Wounded

The three of them first went to look around the examination site for tomorrow's county exam. Finding the area already cordoned off, they familiarized themselves with the route and then left.

Afterward, they headed to a small market in the county town. Relying on a small pinch of powdered roasted rice flour from Jiang Youfu, they briefly opened up their teeth-cleaning business. After earning a few hundred copper coins, they immediately packed up their stall and began to stroll around the town.

Although Anqun County was far from bustling, to these three youths whose farthest trip in over a decade had been to Cuifeng Town, everything looked novel and fresh.

They even squatted for a long time in front of a girl with a piece of grass stuck in her hair who claimed to be selling herself to bury her father.

They only ran off when the girl was about to fly into a rage out of humiliation from their staring.

It wasn't until late afternoon that the three returned to their small courtyard, still feeling as though they hadn't seen enough.

As soon as they entered the room, they saw a piece of cloth spread over the table, upon which lay Tuantuan, covered in injuries. Sun Yigao, who should have been studying hard, was feeding it a Rejuvenation Pill, a healing elixir he had recently learned to make from Senior Liao.

"What happened?" Lin Xiao asked in confusion, looking at Tuantuan on the table, who looked completely different from its energetic self yesterday.

Sun Yigao shook his head:

"I don't know either. Not long before you guys came back, I heard a scratching sound at the door. I went to check, and as soon as I opened it, I saw it lying on the ground like this."

The group looked at Tuantuan, who barely had a good patch of fur left on its entire body.

"It's a cat demon at the seventh level of Spirit Awakening. To think it could be beaten like this..."

Lin Xiao noticed that Tuantuan's originally long tail was also snapped off by a section.

"It seems the person who injured it must have a cultivation level much higher than its own..." He pointed at Tuantuan's severed tail and said, "They say cats have nine lives. Although Tuantuan doesn't have nine tails, severing a tail to survive might be a unique divine ability of cat demons. It was probably because of this that it managed to escape death."

Looking at the half-missing cat tail, the group couldn't help but feel a lingering fear.

Jiang Youfu asked in confusion, "Isn't this the mortal realm? It always seemed quite peaceful in the past. Why is it that as soon as we started cultivating, things became chaotic everywhere?"

Liu Yunan shook his head and said to him earnestly:

"You don't understand, do you? Before, when we didn't have any cultivation, we wouldn't know the reasons behind what we saw. For example, if it were in the past and we saw Tuantuan like this, we would only think it was an ordinary cat that had been beaten by someone, right?"

Unlike now, because they knew it was a seventh-level Spirit Awakening cat demon, they knew that the person who injured it definitely had a strong cultivation base.

Hearing this, Jiang Youfu felt it made a lot of sense and nodded.

Lin Xiao also said:

"Exactly. Just like that Silver Frost Python demon in our village before. If we hadn't cultivated and had no cultivation base, we wouldn't have felt anything was wrong at all. We would have just thought the weather was erratic. Even if everyone in our village had died when the time came, others might have just thought we all froze to death. Afterward, the survivors would just sigh that the heavens left no way out, and Xiushui Village might have forever become a thing of the past."

Hearing him say this, the others all felt a deep sense of agreement and sorrow.

Having finished feeding Tuantuan the medicine, Sun Yigao also spoke up:

"Therefore, in this world, only when you stand higher can you see more of the truth. But often, those who stand the highest know the truth of the lower levels, yet they just let things be and do nothing. And they themselves are also subject to the manipulations of those at an even higher level."

While they were talking, whether it was due to Tuantuan's tenacious vitality or the effectiveness of the Rejuvenation Pill refined by Sun Yigao, Tuantuan, who had lost consciousness and was barely breathing, gradually woke up.

It struggled to open its eyes, saw the four youths it had met yesterday, felt a burst of rejuvenating energy within its body, and sensed the familiar atmosphere of the courtyard. Feeling at ease, it fell into a deep sleep once more.

Soft snoring gently echoed in the quiet courtyard.

Sun Yigao then stood up and said softly:

"I'll leave it to you guys for now. I'm going to continue studying."

Seeing the three agree, Sun Yigao turned and went into another room to read.

The sun gradually set, and the afterglow of the sunset was slowly replaced by the night.

The three placed some food and water next to Tuantuan.

Liu Yunan went out to the Fang family's house to get dinner.

Jiang Youfu was already hungry, so he took out the dry rations brought from home and started gnawing on them with some water.

Meanwhile, Lin Xiao was pondering the three sect construction tasks.

Building the Talisman Crafting Room, the Artifact Forging Hall, and the Array Formation Hall.

Actually, as long as Lin Xiao wanted, he could have enough dirt and wood at any time. But the reason he didn't immediately start building these three facilities was because he remembered that when he built the Alchemy Room previously, in addition to dirt and wood, he had also put in the Red Lotus Lava as a fire source along with the cauldron needed for alchemy.

So he wondered, did the other three facilities also require certain specific items?

He couldn't just build a room out of dirt and wood and then declare it to be whatever he wanted, right?

Of course, he could do that, and he believed no one in the entire sect would object.

But he was afraid the system wouldn't acknowledge it.

Even though the system seemed to have treated him quite well so far.

However, he didn't think the system would let him be so careless.

Otherwise, the issued tasks wouldn't truly achieve the goal of building the sect. The system couldn't possibly be issuing tasks purely to give him free items and spirit stones, right?

Moreover, once these facilities were built, their sect would be the one to benefit.

Therefore, Lin Xiao didn't want to be too casual about it.

If he followed his experience with the Alchemy Room, which required putting in the tools needed for that facility, then wouldn't the Talisman Crafting Room require special talisman-drawing brushes and talisman paper?

Lin Xiao felt it was actually quite possible.

Would he put in a bunch of paper and brushes, and then it would generate a bunch of talisman-drawing seats with paper and brushes on them?

Oh, there had to be ink too.

But on second thought, that wasn't right either. Ink and paper were consumables, and when he synthesized the Alchemy Room, he hadn't put any herbs in...

Never mind, once he acquired the brush, ink, paper, and inkstone for talisman crafting, he would just put them all in, just in case.

As for the Artifact Forging Hall.

He currently had no ideas.

He didn't know much about these two. He had no idea whether artifact forging was generally like a blacksmith striking iron or like an alchemist refining with a cauldron.

As for the Array Formation Hall, he did know that some array formations were carved with a carving knife.

But he didn't know if that was the case for all array formations.

Speaking of which, didn't setting up an array also count as part of array formations?

...

While his thoughts were running wild, Liu Yunan had already returned from the Fang family's house with the food. At this moment, he and Jiang Youfu were carefully moving Tuantuan from the table to the heated brick bed, freeing up the table.

Then, enduring their hunger, the two took the fragrant dishes out of the food box.

Three dishes and one soup, a good mix of meat and vegetables.

Moreover, the portion of each dish was especially large.

Aunt Fang, considering that they were all growing boys, had specifically used a large basin to hold a full, tightly packed mound of rice.