Not long after, as the night echoed with battle cries and flickered with fire, Lu Yang slowly approached a house near the southern gate with his newly acquired horse.
Stopping at the entrance, he lifted his head to look at the sign hanging above the door, his face clouded with sorrow.
This was none other than his family home, where he had spent the happiest years of his life. A while ago, when thinking about a safe place to leave his horse near the southern gate, his old home came to mind.
Since no one would visit this decrepit house, it was an ideal spot to tie up the horse. Entering the yard with the horse, Lu Yang walked slowly, glancing around.
After securing the horse in a corner where no passerby would see it from the doorway, Lu Yang started to wander around the yard, intending to take one last look before leaving town for good.
Until two years ago, this house was filled with people, home to a happy family. Now, overgrown plants covered broken furniture, and insects and small rodents had made it their home.
Lu Yang quietly walked through the rooms, now barely recognizable as rooms and covered with cobwebs. 'Might as well check my old room one last time before I go,' he thought, moving to the back of the house. He stopped at a room with a broken door lying on the ground and slowly entered.
As he walked around his old room, expressionless, he remembered his father pointing to a recess in the wall next to his bed and saying, "Son, if anything happens to us, I've left enough money here for a while. Don't open it unless you absolutely have to."
Walking past the dragged and torn bed, he carefully examined the wall. Under the faint moonlight shining through the half-collapsed roof, he spotted dents in the wall. 'I'm sure they looted whatever was hidden here too,' he thought.
Still, he continued to trace his fingers along the wall, trying to recall the exact spot his father had pointed out back then. Just as he was about to give up, his fingers grazed a stone that moved slightly.
'Was that my imagination?'
'I'll try pulling the stone out just in case.'
Scraping away dried mud and dirt around the stone with his fingers, Lu Yang pulled it out with some effort and saw a dusty pouch tucked into the recess.
'There's actually something here!' Excitedly, he reached in and pulled out the dust-covered pouch, setting it down. Before opening it, he cautiously approached where the door used to be and looked out into the yard.
A few seconds passed. 'Hmph… who would come here in the middle of the night to this abandoned place? I worried for nothing,' he thought, shaking his head and returning to the pouch.
Unaware of it himself, this habit of hyper-awareness he had developed over the past two years could be a vital survival skill in the martial world. Even when he first entered, his gaze was constantly on alert for any traces or signs of movement around him.
After all, in this world where people lived, it wasn't just the strong that preyed on the weak; the weak also had ways of overcoming the strong in certain situations.
Sitting with his back against the wall, where he could see the doorway, Lu Yang untied the mouth of the dust-covered pouch, one eye always on the entrance.
The pouch was neither too heavy nor too light. As he untied it and felt the contents, Lu Yang thought, 'This cold texture... Is it paper?'
As he felt inside the pouch, his spirits lifted, thinking he had found money, and he began to pull out the contents excitedly.
The first cold item he grasped felt like a small stone, so he held it up to the moonlight to get a better look and realized it was an Earth-Stone the size of his thumbnail.
Lu Yang was so shocked to move for a few seconds and then he quickly stuffed the stone between the folds of his clothes as though afraid someone might see it.
'Could this really be an Earth-Stone? I can't believe my father hid something this valuable here,' he thought, taking out the other cold, metallic pieces and tucking them away with haste.
Holding the pouch, which still contained something papery, Lu Yang considered the items he'd already taken out, thinking, 'Three Earth-Stones, two silver coins, and three gold coins. Hahahaha! Looks like I'm rich now.'
In Wu Town, most people were at the Martial Apprentice level and needed to consume large amounts of ordinary beast meat to support their daily needs and martial bodies.
For a level 4 Martial Apprentice like Lu Yang, three copper coins could cover his food and drink for a day, so with two silver coins worth about two hundred copper coins in the town, he had enough money to last him for months, not even accounting for the three gold coins, each worth about seventy silver.
Thinking of the Earth-Stones, each no larger than a fingernail and usually sold for about ten gold coins when seen in town, Lu Yang could only imagine the effect the larger stones he had would have if anyone found out about them.
Once his excitement settled down, Lu Yang reached back into the pouch, holding the last papery item, and pulled it out.
Setting the pouch aside, he carefully unfolded the smooth, high-quality scroll, revealing strange patterns and some writing he couldn't quite read in the dim light. Holding it up to the moonlight to examine more closely, he could make out what looked like a doorway at the bottom of the torn sheet.
On the torn scroll, with its upper half ripped away, strange symbols were inscribed between what appeared to be two feet resembling the base of a gate. Behind the symbols, a perfectly proportioned figure was shown seated in meditation, as if positioned beneath the gate. However, with the upper half of the paper missing, only the lower half of the figure was visible, leaving its full form unclear.
Lu Yang couldn't understand the scroll's symbols or drawings, but he sensed it might be the most valuable item in the pouch.
After running his fingers over the scroll's smooth surface for a while without understanding, he carefully returned it to the pouch.
He untied the strap of his cloth bundle, which was tied across his chest, pulled it to the front, and tucked the pouch carefully between folded, clean clothes before sealing the bundle tightly and strapping it back on his shoulders.