"Damn it! It costs a hundred Medium-grade Spirit Stones just to enter the city? Are you guys out of your minds?"
A harsh, quacking duck voice rang out from the city guard post.
"If you don't have money, why come to Yunjing? Guards! Throw this man out!"
...
Jiang Qingyu looked at the notice posted at the gates of Yunjing and fell into deep thought.
True enough, they could clearly just rob people outright, yet they still chose the most polite method instead.
This really was an eye-opener.
One Medium-grade Spirit Stone was equal to ten Low-grade Spirit Stones, one High-grade Spirit Stone was equal to one hundred Medium-grade Spirit Stones, and one Top-grade Spirit Stone was equal to one thousand High-grade Spirit Stones.
She recalled the iron sword she had picked up at a street stall for twenty Low-grade Spirit Stones—a notched, battered treasure sword that hadn't broken down even after hacking a female Evil Cultivator over thirty times. And now, just entering a city was going to cost her a small fortune!
Jiang Qingyu touched her storage bracelet, feeling a sudden pang of insecurity in her heart. She abruptly realized that her four mountains of spirit stones might not amount to much in Yunjing.
Leaning close to Baixin's ear, she whispered, "Senior Brother, how much money did you bring?"
"Before we left the mountain, Master gave me a storage ring. Don't worry, it's definitely enough!"
Baixin's confident words put Jiang Qingyu somewhat at ease. She had known her Eldest Senior Brother was still quite reliable at times!
He generously produced two hundred Medium-grade Spirit Stones and handed them to the city guards, and the two finally entered Yunjing.
Yunjing was truly worthy of being the richest and most prosperous capital of the Central Continent.
Prices here were outrageously high. Buns that cost five Low-grade Spirit Stones in Fengcheng were uniformly priced at ten here in Yunjing—which meant one Medium-grade Spirit Stone!
"You could probably rake in several Top-grade Spirit Stones a year just being a beggar in Yunjing," Jiang Qingyu couldn't help sighing.
A beggar sitting beneath the city wall instinctively clutched his golden rice bowl tighter—the solid gold kind.
There was simply no watching this. Truly, no watching this.
Baixin pressed a hand to his forehead, speaking with earnest gravity, "Promise me, Senior Brother, don't be so unamined, alright?"
"Fine~ Then let's find an inn to stay at first. The auction doesn't start until tomorrow night."
Jiang Qingyu glanced around and pointed at an inn that looked understated yet luxurious: "Let's go with that one, Qihuang Residence."
Yunjing had a huge influx of travelers recently, and many inns were packed to bursting, but this Qihuang Residence alone looked serene, practically an "oasis of peace in troubled times."
The landscaping of Qihuang Residence was exceptionally well done. Most of the guests staying there were disciples of immortal sects; perhaps due to the strict upbringing of their sects and families, everyone enjoyed their food and tea harmoniously without a single quarrel. Their voices were kept so low that only those at the same table could hear them clearly.
Jiang Qingyu stepped lightly up to the counter: "Two superior rooms."
The manager behind the counter took out a ledger, flipped through it from front to back, and smiled apologetically, assuming the two before him were a pair of cultivation partners: "Apologies, Immortal. Our humble establishment only has one inferior room left. I wonder if the two of you might make do with that?"
Jiang Qingyu looked at Baixin, her eyes asking: Should we find another place instead?
Baixin nodded.
Men and women should keep their distance, and since they were fellow disciples and the young girl had only recently reached coming-of-age, it was only proper to avoid impropriety.
"Thank you, but we are not cultivation partners. Staying in the same room would be against propriety. Senior Brother, let's go."
The two turned and were about to leave when a figure in a square-collared, red-trimmed pink robe suddenly leaped in from outside and blocked the doorway, moving with the agility of a macaque: "Wait, wait, wait!"
Jiang Qingyu looked closely and saw it was a red-lipped, white-faced youth who appeared to be around her own age.
The youth asked, "Don't you guys have the Ten-thousand Beasts Pavilion guest token Uncle Zhou gave you? Why aren't you using it?"
"Young Master!" Upon seeing the youth, the manager immediately stepped out from behind the counter to bow.
Jiang Qingyu blinked for a moment, then retrieved the gold-inlaid token given by the Ten-thousand Beasts Pavilion from her storage bracelet. It felt heavy in her hand: "Qihuang Residence belongs to the Ten-thousand Beasts Pavilion too?"
"Well duh!" The youth proudly pointed at the token in Jiang Qingyu's hand and told the manager, "They are guests of the Ten-thousand Beasts Pavilion! Go get the Heaven-grade quarters ready for them!"
Hearing the youth's words, some of the guests inside the inn raised their heads.
To think there were still people who didn't know Qihuang Residence belonged to the Gu Family, and besides, when had Qihuang Residence ever added Heaven-grade rooms?
"Who on earth are these two?"
"Hard to say. Judging by their clothes, they don't look like disciples of any major sect."
"When did the Gu Family ever get mixed up with nobodies?"
A cultivator in water-blue Dharma robes scoffed disdainfully. "Nobodies? Can anyone mixed up with the Five Great Clans possibly be a nobody?"
...
The quiet inn instantly erupted like a bustling market as everyone began guessing the identities of Jiang Qingyu and Baixin—some called them a hidden aristocratic family, others declared them personal disciples—opinions varied wildly.
Meanwhile, the central figures of all this discussion had already been escorted into a private parlor while the discussion outside was heating up, with the pink-robed youth following closely behind.
A delicate, elegant sandalwood fragrance lingered in the air. The tea was the same Fengming Tea they had drunk for two days in Fengcheng, but the flavor here was richer and more intense than what they had tasted in the taverns there—slightly bitter at first sip, followed by a sweet aftertaste.
"I am Gu Zhizhou, of the Fengcheng Gu Family." The youth sat down casually across from Jiang Qingyu and Baixin, introducing himself.
"Yu Qing."
Baixin looked at Gu Zhizhou with amused interest, noticing the bruise on the youth's forehead. With the all-seeing gaze of a fox, his eyes curved into smiling crescents: "Baixin."
Under Baixin's gaze, Gu Zhizhou reached up to touch his forehead, winced in pain, and immediately curled his toes tight inside his shoes, feeling an awkwardness so intense it made him want to claw out a three-bedroom apartment with his feet.
Right at that moment, a ball of white fluff suddenly bounced its way into Gu Zhizhou's arms.
A painfully familiar... rabbit.
Jiang Qingyu's apricot-shaped eyes widened abruptly as she stared at the round red eyes of the white lop-eared rabbit, and then back at Gu Zhizhou, who was holding the rabbit with a look of utter embarrassment.
"Are you stalking us?" After calming herself down, Jiang Qingyu instinctively gripped the hilt of the Jinglan sword, though she soon silently released it—this wasn't their territory, so it was best not to draw too much attention.
"No, I'm not stalking you! It's a coincidence!" Gu Zhizhou hurriedly waved his hands to clear his name. "There's only that one road from Fengcheng to Yunjing! We just happened to run into each other—it really was pure coincidence!"
Jiang Qingyu scrutinized Gu Zhizhou. After a moment, her doubts vanished.
This kid was a bit dim; he didn't look like someone mixed up with Evil Cultivators. Besides, with the Gu Family and the Ten-thousand Beasts Pavilion behind him, he was the last person who would need to dabble in evil cultivation.
Jiang Qingyu bowed in apology, purely out of self-preservation: "My apologies for the presumption."
Gu Zhizhou shook his head. "It's fine. But since you killed people from Lansha Hall, I'm afraid you won't have many peaceful days ahead."
"They provoked us first. What I did counts as self-defense. To put it severely, at most it was excessive defense."
"Right, Xiaoyu, can you show me the little White Tiger you bought from the Ten-thousand Beasts Pavilion?"
Though puzzled, Jiang Qingyu summoned Jinzi from her spirit pet space.
Jinzi had been sleeping soundly in its space and was suddenly yanked out, looking completely bewildered. Seeing Jiang Qingyu, it instinctively rubbed against her sleeve before flopping onto the table and going right back to sleep.
Gu Zhizhou beamed with secret delight. Seeing Jinzi asleep, he reached out a paw to stealthily grab its plump back, just an inch away from success.
"Roar!"
Jinzi snapped its eyes open instantly and let out a low growl at Gu Zhizhou. The sound was still babyish, but its intimidation factor was maxed out.
Seeing this, Gu Zhizhou could only withdraw his paw with an awkward chuckle, "Ahem, this little fellow certainly has quite a temper, ha, ha..."
"This little thing actually has White Tiger bloodline?" Under Gu Zhizhou's envious gaze, Baixin gave the tiger's head a vigorous ruffle and asked.
"Isn't Jinzi the cub of a Obsidian Tiger Beast?"
Gu Zhizhou explained, "Its ancestors were White Tigers. After later generations interbred with Obsidian Tiger Beasts, the bloodline power thinned out to almost nothing. This little fellow is considered a case of ancestral bloodline reversion. Out of the entire Obsidian Tiger Beast clan, it's the only one carrying half the bloodline of a White Tiger."
Jiang Qingyu picked Jinzi up by its front paws. No matter how she looked at it, it just seemed like a little golden-shaded kitten. Without probing its bloodline and just looking at its appearance, who would ever guess this creature was actually a descendant of a White Tiger?
"I remember... Obsidian Tiger Beasts supposedly live in the Illusory Forest of the Beizhou demon clan?" Jiang Qingyu recalled reading *The Record of Ten-thousand Beasts*, a tome that recorded every demon beast and spirit beast in the Cultivation World.
"You've read *The Record of Ten-thousand Beasts*?"
"Is there a problem?"
"No, not at all. It's just that that was news from four years ago; the Obsidian Tiger Beasts have already migrated to the Tuoling Mountain Range in the East Continent." With that, Gu Zhizhou pulled a brand-new copy of *The Record of Ten-thousand Beasts* from his sleeve and handed it to Jiang Qingyu. "Here! This is the latest edition, not even published yet. Take a look!"
Jiang Qingyu took it, flipped through it, closed it, and tucked it into her storage bracelet. "Thank you. So *The Record of Ten-thousand Beasts* is compiled by your Gu Family after all."
"Of course! When it comes to understanding demon and spirit beasts, who could possibly compare to our Gu Family, aside from the beasts themselves?" If Gu Zhizhou had a tail, he would undoubtedly have been wagging it up to the heavens right now.
The air froze.
"Ahem, well, now that everything's out in the open, we can consider ourselves acquainted. Senior Brother Baixin, Junior Sister Xiaoyu, feel free to make yourselves at home here at Qihuang Residence! I have matters to attend to, so I'll take my leave now! Taking my leave!"
Watching Gu Zhizhou's hurried departure, Jiang Qingyu snatched Jinzi back from her Eldest Senior Brother and took a deep sniff of the tiger's head—it smelled delightfully of milk.
A waiter walked into the private parlor with a smile: "The two of you, your rooms have been prepared. Please follow me."
"Ah, right, coming."
After that minor interlude, the two finally settled into their inn before nightfall.
The night market in Yunjing was even livelier than the daytime, brilliantly lit, teeming with street food, and crowded with immortal men and women.
Jiang Qingyu turned down Baixin's suggestion for a night stroll, leaving him and Jinzi behind as she holed up alone in her room.
When she drew Jinglan from her sword vault to deal with the female Evil Cultivator that morning, she hadn't put the sword away since.
Jinglan, having bottled up words for several years, finally started rattling off like a string of firecrackers.
"Xiaoyu, how did you run into an Evil Cultivator? Good thing I woke up in time!" A familiar young-boy voice echoed 360 degrees around her ears with no blind spots.
"I don't know, I just ran into one. But you really did wake up just in time."
Seeing Jinglan awaken from its slumber made Jiang Qingyu very happy.
This time, she didn't put the sword back into her sword vault. Instead, she took an exquisite white scabbard from her storage bracelet and slid Jinglan into it. It was a perfect fit.
"I knew this color suited you!"
"Is this for me?" Jinglan asked in surprise.
"That's right, I made it myself! There's a sword tassel too!" Jiang Qingyu took out a white tassel and hung it from Jinglan's hilt. "Look! It's a matching set!"
The white scabbard paired with the white-jade sword, along with the white tassel and silver-white hilt, elevated the sword's overall aesthetic considerably.
"Senior Brother said that sword cultivators in the Cultivation World all like to dress up their spirit swords. I made several sets of scabbards for you, so you can change them whenever you want!"
Jiang Qingyu waved her hand with magnanimous wealth, and a pile of various scabbards and tassels in different styles and colors immediately covered the table, all in complete sets.
"Wow, Xiaoyu! You're the best!" Jinglan was moved to tears—too bad swords couldn't actually cry.