A dull boom reverberated through the stone chamber.

Wang Hao coughed, waving away the acrid black smoke as he began the tedious task of scrubbing the charred Red Maple Furnace. The first attempt was a total loss.

It was a humbling reminder of the gap between tiers. The White Lotus Pill required a delicate balance of only eight spiritual herbs; the Foundation Establishment Pill demanded the synchronization of over twenty. The complexity was exponential. Inside the crucible, the medicinal essences clashed violently, turning the liquid volatile and nearly impossible to condense. Even with Wang Hao’s formidable Divine Consciousness, the mental strain was crushing.

It was no wonder major factions reserved this task for Tier 3 Alchemists. It wasn’t just about yield; it was about safety.

But Wang Hao didn’t let the failure linger. He had resources to burn and a clan to build. He spent half a day in meditation, recalibrating his mental state and analyzing the collapse of the formula.

Then, he lit the fire again.

Fifty days later, the heavy stone door ground open.

Wang Hao stepped out, his face drawn with exhaustion but his eyes bright with triumph. For the last month and a half, he had maintained a grueling pace: one batch every six days, followed by a single day of rest. Seven batches in total.

The first three were failures—tuition paid to the Dao of Alchemy. But once he grasped the rhythm, the successes followed. The fourth furnace yielded his first Foundation Establishment Pill. The fifth produced two. The sixth and seventh were perfect runs, yielding three each.

Nine pills.

If I had a high-grade Spirit Weapon furnace, Wang Hao noted silently, I could push the success rate to forty percent.

He ran the numbers. Three pills for the family candidates—Wang Wenyan, Wang Wenxiu, and Wang Yanyuan. Three to settle the debt with the Li family. That left three to take back to the main branch.

He still had enough herbs for thirty-three more batches. Even with a conservative thirty percent success rate, he was looking at nearly a hundred pills in the long run.

A hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators. That was a force that could rival a mediocre Golden Core sect. Of course, quantity only mattered up to a point; a single Golden Core master could slaughter ten late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators without breaking a sweat. But it was a start.

Wang Hao decided against refining the Divine Concentration Pill for now. The Divine Nurturing Fruit he possessed had been stored too long, leaking medicinal efficacy. Refining it now risked failure, and even a success would yield a subpar pill. Since a cultivator could only consume one in their lifetime, he refused to waste the opportunity on a defective product.

Moreover, his Divine Consciousness was already dangerously potent, outpacing his physical cultivation. The world often felt like it was moving in slow motion—a dissonance he needed time to integrate.

He turned his thoughts to his greatest secret: the Farm.

The Divine Nurturing Fruit was a Tier 3 spiritual fruit. In the outside world, these trees took a millennium to fruit and five hundred years to mature. Inside the Farm, time bent to his will, but the cost was steep.

Upgrading the soil to ‘Gold’ tier was exorbitant. The first plot cost fifty thousand Spirit Stones, the second a hundred thousand, and the third a staggering one hundred fifty thousand. He currently maintained only three plots of Gold Soil.

His annual profit hovered around one hundred thousand Spirit Stones. Expanding the Gold Soil further would cripple his cash flow.

The Farm’s internal economy was ruthless. In the outside world, an Essence Condensing Fruit could fetch ten thousand Spirit Stones easily. But the Farm judged it as a mere “Tier 2 Top-Grade” item, valuing it at a few thousand. The Jasper Moon Fruit suffered the same devaluation. Since he couldn’t deposit outside currency into the system, he had to grind for upgrades slowly.

Resource allocation, Wang Hao mused. One Gold plot for the Jasper Moon Fruit, one for the Divine Nurturing Fruit, and the last for the Gold Essence Fruit.

The standard Essence Condensing Fruits were currently in low demand, so the ‘Black Soil’ plots would suffice for them. The Divine Nurturing Fruit needed nineteen years to mature. The Flowing Yin Formation shaved off ten, leaving nine.

The Jasper Moon Fruit, however, was a cash cow he couldn’t bear to uproot. Besides, Wang Wenmei and the other female elders would never forgive him if he severed the supply of beauty-enhancing resources.

The return journey was quiet.

On deck, Wang Wenwu stood watch. The man was a stoic martial artist, a wall of silence. Wang Hao appreciated the quiet, standing by the rail as the sea breeze cleared the lingering scent of charcoal from his lungs.

Days later, the ship docked at Wanxiang City.

Wang Hao moved with efficiency. He liquidated the perishable monster beast meat and stored the unsold bulk goods on the other two vessels. He returned the leased ship, settled the accounts, and secured berths for their new fleet.

Only when the logistics were impeccable did he lead his group toward the southern district.

But the moment he stepped across the threshold of the Pill & Talisman Pavilion, the atmosphere shifted.

Wang Wenyan rushed out from the back, her face pale and haggard.

“Fifth Brother, you’re finally back,” she breathed, her voice tight. “The shop is in trouble. Big trouble.”

Wang Hao’s expression didn’t flicker, though his mind instantly shifted gears. “Calm down. Speak clearly. What happened?”

Wang Wenyan took a steadying breath. “The first two months after you left were fine. Following your instructions, we rationed the Face Preserving Pills, and traffic surged. But six months ago, the wind changed.”

She clenched her hands. “The wolves started circling. The surrounding shops formed a coalition. They undercut our prices aggressively. That we could handle, but then came the rumors. People claiming our pills were defective, that they caused cultivation deviation. Business has been bleeding out ever since.”

Wang Hao frowned. He had expected friction—the Wang family was a foreign entity carving out a slice of a lucrative pie—but a coordinated multi-shop strike suggested a deeper issue.

“We’ll discuss this in the secure room,” Wang Hao ordered.

Li Derong, concerned that the suppression of the Wang shop would bleed over to the Li family’s talisman sales, quickly excused himself to investigate his own storefronts.

Wang Hao led his clan members to the meeting hall in the rear courtyard.

“Everyone is here,” Wang Hao said, taking the head seat. “Wenyan, give me the details.”

Wang Wenyan laid it out. It was a classic suppression tactic: crude but effective. The Pill & Talisman Pavilion had been too successful, eating into the market share of established locals. Initially, the competitors held back, wary of the unknown background of this new store.

“But six months ago,” Wenyan said, shooting a sharp look at a trembling figure in the corner, “Wenxiu slipped up.”

Wang Wenxiu, a Qi Refining disciple, had gotten drunk and bragged. He let slip that they hailed from the Qingyuan Sect in the Thunder Peninsula.

To the locals of Wanxiang City, the Qingyuan Sect was a distant, second-rate Golden Core power. Far away. Weak.

The tigers realized the dragon was just a snake.

The harassment began immediately. They didn’t dare break Wanxiang City’s strict laws against physical violence, so they waged economic war. If Wang Hao sold an item for a hundred stones, they sold it for ninety-nine. Coupled with the slander and the exhaustion of the Face Preserving Pill stock, the pavilion’s reputation had cratered.

“Elders, it… it is my fault,” Wang Wenxiu fell to his knees, terror written on his face. “I shouldn’t have been drinking. But I swear, I only mentioned the Qingyuan Sect! I never mentioned Green Bull Market or the family specifically!”

Wang Hao looked at the kneeling youth. The boy was shaking. He knew he had likely just cost himself the Foundation Establishment Pill Wang Hao had promised.

“Hmph!” Wang Yanfeng slammed his hand on the table. “Even we Foundation Establishment cultivators walk on thin ice in this city! You, a mere Qi Refining junior, have the audacity to get drunk and run your mouth?”

“Enough,” Wang Hao raised a hand, silencing the elder.

“Get up, Wenxiu,” Wang Hao said calmly. “Even if you hadn’t spoken, they would have found out eventually. A determined investigation would uncover our roots. It was only a matter of time.”

He looked around the room, meeting the eyes of his worried family.

“There is an old saying: ‘The world bustles for profit, and the world throngs for gain.’ We touched their rice bowl; naturally, they want to break ours. If this is merely commercial warfare, I have ways to crush them.”

Wang Hao’s eyes narrowed slightly. “My concern is not the price war. It is the pan waizhao—the underhanded tactics. We are currently too light on the scales of power.”

“We’ve been gone nearly five years,” Wang Yanping muttered, his brow furrowed. “I wonder if the Old Ancestor has succeeded? If we had a Golden Core patriarch sitting in this hall, these local shopkeepers wouldn’t dare breathe too loudly.”

Wang Hao nodded in agreement.

He knew his own path to the Golden Core was a marathon of forty or fifty years. The Wang family couldn’t wait that long. Their only short-term hope was Wang Guang’an.

I need to go back, Wang Hao decided. I must deliver the Gold Essence Fruit to the Ancestor personally.