The small, broken wooden hut once again fell into silence because of Mu Sui’s “sweet words.”

And in this silent interval, Mu Sui suddenly felt his body become lighter. The chest that Meng Ruji had pressed painfully yesterday was relieved of its pain, and some other aches he hadn’t paid attention to also began to disappear.

His drinking Nai River water was fake, but the medicine Meng Ruji brought back was real.

Not only did it not send him to the afterlife, it also cured some of his minor ailments…

“The medicine is taking effect.” Mu Sui said truthfully. “This medicine is very good.”

Almost the same effect as the pills researched and developed by their Zhuliu City.

“Good that it worked.” Meng Ruji covered her waistband and stood up. “It’s still early. I’ll go to the market and see if there’s any work to be done.”

Mu Sui looked into her eyes: “Did buying the medicine spend all your money?”

“Ten copper coins left.” Meng Ruji felt there was nothing to hide about this. Whether Mu Sui was the Lord of Zhuliu City or not, the current problem of eating still needed to be solved. “Rest well and let the medicine work more. I’ll be back later.”

Meng Ruji left once again.

Mu Sui suppressed the wave-like sense of loss in his heart each time they parted. After his emotions had settled slightly, Mu Sui listened carefully – there was no human presence outside.

He then took out the silver ingot from his bosom and, as before, set up a formation. He watched as Cinnabar’s phantom “grew” out of the formation.

“City Lord.” After a long while, Cinnabar finally connected with the stone on the other side, and the phantom became a real human figure. “Your subordinate just retrieved the Golden Staff from Chiying Hall and hasn’t had time to find Tuzi yet…”

“What’s the deal with the medicine for Nai River water poisoning?” He asked with a stern face as soon as he opened his mouth.

Cinnabar was startled on the other side: “Has the City Lord accidentally ingested Nai River water? If there’s any remaining silver money, your subordinate can travel day and night to deliver it to the City Lord.”

“Handle your affairs. I don’t need you to worry about things here. I’m asking about the price change of these pills, why the remote and impoverished market can also have pills for sale?”

Hearing that Mu Sui sounded strong and showed no weakness, Cinnabar put down his worries but scratched his head, answering somewhat awkwardly: “It’s Tuzi.”

That rabbit again…

Mu Sui’s expression became even more unpleasant.

“After you left, some medicine makers emerged. Tuzi said we needed to stabilize Zhuliu City’s medicine business, so she consulted with the stewards and adjusted the prices of some finished medicines. Among them, the pills for Nai River water poisoning were adjusted from the original twenty silver to seven silver, then distributed to various medicine shops. The intention was to squeeze out other medicine makers…”

Hearing this, Mu Sui was already pinching his brow.

Cinnabar continued: “But unexpectedly… although the prices were adjusted, there weren’t that many people poisoned by Nai River water who needed the medicine. Moreover, for those who could originally afford twenty silver, whether the price was adjusted or not didn’t matter. For those who originally couldn’t afford it, even seven silver was still unaffordable… so… this is one of the reasons why the city’s treasury is now empty.”

“The money I left after departing was for you to select the next capable person from among yourselves and help him achieve his wishes, not for a half-wild rabbit to squander.” Mu Sui’s voice was ice-cold. “If you don’t want to return to the mortal world, you might as well jump directly into the Nai River and scatter the wealth, rather than giving it to a rabbit for entertainment.”

Cinnabar lowered his head to take the scolding, not daring to make a sound.

“What are you holding in your hand?” Mu Sui saw that Cinnabar was still carrying a half-person-high iron cage.

“Oh… following the City Lord’s orders, I’ve already retrieved the Golden Staff and am now preparing to find Tuzi and lock her up…” Cinnabar asked carefully, “Should I not use a cage?”

“Too big.” Mu Sui said. “Get her a smaller one. What I want is for her to maintain her original form.”

Hearing the fire in Mu Sui’s voice, Cinnabar immediately agreed.

Mu Sui said nothing more, directly dispersing the formation and sweeping away the traces on the ground with his foot.

When Tuzi was just a rabbit, several stewards in Zhuliu City had indulged this rabbit in every way. He knew this rabbit had some ability to make people happy. Now that she had become human, she had charmed a group of people into disrupting Zhuliu City’s rules with her and depleting the treasury.

In the Realm of No Retention, money was money, but also power, and even more so, spiritual resources. If it were just one or two stewards being unclear-headed due to “nostalgia” and playing along with her, that would be fine. But now it was clear that Tuzi had gotten a whole group of people to fool around with her. This rabbit, after becoming a spirit, might not be as simple as Cinnabar described.

Cinnabar taking the Golden Staff to confine her could probably only contain her temporarily. What was important was that he himself needed to return and regain control.

He must quickly trick out the method for using the Inner Core.

But now…

Mu Sui glanced at the peeled oil paper from the pill discarded on the ground, his eyelids slightly lowered.

A seven-silver pill, coming here, even if the medicine shop owner marked it up by one or two silver, wouldn’t be considered black-hearted. How much money Meng Ruji had on her, Mu Sui knew all too well – wasn’t it just the eight silver he gave her yesterday? Now she had ten copper coins left…

She was willing to spend almost all her money, power, and spiritual resources to buy a pill…

For him.

A “little savage” who had stolen her Inner Core and wasn’t even familiar with her.

If it had been before yesterday, when Meng Ruji didn’t know how to use silver money from the Realm of No Retention to invoke magic, that wouldn’t be surprising. But now she knew so many uses for silver money.

She still chose this way.

Sincerity wasn’t rare; what was rare was remaining sincere after experiencing worldly affairs.

Meng Ruji had lived so long and reached this point, yet was still willing to trust strangers and save the suffering. Mu Sui asked himself – he couldn’t do it.

He picked up the oil paper that had wrapped the pill, slowly smoothing out the wrinkles on it, flattening it, then folding it neatly and putting it in his bosom.

He thought that he indeed couldn’t do it, but what he could do was trust his path, keep walking, walk until dark, and never look back.

Meanwhile, the sincere Meng Ruji, after leaving the small broken wooden hut and reaching a secluded spot in the forest, looked around to confirm no one was there, then immediately took out the gray-black stone stuck in her waistband.

She threw the stone hard on the ground while cursing: “Can’t you count?”

The stone went “bang” and transformed into human form. Mo Li smoothed his hair and clothes, pretending to be weathered as he complained: “Little Meng, you can’t treat an old person like this. I’m old with creaky bones. If you drop me, I’ll break soon. And if you yell at me again…”

Meng Ruji wasn’t buying it and directly interrupted: “I told you to jump twice if you recognized him. How many times did you jump? Don’t you know in your heart? You better explain!”

“This still needs explaining? Jump twice to confirm he is, don’t jump to confirm he isn’t. Jumping once means I’m not sure if he is or isn’t, right?”

He explained, and Meng Ruji’s anger got stuck in her throat.

Damn it, she thought this old immortal made some sense!

It was logical!

But!

“How can there be an answer like ‘not sure if he is or isn’t’?” Meng Ruji didn’t understand. “Don’t tell me you’re going to say your memory is bad because you’re old?”

“I still remember the Lord of Zhuliu City’s appearance clearly. It’s just that when I saw him back then, he was already twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. Now looking at this person, although he looks very similar, his age seems to be only sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen – just a youth.”

Mo Li’s words made Meng Ruji frown as well:

“When immortal cultivators reach a certain level of cultivation, their appearance just stops and no longer ages with time, or rather, aging is delayed. But I’ve never heard of anyone growing backwards.” Meng Ruji guessed, “Is it a disguise technique?”

“In the Realm of No Retention, without money, you can’t use magic. Little Meng, you should already know this, right?”

She knew this, which was why on her first day in the Realm of No Retention, she was walked like a dog by Mu Sui. Without a single coin, no matter how skilled she was in magic, she couldn’t use it.

So Mu Sui wouldn’t be disguising himself in the Realm of No Retention.

Moreover, even on Xuejing Cliff in the mortal world, during their brief encounter, Meng Ruji remembered that Mu Sui already looked like this.

“If it’s not a disguise technique, what is it?” Meng Ruji asked. “Has he become young again?”

“Hard to say.” Mo Li guessed. “Maybe they’re fraternal brothers.”

“Fraternal brothers…” Meng Ruji looked at Mo Li speechlessly. She held back, but still couldn’t suppress the sarcastic words in her mouth. “Yan Tianjun, are you just a stone now? Your brain doesn’t work anymore? Which family’s fraternal brothers would give birth to a younger brother ten years after the older brother was born? Huh?”

Mo Li pouted, looking completely innocent: “If becoming young again is possible, what’s so difficult about giving birth to a brother ten years later?”

Meng Ruji: “…”

Although it sounded absurd and infuriating, it made some sense!

Indeed, both were possible!

How could she dismiss it so definitively?

Seeing Meng Ruji unable to speak for a long time, Mo Li smiled. On his overly pale face, when he smiled, his red thin lips became even more conspicuous: “So did I jump wrong? I just wasn’t sure.”

Meng Ruji rubbed her chest, which ached from anger, and finally decided to turn away and not look at Mo Li’s nightmare-inducing face.

Meng Ruji murmured to herself: “The most likely scenario is that he is the Lord of Zhuliu City. He crossed the river some time ago, but for some reason appears younger… “

Mo Li interjected: “Isn’t the most likely scenario simply that they just look alike?”

“Shut up.” Meng Ruji cursed, continuing to organize her thoughts: “He returned to the mortal world, then for some purpose came to steal my Inner Core. Unexpectedly, he was struck by lightning along with me to the Realm of No Retention, once again…”

Speaking of this, Meng Ruji couldn’t help but start feeling sorry for Mu Sui.

A thousand gold pieces to buy back his life…

A thousand gold pieces…

How much effort must it have taken to return to the mortal world, and now, with one lightning strike, everything was back to square one.

He also became her life-sustaining object, became foolish, remembered nothing except eating, and daily circled her seeking cuddles and hugs, opening his mouth to call “sister, sister”…

The Lord of Zhuliu City…

If he recovered his memory, would he kill her?

Just thinking about switching places, Meng Ruji felt that if someday Mu Sui returned to Zhuliu City, became the Lord of Zhuliu City again, and found a way to restore his memory…

Then his first action probably wouldn’t be simply and happily taking her, this “sister,” to spend a thousand gold pieces to return to the mortal world together.

He would probably… want to erase this past, right?

Meng Ruji fell into deeper contemplation.

At the right moment, Mo Li, who was idly playing with his hair, said quietly:

“Little Meng, in the Realm of No Retention, if you become partners, you can share half of each other’s wealth.”

Meng Ruji was pulled from her contemplation by this sentence:

“Hmm?”

Meng Ruji thought for a moment, then her attitude toward Mo Li finally improved a tiny bit:

“Why don’t you elaborate on that?”

Mo Li smiled: “No need to elaborate, it’s just the literal meaning.” After speaking, he sighed, pretending to be sentimental: “I heard that the Lord of Zhuliu City is also respectfully called Qianshan Jun because his wealth can pile up into a thousand mountains. Sharing half with his partner would be at least five hundred mountains. Supporting me in old age wouldn’t even require one mountain.”

Meng Ruji looked at Mo Li: “You…”

“I… have no other meaning.” Mo Li leaned close to Meng Ruji and spoke softly in her ear: “I just saw that there’s a fool who likes you. I’m old and can’t bear to see sincere feelings go unreciprocated.”

After he finished speaking, he moved away from Meng Ruji’s ear.

Meng Ruji looked at him, but seemed to see a face full of abacus beads…