district.
If Lin Yi's eyes did not deceive him,
that district was the seat of the Fang family—the strongest of Jiuwu City's three great families!
Good heavens...
Someone actually dared to break Jiuwu City's rules so brazenly—and had the gall to fly straight for the Fang family on top of it?
Bear in mind.
When the city was first built, in order to put the fear of the city rules into everyone,
the Fang family head of that time had personally struck, fighting and killing a mid-Nascent Soul cultivator who defied the rules!
In the sixteen hundred years and more since, people may have crossed the line for all sorts of reasons, but absolutely no one had dared, with such fanfare, to flaunt a challenge to Jiuwu City's authority to its face.
Anyone who would do such a thing was either possessed across worlds by Earth's Baltic Three Stooges, or else...
of no ordinary origin or strength.
"Senior Wen."
Just as shock and doubt churned in Lin Yi's heart, an old man who was also shopping in the store suddenly cupped his hands toward someone outside the door and asked in a deferential tone:
"Forgive this junior's limited eyesight, but might the five who just entered the city be envoys of the Dao Protection Office?"
The Senior Wen he addressed was a middle-aged man clad in a straw rain cape, dark-skinned, with plain features, showing not the slightest air of a cultivator.
And yet he had been the first of the cultivators present to notice that something was amiss.
Lin Yi suspected the man's cultivation was at least early Golden Core, and quite possibly higher.
Unfortunately, the Tianling Realm had no technique for judging the cultivation of higher-realm cultivators, so Lin Yi could only lean on the man's reactions and the old man's deference to inform his guess.
"Oh, so it's Fellow Daoist Hengshui." The caped man answered mildly, then cast a subtle glance toward the Fang family's main residence. "Wielding the Startled Swan Sword Art and conducting themselves with such overbearing style—they are most likely Dao Protection Office people, though which Hall they hail from, I couldn't say."
"So it truly is the Dao Protection Office?" The old man called Fellow Daoist Hengshui started in alarm. "Senior Wen, could the rumors be true?"
"That, Wen here cannot say." The caped man shook his head, impossible to tell whether he truly didn't know or simply wouldn't discuss certain sensitive matters before a crowd. "In any case, strange things have come thick and fast of late, Fellow Daoist. It would be wise to make some preparations."
"I picked up some dust on my journey just now and mean to find a place to bathe and change. We'll talk another day, when there's time."
With that,
the caped man made a hurried clasp of his hands, set his bamboo hat on his head, and left the scene at a brisk pace.
Off to bathe. Talk next time.jpg.
"Hey, Senior Wen..."
Old Daoist Hengshui hastily reached out a hand, as if hoping to worm a little more out of him, but the caped man seemed to have employed some movement art, and after only a few blinks his figure had vanished.
The old Daoist's outstretched palm hung frozen in midair, and only after a moment did it drop, helpless:
"Ah..."
Then he shook his head, irritation written all over his face, and the corner of his eye happened to catch the trading house attendant standing beside him—at which he let out a surly snort:
"What are you looking at? Is that Five-Colored Luan-Plume Umbrella for sale or not? If not, this old man is leaving!"
The attendant whom Old Daoist Hengshui barked at was a round-faced young man with an honest look, and at the words his features promptly knotted themselves into a tangle:
"Esteemed senior, knocking ten low-grade spirit stones off is already the absolute limit. You opened your mouth asking for twenty off—this junior truly has no way to manage it..."
At that, Old Daoist Hengshui's face darkened. He flicked his sleeve and made to leave.
But the moment he turned, Lin Yi behind him called out to stop him:
"Fellow Daoist, please wait!"
Chapter 42