"Weâre staying in this hall, sit wherever you like."
Chan Zi steered the boat to Lake Heart Island in the Yunmeng Swamp, carrying Ah Gou into the shack.
"We?"
Chen Xuantian put his hands in his sleeves and followed inside, looking around at the little shack that resembled a duck pen.
Well, itâs just a duck pen, where fishermen come to release ducks into the lake, occasionally using it for shelter from the wind and rain.
"Didnât you see just now? If you want to survive here, you can only work for the Nangong family.
Those heartless, rotten guys give you little work for much, canât even fill your belly, and still beat people.
If thereâs no one to lend a hand, many canât make it through winter..."
Chen Xuantian calculated with his fingers,
"So you pick them up to feed them, and even eat the ducks they keep here?"
Chan Zi turned to look at him,
"Am I supposed to watch them starve to death? Besides, I already settled the bill for the ducks. Whatâs wrong with your hand? Do you need it bandaged?"
Chen Xuantian was speechless, had to put his hands back, glanced at Ah Gou sleeping soundly on the straw,
"How many people under you?"
"Theyâre not under me, they call me boss because Iâm the oldest. Plus, they donât recognize the word Chan... Thirty-three."
Chen Xuantian looked at him,
"Only thirty-three? This place smells like itâs been home to at least a hundred, no?"
Chan Zi looked expressionless at Ah Gou,
"They come and go. Those who can earn a living on their own, I send away, a few lashes wonât kill anyone.
I donât have great skills, just take care of the young, the injured, the hurt, bringing them back for a bite to eat."
Chen Xuantian wandered around the room, glancing here and there,
"Heh, at least you have some self-awareness, those thirty-three people then."
"Theyâre over by the Beast Cage. When the Hunting Team goes into the mountains, thereâs work, then thereâs food. This place can sometimes be a hideout but canât come often, thereâs a monster in the lake."
So Chen Xuantian noticed too, in the back room of the shack, several wooden planks set up to block a huge gap, apparently something from the lake crashed in, nearly tearing the whole shack apart.
"How did you guys survive?"
Chan Ziâs voice paused for a moment,
"It was Master who fought it off..."
Chen Xuantian sighed,
"Is that so, my condolences."
"Condolences for what? My Master ainât dead! Heâs taken the Hunting Team to the Southern Border."
Then Chan Zi came out of the basement, holding a burlap sack,
"Here, didnât you want to see the goods? This is it. Itâs not stolen, itâs found."
Chen Xuantian was also speechless, had to look at the stuff inside the burlap sack.
Dirty, stinky things that looked like the remains of skin and fat from a demon beast, seemed quite dead for a while, all the meat had been gnawed clean, only a disfigured skeleton remained, but from the extraordinarily intense aura and very sturdy bones of the remains, it mustâve been a high-level carnivorous predator.
"Whereâd you find it, any more?"
Chen Xuantian picked up a bone from the sack, examining it closely, almost wanting to lick it.
Chan Zi frowned, squinting at him,
"Dug it out from a dragon fishâs belly. That fish was terrifyingly large, not found in Yunmeng Swamp, probably rushed in from the Li River, stranded by the lake shore.
We saw it first, but the Nangong family snatched it, still made us transport it to the Beast Cage for cleaning...
When I was gutting the fish, I saw this bone was also thick, didnât know how long it had been inside and wouldnât digest, might be something good, so I dumped it out to sell.
Who knew that unscrupulous trader would renege on the deal, only willing to pay cow bone prices, even threatened to harm me and snatch my goods... If youâre really hungry, Iâve got some biscuits here."
Chen Xuantian wasnât bothered by the dirt, arranged the bones on the ground into a skeleton, marveling at it,
"The shape is like a bull, with the body of a sheep, a human face, eyes beneath the armpits, tiger teeth, human claws... Tsk tsk, this place actually has a roe owl. And thereâs something stronger that could eat it, the Southern Border must have a companyâs armed wetware production base..."
Although Chan Zi couldnât understand what this chubby fellow was saying, this look of seeing an old friend clearly meant he had a plan, so he tentatively asked,
"How much is this thing worth?"
"How much is it worth?"
Chen Xuantian chuckled, slapped the bone in his hand,
"This is a Divinity Transformation Level Heavenly Materials Treasure, probably just a step away from becoming an Evil Devourer, unfortunately, it failed in crossing the tribulation and fell here.
If there werenât any middlemen making money, and it went directly to the Mountain Man, it would be of immense cause and effect. Not to mention feeding thirty-four of you, directly taking you in at the Mountain Gate and sheltering Core Formation would be deserved.
But if you take it out to sell, not a penny would it fetch, instead, itâs a huge trouble, once recognized for what it is, itâd bring a fatal disaster.
It wouldnât just be seized by force, but theyâd need to destroy the corpse and erase all traces of this Immortal Fate, then only would they be at ease to swallow it whole."
Chan Zi squinted at him,
"According to you, youâre going to take this hot potato to swallow yourself?"
Chen Xuantian chuckled,
"I canât swallow it. Youâve seen what happened to that dragon fish, unless itâs one of those rare, once-in-a-millennium, cherished anomalies by heaven and earth, favored by the Great Dao.
Otherwise, a Divinity Transformation Level Heavenly Materials Treasure can only be enjoyed by an old monster at the Divinity Transformation Realm, slowly simmered in an Alchemy Furnace, secluded for painstaking refining.
Cultivation, Immortal Fate, luck, any slight lacking canât enjoy such blessings, greedily swallowing and forcing it down would rather choke you than nourish, endangering itself.
Otherwise, how could there still be hundreds or thousands of Heavenly Materials Treasures left in the world, they would have all been eaten up at the sight, wouldnât they?"