Chapter 686: Heightened Vigilance (1/2, Autumn Subscription)

Unlike the Government organization, it can absorb talent from the surrounding and lower towns.

A civilian organization like the Heavenly Merchant Alliance could not possibly compete with the Government for people.

What they can absorb is the lower-tier market.

That is, those mercenaries, those idle martial artists.

Fortunately, 【Chunuan City】 was already in the middle of the 【Martial Decision】.

The 【Martial Decision】 not only attracts merchant caravans back to 【Chunuan City】 to halt some commercial activities, but also draws large numbers of martial artists to come make a living, or to make a name for themselves.

Not everyone belongs to an organization.

In the jianghu, those idle martial artists, many of them will have their strength stagnate due to a lack of resources.

Poverty for scholars, wealth for martial artists.

Martial artists' consumption of resources has always remained high.

Without enough resources, strength cannot keep up; without strength, one cannot obtain more resources — this is a vicious cycle.

So many martial artists whose strength has stagnated, or who lack cultivation materials, will venture out into the jianghu and take part in various activities.

Killing major anomalies, making a name for themselves, raising their price — these are fairly common methods.

On a special occasion like the 【Martial Decision】, choosing a good merchant caravan to represent in battle can likewise greatly boost one's fame.

With fame comes business, and an endless stream of cultivation resources.

This is the experience of most martial artists, and also their way of survival.

Even sect factions will send their disciples down the mountain to temper themselves, taking part in events like the 【Martial Decision】 — it both spreads the sect's reputation and lets the disciples gain practical experience; if they encounter anomalies along the way, they can also improve their real combat ability. Many benefits at once.

The personnel the Heavenly Merchant Alliance lost last night were selected from among these people and absorbed into their ranks.

But given the terrifying strength of the 【Nuomian Gui】, most of these people are still cannon fodder; the true main force is only that batch led by the Heavenly Merchant Alliance's leader.

A high-rank Calamity-class anomaly is no joke — its strength is so terrifying that Fang Yue could only say he had the ability to fight it, not that he could definitely take it down.

Of course, these are all problems the Heavenly Merchant Alliance needs to worry about; Fang Yue has no need to bother with them.

Even if the sky falls, the Phoenix Organization is still there to hold it up.

Setting aside whether the Heavenly Merchant Alliance can hold out, even if it cannot, the Phoenix Organization would not let a stronghold it has spent years cultivating run into trouble.

According to prior intelligence, this 【Chunuan City】 is the Phoenix Organization's transportation hub — its connections in all directions allow a steady stream of 【medicine-people】 to be traded out.

Such an important stronghold — one can imagine that even if it meant exposing something, the Phoenix Organization would fight to keep it. If this drew out the Phoenix Organization, Fang Yue would be even happier.

After having Yang Hongxia spread the news that he had become a Guest of Dayang Fu, and after adding a batch of patrol personnel, Fang Yue continued to mull over Lord Han's inheritance.

Fang Yue was now at the Human-rank, and with two Heart Methods as his foundation, he could formally begin cultivating Lord Han's inheritance method.

Only, at present, Fang Yue was still at the reading-and-comprehension stage.

This inheritance method… was not a direct, brainless灌输; it required one to study and comprehend it on one's own before mastering it.

Moreover, it was the first time Fang Yue had seen a 【Comprehension】 restriction in martial arts!

That's right! Lord Han's inheritance method actually had a 【Comprehension】 requirement!

Fortunately his foundation was solid; otherwise he might not have been able to inherit Lord Han's inheritance.

Because the Frozen Heart Method's 【Comprehension】 requirement was a full 10 points!

10 points of Comprehension — even for Fang Yue, it took steady, step-by-step work to barely scrape at the edges.

For anyone else, they would probably have to seek out all manner of heavenly materials and earthly treasures, racking their brains for ways to raise their Comprehension, before they could learn the inheritance art.

No wonder Lord Han always seemed to look down a little on Lin Ling — with Lin Ling's aptitude, inheriting Lord Han's inheritance was, well, hard to say…

Fang Yue strongly suspected Lin Ling's aptitude was 0 points, or a decimal like zero-point-something; otherwise it was hard to explain how this person had dawdled for so many years still wandering around the Postnatal Realm.

Unlike players, the distribution of Natives usually has a certain class-based pattern.

A village-level Captain with middling strength is the norm; having no geniuses is normal.

Exceptional cases like Captain Wu are exceedingly rare.

Even Yo… her blue-clothed garb wasn't native to Qingsi County either — it came down from some bigger place.

So Natives generally stay in whatever town they're in, and their strength is roughly within that range.

Players, on the other hand, grow much faster.

Apart from someone like himself whose strength was skyrocketing like a rocket, other players had also, within just over a month, generally advanced to the Postnatal Realm and entered the Martial Dao.

Compared to Natives who need a dozen-odd hard years to enter the Martial Dao, every player looks like a genius or prodigy with astonishing aptitude.

Of course, this was certainly because of the System — in reality, players had no foundational knowledge at all; many of them couldn't understand a cultivation manual even if it were placed right before their eyes. They relied entirely on killing anomalies, leeching assist-counts, and brute-forging attribute gains to raise their strength quickly.

Fang Yue estimated that with another day of grinding, he could grasp the Frozen Heart Method and begin formal cultivation.

Retreating into his room and shutting the door, Fang Yue went into closed-door cultivation.

This sight left Yang Hongxia quite sullen.

She had wanted to spend more time around Fang Yue, but this brooding gourd only knew how to practice martial arts!

Sighing, Yang Hongxia sent people to the market to recruit a batch of new hires, to tighten up the警戒 level.

"Miss, the people have been recruited."

Yang Hongxia nodded, personally inspected the batch, then suddenly frowned and said to the Head of the Guardhouse.

"Why did you bring an alien along? Don't you know I find aliens very distasteful right now?"

The Head of the Guardhouse hurriedly said, "Miss, this one's strength is at the Xiantian Realm, yet the price is only that of a Postnatal one. I saw it was such a bargain, so…"

Cheap labor?

Yang Hongxia glanced at the male alien, who had somewhat rat-like features and a long tail, and asked, "What's your name?"

"Miss, my name is Wuxiantian."

"Wuxiantian, listen well — I can let you stay, but if you cause trouble, my Dayang Fu will absolutely not let you off. Understand?"

"Yes!"

Wuxiantian kept his posture very low, but for some reason Yang Hongxia still wasn't entirely at ease with this alien race, and gave an extra instruction to the head of the guardhouse to keep a close eye on him, before leaving.

The head of the guardhouse immediately began making arrangements, and in no time had clearly assigned the duties for this batch of people.

The Tianshi Sun in the high sky was already about to set behind the western hills.

The sky quickly darkened, and a blood-tinged Tianshi Moon rose. In Chunuan City, every household kept its doors tightly shut; only the Government and the Sky Merchants Alliance people were out patrolling the night, searching for something.

……

Wuxiantian was very uncomfortable.

As a member of an alien race, he already held little standing among the human race.

Though he possessed the strength of the Xiantian Realm, in terms of treatment he had always suffered discrimination — only by accepting a price a notch lower than human cultivators of the same level could he find work.

Fortunately, today's job was fairly easy; all he had to do was patrol, and he'd earn his reward.

For a loose cultivator like him, even one extra black stone was a precious resource, one that had to be split into three portions to use.

This was how poor Wuxiantian was, and this was how his days passed, one after another.

But today, he was very uncomfortable.

(End of chapter)