Chapter 165: Reasonably Exploiting Local Bugs

"This place makes the snake feel really uncomfortable."

As Feng Xue walked down the main road carrying a sack, Bai Yi couldn't help muttering—and even Feng Xue himself was jolted by the stench.

How to describe it? It was like a city dweller accustomed to clean urban toilets suddenly stepping into a long-abandoned, yet still occasionally used, pit latrine in some rural town—truly enough to make you pass out from the stink!

Never mind the smell; just one glance made your eyes burn!

Don't blame Feng Xue for this disgusting example—because the impure wishes here had reached this level; under the Sight of Qi, it was like… puking!

Feng Xue immediately cut off the Sight of Qi. As the scenery before him returned to normal, he slowly recovered from the intense nausea—luckily, he'd only begun cultivation for a little over a month; if any cultivator from the Folklore World had been here, he couldn't imagine what expression they'd wear.

"So, if there are no customs like sacrificing to the Stove God, welcoming the Jade Emperor, or staying up on New Year's Eve, it turns into this hellish state?" Feng Xue mused inwardly, though his mood wasn't bad—accumulated impure wishes meant the wish-energy environment here was actually quite rich; once he cleared even a small "sterile zone," he could use the Summoning God Spell's "filtering" function to set up a net, letting the wish-energy he needed flow in continuously, without even needing to collect it manually.

To put it bluntly, if he ever encountered something unsolvable, he could also rely on the Cursing Method Master Li had taught him—the "Demon Subduing Spell," used in emergencies to seal impure wishes by making himself a human pillar—to create a "Heavenly Demon"—of course, Feng Xue didn't yet know that this was the correct way to use the spell.

After all, the "jiang" in "Demon Subduing Spell" is pronounced "jiang," not "xiang"!

But to open up the situation, first and foremost, he clearly needed a "home."

"Hmm, maybe I should try opening a jack-of-all-trades shop… Nah, I don't need the money—better open an underground clinic."

Feng Xue muttered to himself, his gaze sweeping across the street. On the surface, it looked no different from the Japanese-style commercial streets common in anime from his past life: drunken uncles with ties tied around their heads, salarymen still dressed impeccably in the middle of the night, grouped in threes and fives, and of course, plenty of beautiful young ladies dressed in maid outfits, sailor uniforms, bunny girl costumes, folk attire, and more.

Hmm, and also military police and aliens.

"There's more than one kind?" In just a few steps, Feng Xue had already spotted five or six alien species, each differing drastically in skin tone and appearance—even beings with four legs and two arms, or two legs and four arms—making him frown.

"Report, Master: According to the medical survey report from the Eastern Great Nation, the He Xing are a special race with extreme environmental adaptability, oviparous, undergoing metamorphosis similar to amphibians. Their hatchlings are initially uniform, but differentiate into distinct forms based on environment, education, and lifestyle."

"Autopsy results show that those engaged in technical or intellectual labor often develop enlarged heads; artisans evolve multiple arms; hunters develop additional legs or spinal mutations depending on their hunting environment. Their decision to invade Earth seems to stem from its environmental diversity."

Xiao Lingdang's explanation surfaced in Feng Xue's mind. He could only marvel at the aliens' bizarre diversity, forced down his nausea, and activated the Sight of Qi to examine the specific flow of impure wishes.

The wish-energy of a place clearly reflects its inhabitants' living conditions. Despite the street's facade of decadence and indulgence, a slight analysis revealed immense pressure and hysteria within these impure wishes.

"Oh, there it is—what's that place over there?" Feng Xue's gaze suddenly locked on something. He immediately shut off the Sight of Qi, trying to forget the previous sensation, and asked Xiao Lingdang.

As a deity, Xiao Lingdang cared little for wish-energy environments; to her, wish-energy was either edible or not—like marine creatures not caring about excreting in water. She merely scanned the area according to Feng Xue's thought and replied:

"The area you're observing is a food street, a side alley of Kabukicho, lined mostly with affordable izakayas, brothel shops, hourly hotels, sex toy stores ('cheng' as a homophone), pachinko parlors, etc. After 6 p. m., various mobile stalls appear, making it a low-end consumption zone. Walking straight down this street leads to Xili Su, the most chaotic area."

"Ohhh~ So these aliens have no idea what a group of stressed-out, low-income men who've had too much to drink will talk about in a bar…"

A smirk curled on Feng Xue's lips. After a moment's thought, he said:

"First, I need to borrow some money from a loan company."

Though Xiao Lingdang hadn't said so, based on his past-life experience writing novels, Feng Xue knew that wherever there was a pachinko parlor in Japan, there was a payday lender within a hundred meters—simple evaluations, instant loans, sometimes entire buildings filled with big and small loan shops.

These places were mostly tied to organized crime, so they weren't worried about repayment—so long as identity was confirmed, they'd lend, and the reckless even used the same collateral to borrow from the ground floor all the way to the top floor.

As expected, Feng Xue walked from the ground floor to the rooftop, each time just scanning an ID code and verifying facial recognition before receiving cash. In less than twenty minutes, he had over two million in hand.

That was only because he got lazy and stopped borrowing—if he'd walked around the small building two hundred meters away, he could've doubled it again.

But as a newcomer, he didn't intend to immediately antagonize the local underworld. Instead, he kept having Xiao Lingdang change his clothing and subtly adjust his facial contours with magic, repeatedly entering and exiting various pachinko parlors.

Although Xiao Lingdang's self-developed facial adjustment technique couldn't match Sara's nanofilm disguise for precision, turning one person into another was still effortless.

Feng Xue spent four hours—from his arrival until dawn—using the "Gao Chao" technique of stuffing Mo Ying into pachinko machines, not only repaying his debts but swelling his funds to an absurd sum of fifty million.

Though this seemed outrageous, it still didn't draw attention compared to the pachinko parlor's actual profits (Note ①). Still, he stuck to his basic principle of safety-first, changing his face again and again.

Then, after sunrise, yawning, he walked into a real estate agency that belonged to the same company as one of the small loan shops he'd borrowed from…

(End of Chapter)