A small child, tied up, was being kidnapped by a demon sect operative. Jaded and annoyed, the operative dropped the kid off at the demon sect headquarters. The Su clan gig was sweet. Meals were full, and cultivation resources were plenty. Now, he had to burn his cover. He had to lose all the privileges that stem from being a Su Clan goon.
He was nevertheless loyal to the demon sect. Time after time, he would get taken advantage of before meeting the demon elder Fu Ru. After coming under the demon elder's wing, he was able to see through hypocrisies. He was naive no more. All the backstabbing and cruelty were par for the course for the brutal world he was living in. The kind world depicted by so-called righteous sects was nothing but a sham. It was a ruse to have you let your guard down. When your guard is down, you won't expect the kinds of behaviors cultivators exhibit when profits and losses are involved. In contrast, the brutal world depicted in demon sects' ideology was more in line with the truth.
While he was ideologically aggrandizing himself and his cause, there was a kidnapped child under his arm. He was very good at mental gymnastics that put himself above others. In actuality, he was just a bottom-feeding scum. He never had a spine. He was acting like a pushover, looking like a pushover, attracting the worst people. He surrounded himself with wolves. Every time he gained something, it was harvest time for wolves. The demon sect he loved so much was just blatant and shameless about the illegitimate acquisition of wealth.
He delivered Su Ning to the demon cult. It was out of his hands now.
Luo Geming looked down upon the girl in front of him. Sure, she had superior roots but... she was a girl. Between him and Emperor, one of them had to possess the girl's body if they were to make use of her. In other words, one of them had to become a lady.
Emperor Huo and the Six Wings Demon Venerable looked at each other. They wondered which one of them was going to take the hit. "Untie her!" Luo Geming bellowed. "Listen, brat. You will use the manual I tell you to cultivate."
Su Ning's mouth was untied at last.
"Shrieeeeeeek!"
Luo Geming was displeased by Su Ning's constant screaming.
"Silence!"
Su Ning was startled, thus she shut up for a second, but then,
"SHRIIIIIIIEEEEEK!"
She was rolling on the ground, pulling out her hair. She was too young and too stupid to cultivate complicated scriptures. She was to start with simple and safe manuals, and after she laid a good foundation and grew up, she would be able to cultivate the Huo Emperor scripture.
The search resumed for the superior spirit root juniors.
Meanwhile, at the Shoushan Sect, Wang Feng was studying his own dao marks. He found that if divination involves inventions made by other people, it was falsified because equations involving unknowns with infinite possibilities are incalculable. Wang Feng speculated the same property of being impossible to divine applies to things or persons that receive outside-universe influence.
The invention rule didn't apply to Wang Feng himself. Wang Feng's dao marks were perfectly aware of Wang Feng's body. That included his brain. All the possible inventions he might make weren't unknown when it comes to calculation.
There was another way to block divination involving copious amounts of dice during decision-making. Every dice throw multiplies the possibilities by the number of dice surfaces.
Every time dice are thrown, the spiritual qi cost for divining related matters increases, making it impossible to divine something in the process.
Gambler dens were blind spots for Wang Feng.
Wang Feng was not downcast by this revelation. He had spent a whole previous life without any qi-related activities and was sure he could manage with holes in his karmic defense. Everybody else was doing fine without divining things all the time.
Meanwhile, Shi Hong was getting nervous because Wang Feng had been relatively silent lately. He decided to use relatively tame means to achieve some semblance of control over Wang Feng.
He summoned his assistant and said to him, "Tell Wang Feng that his martial attainments are satisfactory and he has been cleared to take on missions. In fact, as a disciple with no backer, he is obligated to complete one mission per month."
There was nothing like legitimate administrative power to exercise control over people. Missions were not even that dangerous. Shi Hong just wanted to have some feeling of control over his life back. Was that too much to ask?
The assistant bellowed "Yes, Sir" and left the room.
Why couldn't Wang Feng be more like him? Always obedient, responsive, and ready to command. Why must he terrify The Thousand Puppets Venerable so?
The missions were nothing dangerous - escort a caravan here, mine some spiritual stone there, dispose of some mortal bandits bloodlessly sometimes. Such bandits were bandits in name more often than not. Most of the time, they were just villagers who were starving and resorted to violence. The sect juniors would gather them up and sell them into slavery or serfdom. It was an option that was better than them starving or committing murder and robbery. No matter where terrible fates awaited the incapable.
Missions that involved fighting demon sects or monsters required a disciple to be at least twenty to apply. They also could not be issued by the sect to juniors for the same reason.
To Shi Hong's surprise, Wang Feng accepted the requests without a hitch. At least the boy wasn't a leech. Shi Hong could only hope Wang Feng wouldn't mess up some things, making an unfathomable move.
Wang Feng made his way to the missions hall. He took a mission regarding a traveling caravan.
Such traveling caravans would often hire escort agencies. Said escort agencies were often the subsidiaries of sects of the Shoushan sect, along with a few independent agencies.
The subsidiary sect agencies had the right to request extra hands from the main branch of the Shoushan Sect. That was what the mission was. Wang Feng, for good measure, divined the mission's auspiciousness. It was a very slightly ominous color. "Another weakness of divination," he thought. "This mission is what we call 'What needs to be done.' But since its benefits for me are minimal when time and effort are deducted, divination indicates a loss. Therefore, it manifests as ominousness."
Wang Feng also wanted to do something labeled as ominous and not under his control at least once. The result of this experiment would dictate if he was under the imprisonment of his environment or not. Wang Feng imagined a life in which he always did what was auspicious for him. Elder Ma had taught him well. He was not going to give up his will to the heavenly dao, becoming just another dao entity.
A caravan was to take low-grade spiritual peaches and exchange them with flower stems of the yang lily at the neighboring sect. Yang lily was significantly more valuable than low-grade spiritual peach.
Bulky goods called spiritual peaches, when exchanged with compact goods like Yang lily stems, allowed the caravan to procure extra goods for the return trip.
Sect disciples who participated in such expeditions had the right to one cart during the return trip. Divided by six disciples, every disciple had three-fourths of a meter cube usage rights for personal procurements.
Normally, this trip would be a great boon to a diviner like Wang Feng on account of figuring out what he can buy low to sell high within the Shoushan Sect territory.
Wang Feng mused, "Trade between two territories is either saturated, or clans have such a stranglehold in the economy that no one is able to sell things in large quantities without a clan connection."
Wang Feng was right on both counts. Trade between the two sects was so frequent that the prices of goods were nearly identical.
A person could also apply to the clans to be able to market their goods without problems. However, every clan would give traders such a huge slash on profit margins that if they accepted the terms, the entire endeavor of carrying goods around became pointless. Eventually, every competitor to the clans was pushed out of business or forced to relocate.
Clans that didn't deal in such predatory practices first went poor and then got swallowed by larger clans. They were confronted by one of the cruelest choices life often presented to people: "Be evil or suffer immensely." Clans that are still alive chose "Be evil."
When he assembled in the mission hall for the mission briefing, he found out one of the disciples who took the mission with him was Yi the bastard.
Yi approached Wang Feng.
"Brother Feng, I'm sorry for my behavior earlier." Wang Feng was happy. It was always good to have arrogant young masters become socially capable normal individuals.
"No problem, brother Yi. Life deals us with all kinds of circumstances."
"Brother Feng, my little sister went missing. I understand that you are good at divination. Could you divine her location for me? I will make it worth your while."
Wang Feng was worried for the little girl.
"I will divine her location for you. You don't have to pay anything."
"Thank you, brother Feng! I owe you a favor!"