Watching the grey-robed wandering cultivator's hunched, wary silhouette recede into the crowd, Lin Mu's mind had already assembled a brilliant plan.
He was just about to step forward and follow — find a quiet corner, make contact, and put the plan into motion.
But fate, it seemed, always enjoyed playing absurd jokes at the worst possible moments.
The instant Lin Mu lifted his foot, a tiny, almost imperceptible accident unfolded in the bustling crowd ahead — tiny, and absolutely fatal.
The grey-robed wandering cultivator was carrying a full thousand Primeval Stones — a fortune beyond anything he had ever held in his life.
He had been walking with extreme caution, but his hands would not stop shaking.
As he tried to push the heavy coin pouch deeper into his robes, his movements were too stiff, too frantic.
Thud.
The drawstring slipped loose by a single gap.
A flash of crystalline, intoxicating brilliance — the unmistakable radiance of Primeval Stones — flickered through the gap in his grey robe and vanished.
It lasted less than half a breath before the wandering cultivator clapped his hand over it in terror.
But in the Middle Ring market, where cutthroats and pickpockets lurked around every corner, that single fleeting gleam was like a drop of rich, fresh blood falling into a pool of starving piranha.
"This is bad."
At the edge of the crowd, Lin Mu's pupils contracted slightly.
His instincts — honed through repeated brushes with death — caught it immediately.
In the instant that light appeared, the noisy, ordinary market atmosphere around him underwent a subtle, deeply unsettling shift.
At least seven or eight pairs of eyes — eyes that had been haggling, or wandering aimlessly — changed in that single moment.
Those gazes locked onto the grey-robed wandering cultivator's back like physical weights, refusing to let go.
Never reveal your wealth. Reveal it, and disaster follows.
At a Southern Border grand market that chewed people up and spat out nothing, a frail wandering cultivator with no apparent backing, carrying something that radiated blinding light — he was a walking target.
Lin Mu immediately pulled his foot back.
He said nothing. He was not foolish enough to approach the man now.
He pulled his bamboo hat lower and fell in behind — not too close, not too far — drifting like a patient ghost in the wake of the grey-robed wandering cultivator and the pack of hyenas now trailing him.
The grey-robed wandering cultivator had noticed nothing.
His only thought was to get back and hide the Primeval Stones in the most concealed corner he could find. He was completely blind to the danger closing in behind him.
In his blind panic, he did not even stop to get his bearings.
He rushed out of the caravan camp's relatively safe perimeter zone and plunged headlong into the dim, dense forest on the outer edges of Black Wind Ridge.
Lin Mu did not blindly follow him into the trees.
He stopped at the forest's edge, tapped the toe of his boot lightly against a rough trunk, and used the burst of the Earth Ring Body Killer Move to launch himself upward.
Silent and fluid as a night cat, he moved into the canopy of an ancient tree dozens of zhang tall.
The dense foliage swallowed his silhouette completely.
Lin Mu crouched in the fork of the branches, drew a slow breath, and let a thread of faint red Rank 2 Red Iron Primeval Essence flow through his Aperture.
"Might as well test the new purchase."
With a single thought, he activated the Rank 2 scouting Gu he had just acquired at the market — the Far-Sight Gu.
Hum.
As Primeval Essence poured in, a faint amber luminescence bloomed in the depths of Lin Mu's pupils.
The next instant, a staggering visual experience descended upon him.
His field of vision seemed to stretch and magnify in a single breath. The layers of mist and the tangle of crossing branches that should have blocked his sight became as insubstantial as air.
His gaze soared like a hawk riding the high winds, taking in the entire forest landscape for several li ahead from a god's-eye vantage.
Total situational awareness. Crystal clear.
And beyond that, the Rank 2 Far-Sight Gu carried exceptional low-light night vision. In the dim depths of the forest, the faintest movements were amplified to their fullest extent.
Lin Mu watched clearly as the grey-robed wandering cultivator stumbled along a thorn-choked path like a headless fly, lurching forward with uneven steps, his robe snagged and torn by branches in a dozen places — completely unaware.
And behind the wandering cultivator's escape route, and in the undergrowth on both flanks —
One, two, three... eight.
Lin Mu counted in silence.
Eight figures materialized one by one — skulking, radiating killing intent.
From their clothing and bearing, they belonged to different factions. Several were clearly the low-level thugs of Black Blood Stockade, the kind who made their living preying on their own.
The others were outside Demonic Path cultivators who prowled the outer Southern Border like wild beasts.
They did not know each other. But in this moment, they shared a single objective.
Like a pack of experienced hyenas, they used the trees as cover, moving at speed to encircle and cut off every angle of escape, tightening the net with practiced efficiency.
At the rate they were advancing, and given the wandering cultivator's panicked, directionless flight —
"At most ten minutes before the net closes completely. After that, he'll have nowhere left to run. A turtle in a jar."
Lin Mu crouched in the canopy and watched the robbers below — blades in hand, ugly grins on their faces — his brow drawing into a tight furrow as his mind ran a cold, precise risk assessment.
"Of these eight, none are Rank 2. But at least three are Rank 1 peak, and the rest are all Rank 1 upper stage desperadoes."
"If I charge out right now to save him..."
Lin Mu's eyes went cold as his mental abacus clicked through the numbers at speed.
He was Rank 2 initial stage, his combat system fully built out. In a real fight, he had every confidence he could win.
But these eight were not stationary wooden dummies.
The moment he was drawn into a one-against-eight brawl, he would inevitably release Rank 2 Primeval Essence fluctuations — and might even be forced to use the Dust Escape Gu.
Erupting into a full battle this close to the caravan camp would cause a massive disturbance.
It would expose his hidden Rank 2 strength, and very likely draw the attention of the clan's Punishment Hall — or the eyes of White Bone Stockade's informants.
Not worth it.
"I am no chivalrous hero out to save the world."
"In this world, if you lack the strength to protect the wealth in your hands, that wealth is nothing but a death warrant."
"If you can't even hold onto a coin pouch, then you don't have what it takes to work with me."
Throwing himself into a pointless brawl and risking exposure — all for a small, exploratory plan — was the worst possible return on investment.
Decision made, Lin Mu did not hesitate further.
He turned to leave, and offered the grey-robed wandering cultivator — soon to be torn apart by eight hungry dogs — a perfunctory half-second of silence in his heart.
Then he prepared to cut the Far-Sight Gu's Primeval Essence flow and retrace his path back to the lively inner camp.
But then.
In that brief, fleeting instant before Lin Mu turned his head and severed the connection —
Something changed in the Far-Sight Gu's still-active field of vision.
Lin Mu's movement stopped instinctively. His gaze snapped back to the dim forest.
The grey-robed wandering cultivator was still charging ahead with his head down, running for his life.
He had even tripped and fallen at some point, scrambling back up and continuing his desperate flight — completely unaware that the death net behind him had already fully closed.
But what he could not see was this: the killing intent at his back had, in this very moment, come to a strange and inexplicable halt.
The eight robbers — who had already completed their encirclement, who had already raised their weapons, who had been on the verge of lunging at their prey —
At the last moment, every single one of them stopped dead.
Because they had seen each other.
Eight people. Three separate small groups. Two lone operators.
In the Southern Border's cultivation world — where trust was nonexistent, where a man would push his own companion off a cliff for half a Primeval Stone — who would willingly hand their back, unguarded, to a group of strangers who were just as willing to kill without blinking?
And the prey scrambling ahead like a startled rabbit was carrying a fortune that had radiated that blinding gleam.
If anyone rushed forward and killed the target first, they would instantly become the focal point of every other blade in the forest.
Under the grotesque pressure of absolute greed and absolute distrust, the atmosphere in the forest shifted in an instant — a blade drawn and held at every throat.
Eight robbers locked eyes with each other, their gazes flickering with wariness and vicious menace.
No one could say exactly who snapped first.
Perhaps one of them, nerves stretched past their limit, accidentally discharged a Gu worm that grazed another thug's cheek. Perhaps one of the Demonic Path cultivators, trying to strike preemptively, had quietly flung out a handful of poison powder.
Whatever the trigger, the string — pulled taut beyond all endurance — broke with a thunderous crack.
What had been a coordinated hunt closing in on the grey-robed wandering cultivator spun completely out of control in a single instant.
In their desperation to claim sole ownership of the prize — to guarantee that no one could ambush them after the money changed hands — the robbers made a decision that was almost comically absurd.
They abandoned the prey still stumbling away ahead of them entirely.
Eight desperadoes, eyes bloodshot, like eight rabid dogs crammed into the same cage — without warning, without preamble, they threw themselves into a savage, frenzied melee right there in the forest.
The light-effects of low-rank Gu worms exploded chaotically through the dim trees.
The screech of clashing weapons, the screams of flesh dissolving under poison powder — it all wove together in an instant into a silent, blood-soaked tableau of carnage.