Retracting his gaze, Lin Hui looked at the three Evolvable Branches at the bottom of his field of view.
The Hell Startling Wind Sword Technique has corrupting power, easily attracting extra attention beyond my current level. Not suitable.
The Arcane Wind Elemental Sword focuses on area-of-effect damage and has enormous consumption. The key issue is that sitting still in a place with strong winds for so long is hard to achieve. Here, one must get up at night to find a shelter to isolate the mist, and thirteen days involve too many variables.
Finally, he cast his gaze upon the Typhoon Sword Technique.
This was the only one suitable—clean, corruption-free, environmentally friendly, and possessing great power. Most importantly, the evolution condition was simple.
It only required two seven-year periods, totaling fourteen years.
I have medicine to take in combination, which can shorten the time to one-quarter. Plus, with the remaining thirteen Spirit-Enriching Reishi, each reducing the time by three months, that's over three years. Calculating like this: fourteen years, first consume the Spirit-Enriching Reishi to reduce it by over three years, then slowly take the medicine in combination. I should be able to complete all the evolution within three years.
This is the limit; it can't be shortened any further... Lin Hui sighed. He turned to head back.
Suddenly, his body stiffened, and he paused in place.
The figure's build was similar to his, with a long saber at his waist. He was dressed in a black leather trench coat left open to reveal robust pectoral muscles and a tuft of golden chest hair fluttering in the wind like a golden-red scarf.
"Friend, did I disturb you?" the goat-masked man asked softly. "I just happened to pass by and heard you sigh, so curiosity arose, and I stopped to see the reason."
"That reason is very far-fetched," Lin Hui said calmly.
"I'm just finding an excuse; just listen to it." The goat-masked man laughed, his voice hearty. He sounded like a young man.
"Does Your Excellency have business with me?" Lin Hui stared at the stranger, seemingly guessing his intention.
"Let me introduce myself. I am Fang Tiancheng, from the Inner City Fang family. The Fang family is a great clan within the government. Many clan members hold important positions in the government," the goat-masked man introduced himself.
"So, Brother Fang is also here to seek cooperation with me?" Lin Hui asked.
"Exactly. However, looking at it now, it seems I came a bit late," Fang Tiancheng laughed, not disappointed in the least. He took off his mask, revealing a handsome, sunny, and cheerful face.
"You don't seem to care at all?" Lin Hui was somewhat curious.
"Yeah, failing to cooperate is the family's loss; what does it have to do with me personally? Anyway, I get a fixed benefit fee for making this trip," Fang Tiancheng laughed.
"True... it's still better for you, Inner City people. You don't have to worry about anything, don't have to live in fear every day..." Lin Hui said.
"What are you saying?" Fang Tiancheng was speechless. "Your persecution complex is a bit off. Although the Outer City is a bit dangerous, it's not as exaggerated as you say, is it?"
"Mist monsters, night mist, missing person cases every year—is this not dangerous enough?" Lin Hui smiled.
"Have you seen it with your own eyes?" Fang Tiancheng asked back.
"..." This question made Lin Hui stun for a moment.
Seeing this, Fang Tiancheng continued, "I think you've been bitterly cultivating too much and are out of touch with the lives of ordinary people. If the Outer City were truly that dangerous, how did you grow up? How did the people around you, your friends, companions, grow up all these years?"
"..." This question truly stumped Lin Hui.
"Temple Master Lin, you don't actually understand the lives of Outer City people. Perhaps you once did, but the current you is no longer who you were back then," Fang Tiancheng replied. "However, although we can't sign an agreement, we can try private cooperation. Temple Master Lin's movement technique is indeed outstanding."
"How shall we cooperate?"
At this moment, Lin Hui directly confirmed the evolution of the Typhoon Sword Technique on the Blood Seal. The text instantly disappeared, and only then did he look fully at Fang Tiancheng.
"Very simple..." Fang Tiancheng quickly described a plan much inferior to the proposal given by Wang Yueheng.
Lin Hui had no objections. Money was just a number to him; as long as he could buy enough medicine, it was fine. Now with his old man making money, their family fortune was raking in gold every day; he didn't need to worry about it at all.
After confirming the new cooperation model with Fang Tiancheng, Lin Hui kept recalling the words the man had said when they first met.
Returning to the mansion, he stayed behind closed doors, eating the Spirit-Enriching Reishi one by one. Aside from eating, drinking, and relieving himself, he spent all his time in secluded cultivation of Internal Force, gnawing on the Spirit-Enriching Reishi.
For two consecutive weeks, Lin Hui did not take a single step out the door until he had eaten all the Spirit-Enriching Reishi, eating until he wanted to vomit at the sight of them.
But the benefits also manifested.
The fourteen years required for the Typhoon Sword Technique were reduced to ten years and five months right from the start.
Then, Lin Hui began his daily routine of taking medicine.
During this period, he could basically move freely. Now that the urgent danger was gone and his opponents were sensible enough to become collaborators, the Clear Wind Sword Sect officially possessed quotas to send people into the Inner City.
Lin Hui simply took advantage of the gap while preparing for the celebration to go home first, visiting his mother, father, and Second Mother.
Then, after finishing his Body Tempering and Internal Force cultivation, he recalled what Fang Tiancheng had said earlier. His heart could never quite settle.
Thus, he left the Clear Wind Sword Sect and even left Xinyu Town, wandering aimlessly along the main road leading away from the town.
Rapid carriages and galloping horses occasionally sped past on the main road, their wheels crushing new tracks into the slowly accumulating thick snow. On both sides of the main road, small wooden courtyard houses passed by him one after another. From these courtyards, the sound of brooms sweeping snow could be heard from time to time.
Unknowingly, Lin Hui once again arrived before the towering wall of mist.
Ahead, an exhausted caravan was slowly driving out of the mist, passing slowly by his right side.
While Lin Hui watched them, guessing which faction they belonged to, more than ten burly men in black vests and melon-skin caps rushed out from a courtyard on one side of the road. These men skillfully rushed to the side of the caravan, supporting some members who were obviously injured, and hurried towards the courtyard.
They began to treat the injuries, and then the people from the caravan took out some goods to pay for the costs.
Soon, cart after cart of transported goods was transferred to the black-vested men in the small courtyard. One hand delivered the money, the other delivered the goods; their proficiency clearly showed they had done this many times.
This action attracted not only Lin Hui as an onlooker but also several other passersby, who all stopped to watch this scene.
One of them, standing a bit closer, saw the look of novelty on Lin Hui's face and couldn't help but sigh.
"Is Your Excellency also here to wait for family and friends?"
"..." Lin Hui didn't reply, just glanced at him.
This older man seemed to have filled in the specific plot himself and sighed again.
"Although the roads for these mist zone caravans are already very mature routes, the casualties are still not small. My eldest son died halfway through the journey... now my second and third sons continue in this trade. I don't know when we'll be liberated..."
"Why not switch to another job?" Lin Hui was silent for a moment, then asked aloud.
"Switch to what? In this day and age, every job has risks. It's better to do what we are most familiar with and experienced in. At least one trip in this trade can feed us for a year." The older man smiled in self-consolation, took out a dry tobacco pipe from his waist pouch, lit it, took a puff, and exhaled a mouthful of smoke.
"My family used to farm, but because we couldn’t work at night—as soon as the sky darkened even a little, we had to leave time to get back, or else it would be too dangerous—the harvest was never good all year round. Later, my old companion suddenly fell ill. We had no money to see a doctor, and she passed away in just a few days."
"From then on, my two sons and I understood that people don’t just live to survive—we have to earn money! We have to live like human beings!"
"In this Outer City, even if you go out, you can’t go too far. As soon as the sky starts to darken, you have to figure out when to head back. Otherwise, if you’re stuck outside overnight, it’s extremely dangerous."
"If you’re unlucky and run into strong winds while spending the night outside… once the wind blows open even a small gap in the fur covering your body, even a Jade Talisman is useless. A person can be gone in an instant." The older man waved his hand, trying to convey how fast it happened.
"When I first started running merchant trips and spent the night in the mist zone, I personally saw a veteran in the team get a small gap blown open by the wind without realizing it, and in the end…"
The older man chattered on. It seemed Lin Hui's quiet listening suited his taste, so he kept talking non-stop, as if to vent his chatterbox nature accumulated over many years all at once.
Lin Hui listened quietly without interrupting.
Inexplicably, he felt as if he somewhat understood the way of survival for the most insignificant ordinary people in this world. Like ants, in the limited safe time, they took risks as much as possible to desperately earn money, earning their own living space.
They were like this, so what about him?
He suddenly felt somewhat lost. After awakening the memories of his previous life, he had been constantly forced forward by a huge sense of crisis.
And now, because of the improvement in his strength, that once-intense sense of crisis had slowly faded and weakened.
The missing person cases would absolutely not be traced to him; his old man was developing very well and had even connected with the Inner City; everything seemed to be developing in a good direction.
But was he really happy? Was this kind of life really what he wanted?
For a moment, Lin Hui felt a sense of confusion from losing his goal.
He watched that caravan. After removing the goods and the wounded, they quickly took over the new carts transported from the small courtyard, turned around, slowly walked into the mist zone, and embarked on the return journey.
Perhaps I should clarify the matter of the Jade Talisman. Then, using the Call quota, cultivate some of my own people, stabilize the situation, and then enter the Inner City to take a look...
Compared to the vast Inner City, the Outer City was like a gray zone, a buffer zone between it and the mist zone.
After seeing what I want to see, perhaps I will quietly find a place I like, marry a wife, have a child, then live a quiet life, waiting to grow old. Perhaps one day, I will also be like this brother, standing at the entrance of the mist zone, waiting for my child to return home safely.
Thoughts were complicated in Lin Hui's mind. Inexplicably, he looked up at the sky filled with fluttering snowflakes.
That gray canopy of the sky also had some kind of invisible cold wind blowing, blowing the snowflakes into various diagonal lines, drifting and falling.
Gazing at the cold wind blowing the snowflakes, although his vision couldn't see it, Lin Hui seemed to have a strange sensation. He seemed to understand some essence of the wind. It was like the fate of the older brother's family—impermanent, disordered, and unpredictable.
"Is it the snow that stirs up the wind, or the wind that brings the snow?"
Lin Hui gently caught a snowflake, watching it melt in his palm.
In this instant, a line of text inexplicably appeared at the bottom of his field of view.
[Hint: Due to your improved cognition of the characteristics of the Wind of Natural Disaster, the progress of the Typhoon Sword Technique is shortened by one month.]
"!!?" Lin Hui was stunned.
Could evolution's progress be shortened like this?