The Prodigies War

It was difficult to move an inch without money!

Lin Xun deeply understood the meaning of this sentence after coming to Donglin City.

Money was needed for clothing, food, housing and transportation. Additionally, as a practitioner, his spending was much higher than that of ordinary people.

For example, ordinary people would be happy as long as they had something to eat, but practitioners must consume aeth grains and aeth vegetables as well as the blood and flesh of beasts to maintain their bodies’ purity. And the cost of such items were terrifyingly high.

Some cultivators from wealthy backgrounds would even solely consume aeth herbs and aeth pills to supplement their bodies’ needs as to constantly sharpen and improve their cultivation base. Those valuable materials were not something that an ordinary practitioner could afford.

Moreover, the clothes that cultivators wore, the horses and other animals they rode, the combat equipment they used and the cultivation techniques they required, all required huge amounts of money.

Why else would there be the saying that children of poor families could only read while the rich learned martial arts?

Only the descendants of wealthy families could concentrate on martial arts without having to worry about money and afford the items necessary for martial training.

In contrast, even if poor people had the talent and constitution to cultivate, the lack of financial support and cultivation resources meant they wouldn’t progress far on the cultivation road.

Why did the district examination held in the empire attract so many cultivators to participate every year? Why would cultivators from poor backgrounds treat the district examination as an opportunity to leap over the dragon gate?

It was because anyone who passed the district examination would be favored by many chambers of commerce, sects, clans and wealthy families and they would try to draw them to their sides by providing them with cultivation resources.

Cultivators did everything possible for their cultivation but cultivation was absolutely impossible without money.

In the seven days that Lin Xun had been in Donglin City, he had often gone out to familiarize himself and integrate into the life of the city as soon as possible.

Those seven days made Lin Xun deeply realize the importance of money.

Donglin City was different from the Qingyang Tribe in that it was far more bustling. Even if there were unimaginable cultivation resources in the city, it was extremely difficult to obtain them.

This was especially the case for Lin Xun given that it was his first time stepping foot into a city. It wasn’t easy for him to settle in this densely populated place where cultivators were as common as trees and the countless sects and forces were intricately and complicatedly linked.

I need to make money!

This is my top priority!

Lin Xun thought to himself. Only when he had earned enough money could he move to a different place with Xia Zhi and obtain more cultivation resources. Then, he could live better in the Ziyao Empire.

……

Hunched over the desk, Lin Xun suddenly sighed.

Xia Zhi raised her head and asked, “What's wrong?”

Lin Xun closed the book in his hand and shook his head. “Nothing.”

The book was ‘The Record of the Empire Landscape’, which he had purchased from the Li’s Bookstore. It was a book about the mountains, rivers and landscape of the Ziyao Empire.

Lin Xun originally intended to investigate where the mine prison that he used to lived in was located but he could only find the Great Three Thousand Mountains. Further south of it was the territory of the Ziyao Empire’s enemy—Darkness Kingdom.

Lin Xun remembered that he lost consciousness when Mister Lu pushed him into a mine of unfathomable depths and when he regained consciousness, he was already in the Great Three Thousand Mountains.

This made him speculate that the mine prison was likely located somewhere in the Great Three Thousand Mountains.

Unfortunately, the Great Three Thousand Mountain was too vast with mountains stretching endlessly. Even the ‘Record of the Empire Landscape’ had no detailed description of the area.

However, the book was pretty useful because Lin Xun learned that he was living on the vast and boundless Cangtu Continent.

The Ziyao Empire was only one of several empires on the Cangtu Continent.

“Are you still thinking about moving?” Xia Zhi suddenly asked, frowning.

“Yes.”

Lin Xun nodded casually and opened another book. It was the ‘Handbook of Cultivation Basics’ and, as the name indicated, it provided knowledge on cultivation basics. The content was very simple but the sections were very well thought out.

The book was divided into five parts based on the five great cultivation stages: True Martial, Spirit Dipper, Spirit Sea, Heaven Ascension and Cyclic Derivation.

For example, the nine layers of the True Martial Stage from the first Qi Drawing Layer to the last Aeth Transformation were all explained.

However, books could only provide theoretical knowledge and not training experience. They could help readers roughly understand the changes expected in that stage and what were the specific signs of breakthrough.

Although the content was very simple, Lin Xun read it with great interest.

“There’s no need to move, I like it here,” Xia Zhi stated as she picked up a book called ‘The Official History of the Empire’ and flipped through it.

Lin Xun raised his head and glanced at Xia Zhi in surprise. “Do you like it here?”

Without looking up at Lin Xun, Xia Zhi responded, “You can fight anytime here. If you move places, it will be hard to find people to battle with. It will be boring.”

She suddenly lifted her head and looked at Lin Xun with a serious expression. “Do you know how I felt in Feiyun Village?”

Lin Xun smiled bitterly as he could roughly guess what Xia Zhi was about to say.

As expected, she continued, “Bored. I have analyzed my strength and came to the conclusion that my strength will gradually weaken without any battles.”

Lin Xun was a little taken aback by her answer and he gazed intently into her eyes. “Do you mean that your strength won’t weaken with constant battles?”

Xia Zhi nodded. “More than that, only battles can make me stronger. I don't need to practice, I don’t need any cultivation arts. I only need to fight.”

Lin Xun was flabbergasted. He suddenly realized a problem. He had always subconsciously treated Xia Zhi as a little girl and had always done everything he could to protect her despite knowing that she was entirely different to other children. But had he ever thought about what Xia Zhi actually wanted?

At such a young age, she could effortlessly kill Wu Henshui who was at the eight layer True Martial Stage and could survive in the deep mountain forests where fierce and savage beasts roamed. Lun Xun had to admit that he wasn’t as strong as her.

So what does she actually need?

Lin Xun had never thought about that question. He only knew that Xia Zhi liked to eat and sleep, and that she lived a simple and carefree life. But after hearing Xia Zhi’s words, he realized that she had her own thoughts and a cultivation path that she wanted to follow. She had a life that she desired!

Lin Xun pondered for a long moment and said, “I understand”, and then he scratched his head. “It's just that fighting means killing, do you know what this means?”

Xia Zhi nodded. “I only kill enemies.”

Lin Xun smiled bitterly. “But we don’t have many enemies.”

“Really?”

Lin Xun thought again and fell silent. Do I really have no enemies?

Of course I do!

The person who took his Origin Aeth Artery and the owner of the giant hand that destroyed the mine prison and made Mister Lu’s whereabouts unknown could be considered his enemies.

It was just that Lin Xun was still far from getting revenge.

“Your enemy seems to be the brute warrior.” Lin Xun suddenly remembered a Spirit Sea cultivator was trying to kill Xia Zhi when he first saw her.

“I remember him. When I become stronger, I will personally kill him.” Xia Zhi's expression was calm and her voice was calm as though she was destined to do that.

“Battles…battles…” Lin Xun hesitated. If what Xia Zhi needed was to battle, he currently couldn’t help her.

“You don’t need to worry, I like to fight, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t survive without fighting,” Xia Zhi stated seriously.

Lin Xun let out a sigh of relief and he smiled. “That's good.”

Xia Zhi suddenly raised the book ‘The Official History of the Empire’ in her hands and pointed to the paragraph on the last page. “I fight to become stronger, and this person was born to fight. This is the difference between me and him.”

Lin Xun curiously took the book to take a closer look and saw that the last paragraph read, “I am born from the qi of heaven and earth and I live to battle. My glory is built on the blood of the enemy!

“If I die, the battlefield will be my burial mound and the enemy’s bones will be my coffin. I will rest my head on the mountain of corpses, lay in a sea of blood, face the sky and sleep with the earth. This way, I have no other regrets!”

——The Iron Blood King of the Ziyao Empire.

Those few sentences made Lin Xun’s blood rush around his body and battle intent surged to his chest. He couldn’t help but marvel, “The Iron Blood King has such a bold vision. His brilliance could compete with the sun and the moon, and he could vie for eternal supremacy!”

He looked at Xia Zhi, who was sitting quietly, and said thoughtfully, “You are indeed different from him.”

A slight smile lifted the corners of Xia Zhi’s lips and her beauty lit up the entire house.

Fortunately, the smile disappeared in a flash.

But even so, Lin Xun couldn’t help reminding her. “Xia Zhi, you shouldn’t show your face outside in the future.”

She was only five to six years old, but her beauty was already too dazzling and could draw many unexpected disasters.

Xia Zhi lifted her face and made an acknowledging sound.

Lin Xun smiled and said nothing else. He turned around to face the desk, took out a rune brush, a swallow-winged blade, and a dish of completed rune ink.

The rune brush was polished from the leg bone of an iron-beaked mountain pheasant. It was perfectly straight, slender and entirely pale purple. The body of the brush was heavy and simple and the tip was sharp and thin like a cicada’s wings. It emitted a wondrous light and was named Violet Pheasant by Lin Xun.

Lin Xun had bought the swallow-winged blade from a weapon shop in the city. It was entirely made from a rune material called rosy cloud steel but it was only considered an ordinary tool due to the absence of any engraved runes.

That dish of rune ink was precisely scarlet fire rune ink, one of the more common rune inks on the market. It was able to engrave a dozen kinds of basic rune patterns with fire attributes.

Lin Xun hoped to engrave an explosive flame rune on the swallow-winged blade and thereby transform it from an ordinary tool to an aeth tool!

This was one of the most effective means of making money that Lin Xun could think of!