The greasy, heavy wooden door of the Cloud's Rest Inn swung open beneath a leather-gloved hand.
Noon sunlight poured through without mercy, illuminating every mote of dust drifting in the threshold like suspended ash after a cremation.
A hulking silhouette stepped across first.
Mo Fan had ditched his signature tattered servant rags. Instead, the [ Shadow Leopard Cloak ] draped across his shoulders—all dark fur and barely-contained savagery.
His bronze skin gleamed with a cold, metallic sheen under the harsh light, and combined with that massive panther-skull hood pulled low over his brow, he radiated the kind of energy that said:
I just walked out of somewhere very dangerous, and I'm disappointed nothing tried to kill me.
His hands hung empty at his sides. His expression? Bored. Like a young master taking a leisurely stroll through his family's private gardens.
Half a step behind and to his left, a silent shadow followed.
The figure wore loose-fitting black combat robes, dark as spilled ink. Thick-soled ox-leather boots. A rust-pitted sword wrapped in black cloth strapped across its back.
A plain black veil covered its face—but spiritual energy shimmered across the fabric, projecting the illusion of a middle-aged swordsman with sallow, jaundiced skin and eyes cold enough to freeze blood in the veins.
Mo Fan stepped forward with his left foot.
The black-clad figure mirrored him exactly. Left foot. Same instant.
Their stride length was identical. The way their clothes rippled in the breeze—identical. Like watching a man walk alongside his own reflection in a dark mirror.
The street's ambient chatter died.
Just for a heartbeat.
Just long enough for the wrongness to register in the hindbrain of every cultivator within eyeshot.
But the most unsettling detail? If you listened closely to that black-robed bodyguard—really listened—you'd notice something was missing.
He wasn't breathing.
No rise and fall of the chest. No whisper of air through nostrils. The figure moved like a slab of walking black ice, radiating a keep-away chill that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with wrongness.
The crowded street parted before them.
Not because Mo Fan demanded it. Not because anyone was shoved aside.
Every rogue cultivator who wandered within three meters of the black-clad figure felt it—a primal shudder crawling up their spine.
The body's ancient warning system screaming: death, death, too close to death.
It was a physiological response to concentrated death energy, pure biological revulsion hardwired into every living thing.
But to the uninformed observer? It looked like something else entirely.
"Hsss... such pure Frozen Malice Qi!"
A weathered old Daoist running a roadside stall hunched his shoulders and muttered to his companion.
"That one in black has to be cultivating some peak-tier Ice-attribute art, or maybe a Malice Dao technique. Just the overflow from his aura is enough to make my bones ache."
"Look at those footsteps—silent as shadow. That's the mark of a movement technique trained to perfection."
A scarred man with a broadsword strapped to his back eyed the pair with naked wariness.
"And that young one leading? No visible weapon, but that blood vitality... tsk, tsk. Bronze skin like that? That's a Body Cultivator who's already crossed into the intermediate realm."
"Don't provoke them. Don't."
The old Daoist's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "This kind of 'young master plus death-sworn guardian' combo? There's always a background we can't afford to offend. Probably some core disciple from a cultivation clan, out gaining worldly experience."
Whispers spread down the street like wildfire catching dry grass.
Mo Fan kept his eyes forward, but his enhanced hearing caught every word with crystal clarity.
Beneath the shadow of his hood, the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
"Frozen Malice Qi? Perfected movement techniques? Cultivation clan?"
He wanted to laugh. God, he wanted to laugh so badly. But he had to maintain that ice-cold expression, that untouchable young master facade.
The so-called "Frozen Malice Qi" was just Mo Yan's (Summon No. 001) lingering corpse-stink that hadn't fully aired out yet.
The "silent footsteps" were because a skeleton frame weighed about as much as a bundle of dry sticks.
And the "perfect synchronization"? That was purely because Mo Yan's current INT stat wasn't high enough to support walking with personal style—it could only mechanically copy its master's movements like a puppet on invisible strings.
But none of that mattered.
Results were results.
"Misunderstandings work in my favor."
Mo Fan felt those hungry, probing gazes transform into wary respect. People who'd been sizing him up as potential prey now averted their eyes and gave him a wide berth.
A rare warmth spread through his chest—the unfamiliar comfort of not being the weakest thing in the room.
"As long as nobody starts trouble, I'm the prettiest boy on this street."
This "fox borrowing the tiger's might" sensation... for the first time since arriving in this death-trap of a market district, Mo Fan understood what it felt like to be privileged.
The two figures—one living, one not—cut through the market district.
Half a day remained until sunset. Mo Fan was in no rush to return. He wandered with purpose toward a cacophonous plaza—[ The Hall of Mundane Affairs: Market District Branch ].
It was a massive open-air square. The air hung thick with the smell of sweat, cheap medicinal herbs, and desperation.
Several enormous wooden notice boards dominated the plaza's center, plastered edge-to-edge with bounty notices in every color imaginable. It looked like a mortal magistrate's wanted-criminal wall—except colder. More callous.
Every fluttering paper represented someone's potential death sentence dressed up as "opportunity."
Rogue cultivators swarmed in and out like ants around a disturbed hill. Some tore notices from the boards with barely-contained excitement, clutching them like winning lottery tickets that might change their fate. Others queued at processing desks with ashen faces, haggling with bureaucrats over a handful of Spirit Stones while trying not to look like they were one bad day away from starving.
Mo Fan stood at the crowd's edge.
He didn't push forward immediately. Instead, he narrowed his eyes and studied the chaos through the gaps between bodies.
To him, this wasn't just a job board.
It was a System. A ruthlessly efficient social ecosystem grinding away.
The available missions covered everything: "Perform rain-summoning rituals for mortal villages." "Clear Rank-1 lesser beasts from farmland." Even "Locate a missing spirit pet."
But strip away the window dressing, and they collapsed into three core categories: exterminate monsters, harvest resources, protect mortals.
"Mortals are the foundation of cultivation society. More importantly—they're sect property."
Mo Fan's gaze lingered on one escort mission: Transport 100 age-appropriate children to the 'Infant Nurturing Hall' under Azure Cloud Sect's jurisdiction.
A picture began forming in his mind. The governance logic of Azure Cloud Sect—of the entire cultivation world—crystallized into sharp focus.
Mortals provided grain. Ore. Labor. And most crucially—children with Spirit Roots.
To the lofty sects, every mortal was an unscratched lottery ticket. The larger the population base, the higher the probability of hitting the jackpot: a child born with Heavenly Spirit Roots.
Sects protected mortals not out of compassion. It was sustainable farming. They were maintaining the size of the prize pool.
And these hordes of background-less, average-talent rogue cultivators?
In the sects' eyes, they were nothing more than consumable labor and outsourced risk.
The sects posted low-tier bounties. Let the rogues earn enough Spirit Stones to eat. This solved countless tedious, dangerous, low-reward problems—freeing elite inner disciples to focus on cultivation.
But the real genius? Risk transfer.
If an inner disciple died clearing a monster nest, the sect lost over a decade of investment—resources, training, potential.
If a bounty-hunting rogue died doing the same job?
The sect just re-posted the mission. No severance pay. No condolence letters. Not even paperwork.
Meanwhile, rogues with legitimate income streams didn't turn to robbery and murder. Social stability increased. Stable societies let mortals prosper and produce more resources. More resources meant the sect grew stronger.
A perfect, cold, efficient closed loop.
"This is literally just the gig economy—Xianxia edition."
Mo Fan watched the bottom-feeders shoving and clawing over scraps, some ready to kill each other for a few Spirit Stones. The corner of his mouth curled into something too bitter to be a smile.
"Bear all your own risks. Feel grateful for the opportunity. Sure, the pay is pathetic—but this system effectively suppresses the rise of demonic cultivators. Every unstable element gets absorbed into the framework and converted into cheap sect labor. Whoever designed this? Smart. Ruthlessly smart."
He filed the observation away and pushed into the crowd, Mo Yan following like a shadow.
"Coming through. Move."
The packed wall of bodies parted again the moment they registered Mo Yan's stay-away-or-die aura. A vacuum corridor opened straight to the notice boards, cultivators peeling aside like flesh recoiling from a hot blade.
Standing before the towering wooden boards, Mo Fan's eyes raked across the posted missions
[ EXTERMINATE ]: Clear Spirit-Devouring Rats from the area surrounding Qingmu Town. No quantity limit. 10 rat tails = 5 Low-Grade Spirit Stones. Rat carcasses belong to the hunter.
[ GATHER ]: Enter the outer Mist Forest and harvest Companion Demon Grass. 10 Low-Grade Spirit Stones per stalk. Note: Companion Demon Grass is typically guarded by venomous serpents. Accept at your own risk.
[ ESCORT ]: Guard a mortal merchant convoy to Black Iron City (100 li distance). Duration: 5 days. Reward: 20 Low-Grade Spirit Stones.
Mo Fan stroked his chin. A calculating gleam flickered through his eyes.
Sure, his servant status meant he couldn't venture far from the sect. Not yet.
But these missions? For someone with an undead army at his disposal?
This was a grinding paradise custom-built for his playstyle.
Kill monsters, gain EXP. Corpses get recycled into new units. Missions pay out Spirit Stones. And he could farm reputation with the sect—slowly bleaching his "suspicious newcomer" status into something respectable.
One fish. Four meals.
"Once I'm free to move... or once I need specific corpse materials... this is the golden highway. Legal killing plus profit. What's not to love?"
His finger hovered over the "Spirit-Devouring Rat Extermination" notice for a long moment, mentally sketching future routes and possibilities.
Behind him, Mo Yan stood motionless beneath its illusory mask.
Like an undrawn blade, corroded but patient. Guarding its sole sovereign in this noisy, dust-choked mortal world. Waiting for the next command to cut.
Mo Fan turned away from the board, a ghost of a smile playing beneath his hood.
"This world... interesting."