“Thunk, thunk, thunk”, Lin Xun heard some knocking noise while getting home.

In the yard, Shia Zhi was striking a suit of inner armour with a huge hammer in her hand, sparks splashing out with each beat.

It was rather an inharmonious picture in which a five or six-year-old girl, young and tender, was carrying a huge rough hammer with her white and fine hands.

However, the hammer seemed to be as light as a needle in her hands. The strikes were accompanied by a special rhythm and beat, which made the task look all too easy for her.

Lin Xun recognized the armour. It was the very one he made with the flakes of the one-horned scaly lizard earlier which was damaged four days ago during his fight with Lian Rufeng. Thanks to the armour, he didn’t suffer much from the slap on his back.

Though it never occurred to him that Shia Zhi would repair the armour without him asking.

Lin Xun went near and took a closer look at the hammer, then got startled again. The head of the hammer was like an iron blotch surfaced with finger prints.

“You kneaded this with bare hands?” Lin asked.

Shia Zhi nodded with no intention to stop, and said, “I have to make one with iron since there is no one off the peg”.

Lin Xun gasped in surprise after hearing this. That was refined iron for God’s sake! How could she make a huge hammer simply with the strength of her fingers?

He looked at her blankly, thinking to himself that there might’ve hidden an ancient fierce beast within her delicate and slim body.

Laying the hammer aside, Shia Zhi passed the armour to Lin Xun and said, “It’s done now. Try it out”.

Looking at the repaired hammer which was as good as new now, Lin Xun praised with smile on his face, “You are full of surprises”.

However, Shia Zhi went straight to the room as if she wasn’t listening, and said, “I’m gonna go to sleep for a while. Remember to make dinner. I’ll be hungry when I wake up."

Bang!

Just then the door was shut.

Lin Xun shrugged his shoulders, feeling quite used to her unique behavior which completely differentiated her from other kids.

His gaze alighted on the huge hammer which was incredibly heavy and as motionless as a statue when he tried to lift it with his hands.

He was surprised and then exerted force suddenly with the spirit energy circulating in his whole body. Only by then did he manage to lift the hammer and with the slightest perception, he realized that it couldn’t be lighter than 250kg.

Boom!

The hammer fell down when Lin Xun loosened his grip, leaving a big hole on the ground.

“She really is a little monster!”

Thinking that the hammer was kneaded by Shia Zhi with the only use of her hands, Lin Xun got a complicated expression on his face, becoming more and more curious about her history.

“I have to ask her when she wakes up and get to the bottom of it”.

Soon Lin Xun stopped dwelling on it, got into the kitchen and made dinner ready. Only then did he find the time to sit on the chair in the yard. Turning his hand over, there was a copper coin of the empire lying in his palm. He couldn’t help but stare at it.

This was the first time he had ever seen a real copper coin which was roughly the size of a baby’s palm, in a pale yellowish color and felt gentle and delicate.

As far as Lin Xun knew, all coins of Ziyao Empire were made from the powder of a special mineral called Cloud Spirit Stone, mixed with a dozen of materials including gold, silver and copper, and then refined by a series of complex and unique techniques which would never be mastered by people outside of the empire.

Coins of Ziyao Empire were divided into three categories, namely gold coins, silver coins and copper coins, with the same exchange ratio of one to a hundred. All coins, no matter what category they belong to, were carved with special patterns of the empire on both sides.

Like this one at the moment, the front patterns consisted of three parts. A purple flower like a fire burning stood for the royal household of the empire, an extraordinarily sturdy green deer looking up to the sky for the empire’s first academy called the Green-deer School, and a sacred sword breaking through the canopy for the army.

Beyond all that, there were dense and colorful branches in cloud lines carved around the three patterns, representing the bigwigs, aristocratic families and clans who made outstanding contributions to the empire.

On the other side, there stood a beautiful landscape covered in clouds and mists, surging forward with great momentum and unfathomable meanings.

Lin Xun had no idea what the landscape represented, but it definitely meant something.

Hum!

Lin Xun took a blow on the coin, which was followed by a unique musical sound. This was undoubtedly a Ziyao Coin which would be indispensible to both his survival in the empire and his future cultivation.

From Wu Henshui’s storage ring, Lin Xun got quite an unexpected fortune of 1500 copper coins where were equal to 15 silver ones.

The coins of the empire had great values. For example, three copper coins could exchange for half a kilo of spiritual grains.

Or the piece of Feiyun fire copper Lin Xun once showed Shiao Tianren, small as a thumb, it could exchange for 30 copper coins in Green Sun Tribe which was equal to 2500g of spiritual grains.

However, Lin Xun wasn’t yet very clear about the exchange value of every object in the empire, thus he couldn’t possibly understand the great purchasing power of 1500 copper coins.

Besides the coins, Lin Xun got a bag of seeds of spiritual herbs, mostly of little value but a necessity of cultivation.

He had no intention of planting them, for the whole process was too complicated which would require a specialized planting master. Moreover, it often took three to five years for the herbs to ripen, or even centuries for some rare kinds.

It might well be true that among those people coming with Wu Henshui, there should be one or two planting masters.

But none of that made any sense to Lin Xun now. What really mattered was to sell the seeds and make some real money.

Besides, there were still some ripe herbs in the ring which were all highly valuable, some for tempering the body, some for refining cultivation, and some bottles for curing the wounds.

For someone like Wu who was already at the eighth level of Martial Realm, his collections would certainly be out of the ordinary.

So Lin Xun cleared up everything in the ring, then threw his Sky Breacher right in it seeing there was still space left.

“With this ring, it’ll be so much easier for me to go to Green Sun Tribe for trading. At least I don’t need to worry about being robbed”, Lin Xun wondered.

He put the ring away carefully. It would draw too much unwanted attention if he wore it since Wu Henshui’s status in Green Sun Tribe as the chief of Wu’s Drugstore made it quite recognizable.

Then he took out the boots he ripped off from Lian Rufeng again and pondered, “These look a bit crappy, but they are a piece of spiritual equipment anyway. Too bad they aren’t fit for me. I’ll just sell them someday”. With this thought, he left them in the ring too.

After all this, Lin Xun gave himself a long stretch, feeling quite relieved.

Now the top priority for him was to continue his cultivation. As for the fire copper mine, he could just leave it to the village head Shiao Tianren.

After some calculation, he figured there was less than half a month left for him to start the second test of the Heaven-Accessing Palace. He dared not to have the slightest negligence towards this. After all, he got Meditating Magic which was prerequisite to refining his body and soul when he finished the first test, who knows what would come out of the second one? Lin Xun was quite excited.

In the late afternoon, Shia Zhi woke up, sitting in front of the stone table. Soon Lin Xun brought her the food he prepared long ago.

Recently, the villagers got a bumper harvest of spiritual grains which were yet to be sold. Lin Xun got bags of grains from them, plus the flesh and blood of nearly 30 beasts, he didn’t need to worry about food for some time to come.

The only thing troubling him was that Shia’s appetite increased day by day. Like a bottomless pit, her stomach needed to be filled with more and more grains and meat everyday. If things kept going like this, Lin Xun really couldn’t be sure how much longer before they ran out of food.

But anyway, he didn’t need to worry about it for now.

While eating, Lin Xun asked, “Shia Zhi, where are your parents?”

Shia Zhi shook her head, chewing on a piece of delicious meat.

“Then what about your home? You remember anything about that?”

Shai Zhi thought for a while, shaking her head again, “I’ve lived with Uncle Bear since I could remember”.

Looking at her being all tranquil and serious, Lin Xun felt strange somehow. It never occurred to him that this little girl in front could live in the mountains from childhood.

“Who’s Uncle Bear?”

“You already met him the other day.”

Reminded of the big barbaric bear he saw in the mountains the other day, Lin Xun got shocked again, then asked, “Are you talking about the beast killed by the barbarian that day?”

These words got Shia Zhi frown a bit. She raised her head and replied with a serious face, “Don’t talk about it like that.”

“Sorry, I meant no disrespect”, Lin apologized immediately.

He still felt strange though. No wonder the language Shia Zhi spoke was so hard for him to understand. How could he ever imagine that she was raised by a big bear!

But something still didn’t add up. That was not a kind of speech for beasts, but an entirely different language.

“I don’t know nothing about barbarians or whatsoever, but I will kill him one day to avenge Uncle Bear”, Shia Zhi uttered these words, full of steadiness in her clear and onyx-like eyes. Then she continued hunching over her plate again.

Being interrupted, Lin Xun forgot to ask where she learnt about her old language before and started to recall the duel between those two mighty spiritual practitioners in Spirit Sea Realm the other day.

One in a jade robe flying on sword, obviously a tough figure from Ziyao Empire; the other called Voodoo-barbarian, shouldn’t be someone strong from the empire.

He could still remember that the real target of the barbarian then was not him, but Shia Zhi.

With the strange and complicated language she was speaking, Lin Xun couldn’t help but think, maybe she came from somewhere outside the empire!