Yan Wei’s knees buckled, the shelves wobbled, and pill bottles hit the ground left and right, rolling across the floor in all directions.

The young woman stood there as if she was watching a good show, not making a sound.

“Yao Tianjian...” he said through gritted teeth.

“Well?” Yao Tianjian said with a smile. “You haven’t been pulling a fast one on us now, have you?”

“You think we would take the time to give you less than sixty percent and smooth things over without you noticing?” Yan Wei asked, voice brimming with sarcasm and resentment.

Yao Tianjian’s arrogant face made him want to tear his own skin off. Like every descendant of the Yao Clan, his upper canine teeth were overgrown and exposed, even when his mouth was closed.

He was no older than Yan Wei and devilishly handsome, but within those good looks, only Yan Wei could sense an undetectable wiliness. His dicey personality made him stand out on Yan Wei’s radar at all times, as if he would kill him at a moment’s notice, just because he felt like it.

“Hm… you’re right.” Yao Tianjian released his spiritual pressure and yawned. “Even if you did, we would surely find out in the end. Business must be good then, huh?”

“Splendid,” Yan Wei said listlessly.

Yao Tianjian strutted back and forth, looking up and down at every detail with his hands behind his back. “Who handles the shop?”

“I do,” Yan Wei said, his eyes on Yao Tianjian’s every movement.

“Oh?” Yao Tianjian’s grin became even more smug.

He walked over to Yan Wei and put his hand over the bottom half of Yan Wei’s mask. “Quite the management skills you have. How would you like to work in the Yao Clan estate? There, you wouldn’t have to work with scraps like you do here.

“Although, the mask would have to go. It’s starting to annoy me–”

Yan Wei’s hand shot out like a lightning bolt, clasping around Yao Tianjian’s wrist. In a voice that was only audible to the both of them, he said, “Would you rather be annoyed… or missing this hand?”

Yao Tianjian was appalled by the sudden flare in attitude, and didn’t manage to react before Yan Wei threw his hand down and snorted, “Why did you come here?”

“Good, good,” Yao Tianjian said, straightening his embroidered sleeve, “I like that. Don’t get so carried away next time, though. Who knows what I might do?

“Actually, I came here for Miss Qing,” he said as he looked over at the young woman in black. “I was assigned as her escort for the remainder of her visit here, after all. Where did Brother Xiu go?”

Qing Hua rolled her eyes. “Big Brother Xiu started whining and left in a rage, he should’ve already gone back to Uncle Song.”

“Alright,” Yao Tianjian sighed. “We’ll be going back as well, then.” He signalled for Qing Hua to follow him.

“Oh, Yan Wei,” he said, stopping with one foot out the door. “Have you heard? It’s snowing, this is the perfect chance for you to gain some experience.”

Smiling enigmatically, he left with Qing Hua right behind, who glanced at Yan Wei with newfound disdain.

Yan Wei cleaned up the mess left behind by Yao Tianjian, trapped in his own deep thoughts the entire time.

…

There were only five hours left before sundown.

“Cough...”

Yan Wei, bewildered, swallowed another Yang-Stabilizing Pill. “Another one already? I should have a few more hours left, unless...”

He suddenly reached an epiphany, then closed up early for the day. Another two hundred or so customers had already flooded in and saw themselves out, so he decided to quit while they were ahead.

Going up the stairs to Pill Master Qiu, who was just pulling two skewers of roasted meat out of a furnace, Yan Wei was handed a skewer and asked about his day.

Learning about Yao Tianjian’s rampage and the snow outside, he nearly choked twice. “That little runt thinks he owns everything he lays his eyes on.”

“Dreams and reality are two different worlds,” Yan Wei scoffed. “He can think whatever he wants, but I’ll be damned if it ever comes true.”

“Those are strong words for someone who will never break past the first level of Source Realm. Strong words require a strong person to say them,” the Pill Master said. “Maybe in Fallen Heaven City, where rich-kid brats are everywhere to be seen and money makes everything true, you would be heard, but this is Silent Rain City. No one will listen to you unless you make them listen.”

His honest words sent Yan Wei into a state of self-absorption for a long time, and his ears started to twitch as he formulated a plan.

A long time passed before he looked up and said, “As you said, cultivation is a long and twisted road. If I don’t have strength, and I can’t acquire the strength everyone else has... I’ll just have to make my own, won’t I?”

Standing up, Yan Wei left the half-eaten meat skewer where he was sitting. “We’ve already hit a safe area of income for the next day or two, so I closed up early. Starting tomorrow morning, I’m going to be taking a look around the city.”

Pill Master Qiu stared in disbelief. “Around the city? Since you got here, you’ve never left the shop. What are you going to do?”

“Gain experience,” Yan Wei said resolutely. With that, he left the astounded Pill Master and headed downstairs into his room.

————————————————

Using the remaining sunlight, Yan Wei finished the second book given to him by Pill Master Qiu, which, to him, was no major accomplishment. His reasoning behind it was that he saw no need in continuing further than that for the time being.

He had no pills he wished to concoct, and Pill Master Qiu was sustaining their inventory. Therefore, he set aside the last book and started studying into something that he could currently use—spirit formations and mechanisms.

Under the dim lamplight, Yan Wei had a stack of books with him on his bed, all based on armor, spirit formations, and mechanisms.

Spirit formations were circles of structured magical symbols that laid the groundwork for affecting large areas with magic, and enhancing items with spiritual energy for different purposes. They could span from hundreds of miles in circumference to a few centimeters.

Mechanisms were apparatuses that were granted autonomy through the power of a spirit formation that was fueled by raw spiritual energy. In most cases, they were self-operating objects that made life easier for businesses and their owners, or in a more honest sense, the people that worked alongside them.

Yan Wei acquired a basic understanding of both these subjects through years of reading, although he didn’t even know enough to lay down a spirit formation, let alone create a mechanism.

Another problem was that cultivation was required to work with spirit formations, which he wasn’t even close to having. These two tasks were large enough to exhaust any other person, but Yan Wei saw ten steps ahead already; he knew that soon enough, he would no longer be tormented by the endless challenges that came with having awful talent, whether it was by transcending them or dying by them.

He refreshed his rudimentary knowledge by skimming through each book, then slept soundly that night, mentally preparing himself for the next day.

...

At the crack of dawn, Yan Wei slid his bed over and lifted a rotting floorboard, revealing a small mountain of Rocs in the ground.

In all truthfulness, one of the only reasons Yan Wei managed to lie his way out of Yao Tianjian’s interrogation without skipping a beat was because he was, indeed, taking a small portion of their sixty percent and smoothing things over.

As far as he was concerned, the people of the Yao Clan were the ones stealing; he was just making sure that he and the Pill Master weren’t flat broke at the end of the day, should anything unexpected happen.

He counted out five hundred Rocs and threw them inside of a pouch that he tied to his waist before covering his tracks and leaving.

The second he stepped out, Yan Wei felt sick. With every breath, he could feel the pollution in the air contaminating his body that was as untainted as an infant’s.

He looked up at the sky, filled with smog as gray snowflakes fell down and landed in his hair, and immediately felt depressed.

Finding a blacksmith was the first step in his plan. After acquiring what he needed, he would be able to do the rest on his own with some experimenting, research, and months hard work.

Moving down the street, he ignored the sly old foxes in their rickety merchant stands, who were constantly waving him down and offering food, jewelry, or any other overpriced items.

“Do you have someone special you’re looking to give a gift to? Come this way!”

“A thin guy like you should be looking to build some muscle, right? My tonic is guaranteed to bulk you up in a day!”

“Try this rare fish out, it’s a pure delicacy in Silent Rain City, and it’s only five hundred Rocs a piece!”

“Anything pure is rare in Silent Rain City...” Yan Wei muttered.

Eventually, he came across a trio of young adults with dirt smeared on their faces and pickaxes slung over their shoulders. They had evidently just come from the quarry and appeared to be in a bad mood as they stood in the middle of the road, doing a shakedown on whoever passed.

He paused and looked down the side allies, filled with shadowy figures lurking around. Weighing the dangers, Yan Wei reluctantly chose to risk getting past the troublemakers in the road.

Yan Wei took advantage of the fact that they weren’t paying attention to him and separated a hundred Rocs into another pouch, which he tied loosely and lobbed over on one side of the road.

Once it hit the ground, the knot came undone and the Rocs spilled out, attracting their gazes as they rushed over.

“There’s at least a hundred here!” one of them cried. “We’re definitely splitting this!”

While they were scraping them up like animals, Yan Wei walked on the other side of the road with large strides until he was out of their line of sight.