Jiang Lu led Gu Chengming through the bustling crowd.
"Senior Brother Gu, most of the stalls on this side are run by Outer Sect disciples. The goods are a mixed bag, but they're cheap. Those slightly more put-together booths over there are Inner Sect territory — better quality, but the prices reflect it."
Jiang Lu walked and talked at the same time, rattling off the market's layout with practiced ease.
Gu Chengming gave a small nod, his gaze drifting in an apparently casual sweep across the stalls on either side.
If he was being honest, there were actually quite a few body-tempering resources on offer here. Tiger bone powder, bear bile wine, even the refined blood essence of certain low-tier demon beasts — vendors were hawking all of it.
But that wasn't why he'd come today. Shopping was secondary. Farming affection points with the Hundred Bones Resonance was the real agenda.
And since he was playing the role of a destined protagonist, what scene could possibly hit harder for the Hundred Bones Resonance than the classic 'hidden treasure snatched up for pennies at the market'?
With that in mind, Gu Chengming didn't rush to make any purchases. Instead, he moved like a true connoisseur — drifting from stall to stall, pausing here to turn a chunk of ore over in his hands, crouching there to lean in and sniff at a sprig of spirit grass.
Reality, however, tends to be far less cooperative than fiction.
The wares at the disciple market were, for the most part, entirely ordinary — and almost everything had a clear price tag attached. These were all fellow sect members, faces they'd be seeing day in and day out. Nobody wanted to torch their own reputation over a swindle. The kind of dimwit vendor who'd sell a divine artifact as scrap metal, or the shameless huckster peddling scrap metal as a divine artifact — neither type really existed here.
But that didn't stop Gu Chengming from manufacturing a miracle of his own.
He came to a stop in front of a stall selling exclusively medicinal herbs.
The vendor was a young man with an honest, open face. The moment he saw Gu Chengming pause, he launched into his pitch with cheerful enthusiasm.
"Good eye, Senior Brother! Take a look around — all freshly picked from the back mountain this morning. Here's some hemostatic vine, here's some spiritcalm flower, and over here..."
He pointed to a pile of lush green plants heaped in the corner of the stall — the kind that looked indistinguishable from common roadside weeds.
"That's vitalizing grass. Basic ingredient for refining low-grade healing pills. Plenty of it, and the price is right."
Gu Chengming's eyes shifted almost imperceptibly.
He didn't even glance at the spirit herbs displayed in the prime spots. Instead, he reached out directly and picked up that completely unremarkable bundle of vitalizing grass. The motion was clean and decisive, as though he had locked onto his target long before approaching the stall.
"This bundle. How much?"
The vendor blinked, then held up two fingers. "Two spirit stones."
A perfectly fair price — arguably a touch on the cheap side, even. Vitalizing grass was common enough, but it wasn't exactly effortless to gather.
Without a word of haggling, Gu Chengming produced two spirit stones, tossed them to the vendor, tucked the bundle of herbs into his storage pouch, and walked away. The whole transaction took seconds, clean as a whistle, not a moment wasted.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance is puzzled.]
[It watches the bundle of green weeds disappear into the storage pouch and thinks: what in the world does Gu Chengming want with common herbs like these?]
[The vendor himself just said — it's basic vitalizing grass. The kind that grows everywhere up and down the mountainside. It doesn't know the first thing about herbalism, but even it can tell from that two-spirit-stone cabbage price that this is absolutely not some rare and precious heavenly treasure.]
Gu Chengming paid no mind to the confusion stirring in the back of his head.
He pushed briskly through the crowd until he reached a relatively quiet corner of the market. Only once he'd confirmed that no one nearby was paying him any attention did he come to a stop.
He glanced around, then looked down at the storage pouch in his hands. A grin crept across his face — the kind he couldn't quite suppress — and in a voice barely above a trembling whisper, meant only for himself, he murmured:
"Jackpot..."
"I can't believe I actually found one."
"Dragon Blood Grass — still immature, but Dragon Blood Grass all the same. It looks identical to common vitalizing grass on the surface, but those faint golden traceries running through the leaf veins... those don't lie."
"This is a third-tier herb. The primary ingredient for refining Dragon Blood Body-Forging Pills. At a proper auction house, this would go for hundreds of spirit stones at minimum... and I just picked it up for two."
[The Hundred Bones Resonance is stunned.]
[Its first instinct is to push back — to insist this is impossible. After all, it watched that vendor part with the herb like he couldn't wait to be rid of it.]
[But then it looks at Gu Chengming — hands actually trembling with barely suppressed excitement, desperately trying to keep a low profile about it —]
[And then it thinks about its own 'Destined Protagonist' setting, and somehow finds itself believing him a little more than it expected to.]
[Could he really have just found a hidden treasure?]
At the same time, all of Gu Chengming's earlier seemingly inexplicable behavior suddenly snapped into focus for the Hundred Bones Resonance.
[No wonder he didn't spare a single glance for those flashy, eye-catching spirit herbs — he made a beeline straight for that pile of weeds!]
[No wonder he paid without a moment's hesitation, didn't even try to haggle, just grabbed it and walked!]
[So it turns out this boy doesn't only know how to spot rare treasures — he also understands the art of not flashing wealth in public. He knows how to play it down!]
[Truly worthy of being its golden finger — possessed of great fortune, great karma, and great wisdom!]
[Hundred Bones Resonance Affection +5]
Listening to the system chime, Gu Chengming laughed inwardly.
This was the heart of Wenjian Sect's territory, after all — orderly, well-regulated, and governed by strict rules. Never mind that he'd only just bought a bundle of two-spirit-stone vitalizing grass; even if he'd been strutting around with a supreme-grade spirit stone held over his head like a lantern, the most he'd get was a crowd of envious onlookers. Nobody would dare make a move in broad daylight in a place like this.
All that 'lurking danger on every side' business? Pure paranoid persecution fantasy — completely self-generated by the cultivation technique's overactive imagination.
But that didn't stop Gu Chengming from playing along.
Matching the Hundred Bones Resonance's anxious energy, he arranged his face into an expression of grave solemnity, pulled his storage pouch close to his chest, then tugged at Jiang Lu's sleeve and murmured under his breath:
"Junior Brother, this is not a place to linger. We should leave quickly."
Jiang Lu stared at him, completely at a loss.
"Huh? Senior Brother Gu, we've barely been here at all... why is it suddenly 'not a place to linger'?"
Gu Chengming offered no explanation. He simply gave Jiang Lu a look that said: you don't understand, but this is very serious.
[For reasons it cannot quite name, the Hundred Bones Resonance is beginning to feel nervous.]
[It wholeheartedly agrees with your assessment.]
[As the saying goes — a man is blameless, but carrying a jade invites disaster. You were discreet when you found that treasure just now, but there's no guarantee some sharp-eyed expert didn't catch a glimpse.]
[This place is crowded and full of prying eyes. There may be danger to your life!]
Meanwhile, on the other side of the bustling market.
Two female cultivators in Daoning Gate robes were idly lingering in front of a cluster of cosmetics stalls, boredom written all over their faces.
"Senior Sister, look at this—"
The round-faced one among them was just reaching for a tin of powdered eyebrow pigment when her gaze happened to drift across the crowd not far away.
Her hand froze mid-reach. Her eyes locked on a fixed point and didn't move.
"What is it?"
The tall, willowy senior sister beside her followed her line of sight.
A young man in a blue-green robe was making his way through the crowd at a brisk pace. Sword-sharp brows, clear bright eyes, an upright bearing — and despite the grave set of his expression, none of it could conceal the effortless, natural handsomeness that seemed to radiate from somewhere in the lines of his face.
With a Charm stat of twenty-five points, ignoring him was genuinely difficult.
"Isn't that... Gu Chengming?"
The round-faced cultivator let out a low exclamation, her voice carrying a note of surprise — and something more complicated beneath it.
At the sound of that name, the tall senior sister's expression hardened in an instant. The appreciative gleam she'd had in her eye a moment before sharpened into something considerably cooler.
"The one who confessed to the Dao Seed junior sister and got shot down, then turned around and started spreading rumors about defeating Senior Sister You Yuyao? That reckless fool?"
Gu Chengming. The name had been making the rounds in Daoning Gate plenty lately.
As for the second rumor — the one about him "crossing swords with You Yuyao" — the two of them didn't believe a single word of it. Believe it? They'd practically laughed it off as an insult to their intelligence.
Who was Senior Sister You, exactly? First Realm, Ninth Layer cultivation — a genius just half a step from breaking into the Second Realm!
And this Gu Chengming? Three years in the sect and still knocking around the Outer Sect, sitting at a measly First Realm, Third Layer. A complete deadweight.
The gap between them wasn't a gap — it was a chasm. Forget a proper duel; if Senior Sister You just stood there and let him swing at her, the shockwaves alone would probably shatter whatever sword he happened to be holding.
"Hmph. Who even started that ridiculous rumor."
By rights, the person who benefits most from a rumor is usually the one who started it. In her mind, it was obvious: Gu Chengming had been rejected, and rather than swallow the humiliation quietly, he'd concocted this story to drag You Yuyao's name through the mud — a desperate grab for attention and a pathetic bid to claw back some face.
"Exactly!" The round-faced cultivator seethed. "Senior Sister You has always looked out for us junior sisters. How can we just let some shameless creep go around slandering her like this?"
The two exchanged a glance, and an unspoken agreement passed between them in an instant.
Since they'd run into him here, why wait for a better moment? Better to deal with it now.
They needed to find this guy and make him answer for himself — make him understand that you can eat carelessly, but you can't speak carelessly.
On the other side of the market.
Under the Hundred Bones Resonance's relentless, life-or-death nagging, Gu Chengming was half-dragging Jiang Lu toward the market exit at a fast clip.
He kept one part of his mind placating the Hundred Bones Resonance with noncommittal mental reassurances, while the rest of him maintained an expression of high alert, his feet eating up the ground beneath him.
They were just about to round a corner and clear the market's central area when two slender figures burst out from the side, one on the left and one on the right, planting themselves in the way like a pair of door gods.
"Stop right there!"
A sharp feminine voice rang out.
Gu Chengming pulled up short. Jiang Lu nearly walked straight into his back.
The two female cultivators blocking the path wore expressions cold as frost. Their hands rested on their sword hilts. Their gazes were fixed on Gu Chengming with undisguised hostility, the entire posture of their bodies radiating the energy of someone who has come to demand answers.
Jiang Lu clocked the Daoning Gate robes, recognized them immediately, and hurried to step forward with a placating smile and a polite bow.
"Senior Sisters! Might I ask what brings you to stop us? I'm Jiang Lu, and this is Senior Brother Gu — we were just on our way back—"
"None of your business. Step aside."
The tall senior sister didn't even glance at Jiang Lu. Her gaze stayed nailed to Gu Chengming as she said, her voice cold:
"Gu Chengming. After everything you've done, did you really think you could just walk away?"
Jiang Lu's heart lurched.
Oh no. Was this about that rumor? Had the people from Daoning Gate actually come looking for trouble?
He was already drawing breath to say something — to smooth things over, buy Gu Chengming a little goodwill —
But he never got the chance to open his mouth.
Because Gu Chengming, who had been silent this whole time — Gu Chengming, who was now facing two female cultivators bearing down on him with hands on sword hilts and fury on their faces — showed not the faintest flicker of panic, nor the slightest trace of guilt.
On the contrary.
His eyes lit up.
What kind of light was it, exactly? The light of a wolf that has been starving for three days and just spotted a plump sheep. The light of a screenwriter who has been waiting weeks and finally sees the perfect actor walk through the door.
That raw, uncontainable, completely genuine excitement — so bright it was nearly blinding — made both women's hearts give an involuntary twitch of unease.
The next instant.
Gu Chengming lunged back a full step. One hand flew up to shield the storage pouch pressed against his chest. The other slapped onto his sword hilt.
His voice rang out, loud and righteous:
"Bold villains! You dare come here to murder and rob?!"
Both women's faces simultaneously produced the exact same enormous question mark.
"??"
Villains? Murder and rob?
This is Wenjian Sect! We're wearing our sect robes! Are you blind?!
But there was no time for them to react.
Because the moment the words left his mouth — the sword was already out.
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