Huh? Isn't this an adventure kingdom building game?!-Chapter 775 - 746: Open Sesame

To this day, the situation can be described as thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river.

The descendants of the Five Great Merchants have become extremely wealthy through relentless exploitation and plundering;

The descendants of the Li Family, however, have failed to produce commercial geniuses, and when Li Dehai took over, he became increasingly restless, always dreaming of accomplishing an immortal legacy, hoping to restore the family’s glory.

Thus, he intensified his investments and failed repeatedly, causing the vast family business to rely on the Firestone mine to maintain its operations within just over a century.

Yet, Li Dehai’s ancestors had sworn a fierce oath: to maintain a lifelong alliance with the descendants of the Five Great Merchants, to advance and retreat together, and to never stir discord with unscrupulous tactics, nor to covet the Firestone mine.

The ancestors of the Five Great Merchants likewise vowed a fierce oath: if they ever forgot the debt of survival or broke their promise, the bloodline of the five families would be eradicated!

The fierce oath restrained the ambitions of each generation’s patriarchs and shopkeepers, maintaining a delicate balance between the parties.

Until the Shi Family produced a prodigious youth, Shi Kesong, who exhibited a remarkable talent for cultivation from an early age and was chosen by the elder to be the next patriarch, receiving personal guidance.

As expected, he lived up to the high expectations, mastering the art of cultivation at a young age. After taking over the family’s business, he thrived under the elder’s revered reputation, the family’s strength, and his own accomplishments in the realm.

His youthful arrogance and lack of experience in handling major events naturally led to the emergence of flaws such as being lecherous, arrogant, and conceited.

Coincidentally, the Li Family produced a ruthless individual, Li Dehai, who would stop at nothing for profit.

The two had always been at odds with each other, disliking one another.

Li Dehai felt that without the ancestors’ lifesaving support, the Five Great Merchants wouldn’t be where they are today and believed that the Firestone mine should have been surrendered back then. The ancestor had graciously allowed them to profit, yet he remained disgruntled;

Shi Kesong, on the other hand, considered Li Dehai a fool unfit to be a merchant, squandering resources that belonged to the Five Great Merchants.

When he was infuriated by Li Dehai’s slander and learned about the huge profits from Firestone, intense emotions clashed within him, almost leaping out from the words of the Soul-Searching Notes.

He dismissed the so-called gratitude long ago, and despite the fierce oath being mentioned frequently, he had never witnessed any divine retribution.

Greed surged within his heart, and he decided to kill, enabling the Shi Family to monopolize the Firestone business on Trapped Snake Island, earning millions in Immortal Jade!

Thus, Li Dehai, who always believed the fierce oath restrained the opponent and lacked vigilance, met his end in Silver Valley.

"So it turns out so much happened during the day that the Five Great Merchants became at odds, deciding to go to Sand Hill City together at night for a confrontation."

Jiang Yuan, after reading the Soul-Searching Notes, couldn’t help but muse, "Their grudges run deep, and this matter seems to have... nothing to do with me!

Even if I hadn’t taken the side job, without the Firestone to sell, Li Dehai would still have been forced by old clients to go to Silver Valley to find Shi Kesong for a solution. The two were already at odds, and with no Firestone to deliver from Silver Valley, they surely would have quarreled over the goods from Moon Snail Mountain, so it doesn’t matter if I was involved or not."

With this thought, he felt much more at ease. He destroyed all the Soul-Searching Notes he had roughly skimmed through as they were of no value, saving space.

Checking the notes of those small-time minions, he found even less of value, discovering that one Little Demon Cultivator’s note from a side branch of the Qi Family mentioned: — How terrifying, there really are ghosts in Silver Valley!

Jiang Yuan chuckled at this, thinking that in the Cultivation Realm, having ghosts was perfectly normal. With so many ghosts in the Netherworld and so many Ghost Cultivators, how could a Demon Cultivator be afraid?

Moreover, the cities above the wilderness were inhabited by Demon Cultivators and Demon Beasts, so even if there were Ghost Cultivators, they wouldn’t cause much trouble, likely just another idle piece of gossip.

The Soul Searching Technique had this particular downside, drawing out only the subjective information retained in the person’s mind, making it difficult to discern truth from falsehood. Even little Demon Cultivators could recall trivialities with certainty, making it seem somewhat amusing.

He worked diligently until daybreak, finding the continuous mining excruciatingly tedious.

Jiang Yuan decided to leave the paperman in the cave, carrying his own mining pickaxe to dig on his own, also dispatching a few paperman horsemen followers to help if any small creatures were encountered.

They would dig as deep as possible, twenty thousand meters was no small feat, accumulating little by little step by step.

Transporting back to the small courtyard, he remembered he left in a hurry last night, leaving some details unaddressed.

Moreover, what state is the courtyard in after the invisibility settings?

He had never seen it before and couldn’t quite imagine it.

Could it be that the entire courtyard disappeared, leaving only a scene of green mountains, hills, and rivers at Shuiyun Lake?

Exiting the small courtyard from the front door, Jiang Yuan stared in disbelief, rubbed his eyes, and looked again, ensuring he wasn’t mistaken — Shuiyun Lake had vanished!

After a glance around, he realized it hadn’t disappeared but had, more accurately, been "folded" as if the whole world was like a two-dimensional picture, with two lines folding to conceal the middle part.

Isn’t this the mountain folding that Miss Qi and Jun Yan mentioned?!

Originally, Shuiyun Lake covered a spacious square piece of land, with a river running through, dividing it in two.

Now, beside the western mountain range was the bamboo forest on the eastern side of the small courtyard; the southern forest and northern cliffs had merged, with Jiang Yuan standing at the courtyard’s entrance, bamboo forest behind, and a small hill in front.

Stepping forward into the courtyard’s range, the spacious courtyard, beautiful scenery, and slightly elevated terrain that had merged in from the west unfolded before his eyes; stepping back, the courtyard once again vanished.

"Chirp chirp!"

As Jiang Yuan marveled at the novelty, he saw a bird fly from the bamboo forest directly to the trees on the small hill, evidently perceiving the entire courtyard as folded up, non-existent in both sensory and spatial terms.