The task of finding wine in the capital city did not seem like such a difficult one at first glance.
But the problem came with financing as well as supply...
"Great Cultivator Sir! I cannot afford to give you change for this banknote! Please have mercy on this lowly merchant!"
"My Lord! Please spare my life, we do not have the quantity of wine you have requested! We apologize!"
"Lord, your pockets are too deep for this small merchant! I cannot afford to serve you."
Mo Yangling grew increasingly irritated, as he went from shop to shop in the middle districts of the Capital City.
No matter where he went, he would receive a similar reply. There was simply no one who could trade him wine, and worst of all, the Golden Providence Pavillion also didn't sell mortal wines...
The stuff they did sell was the type of wines used by cultivators. When the monk inquired about the ingredients of said wine he received the expected answer...
'It is the fermented extract of a Middle-Rank Beast's gallbladder, mixed with grapes harvested from the Chen Lu Forest. Very high quality!'
Thankfully, the monk had not been offered to taste test it beforehand, otherwise he likely would've brought down the entire pavilion in a disgust-fueled rage.
They weren't about to make any exceptions and help him either since the Elder of that Pavillion didn't do favours for those he deemed unachievers.
Hell, at that point the monk just hoped someone would give him as many barrels of wine as they could and just scam him of the rest of the money!
But people were too scared to accept his bank note.
'Amitabha, money is as much of a blessing as it is a curse it seems...'
One banknote contained 1 million golden taels, this would normally be enough for the Monk to jumpstart his own winery.
But he really didn't feel like doing that.
'Do I really have to ask the king for a favour at this rate? Ah, the world really is unfair...'
As he mused to himself, he didn't even notice when he had wandered into a 'less-travelled street'.
That was when it happened, jumping down from ceilings all around him, 3 masked cultivators pointed crooked knives at the Monk.
"You! Saw you walking around with that stack of bills! Give it to us and we'll let you live..."
The tallest one among them spoke up first, his crooked knife pointed at Mo Yangling's neck.
The monk assessed them with a gaze, two were Martial Apprentices, and the other was a Late-Stage Martial Soldier.
"Amitabha... Are we really doing this shit?"
Needless to say, the poor outlaws caught the monk at a bad time.
The outlaws all took a step back, almost as if on instinct as the monk's gaze turned feral for a moment.
"Y-you better listen to us..." The Martial Soldier seemed to still be able to hold his composure, likely relying on the fact that Mo Yangling's cultivation couldn't really be judged due to his lack of 'Internal Energy'.
It was the reason why so many were unable to tell that the Monk was in actuality filled with Origin Energy. Few would think to use beast-sensing techniques to look at a well-known grand noble clan member or a human in general.
"Or what? Listen to you, or what? Let me guess, one of the shopkeepers I've run into today paid you to steal from me.
And you idiots really thought that someone carrying around that much money would be helpless to defend it..." The outlaw martial soldier seemed to be taken aback by how intimidating the 'rich noble' they were trying to rob was.
"Brothers, don't get scared! Let's show him what disobeying us means!"
But they weren't about to let go of the matter easily. It seemed that being non-intelligent was not uncommon in their line of business, as all three of them rushed towards the monk at the same time, one from each direction.
Mo Yangling didn't even bother moving as their knives came in contact with his clothes.
Instead, he finally decided to fully utilize the technique he had learned from the Dragon of the Valley, and in an instant, all of their knives broke to pieces, alongside the bones in their arms.
Their muscles twisted in unnatural ways as the shockwave reverted back to them tenfold, with the Monk applying his own Origin Energy to strengthen the measly original impact of the outlaw's hits.
'Doesn't seem to work that well with slashing attacks... But it hardly matters with enemies this weak.'
The martial apprentices didn't even get to scream before the monk grabbed the beads around his neck and threw them forward.
The Beads seemed to move on their own as they wrapped around the two bandits, pulling onto their necks and forcing them to crash into one another with great strength.
The Martial Soldier held onto his twisted broken arm, bones poking out of his skin as he looked on with widened eyes.
"W-what the he-"
But before he could even speak properly, the Monk's hand was already clasping his face, lifting him off the ground with ease.
"Amitabha, you young men are truly fortunate... You see, I am very much a peaceful man... I do not wish to kill you for all life is precious."
The outlaw couldn't help but sweat bullets as the man, no the devil in front of him bragged about his merciful demeanour and generosity after crippling his arm for life.
The Monk didn't let go of the man's face as he spoke either. He gazed into the Martial Soldier's eyes with a hint of sadism as he continued speaking.
"Let it not be your destiny to cross me again in such a way. Amitabha, at that point I wouldn't have any choice... For that would mean your destiny is to die. And what man could ever claim to stand above fate itself? Hoho~"
The monk then let go of the outlaw as soon as he finished speaking, his laugh still ringing into his victim's ears.
The Martial Soldier fell to the ground and immediately started crawling away, wanting nothing to do with the devil that he had just encountered.
Fortunately for him, the Monk no longer cared about the small-time martial soldier or his associates as he collected his praying instruments from the necks of the two unconscious martial apprentices.
'I'll just leave them here, I doubt it'll be much of an issue.
I should probably head to the bank... I'm sure I can work out something like a partial withdrawal from one of these bank notes, I can't really walk around with a few chests filled with gold taels after all...'
In the meantime, he continued to train his control over the energies within his body, as he often did whilst training or walking around.
He was studying ways to make himself even harder to detect. Hiding his strength until the right moment could be a useful ability.
After all, if he had attacked the king by surprise back there instead of just flaring up his energy at him then he likely could've done fatal damage.
Hell, he maybe could've killed the king, unless Guo Zhu had some weird mystic arts that could save his own life.
'That is very likely. These 'mystic arts'... It seems that that's what they call martial arts, which affect the world around them through Internal Energy.
A king would likely have quite a few trump cards, hell, most elders and above, likely have some sort of trump card on them.'
For the monk, he could easily think of all of his martial arts as 'Mystic Arts'. And he had a rather wide range of martial arts too.
That was not all either. All Origin Energy the Monk absorbed was stored in either his Dantian or his muscles, instead of just his Dantian.
That only really meant that he could perform techniques instantly without having the energy within his body travel much.
He had experimented quite a bit on his own, mused over his disappearing meridians too. But all in all, he didn't feel any weaker than before. Rather his body was only growing stronger.
'I can't possibly know what exactly is wrong with my body... I must search the libraries for any similar cases in history. But that can come later.
For now, I'll just focus on forging a proper relic to use.'
"You there! Stop in the name of the law!" A woman's voice took him out of his thoughts as he turned his head towards the source of the noise.
A rather short woman with long hair tied in a bun, her red uniform had the simple word 'Law' written on the chest area. A name tag on the other side allowed the monk to have her name and badge number instantly.
'Enforcer Qiu, huh? She's the equivalent of a cop, I guess. The king's laws are not going to apply themselves after all...'
The Monk looked unimpressed as he watched his new world's version of an annoying policewoman strut up to him and point her finger in his face.
"Did you just leave three men in critical condition in the middle of an alleyway?! In broad daylight no less!"
The monk, however, didn't feel like taking such baseless accusations.
"Amitabha, I have no clue what you are talking about. I am but a young man travelling in the path of life~"
"..." Enforcer Qiu looked the monk up and down, her eyes narrowed.
"You didn't even bother to clean up their blood off of your clothes!"
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Hello there!
Bit later to upload today, but was a bit busy, had those 2 birthdays today (ones I mentioned prior)
Anyhow, thanks for all the support on this book! It's been doing a lot better than I expected
Anyhow, hope you all have a great day/night!
If you want to support me and read up to 24 chapters ahead you can find me on Patr_eon by looking up 'VeganMaster'