After resting for half an hour, Liu Weian finally forced himself to his feet, still wincing from the pain. Thankfully, all the nearby rotting corpses had been cleared out. Had one wandered over now, he'd be like a dragon stranded in shallow water—helpless. The wound on his chest was deep. Even after thirty minutes, it continued to bleed.
He dug out and swallowed two strength seeds from the corpses, which finally stopped the bleeding. But to fully heal, that would take time. He had hacked at the corpse walker's head over a dozen times before cracking it open. It was as hard as stone, and his blade was chipped from the effort. A strength seed the size of a mung bean rolled out.
Liu Weian's eyes lit up. He'd grown used to seeing seeds no bigger than rice grains, so this larger one instantly lifted his spirits. With growing anticipation, he dug out the meat sac. His heart tensed.
Compared to the ones from regular corpses, this meat sac was darker in color, giving off a sense of weight and density. Typically, the stronger the monster, the better its drop—but there were always exceptions. Sometimes, even powerful monsters dropped nothing at all. Having nearly died to the corpse walker, Liu Weian knew how dangerous they were. Naturally, his expectations rose.
"Don't let me down," he muttered, slicing open the meat sac.
Ding-dong!
Something dark and metallic clinked to the ground. Liu Weian picked it up—and froze. His eyes went wide, joy exploding across his face. It was a ring. A ring!
Rings were considered jewelry-type equipment, rare in the extreme. But when one did appear, it was almost always something extraordinary and valuable. In shops, the cheapest ring started at ten gold coins.
The moment he put it on, a stream of information surged into Liu Weian's mind. He immediately understood what it was: a spatial ring—a rare, magical storage item.
And not just any spatial ring. This one had a full cubic meter of internal space. By the shop's standard, where just 0.3 cubic meters cost 130 gold coins, this ring's value easily exceeded 350 gold coins. The bigger the space, the higher the exponential jump in price. It wasn't a linear scale.
This was perfect—now he had somewhere to store his strength seeds. Even carrying gold coins wouldn't be a burden anymore.
After packing up everything, Liu Weian returned to Stonehold with the transport wagon. Sun Shouwu wasn't at the shop. Lately, he'd been out early and back late, always rushing around. In the past ten days, Liu Weian had only seen him three times. While Black Bull and the others unloaded goods, Liu Weian walked up and knocked on Sun Lingzhi's door.
Sun Lingzhi was Sun Shouwu's younger sister, the eldest daughter of the Sun family and one of the proprietors of the Life-and-Death Apothecary. Their names were quite amusing—Lingzhi (Ganoderma) and Shouwu (Fo-ti). Liu Weian couldn't help but wonder if they had a sibling named Ginseng. That would make the trio a perfect set of traditional medicinal treasures.
"The door's not locked—come in," came a pleasant voice from inside.
Liu Weian stepped into the room, catching sight of Sun Lingzhi adjusting a potion. This wasn't a bedroom but a laboratory. Sun Lingzhi was an alchemist. Her eyes were fixed intently on the test tube in her hand, her expression focused. She didn't even glance up at him, only waving him to wait.
The test tube, clear like glass, was half-filled with red liquid. Within, particles drifted and sank slowly. With a tiny silver spoon, she kept adding unknown powders. Her expression shifted with each change in the liquid's color—sometimes pleased, sometimes frowning, but mostly puzzled.
The red liquid slowly turned green—a sickly, eerie green, like the scum floating in a decades-old sewer. Within seconds, it began to bubble and churn, as if boiling. Sun Lingzhi's face grew serious. Her brows furrowed, nose scrunched slightly, lips pressed tight. The combination made her exceptionally captivating. Liu Weian stood there, dumbstruck, briefly forgetting where he was.
Pfft—
A puff of white smoke burst from the tube, followed by a foul stench filling the room. Sun Lingzhi quickly pulled down a protective screen and flipped on the ventilation fan. Still, she inhaled some of the gas. Her face paled, and she staggered.
Liu Weian reacted instantly, stepping forward to catch her and swiftly carrying her out of the room.
He had inhaled some of the gas too, but not much—he'd been farther away. Besides, thanks to consuming corpse pellets, he had developed some resistance to toxins and wasn't affected.
This was the first time he'd ever held a woman. Her body was soft and smooth, exuding a faint fragrance. His heart floated in a daze, wishing time could stop. Of course, that was impossible. Sun Lingzhi let out a groan and opened her eyes.
"I'm fine now."
"Oh!" Liu Weian released her as if shocked, stepping back quickly.
Sun Lingzhi raised a delicate brow slightly, took out a vial, and popped a red pill into her mouth. Within seconds, color returned to her face. With a graceful flip of her fingers, the vial vanished. She looked at Liu Weian.
"Did you need something?"
Liu Weian's heart tightened. He hadn't noticed when she retrieved the vial, but he had seen where it went—a verdant bracelet on her wrist. No doubt, it was also a piece of spatial equipment.
Such items were rare. Spatial equipment even more so. To encounter two in one day wasn't luck—it was wealth. The Sun family was rich, plain and simple. Liu Weian had risked life and limb to get his spatial ring; they had theirs at the flip of a wrist. The disparity was suffocating.
Rich people really do live differently. Envy flashed through his heart but quickly faded. He explained, "I wanted to ask—are you buying corpse walkers?"
"Corpse walkers?" Sun Lingzhi's eyes lit up. "Where? Take me to see one right away!"
She was certainly unorthodox. Most people—especially women—avoided corpses like the plague. But not her. She acted like she'd found treasure.
Not knowing if the Sun family accepted them, Liu Weian had set the corpse walker aside rather than storing it. Sun Lingzhi crouched down, inspecting it closely. She even touched it with her fingers. Her courage was no joke.
The face was shrunken, leathery like bark, and blackened. Corpse lesions covered its body. It had fangs and long claws. Structurally intact, just extremely thin. Its frame was larger than a typical rotting corpse, and though it emitted a foul smell, it was far less offensive.
Using a stick, she poked into the corpse walker's mouth. No tongue. Straightening, she said casually, "This one's good. I'll take it. Four and a half silver coins each. Bring me as many as you can—no such thing as too many."
"Alright," Liu Weian agreed. Not that he had a choice—Sun Lingzhi wasn't like her brother. When she spoke, it was final. No bargaining.
He would've liked to linger a bit longer, but Black Bull and the others had finished unloading. With no excuse to stay, he had to take his leave.
He hadn't been paying attention, but now he noticed—Stonehold had grown. The settlement had expanded, and new shops had popped up everywhere. Before, each industry had just one store. Now, many sectors had two or even three, especially weapons, clothing, and materials shops. Inns had increased to four.
More shops meant better prices for players.
"Make way! Make way!"
A carriage thundered into town from outside the gates. The driver cracked his whip, showing no concern for the crowded streets. Chaos erupted as people scrambled aside. Liu Weian got bumped several times, nearly falling. Angry curses filled the air. A few hot-headed folks nearly charged the carriage but were quickly held back.
"Are you crazy? That's a He family carriage!"
The aggressors instantly deflated and slunk away. The He family. Liu Weian immediately thought of the pharmacy he'd once worked with. The rich were different. While commoners couldn't afford even an ox-cart, the He family rolled around in a double-horse luxury carriage.
"A bunch of nouveau riche, so arrogant. The Wangs, Lis, and Zhaos—true aristocrats with centuries of heritage—don't act this way," one man muttered as he got up. He spat in the He family's direction before stomping off.
Liu Weian's mind clicked. Stonehold had recently seen an influx of Wang, Li, and Zhao family businesses. If the Sun and He families were considered wealthy, then the Wangs, Lis, and Zhaos were giants—empires with legacies stretching back centuries, predating even the founding of the three interstellar empires. Their influence spanned across planets.
In the Han Dynasty, there were six legendary families: Liu, Li, Wang, Zhao, Zhang, and Yang. These clans controlled the empire's economic lifeblood. Offend one of their heads, and even the emperor couldn't save you.
Stonehold was just a remote settlement, barely on the map. Why would such titans show interest here? Liu Weian didn't believe they were after small-time profits. Suspicion stirred in his mind. His eyes sharpened.
The streets were full of unfamiliar faces—skilled warriors, no doubt.
He couldn't see their stats, but he could read their gear. Their boots, armor, swords—they were all high-grade. Some even shimmered with a faint green-blue glow, a sign of elite-tier weapons. Liu Weian had only ever seen those in the weapons shop, priced over 30 gold coins each.
"Looks like something big's going down," he muttered and headed straight for the equipment shop.
The graveyard had started spawning corpse walkers. Their combat prowess was far beyond that of rotting corpses. His current arrows weren't cutting it. If it took three shots to bring down one walker, and a group showed up, he'd be dead. Time to upgrade.
Iron-Tip Arrows
Arrowhead: forged from refined iron in a triangular shape.
Shaft: made from ten-year-old jujube wood.
Price: 20 copper each.
Liu Weian bought 100 arrows, paying 20 silver coins. As he left the shop, he sighed to himself:
"Every shot… is money flying away."