Chapter 113: Chapter 113: The Expansion of the Market
Wang strode into the forbidden archive, his eyes scanning the rows of decaying wooden shelves and dusty glass cases.
This was the place where the sect hid its most shameful secrets, forbidden curses, failed bloodline experiments, and illegal records of inter-realm interventions that violated the absolute laws of the Heavenly Dao.
He walked past the piles of useless scrolls, his supreme instincts guiding him straight to the very back of the chamber, where a small, broken stone altar sat in the shadows.
Resting upon the altar were the shattered remnants of a lower-realm tracking array, a complex, multi-layered magical mirror that had been intentionally smashed with a heavy iron hammer to destroy the coordinates.
The stone frame was cracked into a dozen pieces, and the central spiritual crystal was completely dark, drained of its energetic core.
Wang leaned down, his broad shoulders tensing slightly as he placed his hand over the broken stone pieces.
He closed his eyes, turning his consciousness inward to activate the ancient, divine detection senses of his primordial core.
He didn’t care about the physical damage; he was looking for the lingering, microscopic energetic traces left behind by the person who had operated the mirror during his disappearance.
For a long moment, the dark room was completely silent, save for the heavy breathing of the kneeling sages near the doorway.
Then, a sudden, violent spasm tore through Wang’s chest.
It wasn’t the painful, suffocating rejection he had felt when looking at the imitation face of Shen Mao. It was the exact opposite, a sudden, overwhelming wave of pure, intense warmth that rushed through his frozen meridian pathways like a summer tide.
Deep within the cold stone cracks of the broken altar, a tiny, faint spark of foreign spiritual energy was still lingering, trapped beneath the layer of dust.
It was an exceptionally unique, vibrant, and modern soul signature. It carried the faint, crisp scent of fresh mountain wind, the sweet aroma of milky popcorn, and an underlying aura of absolute, cool intelligence that did not belong to any traditional beast-clan female in the Upper Realm.
The moment Wang’s spiritual sense brushed against that tiny lingering spark, the heavy iron seals around his memory ocean vibrated violently.
A brief, blinding flash of a visual passed through his mind, a silhouette of a beautiful woman with cool, calm eyes, standing behind a modern white kitchen counter, holding a small, chubby white snowball of a cub in her arms.
The visual vanished as fast as it had arrived, leaving the seals tightly locked once more, but the impact on Wang’s heart was huge.
A sudden, sharp gasp escaped his lips, his crimson eyes snapping open as a massive, uncontrollable wave of raw emotion flooded his features.
The icy, indifferent mask he had worn since his awakening completely shattered, replaced by a look of profound, aching realization.
His breath became short and frantic, his fingers gripping the edge of the stone altar so hard that the thick spiritual wood began to turn to fine powder beneath his knuckles.
’Lin Wan...’
The name did not appear in his mind as a spoken word, but his soul recognized the exact shape of her existence with an absolute, unbreakable certainty. She wasn’t a ghost.
She wasn’t a dead memory. She was completely alive, down in the lower world, managing a sanctuary of her own while raising his children beneath the shadow of the enemy’s gaze.
"Patriarch! Are you unharmed?!" the eldest sage cried out in pure panic, seeing the sudden, violent fluctuation in Wang’s aura as the room’s temperature dropped by thirty degrees within a single second.
Wang slowly stood up straight, his face settling back into a mask of absolute, glacial calm, but his crimson eyes were now burning with a cold, terrifying fire that made the four ancestors immediately freeze in their tracks.
The confusion in his heart was completely gone, replaced by a ruthless, unyielding clarity. He knew exactly what Elder Shen had done.
"Elder Shen did not merely wipe my memories," Wang spoke, his voice smooth, low, and perfectly flat, yet it carried a deadly weight that made the entire underground tunnel vibrate. "He used this exact tracking array to coordinate with a faction in the lower-realm capital. They tried to isolate my female and my sons while my body was weakened, hoping to completely sever my connection to the lower world before my awakening could occur."
He turned his head toward the sages, his long dark hair swaying over his black robes like a curtain of silk. "The northern bird tribes are not his only allies. The people he is speaking to are currently holding the keys to the lower world’s central alliance. They believe that by keeping the boundary walls high, they can keep me trapped in the heavens while they hunt my family in the mud."
"What are your orders, Patriarch?" the four old sages shouted in unison, their old bodies trembling with a fierce, bloodthirsty loyalty as they pressed their foreheads against the stone. "We will deploy the elite shadow guards immediately! We will tear down the communication lines and bring the heads of the traitors to your throne!"
"No," Wang said coldly, a slow, highly dangerous smirk spreading across his handsome lips as he looked down at the tiny spark of Lin Wan’s energy on his fingers. "Do not touch Elder Shen yet. Let him believe this secret archive remains perfectly hidden. Let him continue his final preparations to send his reports to the capital below."
He walked past the kneeling ancestors, his loose black robes snapping softly in the cold air of the tunnel. "He wants to open a temporary spatial rift to send his primary forces down to finish the hunt. We will let him open that door. And the moment the boundary line thins... I will personally step through the rift, shatter their entire alliance into absolute dust, and bring my female back to sit at my side on the highest throne of the heavens."
.....
The soft, blue-gold sky inside the spatial sanctuary remained completely calm, but the activity inside the mansion’s lower storage halls had reached a fever pitch.
The heavy, mouth-watering aroma of freshly boiled sugar syrup, mixed with the sharp, crisp scent of crushed lemon peel and cold-pressed lavender oils, filled every single room.
Huge baskets of dried grass and thousands of small, beautifully polished clay jars were neatly stacked along the walls, waiting to be moved out to the world below.
Lin Wan stood beside the wide quartz counter in the kitchen, her long hair tied into a secure knot at the back of her head.
She wore a simple, loose fitting shirt and dark trousers that allowed her to move with quick efficiency. In her slender fingers, she held a long piece of smooth charcoal paper, carefully ticking off the inventory lists that Lanying had prepared during the night.
"The demand has officially passed our current production speed, sweet Wanwan," Lanying said, her graceful voice carrying a slight hint of breathless laughter as she sealed the final lid on a crate of herbal soap bars.
She wiped a stray drop of water from her elegant hands, her striking blue eyes shining with absolute admiration.
"The noble females in the capital are no longer just buying the soap to wash their faces. They have started melting the bars down into small perfume satchels to wear around their necks during the grand parties and assemblies. A single box of our secondary lavender batch was traded yesterday for three high-grade fire crystals and a map of the southern trade routes."
"We keep the supply tight," Lin Wan replied smoothly, her voice calm, level, and entirely business-like as she set her paper down. "The moment the capital nobility thinks they can get these items whenever they want, the price will drop by half. We will only release twenty jars of white sugar and fifty bars of milled soap every three days. If they want to ensure they get a share, they will have to fight each other at the eastern gate warehouse."
"Haha! They aren’t just fighting, Wanwan! They are practically tearing each other’s hair out in the streets!"
A thunderous, boisterous roar of laughter suddenly boomed from the back patio as Long Zhan strode through the wide glass doors.
His massive six foot six frame was packed tightly into his favorite pair of modern stretch-denim jeans and a fitted black tank top that showed off his massive, sculpted shoulders.
He was carrying an enormous wooden crate filled with raw, unrefined sugar beets on each shoulder, balancing the heavy weight as easily as if they were made of feathers.
He dumped the crates onto the floor with a solid, satisfying ’thud’, his violet eyes flashing with pure, childish excitement. "I just came back from checking the hidden arrays around the eastern warehouse. The Fox clan patriarch actually brought his entire private guard squad to camp out on the gravel road last night! He was wearing his grand velvet robes, sitting on a tiny wooden stool in the dirt, just to make sure the Bear clan didn’t steal his spot in the morning line!"
