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Lin Xiao listened to the two of them talking without saying a word, just kept stuffing himself with Fuzi’s fried beans from time to time.

Jiang Youfu didn’t notice. He tilted his head, thought for a moment, and said:

“But just because your master won’t accept you doesn’t mean you can’t go back to the Heaven’s Secret Sect, right?”

“That’s true.”

Yuan Qing nodded as he spoke,

“But after what happened, someone like my master will find every reason to look down on me. He’ll probably wish he never had to see me again. Even if I stayed at the Heaven’s Secret Sect, life wouldn’t be good for me. And I can’t exactly take another master, either—no one would want to go against my master for the sake of a minor disciple like me.”

Jiang Youfu listened carefully for quite a while before he finally understood all the ins and outs of the situation. But understanding didn’t mean accepting it. He shook his head in disappointment and said:

“I never expected these big sects to be like this.”

Lin Xiao, who had been listening nearby, was somewhat surprised by Yuan Qing’s words. He had initially thought that Yuan Qing was going through so much trouble to contact his former sectmates and clear his name because he wanted to return to the Heaven’s Secret Sect.

But it turned out he had already seen through it all, and had long since made up his mind not to go back.

So Lin Xiao asked:

“Then what are your plans afterward?”

Yuan Qing was silent for a moment before speaking:

“If I really can clear my name of the shame I’ve been saddled with, I’m planning to go home. Go back and help my older sister.”

“Your older sister?” Lin Xiao asked.

Yuan Qing nodded:

“That’s right. To be honest, I’m actually the adopted son of the head of the Yuan clan’s main family. My parents passed away when I was young, and the clan matriarch took me in to raise me. Her whole family treated me extremely well. If not for them, I wouldn’t have made it this far alive. So I owe the Yuan clan’s main family a great debt of gratitude.”

“My older sister is Yuan Zhiyun, the young master of the Yuan clan. In recent years, even though I’ve been far away at the Heaven’s Secret Sect, I’ve occasionally heard rumors about things at home. I hear she’s… been facing some difficulties. Now that I can’t return to the Heaven’s Secret Sect anyway, going home might at least let me help her in some way.”

Yuan Zhiyun…

Lin Xiao scratched his ear and thought for a moment.

Oh, right—the person whose storage pouch had that Heart-Questioning Stone.

But he didn’t need it anymore.

Suddenly, he remembered a message he had seen on the Yuan clan’s notice board, and said to Yuan Qing:

“I saw before that the Yuan clan has been trying to purchase Frost Plains Spirits. The procurement notice has been out for quite some time, but they’ve never managed to get any. Also, I heard your sister went to the Frost Plains Secret Realm last year, probably looking for that very thing.”

He couldn’t help with much else—giving out a Frost Plains Spirit wasn’t possible since Senior Liao wouldn’t agree, and he wouldn’t do it anyway—so he could only pass along the information he knew.

Hearing this, Yuan Qing clearly understood what Frost Plains Spirits were used for. He furrowed his brow in deep thought for a moment.

“For my sister to go looking for a Frost Plains Spirit herself… could it be because of the clan leader, Uncle…?”

Even though he’d only muttered the words under his breath, Lin Xiao, with his sharp ears, caught them anyway.

Seeing that Yuan Qing truly had no idea about the situation, Lin Xiao couldn’t help but think to himself that it seemed the Yuan clan’s main family had treated this guy well. Normally, if a family couldn’t find what they needed within their own territory, they’d naturally try to contact their people in the major sects to ask for help.

But they never once sought out Yuan Qing, which suggested they probably didn’t want to disrupt his life at the sect or cause him any trouble.

Lin Xiao then recalled the news he had heard back when he rescued people from the Icefield Secret Realm, so he spoke up:

“Oh, by the way, I heard something earlier—last year, it seems your family head personally went to the entrance of the secret realm to bring your elder sister back.”

With that, Lin Xiao gave him a rough account of what had happened in the Icefield Secret Realm the previous year.

Yuan Qing then remembered that last year at the sect, he had indeed heard some talk about a place within the Icefield Secret Realm where people had been trapped. But at the time, the letters from home had never mentioned it, let alone told him that Yuan Zhiyun had been among those trapped.

Still, that likely meant the family head wasn’t in any serious trouble.

If the need for an Icefield Spirit had been truly urgent, there’s no way he would have had the energy to come fetch someone in person.

So Yuan Qing’s thoughts turned to the old ancestor of their Yuan family.

From the looks of it, the problem must have been with that ancestor. That would explain why the Yuan family was so desperate and had gone to such lengths to acquire an Icefield Spirit.

They must have truly reached their last resort.

After pondering for a long time, Yuan Qing raised his head and said to Lin Xiao:

“Thank you for telling me this, Brother Lin. I’ll ask my fellow disciples tomorrow if they have any leads on Icefield Spirits.”

Seeing him lost in thought with a worried frown, Lin Xiao and Jiang Youfu didn’t linger. They said their goodbyes and headed into the inner room.

When they saw Senior Liao soaking his feet and sipping tea, the two squeezed in beside him and snatched his tea to drink for themselves.

The next morning, all three went out again.

Since there were no talisman master competitions that day, Lin Xiao and Jiang Youfu headed straight out of the city.

Their harvest over this period had been quite plentiful—nothing to make them wealthy overnight, but Lin Xiao figured that if they sold everything except what they kept for their own sect’s breeding programs, it would still be a decent sum.

But they hadn’t rushed to sell the spirit beasts they’d caught in the past few days. After all, they still had many days left to stay here. Offloading too much at once might attract unwanted attention.

Selling them bit by bit, on the other hand, was too slow and time-consuming.

Luckily, the system’s storage space let them stash away anything without limit, so they weren’t in a hurry.

The only problem was that Lin Xiao and his companion had been catching beasts without feeding them lately. Many of the low-level spirit beasts in the living-storage area were getting hungry. Some were just a bit sluggish, but others had actually grown thinner from starvation.

After all, the system’s living-storage area only stored them; it didn’t handle their need for food.

So, to keep these spirit beasts from dying of hunger, Lin Xiao and his companion had to go out of the city to collect the food those beasts usually ate.

Actually, when Lin Xiao first realized that the beasts stored in the living area could still be fed, he immediately asked the system:

“Can I just raise them here instead?”

The system didn’t seem to have expected such an idea from him, and it stayed silent for a good while.

After a few breaths, it finally spoke in a very mechanical voice:

“To prevent the host from slacking off and focusing on exploiting loopholes, the system is hereby modifying the living-storage area’s access permissions to a time-limited mode. The opening period will be only three months. Please complete your mission as soon as possible.”

Lin Xiao had learned firsthand what it meant to shoot himself in the foot. He fell silent for a moment, then spoke in a somewhat pitiful tone:

“I take back what I just said and that idea. How about we just pretend nothing happened and go back to two minutes ago? I swear I won’t slack off anymore!”

The system fell silent again for a few seconds.

During those few seconds, although the system made no sound or response, Lin Xiao somehow felt as though he could hear its cold snicker.

Then, he heard the system reply in a very mechanical tone:

[Fine.]

Though its voice was utterly devoid of emotion, Lin Xiao could sense a kind of icy indifference in it.