Crack. Crack.
The faint but jarring sound of fracturing ceramic was conspicuous in the stillness of the shop.
Lin Mu's fingers were clamped around the rim of the coarse bowl, the tendons on the back of his hand standing out like coiled roots.
Since crossing into this brutal world of Gu, this was the first time he had completely lost control of his emotions when faced with an opportunity of this magnitude — his entire body locking up in a tremor he could not suppress.
The core inheritance of a peak Rank 5 Demonic Path tyrant.
An opportunity of this caliber was enough to drive any Gu Master in the Southern Border to absolute madness — enough to make a man forget blood and kin.
Fortunately, Old Ma — who commanded a vast intelligence network — was completely, thoroughly drunk.
"Back in my day... my Flying Sand and Rolling Stone technique... who didn't know of it..."
Old Ma's face was flushed crimson, his words a slurred, half-coherent mumble, entirely lost in the glorious memories of his youth.
His cloudy eye was half-lidded, his focus long since dissolved.
He had no idea that the young man sitting across from him, eyes hidden beneath the shadow of a bamboo hat, was being swept through by a storm of staggering, consuming greed.
"I can't stay any longer."
Lin Mu caught the turbulence in his own mind with sharp clarity.
He knew that in front of a man as sharp as Old Ma, even the smallest emotional leak could invite a fatal probe.
Staying longer would not draw out any more useful information. It would only increase the risk of giving himself away.
He drew a slow breath and forced the war drum hammering in his chest back down. His fingers uncurled from the cracked bowl one by one.
"Old Ma, you're drunk."
Lin Mu stood. His tone returned to its usual flat, unhurried calm.
He produced a clean, unassailable excuse: "It's late. I have to check in at the External Affairs Hall in the morning. Tonight's stories were good. Thanks."
"Hic..."
Old Ma looked up at Lin Mu rising to leave, and let out a disgruntled, liquor-soaked belch.
"Rotten little brat... show up whenever you like, leave whenever you like... you think this old man's place is some kind of inn?"
"I haven't even gotten to the best parts of my glory days yet..."
The words hadn't finished leaving his mouth before his head dropped with a thud onto the liquor-reeking counter, followed immediately by a long, deep, bellows-like snore.
He was out cold.
Lin Mu reached the door but didn't leave immediately.
He turned and looked at the dead-drunk Old Ma, a flash of extreme caution crossing his eyes.
He walked back, leaned close to the faint oil lamp, and blew it out with a soft puff.
Then he stepped outside, pulled the heavy, battered wooden door shut behind him without a sound, and carefully erased every minute trace around the doorframe that might betray any emotional disturbance.
Only once he was certain he had left nothing behind did Lin Mu pull his hat brim low and turn, dissolving into the thick, impenetrable dark.
The deep autumn wind cut like a blade across the quiet cobblestone lanes of the Silent Stone District — cold enough to bite through to the bone.
But it couldn't touch the blaze burning in Lin Mu's chest.
His steps were steady. Only he knew that his heart was still slamming against his ribs.
The core inheritance of a peak Rank 5 Demonic Path tyrant.
What did that even mean?
In the original story, Gu Yue Fang Yuan's inheritance from the Flower Wine Monk at Qing Mao Mountain was nothing more than a crude ruin hastily laid down by a Rank 5 demonic cultivator.
Lin Mu moved through the night wind at a long, rapid stride, his thoughts racing.
And even that crude ruin — the Primeval Stones left behind, the Liquor Worm, even the Heaven Origin Treasure Lotus that produced Primeval Stones on its own — all of it was enough to carry Fang Yuan all the way to Rank 3.
If the Flower Wine Monk's scraps could do that, then what of the Black Bone King?
The Black Bone King was a peak Rank 5 powerhouse, half a step from immortality — and rarer still, a tyrant who dual-cultivated both Blood Path and Earth Path.
The treasure he deliberately dismembered to sift out a worthy successor — its depth and wealth would dwarf the Flower Wine Monk's hastily abandoned leftovers by ten times, a hundred times over.
The fortune contained within it is beyond calculation.
Lin Mu pressed his fingers hard against the inner pocket at his chest, feeling the cold surface of the Pitch-Black Bone Plate through the cloth.
He could almost see it — a mountain of peak-grade Gu worms and Primeval Stones piled high, beckoning to him.
But then.
He finally crossed the empty streets, pushed open the gate of his private courtyard, and looked at the silent, hollow expanse of the yard before him.
Lin Mu's feet stopped dead.
The fever in his mind fractured without warning.
A single image surfaced in his memory, unbidden, the day he had accompanied Patriarch Lin Cang to subdue White Bone Stockade.
White Bone Patriarch Li Mang, standing before the great hall, gripping that bone staff in his hand — the one that radiated a bone-chilling, ancient aura, the one that could command the mountain-protection formation.
Hssss...
It was like a bucket of ice water poured straight over his head.
His entire body seized in a violent shudder. Every trace of the fever, the greed, the towering arrogance of moments ago — all of it was doused in an instant.
Lin Mu came back to himself completely.
"I let greed take the wheel."
He stood in the empty courtyard, cold sweat soaking through his inner clothes, the night wind making him shiver.
"Of course. A secret of this magnitude, a fortune of this scale — how could I possibly be the only one who knows? A Rank 1 branch disciple with no standing?"
The weight of unseen players descended on him like a mountain.
Every piece clicked into place at once.
Why has White Bone Stockade been making so many unusual moves these past months?
Why does the aura of Li Mang's bone staff feel so strange and ancient?
And what about Black Blood Stockade's own leadership — do they have intelligence on this too?
There could be countless monsters lurking in the shadows within a hundred li of this place, all of them already circling this piece of meat.
This was a terrifying game — the ten-thousand mountains as the board, the two great stockades as the pieces.
And Lin Mu, with the core bone plate tucked against his chest — a plate capable of igniting a war of annihilation — was like a three-year-old child standing in the middle of a pack of starving wolves.
One wrong step, and I won't just fail to eat the meat — they'll grind my bones to powder.
The fever was gone. In its place was something colder and far more useful.
Lin Mu walked quickly into the stone building, locked every door and window, activated every warning Gu formation he had, and descended into the hidden underground chamber.
In the dim light of the cellar.
He took out the Pitch-Black Bone Plate again and laid it flat on the stone table.
The greed and excitement that had burned in his eyes were gone.
What remained was the cold of a deep abyss, and a ruthless, absolute clarity of mind.
Lin Mu stared at the cryptic engravings on the bone plate and performed the most unflinching analysis of his own situation he had ever made.
"This Rank 5 game is already in motion, and the key has landed in my hands. I have no choice but to play — and I intend to tear off the largest piece of meat I can."
"This is the only chance I will ever have to truly turn my fate around in this world."
"But."
He clenched both fists. His fingernails pressed deep into his palms.
"At my current cultivation — a mere peak Rank 1 — no matter how pure my Primeval Essence, no matter how unorthodox my trump cards, if I blunder anywhere near the center of that vortex..."
"I won't even qualify as cannon fodder. I'll be crushed by the shockwaves before I can blink."
To sit at the table and play your hand, you first have to earn the right to sit down.
"Rank 2."
Lin Mu's gaze turned sharp as two drawn blades. He looked toward the hidden compartment in the corner of the cellar.
Inside it, the thousands of Primeval Stones he had accumulated — through information asymmetry, through running the odds, through relentless accumulation — sat waiting.
His entire foundation. Everything he had.
In a game board crawling with monsters, Rank 1 is an insect.
Rank 2 is the bare minimum — the lowest entry fee that might let you survive in the cracks and bite off a piece for yourself.
Lin Mu drew a slow breath and tucked the Pitch-Black Bone Plate back against his body.
The nerves that had grown slightly slack during the Grand Competition and the routine affairs of daily life were pulled taut in this moment — drawn like a bowstring on the verge of snapping.
From here on, there was one task and one task only. No excuses. No fallback.
Pour every resource he had into the push for Rank 2 — at any cost.