Before I left, Chan had me change into the sturdy hemp robes of an itinerant farmhand, confiscated the jade token that marked me as a member of the Palace, and replaced my storage bag with a leather pouch that contained nothing but a handful of copper coins. After entering the City of Selfless Courage, I would have no status and no resources. All I would have to rely on would be the crescent moon spade that was strapped to my back.

Of course, I would still have access to both my abnormally powerful soul and all the contents of my inner world, but Chan didn’t need to worry about these things. Telling me to take part in this Return to Simplicity had been an earnest suggestion in his role as my mentor, and I planned to follow through with it.

Once I was prepared, Emperor Chan brought me to the base of the mountain and gave me a final warning. “After entering the city, you need to be careful. Cultivators use their Returns to gain new experiences, and you can never be too certain about who’s a regular mortal and who’s a crouching tiger. While some will choose to become warlords, others will spend their time as beggars, and not everyone will be wearing their weapons openly.”

If my goal was to gain experience with my weapon, having me play the role of a beggar instead of a warlord seemed like a slightly odd decision on Chan’s part. However, it wasn’t too far removed from some of what I had done in the past, so I chose not to comment on it.

“You will run into many people who are simply looking for a fight, and you should oblige them, but do nothing to create lasting enmities. And, do not kill anyone. If you decide to play the hero and cut down the personal disciple of some Martial Ancestor, no one in the Palace will be able to protect you from their wrath, understood?”

Depending on the behavior of such disciples, a few lasting enmities might be inevitable, but I would try my best to avoid them. While it wasn’t uncommon for the pampered scions of notable individuals to have far too strong of a belief in their own superiority, anyone who was able to catch the eye of a Bloodline Tier cultivator should be beyond such pettiness.

Having said everything that needed saying, Emperor Chan and I bid each other farewell, and I began my foray into the City of Selfless Courage.

Selfless Courage was called a ‘city,’ but in truth, it was a sprawling leviathan that consisted of five full empires. Each of these empires occupied a ‘region’ of the city—north, south, east, west, and central—and each region contained ten divisions that were ruled by Martial Kings. These divisions were then broken up into individual boroughs, with each borough being under the rule of a Martial Lord.

Upon entering the city, I found myself in the Palace Borough.

Located in the lee of the Palace of the Herb Sovereign, the buildings of the Palace Borough were made from living trees that were connected to the roots of wood qi that extended out from the base of the mountain.

With tens of thousands of people in the Palace Borough, these living buildings were tall and packed tightly together, leaving little space for any other plant life. So, like my workshop deep within the mountain, the walls of these buildings were decorated with a variety of flowers, vines, and mosses. Really, the only notable difference between the Palace Borough and the Palace itself was that the streets were cobbled with stones, rather than petrified wood.

The first thing that I needed to do was to find a place to stay. But, as I walked down boulevards that were shrouded by the canopies of the surrounding tree-buildings, I came to an uncomfortable realization: I didn’t have enough money.

With dense foliage covering every building in sight, spending time in the Palace Borough meant steady increases to one’s wood affinity. Because of this, inns near the mountain—where this effect was the strongest—charged gold, and even the public houses on the far reaches of the borough charged silver. So, as Emperor Chan had sent me away with only a few coppers, spending time in the Palace Borough wasn’t viable.

Of course, even if I could have stayed here, doing so would have been a mistake.

The local Lord had set up guard patrols to ensure that there were no vagrants sleeping on the borough’s streets, and these guards did their best to ensure that the borough’s residents didn’t get too rowdy. The Palace Borough was meant to be a safe place where mortals could live in peace while improving their wood affinity. If my only goal had been to relax and take a break from cultivation, the Palace Borough might have been an ideal vacation spot, but that wasn’t my reason for coming here.

So, I headed out the eastern gate to explore what lay beyond.

Technically, the area directly outside the walls was still part of the Palace Borough, and its residents still contributed to the Lord’s karmic energy gains. But, it was outside the jurisdiction of the Lord’s laws, and the Lord’s guards were only allowed to interfere with people who had broken the Saint’s prohibitions against cultivations. Instead, this territory was under the direct authority of its Martial King.

Because of this, if the local King chose not to protect a place, it would quickly devolve into a no-man’s land where a tin-pot dictator could rule with an iron fist.

The lands outside the Palace Borough, however, were spared such a fate.

As I exited the borough’s eastern gate, the first thing I noticed was that all the dense, wooden apartment buildings had been replaced with squat, stone, single-family dwellings. The second thing I noticed was that, instead of covering every inch of available land, these stone dwellings were tightly clustered around massive, multi-story greenhouses that dotted the landscape.

Roots from the Palace of the Herb Sovereign were continuously absorbing the area’s wood qi, making this a poor place to grow herbs. But in return, they exuded a powerful vitality that boosted the growth of mortal crops, giving the area outside the Palace Borough the city’s most productive farmland. As such, the division’s soldiers—the King’s soldiers—patrolled the area constantly, ensuring nothing disrupted the city’s food supply.

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Walking down the dirt road that led away from the Palace Borough, I ran into more than one of these guard patrols, and each of them glanced warily at the crescent moon spade that I had strapped to my back. However, since I wasn’t violating any laws, and since I was clearly on my way out of their territory, none of them made any moves to detain me.

After about half an hour, the road I was walking down took me near to one of the large greenhouses, so I decided to stop in and check it out. As I approached, walking through the dense cluster of stone buildings that surrounded the place, a middle-aged man stepped out to greet me.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before. You new around here?”

I smiled and dipped my head in greeting, checking the man in energy vision as I did so. “Hello, yes. I was just passing through. Was wondering about how this place operated. How much the houses cost, how much you get paid, that kind of thing.”

The man snorted in amusement. “What, lookin’ for a job?”

Just as I was about to respond, the man continued, cutting me off, “Don’t bother. Farms are already full. Even supposin’ they weren’t, there’re dozens of locals dreamin’ of grabbin’ an empty slot.”

I dipped my head again in acknowledgement. “Understood. And the answers to my question?”

The man turned to the side and hawked a large wad of spit onto the gravel next to the road. “Well, we don’t be gettin’ no ‘pay.’ Houses are free, and we get a portion of what we grow. Grow enough, we can sell it for a bit extra. That’s all.”

“I see. Thank you for your time.” Then, giving the man one last dip of my head, I continued on my journey.

That farmer was a strange person. He was the first ‘mortal’ that I had ever seen who had an inactive core nestled in the center of his abdomen. Was it even right to call him a mortal? Like a newly minted Sovereign, he should still have full access to his will-lock, so even without qi, wouldn’t he still be a Martial Lord?

Also, why would a Martial Lord become an ordinary farmer? Was this an herbalist’s version of a Return to Simplicity? Instead of becoming an itinerant warrior, could I spend this Return as the mortal version of an alchemist? What would that even be? Some form of apothecary?

Emperor Chan wanted to focus on developing a deeper bond with my weapon, and I would attempt to follow the course that he had set for me, but I couldn’t stop a part of me from latching onto the idea of taking my Return in a different direction entirely.

After I passed a final greenhouse, I didn’t run into any more guard patrols, and the quality of the stone buildings slowly declined until what surrounded me was little more than a field of rubble.

By this point, I had already been walking for well over a dozen hours. It was getting late, I had nowhere to sleep, and I hadn’t eaten all day. So, when I came across a building that proclaimed itself to be the “Cross Slope Inn,” I let out a sigh of relief. With only a handful of coppers in my pouch, I might need to spend the night curled up in the corner of some long-destroyed building, but at least I wouldn’t have to do it on an empty stomach.

Upon entering, I found an empty tap room with several tables covered in dust. The inn’s windows were tightly shuttered, making the place dark and dingy, and the only light came from a weak Rank 1 formation that had been inscribed into the ceiling.

For a moment, I thought that the inn might have been abandoned, but the moment I stepped inside, a burly, broad-shouldered man appeared from a back door.

“A guest? Welcome. Make yourself right at home!”

I smiled and dipped my head in acknowledgement. “Thank you, sir.”

As I walked over to one of the room’s tables, the man studied me with a gaze that was far too intent for my liking—especially the crescent moon spade that was strapped to my back. This gaze wasn’t exactly covetous, though. It felt more like he was sizing up a prized pig.

In return, I glanced at him using energy vision, but I didn’t pick up on any noticeable energy signatures. There was no sign that he was a Returned Ruler, and there were no refined weapons hiding under his robes.

“All we have to eat these days are steamed buns. Do you want meat or vegetable?”

I would have normally preferred meat, but Emperor Chan hadn’t left me with much coin, and since I hadn’t seen a single farm animal in the area, I doubted that meat would come cheap.

“Vegetable, please.”

I considered asking how much this would cost, but it no longer mattered. I needed to eat, and if that meant dipping into the wealth of my inner world, then so be it.

“Right away. Right away.” The man’s expression flashed with some unreadable emotion as he gave me a half-bow. Then, he disappeared into the inn’s back room.

Over the next several minutes, I heard the clangor of a far too busy kitchen before it faded to a deathly silence.

As I sat in that strange tap room, I was overcome by a sense of foreboding, and I began to wonder if I would soon need to put my weapon to proper use.

Breaking me from my thoughts, the innkeeper appeared in the doorway with two steamer baskets in hand. He placed the first one in front of me. Then, he sat down opposite me and began eating from the second.

“Nice to meet you, Brother. The name’s Zoeng Cing, proprietor of this fine establishment. Who might you be?”

I gave the man a polite smile as I picked up one of the buns and tore it in half to study its contents. “Su Fang.”

“So, it’s Brother Su. Well met. You came by way of the Palace Borough, right? You the Palace’s newest Returnee?” Zeong Cing did his best to fill this question with cheerful indifference, but I detected dark undertones that made me wary.

“You could say that.” The moment these words left my mouth, a murderous glint appeared in the innkeeper’s eyes, so I knew I needed to proceed carefully. “Can’t say as I have too much of a connection to the Palace, though. My mentor’s a traitor who abandoned the Palace to join a clan of humans. He still works for them, occasionally, going on trips to recruit new members, but he convinces anyone who’ll listen to leave and join one of the sects.”

The more I talked, the more the man across from me relaxed, but one thing that I had said stuck with him. “Join a human clan? You mean your mentor’s one of them half-breeds? One of them urgan?”

Zeong Cing looked at me with a slightly disgusted expression before letting out an annoyed snort. “Well, I guess it’s better than working with those damn plant bastards.”

As I ate, I carefully checked my food for poisons, but everything seemed fine, and the innkeeper showed no signs that he was waiting for me to suddenly keel over. Still, I kept a mental lock on one of my detoxification pills, just in case.

Once I was finished, the man held up four fingers. “That’ll be four copper. Six if you want a room for the night.”

I shook my head and passed the man four small coins. “Thanks, but I don’t have enough to spare.”

In response, Zeong Cing just grunted. He might not have poisoned my food, but that didn’t mean he wanted to spend any more time with me than necessary.

After leaving the inn, I walked off the road and searched through the field of destroyed buildings until I found one that was still partially intact. Then, I pulled on earth qi in the surrounding environment and tried to lay down a series of protective formations.

Unfortunately, I failed in this attempt and was instead forced to inscribe my formations into stones that I pulled from my inner world. I laid down three rings of Rank 1 defensive formations and a single stealth formation. These wouldn’t be enough to save me from a major attack, but they would give me the time I needed to wake up and defend myself.