Chapter 529 - 493: Demon Suppression City, Magnificent

Zhou Mu and his group also had three Magical Artifact Vehicles. Ordinarily, they were kept shrunk down inside their Storage Pouches, but when needed, they could be released to expand to ten zhang in length and width, becoming three large carts.

Notably, the Magical Artifact Vehicles belonging to Zhou Mu and his group were of the exceedingly common, pitifully shabby sort.

Don’t be fooled by their ability to freely expand and shrink. If a vehicle didn’t have Puppets to pull it, it was unequivocally shabby.

After all, if you had to pull the carts by hand, how could it not be considered shabby?

Shabby and bedraggled, toiling away for scarce resources, cultivating arduously yet stubbornly pressing forward—such was the life of bottom-tier Cultivators in Demon Suppression City, people just like Zhou Mu and his group.

Zhou Mu and the others, however, were long used to this. It was simply their environment, and there was no point wallowing in self-pity.

If they truly craved a life of comfort, all they had to do was leave Demon Suppression City. Back within the borders of the Nine Provinces, their Cultivation—at the Qi Cultivation stage or higher—would allow them to live quite comfortably in any province or city.

「That day, at dusk.」

Demon Suppression City was now visible in the distance. It was a majestic city rising from the vast sand dunes, its walls a full ninety-seven zhang high!

To the naked human eye, without flying up into the sky, anyone looking up from the ground could truly see little more than a dense, dark mass of brick wall.

It was too high, too enormous.

Seen from afar, the walls of this majestic city looked less like walls and more like a mountain range!

A mountain range that seemed to touch the heavens, soaring into the clouds. A single glance could take in neither its top nor its end.

The terrifying, oppressive feeling it exuded was like standing before an abyss as a colossal wave threatened to crash down, or like reaching the end of a long river only to be met by a sheer, towering cliff.

Even before one reached the foot of the wall, a vast, grand aura that threatened to steal one’s very thoughts and breath was already surging toward them, immense and overwhelming.

In the face of such a magnificent structure, the human body seemed incomparably tiny. It was a sense of boundless scale and personal insignificance that Song Ciwan hadn’t experienced even when she had entered the Giant Spirit Realm.

’If Demon Suppression City is already like this, what must Demon Suppression Pass be like?’

Song Ciwan arrived at the foot of Demon Suppression City. With just one look, three words surfaced in her mind: ’Worth the trip!’

For a moment, she stood beneath the city wall with her head tilted back, an indescribable stillness filling her from body to soul.

Beneath the massive wall, however, the Cultivators queuing to enter the city were a boisterous lot.

The line of Cultivators was unimaginably long. It turned out that in the Nine Provinces World, it wasn’t just mortals who queued to enter a city; Cultivators, too, would line up like worker ants, snaking before a city gate, waiting to pass through a checkpoint, awaiting their reward.

And it turned out that a line of Cultivators could also be noisy, with everyone chatting and boasting back and forth just like commoners in a marketplace.

The most conspicuous and noteworthy topics of conversation were, naturally, their Magical Artifact Vehicles and the Demon Corpses piled high upon them.

When they ran into acquaintances, the exchanges became even more animated.

One person might say, "Well now, Older Brother Sun, nice haul this time! That Demon Beast must be close to the Demon Core Stage, right? Sell it at the Demon Refining Platform, and that’s another three to five hundred Battle Merits in your pocket, I’d wager."

The other would respond, "Tch, don’t get me started. That thing was a real pain to take down. I wasted a ton of Elixirs and Spirit Talismans. Who knows how many Battle Merits it’ll even fetch? I’m just worried the payout won’t even cover the cost of what I used! Times are tough... tough!"

"You said it. Who isn’t struggling? You work your tail off, and the profits don’t even cover your costs. The worst part is, you can’t afford *not* to have those costs."

"Tell me about it. You can’t be stingy with Spirit Pills and Spirit Talismans. You try to save here and there, and the next thing you know, you’ve accidentally ’saved’ your own life right out of existence!"

"If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t be in this constant cycle, always just scraping by..."

And so, with one person complaining about how tough things were and the next person agreeing, the boasting and one-upmanship devolved into a session of mutual commiseration.

On the whole, there was far more complaining than showing off.

Whether things were truly that difficult was hard to say, but even if they weren’t, it was imperative to make them sound as difficult as possible!

Otherwise, in the world of Cultivators, accidentally attracting the green-eyed monster wasn’t some trivial matter of being tripped up while you were out; it could get you killed!

Not every group in the line had a cart, however.

And those without carts were often more envied than those with them.

And why was that?

The reason was simple: not having a cart proved that a team could afford Demon-Cleansing Talismans.

Being able to buy Demon-Cleansing Talismans wasn’t merely a testament to one’s wealth; it meant you had connections and power. Otherwise, you couldn’t even hope to lay eyes on one!

Song Ciwan, Zhou Mu, and the others were in the middle of the queue. Zhou Mu’s team had brought out their three Magical Artifact Vehicles, which were piled with a total of eight Demon Corpses. All eight corpses were still suffused with Malice, not yet purified.

This was at Zhou Mu’s own request. He had spoken with great sincerity: "Fairy, although you possess a mysterious method to dispel Demon Fiend Malice with a mere wave of your hand, we are already incredibly fortunate to have received your aid and benefited from it. It is a blessing we don’t deserve."

"However, we absolutely cannot mistake the Fairy’s methods for our own abilities. We can rely on you today and perhaps tomorrow, but what about the day after that?"

Zhou Mu saw the situation with perfect clarity. "If we continue like this," he said, "it won’t be long before we’re all useless. The Fairy can help us for a while, but she can’t help us for a lifetime."

"Furthermore, we can’t pretend we have Demon-Cleansing Talismans and bluff our way through things... a fake will always be a fake. It can never become the real thing!"

He had laid out his reasoning so clearly that from then on, whenever Zhou Mu and the others killed a Demon Beast, Song Ciwan no longer stepped forward to handle the corpse and purify it.

It wasn’t as if she was desperate for that small amount of Malice. If she truly wanted to harvest Demon Fiend Malice, she could hunt Demon Fiends on her own; there was no need to covet their meager scraps.

Notably, for the remainder of their journey, they didn’t encounter any more Demon Core Stage Demon Beasts, nor did they run into any of the special Demon Beasts that cultivated a Foundation Establishment Method.

All they came across were ordinary Spirit Communication Stage Demon Beasts. After all, those at the Demon Core Stage weren’t so easily encountered.

Zhou Mu explained, "The resources in the Mingqiu Desert are mostly around the Three-star Level, and Demon Beasts at the Demon Core Stage generally don’t frequent this area. If you go to the Wind Mist Plain, on the other hand, you’ll find plenty at the Demon Core Stage, while those at the Spirit Communication Stage are comparatively rare."

Song Ciwan listened carefully, committing his words to memory. She had already decided that once she was familiar with Demon Suppression City and Demon Suppression Pass, she would head to the Wind Mist Plain to hunt Demon Fiends.

Zhou Mu added, "However, in recent times, there have been several strange developments on the Wind Mist Plain. Nowadays, the plain has practically become a meat grinder for the Human and Demon Races..."

At this, he sighed, a hint of sorrow in his voice. "They say you can’t even buy a map of the Wind Mist Plain anymore. Even the Court can’t produce one."

Though his words were simple, they held the anxiety of an ordinary man caught in extraordinary times.

When the lips are gone, the teeth grow cold. When the nest is overturned, no egg remains unbroken.

If the Human Race were to lose its footing on the Wind Mist Plain, a crisis would surely follow for the low-level Cultivators like them, who eked out a living around Demon Suppression City.

Qin Yan, however, sounded wistful. "On the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List, Duan Xinghun, formerly ranked thirty-sixth, is in the Wind Mist Plain. The current sixth-ranked, Du Xingheng, is also in the Wind Mist Plain. All the top Celestial Prides, the geniuses from the Sects, the experts from the army—they’re all in the Wind Mist Plain."

"If we could ever go to the Wind Mist Plain, then our journey of Cultivation would truly be worthwhile."

People’s personalities are all different. If Zhou Mu was the epitome of caution, then Qin Yan still possessed a flicker of unyielding drive.

Though her Cultivation was not high, she never looked down on herself. Having the courage to dream big is its own form of bravery.

However, that’s not to say Qin Yan was necessarily superior to Zhou Mu. Sometimes, the one who ends up going the farthest is the one who is cautious enough to survive the journey.

Before the city gate, the line ahead gradually shrank, and Zhou Mu’s group moved farther and farther forward.

As they waited in line, a sudden commotion erupted from the front.

The disturbance started near the city gate, caused by a soldier of the West Wind Army galloping out from the city on a Red Blood Horse. He carried an official notice, which he intended to post before the gate!

After the initial stir, a clear message began to ripple back through the queue: "It’s the West Wind Army! From Demon Suppression Pass! They’re recruiting Medical Cultivators for the front lines!"