Chapter Seven: Long Song Enters the City

  Along the stream that runs through Longjia Village, walk ten miles, and you will see a small river formed by the confluence of many streams. Along the small river, walk twenty miles, and you will see a big river formed by the confluence of many small rivers. Along the big river, walk thirty miles, and you will arrive at Shuangma Town, the nearest town to Longjia Village.

  This time, the team from Longjia Village to the town has twenty people, led by Long Wu, followed by Long Ge, and the others are all Qi Dan-level villagers.

  From the morning departure, there were no fierce monsters on the way, except for a few wild boars, and nothing else. On the way, the team from Longjia Village killed several wild boars to roast as breakfast, and arrived in Double Horse Town at noon.

  Although the town of Double Horse is small, it's still a city. As soon as you enter the city gate, you have to pay one copper coin, and only after paying can you enter the city.

  After entering the town of Double Horse, I saw people coming and going, it's indeed a town with 200,000 people. There are all kinds of shops inside, including wine houses, clothing stores, jewelry stores, weapon stores, and pharmacies, everything is available. The team from Longjia Village first went to the clothing store to sell their fur to the boss, as they were old customers, it only took a while to settle the payment, and they got over 100 silver coins in total. Then they went to the pharmacy to sell the magic core to the boss, and got over 300 silver coins. The magic core of Longge's Qiying level can't be sold here, it needs to go to the auction market in the market to be sold.

  Arrived at the market, Long Ge found an auctioneer and quickly sold it off for 50 gold coins. After selling, he went to a wine house to have a meal first.

  The tavern in the town is different, with all kinds of delicacies from mountains and seas. The villagers of Longjia Village have eaten their fill of such delicacies, but what they serve here is clearly different. For example, carp, in Longjia Village, there are only a few ways to cook it, such as roasting, boiling, steaming, and frying, while the tavern has many more methods, including braising, deep-frying, and stir-frying, which shows off their exceptional cooking skills; apart from that, they also have many delicious seasonings, leaving the villagers of Longjia Village speechless with delight.

  Long Song had eaten a lot of mountain delicacies and seafood in his previous life, but after three years in Longjia Village, he had already forgotten what delicious food looked like. Now, eating a meal in the wine tower made him feel that it was very delicious, and he even wished to come to the city every day to eat.

  In addition to fish, there is also wild boar meat.

  "What's so good about porcupine meat?" Long Ge asked doubtfully. "Don't we usually eat it all the time?"

  "You'll know once you've eaten it!" Long Wu said with a smile.

  Long Song stuffed a piece into his mouth, and couldn't help but think that the meat was incredibly tender, not only tender, but also had a chewy texture, and was truly delicious!

  Apart from this, there were many things that I had eaten before, but the feeling of eating them this time was just different. They ate for two hours and still didn't finish.

  Delicious food should be worth its price, and the result was that twenty people finished eating and calculated the bill, a total of 50 silver coins were spent, what a luxury! However, no one felt dissatisfied, especially Long Song thought it was very worthwhile.

  After eating, it was already afternoon. Long Ge and the others went to buy things separately. Some villagers went to buy clothes and accessories for their wives and children; some villagers went to the pharmacy to buy medicine, which would be convenient for timely treatment during future hunting trips. There were also some villagers who were responsible for buying suitable weapons, as many had been damaged during the hunt. Long Ge asked his father, Long Wu, to accompany him to buy things, after all, he was still young and without someone to go with him, there would probably be a lot of trouble.

  Arrived at the blacksmith shop, Long Ge spent 10 gold coins to buy a set of forging tools for striking weapons, including an anvil with a bellows and a hammer. (Actually, when forging reaches the advanced stage, no bellows are needed, but Long Ge's current strength is limited and he can't reach that level yet.) After buying the forging tools, he also spent 10 gold coins to buy a piece of 50-jin cold iron.

  After visiting the Refining Equipment Store, I came to the Refining Medicine Store and spent 10 gold coins on a set of furnaces. At the same time, I also spent 10 gold coins buying some medicinal materials, which are used for refining first-class elixirs and second-class elixirs.

  After visiting the Refiner's shop, Long Ge came to the Accessories shop, intending to buy a pair of earrings for his mother, Xiao Yue. After all, being filial was a must, haha!

  After buying, there were only three gold coins left, so I exchanged them all for silver coins and went to a bookstore to buy a lot of books about the mainland. As soon as I finished buying the books, Long Ge sat down in the bookstore to read.

  Firstly, Long Song was most concerned about the experts of this human continent. The experts of this continent were all recorded in the book, although it was a record from ten years ago, but within ten years, the experts wouldn't change much.

  The Five Great Masters of Mainland China: Unranked

  1. Long Wudi: A high-ranking master of the Air King level, skilled in gold attribute Dou Qi, with a signature move called Golden Eagle Dance, belonging to the Jinling aristocratic family.

  2. Mu Yu Shuang: A high-ranking Qi Wang expert, skilled in wood attribute Dou Qi, with a special move called "Wooden Rebirth", belonging to the Murong family. (The first two are indeed experts, even their names sound so domineering.)

  3. Water Wuying: A high-ranking Qi Wang expert, skilled in water attribute Dou Qi, with a special move called Shui Xi Ling Bu, belonging to the Yang Liu family.

  4. Flameless: A high-ranking master of the Air King level, skilled in fire attribute Dou Qi, with a signature move called "Fierce Blaze", belonging to a solitary noble family.

  5. Earth Unscathed: A high-ranking Air King expert skilled in earth attribute defense, with a special move called Earth Heap Defense, belonging to the Ouyang clan.

  After watching the dragon song, he thought to himself, "These few people have their own strengths, but their weaknesses are obvious. If I practice my five-element technique to the level of air rotation, none of them would be a match for me. However, this path is still extremely long." Only aristocratic families can cultivate such masters, and these masters are probably around the seventh level of Qi Wang. Perhaps the older generation has already transcended or reincarnated. However, these aristocratic families don't just have these masters; they also have at least twenty or so high-level masters at the initial stage of Qi Wang, and countless lower-level masters. It seems that this human continent is much more formidable than the Beast God Continent where Long Song lived in his past life. Who knew that having a large population base would make such a big difference!

  There are many powerful individuals who aren't from these influential families, but even if they're extremely skilled, they don't dare or want to confront these families. As a result, those hidden experts can't be considered among the top five most powerful individuals on the continent. These five represent not only their own strength but also their background.

  "How can this Jinling family have the same surname as our Long family?" Long Ge thought to herself, continuing to read another book "Continental Power Distribution".

  Mainland power distribution: Jinling family controls the Dragon Empire, located in the Huanghe River Basin; Murong family controls the Wood Empire, located south of the Huanghe River Basin; Yangliu family controls the Water Empire, located downstream of the Huanghe River Basin; Gudou family controls the Fire Empire, located upstream of the Huanghe River Basin; Ouyang family controls the Earth Empire, located north of the Huanghe River Basin.

  After reading Long Song, I feel a bit strange. The six major empires are all located in the Huanghe River Basin, what about other places? Are there people living there?

  As I continued to look down, the population of each empire was roughly 10 billion, and the imperial capital had a population of about 100 million. It's indeed an empire, it's indeed a big city! With such a large population, it can be seen that this continent is truly super-large!

  Cities with a population of over 5 million are called large cities, those with a population of 2-5 million are medium-sized cities, those with a population of 1-2 million are small cities, and those with a population of 100,000 to 1 million are called towns (such as Erma Town, which has a population of 200,000).

  "With such a large population, how many masters are there?" Long Ge thought to himself, "Just in our village, the foundation is based on Qi soldiers. Those above Qi account for half of that, and those above Qi Dan account for half of those with Qi, and so on. The total population of the five great empires is 51.2 billion (a nice number to calculate, haha!). Half of these are Qi soldiers, which is 25.6 billion, and half of those are Qi users, which is 12.8 billion. There are * billion at the Qi Dan level, 3.2 billion at the Qi Infant level, 1.6 billion at the Qi Form level, 800 million at the Qi Courage level, 400 million at the Qi Condensation level, 200 million at the Qi Rotation level, and 100 million at the Qi King level..."

  "One billion!?" Long Song exclaimed at his own calculations. "How is it possible to have so many?" He thought carefully and felt that it was impossible, because cultivating this thing wasn't just a matter of simple arithmetic. Cultivation not only required effort, but also opportunity and innate talent, just like the Beast God Continent, where among 1 billion beast tribes, there were less than 1000 Qi Kings. According to this ratio, on this human continent, there would be at most 500,000 Qi King strongholds, with an average of 10,000 per empire, and most of them concentrated in the five major aristocratic families. With so many Qi Kings, basically every year someone would cross the calamity and ascend to the immortal realm. It seems that this continent is filled with experts!

  As he read the book, Long Song's heart was filled with burning passion. He wasn't afraid of others being stronger than him, but rather that there would be no challenges. In his past life, he had been at the peak for 10,000 years, with no one to challenge him, and it was a loneliness like no other. But in this life, the number of experts was 50 times more than in his previous life! And he himself was the challenger - what a thrilling thing that was!

  "Bring it on! I love a good challenge!" Long Song thought excitedly to himself, "I don't just want to defeat all the top masters of the continent, but also surpass them in multiple aspects, not just in terms of martial power and combat skills, but also reach the pinnacle in both equipment refinement and alchemy!"

  This is probably the specific gain of Long Song's visit to the city this time. In the past, although it was said that the ideal was to become the strongest, but if you don't know how strong your opponent is, how can you surpass him? Through reading books, Long Song learned some information about the top strongmen on the mainland, which also pointed out the direction for his future efforts.

  Long Song was preparing to look at other books, but several hours had passed and the sky was almost dark. The villagers had already sold what they wanted to buy and were preparing to head back together. Long Song also hurriedly organized his books, alchemy tools, and pill-making tools and handed them over to his father, Long Wu, figuring that he could look at them when he got home anyway.

  The villagers didn't linger and gathered to head back to the village along the original route. The villagers were very satisfied with this trip to the city for shopping, after all, they had exchanged a lot of goods from hunting for money, and with the money, they could buy things they liked, and after buying things, they could please their wives and make their children happy. It seems that in the future, they should go hunting more often, but they must bring along their little genius - Long Ge.

  In the evening, when they returned home, Long Ge gave the jewelry he had bought to his mother, Xiao Yue. Xiao Yue was delighted and put on the beautiful moon-shaped earrings, looking in the mirror as she said to Long Ge: "Long Ge is really filial! You have great taste!"

  "Where did I get this good look from? It's because Mom was originally beautiful!" Long Ge said excitedly "Look, Father is staring at you with wide eyes!"

  After finishing speaking, Long Wu and Xiao Yue looked at each other for a while, their faces turned red, just like newlyweds.

  Next Chapter: Refining Equipment and Alchemy