Boom—
The enormous crowd that had been accumulating in the free Outer Ring zone for days broke loose in that instant like a dam giving way, surging madly into the campsite's interior.
The merchants and Black Blood Stockade elites who had paid astronomical sums for their Inner Ring stalls were instantly buried under this avalanche of foot traffic — every last one of them raking in profits hand over fist, grinning so wide they could barely close their mouths.
But Lin Mu — the hidden hand behind it all, the greatest beneficiary of everything — changed out of his conspicuous robes with quiet deliberateness.
He wrapped himself in a plain, featureless grey cloak, pulled his bamboo hat low, and slipped into the surging crowd without a sound — a single drop of water dissolving into a river.
Carried along by the flow of people, Lin Mu moved with absolute purpose, heading straight for the eighteen-meter giant tree that stood apart from everything around it at the heart of the campsite.
Standing before the wide, natural entrance of the Three Star Cave, Lin Mu tilted his head back and looked up at the Gu House. A strange, indescribable feeling flickered through his dark eyes.
As someone who had crossed over from another world, this was the first time he had stood beneath one of those wondrous creations he had only ever read about in text — felt it solid and real beneath his feet.
The sensation of a boundary dissolving made his heart beat just slightly faster.
But he reined himself in quickly, stepped forward, and crossed the naturally formed wooden threshold.
The moment he entered the first floor of the tree house, the clamor of the outside world seemed to cut off by half.
The interior was far more spacious than it appeared from outside. All three levels had been perfectly converted into a ring of commercial stalls.
The wide counters were not the work of any carpenter — they had grown directly from the trunk and branches of the great tree itself, extending outward in natural formations.
Along the edges of the counters, fresh green leaves still hung, releasing a faint, clean scent of wood and grass.
Scattered throughout the space were round stools and long benches formed naturally from tree burls, provided for distinguished guests to rest — a quiet testament to the depth and refinement of a great merchant house.
Yet within this seemingly tranquil and wondrous natural marketplace, Lin Mu's senses — honed through life-and-death trials — caught a thread of killing intent, deeply concealed and deeply unsettling.
Hum...
Somewhere among the dense foliage at the crown of the tree house, a Rank 3 Jia Clan logistics Gu Master lay hidden, keeping an iron watch over the entire first-floor hall.
And that was not all.
Lin Mu could feel it — the wooden floor beneath his feet, every branch he passed — all of it held in a state of extreme, coiled tension.
If anyone were blinded by greed and dared to snatch a Gu worm from these counters, the open tree-hole entrance would slam shut and lock in an instant.
Every branch and limb that appeared soft and yielding would, within a thousandth of a breath, transform into countless indestructible wooden spikes — shredding the thief into pulp on the spot.
"This is the absolute confidence that lets the Jia Clan put a mountain of gold and silver on open display."
Lin Mu withdrew his probing gaze, quietly sobered, and turned his attention back to the goods on the counters.
He swept his eyes across several display stands, and the admiration in his gaze deepened with each step.
"Impressive, Jia Fu. This kind of shrewd, adaptive commercial instinct — no wonder the Jia Clan Caravan has risen to the top of the Southern Border."
Lin Mu had noticed something striking. The low-rank Gu worms displayed on this floor were not the ones he had seen in the Qing Mao Mountain arc of the original story.
In their place were large quantities of support-type Gu — things like the Grinding Stone Gu, Refined Iron Gu, and Gravity Gu.
And without exception, every single one of them was either a perfect complement to Black Blood Stockade's signature Iron Leaf Gu, or a material that would pair beautifully with Earth Path defensive techniques.
"Adapting to the local market. Truly thoughtful."
Lin Mu felt a genuine flicker of respect for the Jia Clan's leader.
He continued along the counter toward the interior — and then his footsteps came to an abrupt halt.
At the center of the first floor, a circular counter had been set apart from the rest, enclosed beneath an exquisite crystal dome. A crowd of Black Blood Stockade Gu Masters had gathered around it.
Lin Mu pushed through the crowd. His gaze locked on like a blade, fixing on the center of the crystal dome.
There, resting quietly on a soft, jade-green mulberry leaf, sat a plump, white Gu worm — round and smooth as the finest mutton-fat jade, carrying the faint, drifting scent of wine.
A Liquor Worm.
Beside the mulberry leaf stood a small, elegant wooden placard, its starting price written in vermillion: five hundred Primeval Stones.
"Found it."
Lin Mu's breath caught slightly.
A starting price of five hundred — even lower than the going rate of around six hundred for private transactions on the open market.
This was clearly a "traffic bait" item the Jia Clan had deliberately priced low to heat up the grand market's atmosphere.
But Lin Mu's mind was perfectly clear.
"According to the original story, Jia Fu openly holds three Liquor Worms — how many he truly has in total is another matter. This one appears to be the quota allocated specifically for the Black Blood Stockade region."
"As for the one Fang Yuan purchases — that should still be sitting somewhere deeper in the caravan's inventory."
Having confirmed there would be no conflict with the original timeline, Lin Mu prepared to claim what was his.
But looking at the growing crowd pressing around the counter — eyes gleaming with barely contained hunger — Lin Mu's brow furrowed slightly.
"This butterfly's wings have flapped a little too wide."
He smiled inwardly with a touch of bitter irony.
It was precisely because he had orchestrated this extraordinary campsite that the foot traffic and spending enthusiasm flowing into the Three Star Cave today far exceeded anything the original story had seen at an ordinary stockade's caravan reception.
The competition for this Liquor Worm was going to be ferocious.
"Five hundred and fifty!"
"I'll go five hundred and eighty!"
"Out of the way, you paupers! Six hundred and ten!"
The bidding format was a semi-public sealed auction.
No one dared shout openly, but the frantic whispers and the sight of red-eyed bidders stuffing slips of paper into the sealed box made the savagery of this bloodless battle perfectly plain.
But Lin Mu did not let the feverish atmosphere rattle him.
He stood at the outer edge of the crowd, watching the flushed, agitated bidders, and calculated in cold silence.
"The Liquor Worm is a supreme treasure — it can refine Rank 1 Primeval Essence. But in this information-starved corner of the Southern Border, the vast majority of these people have no idea that the Rank 2 Four-Flavor Liquor Worm even exists, let alone its refinement formula."
"In their understanding, the Liquor Worm is nothing more than a transitional Rank 1 Gu with no real future."
That settled one thing with certainty — every commodity's price fluctuates, but it will never rise without limit beyond what the buyers believe it to be worth.
"These bidders are mostly inner-circle Deacons buying a foundation for a nephew or junior, or peak Rank 1 cultivators gambling on a better future."
"Their psychological ceiling is somewhere between six hundred and fifty and seven hundred stones at most. Any higher, and they would be better off buying a Rank 2 Gu outright."
His calculation complete, Lin Mu drew a charcoal pencil from inside his robe and pulled a blank bidding slip from the stack beside the counter.
He had no need to probe the field. No need to raise his bid round by round.
With the crushing weight of over ten thousand Primeval Stones behind him, he brought the full force of that advantage to bear — and wrote a single number on the slip.
A number that would grind every competitor into dust without giving them a single chance to respond.
Eight hundred.
He wrote it without so much as a blink, folded the slip, and dropped it cleanly into the sealed slot on the side of the counter.
A short while later, the bidding closed.
In a concealed back room deep within the tree house's first floor, a Jia Clan manager personally unsealed and read through every bid.
When he unfolded the slip that read eight hundred, even this seasoned, well-traveled man could not suppress a sharp intake of breath.
That premium — it was as though someone had priced the Liquor Worm as a Rank 2 Gu.
There was no suspense whatsoever.
Under the absolute crushing weight of capital, Lin Mu was quietly invited into the back room alone.
"This guest is truly generous. The Liquor Worm is yours." The manager smiled broadly and extended the mulberry leaf with the Gu worm resting on it.
"Payment and delivery, clean and simple."
Lin Mu poured eight hundred Primeval Stones from his Gourd Gu without hesitation, confirmed the count, and scooped up the Liquor Worm, depositing it directly into his Aperture.
Hum—
The instant the new Liquor Worm entered the Aperture, the old Liquor Worm that had been settled at the center of the Primeval Sea seemed to sense a kindred presence.
It stirred with excitement and swam over at once.
Two plump, white Gu worms wound around each other in the Primeval Sea, spiraling together, filling the space with a rich, heady scent of wine.
Feeling those two indispensable core pieces now together inside his Aperture, the great weight that had been hanging over Lin Mu's heart finally settled — halfway down.
"The primary materials for the Rank 2 Four-Flavor Liquor Worm. At last, they are complete."
Carrying the quiet satisfaction of this milestone, Lin Mu kept his hat pulled low and did not leave the back room immediately. He sank into thought.
Because the real obstacle had only just begun.
The refinement formula for the Rank 2 advancement required four specific wines as catalytic agents — sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy.
The sour wine, sweet wine, and spicy wine — whether through Black Blood Stockade's internal channels or somewhere within the vast Jia Clan Caravan — could all be sourced at the highest quality, given enough money.
But the bitter wine — exceedingly rare, with exacting requirements — was a dead end.
Lin Mu's mind raced through every detail he could recall from the original story.
Fang Yuan managed to refine the Four-Flavor Liquor Worm because of a stroke of fortune — he happened to acquire century-old bitter shellfish, and from that brewed a bitter wine that met the standard.
But now —
Through the gap in the leaf-covered window of the back room, Lin Mu looked up at the thick, interwoven branches spanning the tree house's crown.
A faint bitterness stirred in his chest.
"This last and most critical catalytic ingredient..."
He sat in the elevated back room, the sound of independent cultivators haggling over trifles drifting up from the floor below, a rare thread of uncertainty in his eyes.
"Where in the world am I supposed to find it?"