The so-called "inter-stockade friendly tournament" had been forced into indefinite postponement — an unexpected turn of events, brought about by the caravan's arrival.
For Li Mang, who was burning with impatience to use the Scepter to locate the inheritance token, this was an enormous, wordless loss he had no choice but to swallow.
For Lin Mu, busy raising structures on the southern wasteland far from it all, it was the most perfect cover he could have asked for.
Seven days passed in the blink of an eye.
During those seven days, Hall Master Lin Mao Mao had been run ragged by the endless trivialities of the envoy delegation and the squabbling of the Elders.
Only after the delegation was temporarily settled did the fat Hall Master slap his thigh and suddenly remember the other stone hanging over his head — the caravan campsite.
"Oh no, oh no! By my count, the caravan's advance team should be arriving any day now!"
Lin Mao Mao broke into a cold sweat and rushed south with a handful of attendants.
In his mind, he had already pictured what awaited him.
That godforsaken wasteland south of the city — no matter how hard Lin Mu had pushed, the best he could have managed was having people hack down the waist-high weeds with sickles, throw up a few drafty wooden sheds, and fence the perimeter with a crooked ring of posts. That would have to be good enough.
After all, the time had been impossibly tight, and the workforce was nothing but conscripted rabble and odd-jobs laborers.
"When I inspect it, even if it's rough and shoddy, I'll have to hold my nose and accept it. Who else was willing to take on this miserable assignment?"
Lin Mao Mao consoled himself inwardly, already prepared to give Lin Mu credit the moment he saw anything resembling a campsite.
And yet.
When Lin Mao Mao huffed and puffed his way up a rise on the southern outskirts and raised his eyes to take in the scene below —
Hssss—
The experienced External Affairs Hall Master sucked in a sharp breath.
His hand jerked so violently he nearly tore out the few sparse whiskers he had spent years cultivating.
"This... this is the southern wasteland?!"
Lin Mao Mao's eyes — squeezed into narrow slits by the fat of his face — went wide, filled with pure disbelief.
What greeted him was not drafty wooden sheds and crooked fencing.
What he saw was a ring of orderly, visually striking structures — laid out with the precision of a proper city market district.
The outer perimeter of the entire campsite was enclosed by three layers of thick, sharpened timber posts, forming a wooden fortress that looked as though it could hold against a siege.
Inside, every weed and stone had been cleared without a trace.
The central zone had been compacted until it was as flat and hard as flagstone, leaving an open circular space of staggering size.
Radiating outward from that central clearing, the surrounding terrain had been divided by low wooden fencing into clearly delineated street blocks — each one geometrically precise, following the natural contours of the land.
What made Lin Mao Mao's scalp prickle were the details.
The roads were not merely wide — they had been hardened with crushed stone and mud slurry.
Along both sides, drainage ditches had been dug deep, and dedicated runoff channels for large pack animals had been laid out with meticulous care. Even in a downpour, not a drop of mud would accumulate inside this campsite.
"This isn't a temporary campsite..." one of the attendants murmured, eyes glazed. "This is practically a small town built from nothing."
While Lin Mao Mao and his party stood there slack-jawed, wondering if they had taken a wrong turn —
"Hall Master! You've finally come!"
A voice rang out — carrying the perfect note of exhausted relief — and Lin Mu emerged from the largest main tent at a brisk pace, Lin Ping and Lin Wuxie in tow.
For the sake of playing the part to its fullest, Lin Mu had taken care to look the role.
His robes were caked with dust and flecked with mud. Around his eyes, he had rubbed a faint smear of bruised green with grass juice — the convincing look of a man who had not slept in days.
"Mu... Brother Mu, all of this — you did all of this?" Lin Mao Mao pointed at the miraculous construction below, his words coming out in a slight stammer.
Lin Mu showed not the slightest trace of pride.
Instead, he stepped quickly to Lin Mao Mao's side and gave a deep, respectful bow, his face wearing an expression of pure relief.
"Hall Master, if you had waited any longer, I would have been beside myself with worry."
Lin Mu sighed, his tone utterly sincere.
"The framework of this campsite — I drove the men hard to get it up. But I am only a subordinate of little standing."
"The division of the street blocks, the coordination with the caravan's specifications — without you here in person to oversee it and make the final call, I simply did not dare to finalize anything."
Every word was airtight.
Lin Mu not only refrained from claiming a single syllable of credit for this extraordinary achievement — he positioned himself as a subordinate who "only knew how to do the hard labor and dared not make decisions."
He placed the authority to "approve" and "direct" squarely in Lin Mao Mao's hands, offering it up with both palms.
Before Lin Mao Mao could even fully process the immense satisfaction washing over him, Lin Mu had already turned and swept his arm out.
"Fall in! Welcome the Hall Master for his inspection of the camp!"
Whoosh.
At Lin Mu's single command, a large crowd of thoroughly disciplined, well-drilled laborers snapped into formation on both sides of the campsite's main gate — standing ramrod straight, not a sound from any of them.
Lin Mu raised both hands and presented a sharp bone knife wrapped in bright red silk — prepared well in advance — to Lin Mao Mao with great ceremony, announcing in a clear, carrying voice:
"Hall Master, please honor our southern camp by cutting the bramble and performing the Opening Ceremony!"
"Good! Good! Excellent!"
Lin Mao Mao was already dizzy from the sudden grandeur and the weight of the honor being pressed upon him.
He took the bone knife, and under the reverent gaze of several hundred pairs of eyes, brought it down in a single decisive stroke, severing the symbolic bramble vine stretched across the entrance.
"Long live the Hall Master!" Lin Mu led the cry.
"LONG LIVE THE HALL MASTER!!!" The laborers' thunderous cheer followed immediately, shaking the sky.
In that moment, Lin Mao Mao's face glowed red with pride.
Somehow — inexplicably, yet with complete ease of conscience — he had become the "supreme architect" and "guiding force" behind this miraculous undertaking.
And Lin Mu, wearing a faint smile that buried all credit and glory, had perfectly concealed himself in the shadow of the fat Hall Master's broad back.
After the ribbon-cutting ceremony, amid the cheerful atmosphere, Lin Mu quietly invited Lin Mao Mao into the largest inner tent for a private word.
Once the others had been dismissed, Lin Mu poured the Hall Master a cup of hot tea — and then, lowering his voice, finally bared the fangs he had kept hidden beneath his mask of loyalty.
"Hall Master... there is something. I happen to have a distant cousin who works as a logistics manager in the Jia Clan Caravan."
Lin Mu dropped the carefully prepared lie with an air of secrecy.
"He got word to me a few days ago. The reason the Jia Clan Caravan set out three months early and in full force this time — is because the man leading them has brought along a Rank 3 Gu House. The Three Star Cave."
"The Three Star Cave?!"
Lin Mao Mao was no combat specialist, but as the External Affairs Hall Master, he had certainly heard of a Gu House capable of transforming into a massive trading fortress. He shot to his feet.
"Precisely."
Lin Mu pointed to the campsite blueprint on the table, his finger resting on the enormous blank circle at its very center.
"I took the liberty — that central zone, the highest ground, the hardened open space — I reserved it specifically for the Three Star Cave to take root."
Lin Mao Mao studied the blueprint. He seemed to grasp something, but could not quite seize the full picture.
Lin Mu laid out his theory — one that was generations ahead of its time — with unhurried calm.
"Hall Master, think about it. The moment the Three Star Cave — the pinnacle of high-end trading — takes root at the center of our campsite, the ring surrounding it, the Inner Ring, will become the single most valuable, highest-traffic, most elite-concentrated goldmine in the entire southern district."
"My plan is to divide the Inner Ring into dozens of premium stalls."
"The moment the Three Star Cave opens, even if those stall prices are marked up ten times, a hundred times — the independent cultivators and surrounding factions with envy in their eyes will be fighting each other bloody to get in."
Lin Mao Mao's eyes lit up. His breathing quickened.
"Brilliant! Brother Mu, what kind of mind do you have? This is pure profit from thin air — the External Affairs Hall is going to make a fortune this time!"
"Brother Mu..."
He swallowed. The way he looked at Lin Mu had changed entirely. This was no capable subordinate. This was a money tree trimmed in gold.
Sensing the moment was right, Lin Mu reached naturally into his sleeve and produced an exquisite wooden plaque — carved from fine rosewood, inlaid with gold thread.
Engraved on its face were the characters: Inner Ring — Plot Jia-1.
Lin Mu held it in both hands and slid it gently across to Lin Mao Mao. His voice dropped to barely above a whisper, carrying the warmth of mutual understanding.
"Hall Master. Plot Jia-1 is the largest, finest, most auspiciously positioned piece of land in the entire campsite — second only to the Three Star Cave itself."
"I know you have a fondness for collecting rare birds, exotic fish, and unusual treasures in your spare time. I set this plot aside specifically for you."
"Send any trusted man to set up a stall there — even if he does nothing at all, just subletting the space alone would earn you..."
Lin Mu did not finish the sentence. He simply gave Lin Mao Mao a look that said: you understand.
Lin Mao Mao's gaze locked onto that wooden plaque and could not be pried away.
His plump hands trembled as he reached out and closed them tightly around Plot Jia-1 — that token of enormous wealth — clutching it to his palm as though afraid it might take flight.
"Brother Mu..."
Lin Mao Mao raised his head. Across his round face bloomed a warmth and sincerity unlike any he had shown before.
He seized Lin Mu's hand, his voice shaking with emotion.
"Good brother! I knew I hadn't misjudged you!"
The binding of shared interest was, in this moment, locked completely into place.
With the External Affairs Hall Master as his shield, Lin Mu was now the true uncrowned king of this campsite. Whatever harvest he chose to reap — he would reap it however he pleased.
And at the very moment those two men finished dividing the spoils inside that tent, finalizing their grand scheme for the wealth to come —
On the ancient road through the wilderness thirty li south of the city, a dust-covered convoy was pressing forward into the cold wind at full gallop.
The Jia Clan Caravan's advance team.
The party consisted of three Rank 2 logistics Gu Masters and over a dozen managers. They rode swift horned horses, yet every face was etched with exhaustion and barely concealed anxiety.
"Faster! Move faster!"
The lead Rank 2 manager, Jia Ping, cracked his whip and barked at his subordinates. "The main force is only a few days behind us! We have to have the campsite framework at Black Blood Stockade ready before nightfall tomorrow!"
The advance team was operating under crushing psychological pressure.
In the wake of Young Master Jia Jinsheng's sudden and violent death, the caravan's leader — Lord Jia Fu — had become like a maddened lion.
He had not only moved the entire schedule forward by three months, but had issued brutally strict performance mandates to every caravan manager along the route.
If the advance team failed to have the Black Blood Stockade campsite ready before the main force arrived — failed to deliver a clean, impressive start — what awaited them was Jia Fu's thunderous fury and severe clan discipline.
"These backwater Southern Border clans — every time you negotiate territory with them, they drag it out for half a day. And then you have to go recruit slow-handed common laborers from nearby villages to cut the weeds..."
Jia Ping rode on, despairing inwardly.
"With this little time, facing a field of rocks and weeds — how is it possible to build a campsite that meets Lord Jia Fu's standards? This time, I'm going to lose a layer of skin no matter what..."
Carrying that near-hopeless dread, the advance team crested the final ridge.
Jia Ping had already steeled himself for the sight of a muddy wasteland — had already prepared to roll up his sleeves and possibly pound the table at Black Blood Stockade's upper echelon.
But when he spurred his horse up the rise and looked down —
Jia Ping yanked the reins hard. His horned horse let out a long whinny and reared onto its hind legs.
The managers behind him pulled up one by one, staring down in stunned silence.
On the stretch of land that should have been nothing but overgrown weeds —
A large, fully constructed campsite stood quietly in the last light of the setting sun.
Three layers of solid windbreak fencing enclosed it completely. The interior roads were hardened and level. The street blocks were divided with the precision of a chessboard.
Even the dedicated runoff channels and drainage ditches for pack animals had been built to perfection.
And before the wide campsite gate —
Lin Mu stood in his long robes, a neatly arrayed line of laborers behind him — not a sound, not a stir.
He wore a professional smile — warm, composed, as though he had been waiting for some time.
He looked at the slack-jawed advance team, gave a measured bow, and spoke in a clear, carrying voice.
"Lin Mu, General Coordinator of Black Blood Stockade's Southern Campsite. The grounds, fodder, and water supply are all prepared and ready."
"Honored guests of the Jia Clan — you have traveled far. Please enter and inspect the facilities."