“Here, there are now exactly twenty left for the deadline. Take these parts, seal your cultivation, resources and identity. Then measure the country by foot.
During this journey, when you feel and understand something – use that understanding to fill in the gap for nature and construct the final product.”
Lao Fu said, as if he was a hermit.
Not to mention the Devil Emperor – everyone was dumbfounded.
What is this?
Travel a nation by foot – but as a mortal with no cultivation and no money.
“Lao Fu, are you kidding me?”, Mo Fan said in a deep voice as he felt that the joke had gone too far.
He was doing this just because he intrinsically desired an approval of his skills by his teacher.
Even though he is fully qualified as a five-star blacksmith and has even constructed emperor weapons, his teacher never approved of him. He always failed him.
The head of the blacksmith association is far worse than he is!
But he doesn’t get why he is always failed. He doesn’t want to joke with this.
Who was Lao Fu? He was the oldest in the ancient country today and even had tea with the previous Donghuang Emperor – can he not know what this brat was thinking?
“Not a joke”, He said calmly.
“If you concentrate and really do as I just said, you now meet the conditions to pass and as a byproduct – finish this weapon.”
Mo Fan was taken aback now.
He did not understand. He now had the condition to pass if he followed instructions? So, he couldn’t have passed no matter how many times he tried before?
Damn this old man, why didn’t he say that before?
“You are impulsive. Telling you won’t work – you will try anyway. And to answer your next facial expression – no, I’m not reading your mind. I can read out inside out even now just as easily as I did before.
Now, go.”
Saying that, he patted and left the house.
Mo Fan then remembered something, turned around and glanced at everyone.
Else felt a chill rising from their soles.
“You wait until I return.”
Then he looked at his attendant who abducted the lich lord.
“And you, keep an eye on them. Sack them too if they try to run away.”
With one last word, everyone saw that devil emperor grabbed a bag from the void, put the parts of chisel into it and walked away.
With every step, his cultivation dropped as it finally seemed to disappear and he appeared a mortal.
The attendant left there looked at her lord with some confusion. She did not imagine that Lao Fu’s one word would send this nuisance away.
If she knew, she would have asked Lao Fu to do this long ago.
She looked on as she hoped he could achieve what he wants.
---
Zi Yang was tired of thinking of a way to learn gigantification, so he took a break and logged into the void net.
Somehow, he observed that the shops were a little slow these days and even complaints of delay for the delivery of products also flooded royal speed transportation.
Maybe something happened.
Thinking this, he walked in his virtual bank.
Yes, the country approved merit coins as new Donghuang currency and the issuing bank is located on void net.
Why? Because that is safer for him.
His master gave him a money tree and a luobao mother coin through his void ring some time ago to mint coins and all the payment for resources for his creation weapons was conducted through these.
That and some resources or transactions that were directly handled by his master herself.
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Today, for example, the person coming to receive payments were folks from the homeland ruins department – they are responsible for ruins left by beast masters and make the most of it.
They are either developed into secret realms, trial realms, resource realms, housed by schools as talent classes and many other uses he did not know of.
He knew that a king level beast master resource went into the axe head. He was really amazed when he heard that.
For a while, he had a feeling that a donkey was forced to ride an airplane.
He, a mortal, has to use such high tools to open a beast master space. The start stumped him.
Even now he feels ridiculous when he thinks of performing the act of opening heavens as a mortal.
This is not fantasy.
It is pure tomfoolery.
After a while, two people – a man and a child came to the bank.
A.I. Joanne who usually dealt with customers dealt with them and offered the payment plans:
- Enough resources to cultivate a king-level powerhouse for their department
- Renumeration in merit coins as equivalent cost of it in ancient coins.
The two pondered for a moment and chose the first option.
Joanne asked details of the person who needs to be promoted. After some contact, a decadent middle-aged man walked in the bank.
He was a fighter in a skirmish against the primeval beast empire two decades ago and was seriously injured.
He was a captain then and saved the team. His departmental merits allowed him to be chosen for this compensation.
Checking his condition, Joanne replied, “You can absorb all the resources here and follow my instructions.”
The captain said, “we can’t take it back?”
“You can, but if you don’t break through or share it with someone and come back for more, what happens then?”
The captain was enraged.
Alas, A.I. Joanne can think creatively but he was still a machine after all. She does not understand the twists and turns in human relationships.
All she knows is how to maximize benefits for her master.
Zi Yang took over before the situation escalated, “Captain, don’t mind her. She means that her on-site assistance has a better chance for your recovery.”
After a while, in a private void cultivation room opened by the virtual bank – Zi Yang, the pair of man and child, the captain and, Joanne was present.
Joanne then helped the captain absorb the merit coins into his soul, cleansing it. Then she credited to his account, the remaining 10 million merit coins based on the amount required to build a solid law foundation for himself and one of his beasts.
The small episode was an interlude which passed quickly.
---
Zi Yang was bored.
He did not have anything to do, so he logged out and went out for a walk and, ended up coming to the pine hill forests.
He walked while reminiscing the first time he came here.
Wait. He realized that even the security checks at the exit were a little weak. There was no detailed check on him while exiting.
So, they just confirmed his age by looking at his height?
Never mind.
Soon he followed his memory and came to the place where he met those leafed hat truts.
But as he reached here, he found that a young man – quite handsome – just a tad lower than him and having the same kind of superior charm that he has seen in his master.
He was snatching food from the truts.
So, he is also poor.
But he couldn’t let him bully these truts.
They have helped him exchange many resources, though he was always overcharged.
He shouted, “Hey, stop.”
All – the truts and the man stopped and looked at him.
“What? Playing hero here?”, the young man was grumpy and questioned loudly.
Zi Yang walked up to him and pushed him aside first.
The young man fell on his butt.
Standing up in anger, he was about to retaliate when he saw that this person had already walked into the circle of truts and started gesturing.
After a while, the truts exchanged some food from the forest for some drawings he scribbled on the tree bark presented by the truts.
Then the truts pooh-ed at the young man left with their space rings.
The young man was Mo Fan who had stumbled upon this forest in his travel. Even without cultivation, his body is still of an emperor.
He ran a marathon and went wherever he wanted.
Zi Yang handed over the food to Mo Fan, pushed him back on ground and sat with him too.
“Bro, do you exercise often – your body is so hard!”, Zi yang quipped.
Being called ‘a bro’ by a kid always felt weird to Mo Fan, but considering his identity as mortal boy, he forgot about it and answered naturally, “yes, why did they give you food? I asked them but those runts didn’t share any.”
“Huh, for these truts – they won’t let the eagle out if they don’t see rabbits. There are qualified businessmen, you know.”
“You sound as if you have experience with them”, Mo Fan quipped while eating. He had not felt this sensation for a long time.
“Yes, I used to exchange goods from them as a child.”
“Why exchange? Why not bring someone stronger than you and rob it all.”
“What are you a brute? There is law and order to society. You can’t just rob”, Zi Yang mused that this boy might have been a wild boy living in the woods.
“Order? This society is ruled by the powerful, so unless it is overly violating their bottom lines – playing with strength is the word.”
“But paying for what you need is more natural, you know. Imagine if everyone robs and no one pays – the entire natural order will be disrupted.
Moreover, it is in a trut’s nature to trade, but a man’s nature involves both. He can choose. Why choose to rob than to trade as well, if you have something to exchange.”
“I don’t have anything to exchange.”
Zi Yang immediately pointed at his bag when he heard this and gave him a white look.
Mo Fan was speechless.
He still quibbled, “so you mean stealing when you don’t have anything to exchange is fine?”
“Oh, now you are trying to lead me into a moral debate.”, Zi Yang replied frankly, then continued,
“let’s see. If you don’t have the ability to earn money, sure.
If you like stealing and robbing, that is your nature – then also sure. And nature if hard to change – so I won’t comment on that.”
Mo Fan was excited for a moment.
“Why is nature hard to change?”
“You are weird, you know that? From moral debate to philosophy?”
But Zi Yang was idle and bored too. It felt good to revert to his nerd hobbies sometimes.
Therefore, he was also quite receptive to talking and answered, “A man’s nature – that is how he behaves – may get fueled by his desires and emotions but it is not his innate nature – that is who he is.
He should use his innate nature to guide his desires and emotions – not the other way around.
Similarly, the nature – that is the world is affected by everything that happens in the world. An earthquake can derail land, flood destroy fields etc. Ecological imbalance or fights between powerhouses can affect this.
But if everything goes as it should, disasters would still occur but fewer and with more silver linings.
As it is said, Tao follows nature.”
Zi Yang wanted to see some admiration in this person eyes, as his geeky friends would falsely praise him when he paraphrased a combination of online fiction, renowned philosophy scholars and some trumped up comments.
But his guy just ignored and walked away.
Oh well, he was not going to stick his hot face to a cold butt.