Lin Ping stood before the worn stall and addressed Old Ma — who was still sitting in a daze over his windfall — with impeccable courtesy.
Old Ma snapped back to attention, looked Lin Ping up and down, and made no connection whatsoever between this errand boy and the young man who had just left.
"Sweet wine? I don't sell wine myself, but I know who's got the purest wildflower honey mead from the Ten Thousand Mountains."
Old Ma waved a hand in a general direction. "Head to the tent with the red lantern on the east side of the middle ring. Drop my name — they'll knock off ten percent."
"Many thanks, elder!" Lin Ping was overjoyed. He bowed several times in quick succession and hurried off.
Lin Mu watched Lin Ping's figure disappear into the crowd from the shadow of a street corner some distance away.
He slowly tilted his hat brim down, and a satisfied smile touched the corner of his mouth.
The reason Lin Ping had approached Old Ma in that particular manner was because Lin Mu had given him explicit, non-negotiable instructions to do so.
This was not excessive caution.
Lin Mu's mind was clear on the matter. He knew perfectly well that his possession of a Liquor Worm was no longer an absolute secret to certain parties.
The Liquor Worm was rare, but in the eyes of a major clan it was still just a Rank 1 premium support Gu — the kind used to lay foundations for younger disciples. It was not the sort of thing that invited death.
But.
If Lin Mu were to suddenly begin scouring the grand market openly and without restraint, simultaneously hunting down premium wines representing all four extreme flavors — sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy —
Any Refinement Path Gu Master with even a modest degree of experience, or a sharp operator like Jia Fu, would smell something unusual in that pattern the moment they noticed it.
They would immediately deduce that this so-called collateral branch Deacon was sitting on an exceptionally rare Rank 2 refinement formula.
In the Southern Border, a formula capable of allowing a Liquor Worm to transcend its rank suppression and remain effective was worth enough to drive any mid-sized clan into a frenzy.
Once exposed, it would be a treasure that invited slaughter.
So, to sever the intelligence trail completely and eliminate any possibility of someone drawing the connection, Lin Mu had adopted this strategy of deliberate fragmentation with extreme care.
The formula for refining the Rank 2 Liquor Worm was known to exactly one person in Black Blood Stockade — himself.
The task of procuring the four premium wines was split into three separate assignments, each carried out independently by a different person.
Lin Ping, using his cover as a personal attendant, visited the black market and the discreet stalls of the middle ring under the perfectly ordinary pretense of purchasing beverages for his young master.
He successfully acquired a jar of premium wildflower honey mead — representing sweet.
Lin Mu himself had long since used the Breath-Suppressing Root to alter his appearance entirely, taking on the guise of a down-and-out traveling merchant.
Leveraging his knowledge of the market's layout, he found an obscure foreign trader, haggled with painstaking persistence, and made what appeared to be a casual purchase of a jar of decade-aged plum wine — representing sour.
As for the harshest, most throat-scorching of the four — the spicy wine.
That task went to the death-sworn cultivator who practiced the incomplete Food Path — Lin Wuxie.
Lin Wuxie walked straight into a tavern in the bazaar and forcibly purchased the largest crock of the most brutal, throat-burning grain liquor available.
Anyone who noticed simply took him for an unhinged drunkard. No one looked any deeper.
Over the course of a single day.
Three people. Three entirely different identities. Three completely distinct manners of conduct.
Never appearing in the same place at the same time throughout the vast caravan encampment — not even exchanging a glance.
Only when night had fully descended and the noise of the grand market gradually faded did the three jars of premium wine — representing sour, sweet, and spicy — converge like three streams flowing from different sources, slipping without a trace into the dim underground chamber in the Silent Stone District.
"Add in the half-jar of bitter wine Jia Fu promised..."
Lin Mu stood in the chamber, looking at the three neatly arranged jars on the table. The tension in his nerves eased slightly for the first time.
"Everything is in place."
With the prerequisites for refinement arranged, Lin Mu did not immediately head to the dry well behind the mountain to begin his massive excavation.
Sharpening the axe does not delay the woodcutting. The underground work was a slow endeavor, and for now, there was still one loose end that needed to be tied off.
Under the cover of deep night, he moved like a weightless ghost and slipped silently over Black Blood Stockade's outer wall.
On the outskirts of Black Wind Ridge, in a remote and desolate stretch of land, stood an abandoned mountain god shrine.
The cold wind of late autumn poured through the rotting window frames, drawing out a sound like wailing from the ruins.
But within that desolate shrine, a thoroughly contented — if somewhat off-key — humming drifted through the darkness.
"Life's really starting to look up..."
A scrawny, disreputable-looking wandering cultivator in a patched and tattered robe was humming to himself, limping along with a surprisingly light step as he made his way back to the shrine through the night.
This was the Demonic Path wandering cultivator known by the alias Wild Dog.
Wild Dog had been living very well lately.
Not long ago, the bitter enemy he had made on the black market — the Demonic Path cultivator who had hunted him for half a month and cornered him in this very shrine, fully intending to flay him alive — had been killed in a single move by a mysterious black-robed benefactor who had appeared at precisely the right moment, for no apparent reason.
His enemy was dead. The blade hanging over his head had shattered completely.
What was more, that terrifying black-robed killer had not demanded any exorbitant payment for saving his life.
He had simply taken the goods from the original transaction and the remaining payment, and departed without another word.
Wild Dog, having clawed his way back from the jaws of death, had spent the past several days finding that even the blood-tinged air of the Southern Border smelled remarkably sweet.
"Survive a great disaster, and fortune follows."
Wild Dog pushed open the shrine's half-collapsed wooden door, stretched with great satisfaction, and shuffled over to the pile of relatively dry straw in the corner.
He settled in comfortably, preparing to lie down, sleep soundly, and dream of wealth.
But then.
In the very instant his back was about to touch the straw —
Ahem.
From deep within the empty, silent shrine — from behind the crumbling clay idol caked in dust, its body broken in half — came a single, faint, quiet cough.
To Wild Dog's ears, it detonated like a thunderclap from the ninth heaven.
"Who's there?!"
Wild Dog nearly soiled himself on the spot.
But he was, after all, a man who had spent years crawling through the black market — a place that swallowed people whole — surviving by the blade's edge. His alertness had been carved into his very bones.
Within a tenth of a breath of that cough sounding out.
Wild Dog's body — which had been on the verge of lying down — sprang upright like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, pure reflex.
His Primeval Essence surged through him in an instant, driving the detection Gu within his Aperture to full activation without reservation.
He pressed his back hard against the cold wall, eyes wide as bronze bells, staring at the impenetrable darkness behind the altar with a look of wild terror and vicious desperation.
"Which road are you from, friend?! Stop playing ghost — come out and show yourself!" Wild Dog snarled in a low voice, using underworld cant to shore up his own nerve.
But his vigilance, in that dim and crumbling shrine, was nothing short of laughable.
Because against an absolute disparity in power, any reaction was futile.
Whoosh.
The next instant, a black shadow erupted from the darkness behind the idol at a speed Wild Dog's meager mind could neither comprehend nor track.
The Rank 2 Leaping Hare Gu — pushed to its absolute limit.
Wild Dog didn't even register the figure's outline.
He only felt his vision blur, and then a gale of force like something solid slammed into his face hard enough to make the flesh of his cheeks sting.
"Not good."
His instinct screamed at him to raise his weapon and fight back.
Too late. Far too late.
Hiss.
A razor-sharp gleam — carrying the bone-deep chill of death — had already settled without a sound against the pulsing artery in his throat.
The edge of the Metal Rend Leaf Gu caught the faint moonlight, glinting with a predatory blue-black sheen.
Half an inch further, and it would part his neck like soft tofu, sending his head rolling across the shrine floor.
Death's scythe was resting against his throat.
"Great... great immortal, spare me!"
Wild Dog's soul nearly left his body.
The desperate, cornered ferocity he had summoned moments ago collapsed entirely beneath the absolute threat of death.
His knees buckled.
He dropped to the dusty stone floor with a heavy thud, both hands raised high, voice breaking into a wretched, shrill cry.
"Spare me, hero! Don't kill me! I've got Primeval Stones on me — and Gu materials I just got yesterday — all of it's right here, it's all yours! Just leave me my worthless life..."
While Wild Dog was frantically begging for mercy, on the verge of pressing his forehead to the ground —
The black figure holding his life in its hands slowly leaned down.
The wide bamboo hat tilted slightly upward.
In the dim moonlight, a pale, cold jawline was revealed — carrying a faintly familiar curve.
Then a voice drifted down from above Wild Dog's bowed head — three parts mockery, seven parts glacial calm.
"What's this? It's only been a few days..."
"And you've already forgotten me?"