Evening settled over the servant quarters, and thin plumes of cooking smoke began to rise. Gray-white wisps diffused through the dying amber light, softening the edges of crumbling rooftops and muddy paths—the cruelest world's gentlest filter.
When Mo Fan pushed open that familiar rotting gate with his silent, iron-tower of a "cousin" looming behind him, a wave of scent hit his face: cheap spirit grain, pickled vegetables, and damp firewood crackling in a struggling flame.
It wasn't a pleasant smell. Acrid, even. Carrying that particular sourness unique to poverty.
But for Mo Fan—who had just clawed his way back from mountains of corpses, seas of blood, and the terrifying aftershocks of Golden Core cultivators trying to kill each other—this was the most reassuring air in the world.
It meant alive.
It meant temporary escape from the jungle.
"Seventh Brother!"
Er Ya's ears were the sharpest. She'd been helping Old Lü sort vegetables in the courtyard, but at the sound of the gate she dropped her handful of wilted leaves and bounded over like a happy little sparrow.
Da Hu and the other children patching clothes abandoned their work too, crowding around with eyes full of uncomplicated joy.
"Back safe, back safe."
Old Lü wiped his hands on his apron, his weathered face splitting into a grin that deepened every wrinkle. Relief pooled in those crevices like rainwater.
His gaze lingered—just for a moment—on the dark brownish stains Mo Fan hadn't fully scrubbed from his clothes. On Mo Yan's torn, dust-caked black robes.
Something flickered in the old man's eyes. A flash of alarm, quickly suppressed.
He looked away. As if he'd seen nothing.
He asked nothing.
Why are your clothes torn? Whose blood is that?
In the servant district where lives were worth less than weeds, this kind of deliberate ignorance was the highest wisdom for survival.
"Come inside, come inside. Food's just been heated. I'll ladle out some soup."
Old Lü simply turned away, adding another handful of kindling to the stove. The motion of bending down hid the wetness gathering at the corners of his eyes.
Something warm unclenched in Mo Fan's chest. That killing intent he'd been carrying like a coiled spring finally began to dissipate.
He reached into his storage pouch and produced the goods he'd bought at Qingmu Town's market—a large bag of flaky pastries and colorful maltose candies. The children's cheers erupted as he distributed the treats.
Then he pressed a packet of tobacco leaves into Old Lü's weathered hands.
Watching this ragtag family of the old, the weak, the sick, and the young light up over a few pieces of cheap candy... Mo Fan felt those nerves that had been stretched wire-taut in Qingmu Town finally, slowly, begin to loosen.
This place was a wreck. But it was his only anchor in this bizarre world.
To protect this faint flicker of warmth and smoke, he'd become a devil if he had to.
After dinner, the children scattered. The courtyard returned to quiet.
Mo Fan called A-Song into his small room. Alone.
"How's your cultivation coming along?"
Mo Fan sat on the edge of the bed, studying the boy in front of him—so thin it seemed a stiff breeze might snap him in half. His tone was serious.
"Seventh Brother, I felt it!"
A-Song's eyes blazed with an intensity that bordered on desperation—the hunger of someone who'd glimpsed a chance to escape their fate.
"Using that breathing technique you taught me, last night I felt a warm current swirling in my belly! It was just a tiny thread, but I caught it! I didn't dare sleep—I practiced until dawn!"
"Oh?"
Mo Fan's interest sharpened. He activated [ Death Vision ] immediately.
Hummm—
His visual field shifted to grayscale.
There, in A-Song's dantian region, a wisp of pale green energy spiraled slowly. Faint. Barely there.
But it was real. Qi Sense—the first step a mortal takes through the gates of cultivation.
As expected from what's probably a mid-grade or even high-grade Wood Spirit Root. Even without pills or elixirs, using only the most basic breathing technique, the kid had broken through this quickly.
But...
Mo Fan's gaze drifted upward. His frown deepened.
Around the red flame representing the boy's life force, thin threads of grayish decay had begun to coil. Like mold spots appearing on a healthy apple.
Worse—A-Song's blood vitality, already meager to begin with, now showed severe depletion. Like an oil lamp burning bright, but the reservoir had nearly run dry.
"Give me your hand."
Mo Fan gripped A-Song's wrist. He didn't know traditional medicine, but the System's feedback was honest and brutal:
[ Target Status: Blood Vitality Depletion (Severe) ]
[ Life Signs: Sub-healthy / Potential Organ Failure ]
[ Cause Analysis: Forced refinement of essence into Qi. Nutritional intake critically insufficient. ]
Literature is cheap, but martial arts cost gold.
That old saying was taken to its extreme in the cultivation world. Cultivation, at its core, was plunder. Plundering heaven and earth's spiritual energy. Plundering your own essence, vitality, and spirit.
A-Song was just a chronically malnourished orphan who rarely saw meat on his plate. His foundation was paper-thin to begin with. Forcing a Qi Sense breakthrough now was like flooring the accelerator in a car with an empty tank—he wasn't burning fuel, he was burning through the engine's lifespan.
Keep this up, and he'd cripple himself long before reaching Foundation Establishment.
"Stop."
Mo Fan released the boy's wrist. His expression had turned ugly. "Starting today, no more practice."
"Wh-why?" A-Song's face went white with panic. "Seventh Brother, did I do it wrong? I'm not afraid of hardship, I can endure it, I'll sleep less—"
"You didn't do anything wrong. You're just too poor."
Mo Fan sighed, looking at the child's terrified expression with a mixture of frustration and helplessness. "Cultivation is a money-burning business. Your body right now is a sieve with holes in it. Practice without replenishment means trading your life for Qi."
Talent and technique weren't enough.
You had to spend.
Qi-Gathering Powder. Medicinal baths. Spirit beast meat. These weren't luxuries—they were necessities to patch the holes that cultivation tore in your foundation.
Without them, this was slow-motion suicide.
"Go back and sleep. Don't overthink it. The medicine... I'll figure something out."
After shooing away the anxious boy, Mo Fan closed the door and slid the bolt home. The warmth vanished from his face, replaced by bone-deep exhaustion.
He dropped onto the bed and pulled out the heavy coin pouch from his robes, upending it onto the wooden table.
Clatter-clatter-clatter—
Low-grade Spirit Stones tumbled across the surface, their collision producing a crisp, almost musical sound.
To Mo Fan, it sounded like mockery.
This was everything he had:
Leftovers after buying the mask.
42.5 stones from the Qingmu Town mission settlement
Miscellaneous scraps he'd scraped together.
Total: 45 Low-Grade Spirit Stones.
His fingers tapped against the tabletop. His brow furrowed into deep trenches.
Back at the Myriad Treasures Tower, sitting in that display case: "Body Forging Record"—an orthodox body cultivation manual. Price: 50 stones.
That book was his key to legitimacy. His excuse for why his physical strength was so abnormally high. The foundation for his future cultivation path.
He was five stones short.
Pocket change. He could sell a few materials and cover it easily.
But...
Mo Fan glanced toward the door, in the direction A-Song had gone.
That kid's current state—if he didn't get medicinal treatment soon, once his foundation was damaged, it would be permanent. A lifetime crippled. Even the cheapest pills or a few packets of bath herbs would run 5-10 stones minimum.
The red numbers on his mental ledger burned his eyes.
"If I just buy the book, I get stronger. But A-Song might be ruined forever."
"If I prioritize A-Song, my cultivation falls behind. And in this snake pit, every day I delay getting stronger is another day something might kill me."
A lose-lose trap.
Mo Fan ran his fingers through his hair, irritation building. He swept the stones back into the pouch.
"Only children make choices."
His eyes hardened. He cinched the bag tight and stuffed it back into his robes.
"Adults take everything."
"So... the conclusion is simple."
Mo Fan stood and stared out the window into the pitch-black night. Those eyes—eyes that had grown accustomed to life and death through the lens of [ Death Vision ]—now gleamed with a different kind of light.
The desperate green glow of poverty.
"I need money."
"I need a lot of money."