Shaking his head, the masked man in green shirt completely ignored the other party's teasing and hints, and asked the other party seriously about the situation in the city that never sleeps.

Real estate, medical care, food, clothing, culture, transportation, marriage, entertainment, medicine refining, human trafficking, etc., all industries have developed quite well.

Jiang Li was surprised to find that almost all the needs of a cultivator could be met in this city.

You know, for a city to develop, the demand for population is the top priority. Only sufficient demand and consumption can drive the development of an industry.

According to current statistics in the world of immortal cultivation, on average, there is one person with spiritual roots for every six thousand mortals.

However, due to various reasons, not all children of the appropriate age can get the opportunity to take the Immortal Fate Stone test. Therefore, only one cultivator is born in every ten thousand mortals.

If you calculate it this way, even the worst cultivator in the early stage of Qi training is actually a small group picked out of a million in the entire human population.

Based on the total population in the previous life, one ten-thousandth of eight billion people would be only eight hundred thousand.

Putting them all together, it's barely enough to accommodate the population of a city.

Jiang Li originally thought that the population of such a group must be very small, and the so-called city was nothing more than a larger market, a settlement composed of a large number of lower-class mortals.

But he obviously overlooked the vast territory and huge population base of this world.

Jiang Li had never expected that this city that never sleeps could gather so many cultivators and develop to this extent.

After chatting for a while, the female cultivator found that the green-robed monk ignored her instructions, so she could only give up.

She ran to the small room next door and took out a token that was still hot.

“Sorry for the long wait. Here are your permanent residence permit and entry and exit permit.”

"This golden token is a symbol of your distinguished status. From now on, you can enter the city directly by showing it."

"You can also fly freely in the outer city, but there are many adults living in the inner city, so please don't take off in the inner city."

The other party also mentioned some precautions, but for a Jindan cultivator, many terms were actually extremely relaxed, and there were basically no restrictions.

"I see."

The man in green shirt took a token and a permanent residence certificate which was similar to a contract paper from the other party. The formalities here were completed.

Turning over the golden token, on the back it reads "Owner: Qingshan Jushi."

This city that never sleeps is called a registration place, but in fact, even the name can be made up at will, not to mention private information such as origin, cultivation, spiritual roots and attributes.

They could not force a Jindan cultivator to hand over his secrets.

After leaving the wooden building, Jiang Li did not insist on flying over the outer city as he had said before, but walked all the way in by himself.

The outer city area of ​​this city that never sleeps is inhabited by a large number of mortals.

Most of them have special skills, and many of them were once famous masters in the mortal world.

But here, they are just serving the noble and senior monks, the lowest level of society.

Jiang Li also saw a large number of Qi-cultivating practitioners here.

Perhaps they came here for life or for their dreams, but they couldn't afford to live in the luxurious inner city and could only live in the outer city with ordinary people.

It is said that the mayor of this city that never sleeps was just an ordinary handyman here. Later, he rose through hard work and eventually became the mayor of this city.

This story can be said to be very inspiring. It has been passed down to this day and its history is probably no shorter than that of the Sutra Valley. It has inspired countless monks to fight for it all their lives.

But there are only a few who succeed in the end.

When passing a street corner, the man in green turned his head and looked. In that direction, there was an inn.

This is a large inn located on the edge of the outer city. It covers a very large area and appears to be even expanding.

His figure paused for a moment, then continued walking towards the inner city.

A few passers-by on the street glanced at the man in green shirt inconspicuously, then lowered their heads and continued doing their own things.

The arrival of a strange golden elixir could not fail to arouse vigilance and attention, and some necessary surveillance measures were unavoidable. The man in green shirts obviously noticed this look, but he didn't care much, which was a gesture of goodwill to the City That Never Sleeps.

But underground, out of sight, when the man in green shirt paused for a moment, a root with pointed ends and thick middle had instantly drilled into the ground from under his feet.

The roots were like fish swimming in water, moving freely under the ground, and their speed was surprisingly not slow at all.

The roots crept underground towards the direction of the inn and reached the basement of the inn silently.

And on the signboard of the inn, there were three big characters written: "Man Jiang Hong".

Genxu was familiar with the place and found an underground secret room in the Manjianghong Inn.

This secret room is entirely cast with molten steel, making it an unbreakable entity. A layer of spiritual carvings is also painted on both the inside and outside of the room to resist escape techniques.

Ordinary cultivators are simply unable to sneak in. Even if they break through the iron wall by force, they will trigger the formation and be discovered by its owner.

But in one corner of the underground secret room, the cast iron wall was missing a hole, which was covered with a floor tile whose color was similar to metal.

If you don't look carefully, you can't find it at all, but the tree roots didn't take any detours at all, they just lifted up the floor tiles and came in.

A tree root as long as an arm drilled out of the soil, twisted twice, and began to expand and deform rapidly. Soon, the Qingshan hermit who had just appeared appeared in the secret room.

It turned out that the person who had just walked into the inner city was just an empty shell, and the root that drilled into the ground and sneaked into Chencang was the real body.

But at this time he was not wearing a mask, and the exposed face looked a little creepy.

It was a stiff face covered with wood texture, or rather, this face was simply carved out of wood.

If the group of scaly monsters from that time were brought here, they would definitely be very familiar with this green-robed monk, because this was the inverted statue that they had worshipped for such a long time.

Jiang Li's second parallel consciousness finally accepted everything from his predecessor a few days ago. Then he was surprised to find that the statue part, which had always been believed to be the trunk of the Nine Netherwood, could actually separate from the tree and act independently.

Although one cannot be too far away from the main body of the Nine Nether Wood, it is still much better than always using its roots to entangle people.

Jiang Li's original body was participating in the competition and couldn't leave. There were many things that were not suitable for him and his sword cultivator clone to do given their identities and cultivation.

After thinking it over again and again, he still felt that it was not cost-effective to let Jiuyoumu follow him just as a bodyguard.

In the end, he decided to let the second clone act alone.

In order to make it easier for Jiuyoumu to move around, he even brought out the Yin Burial Coffin with him.

The second clone snapped his fingers, and several oil lamps hanging on the wall lit up automatically, illuminating the small secret room.

There aren’t many things, just five soul-collecting bags.

During the time he was away, the Manjianghong Inn received more than 50,000 ghosts.

Jiang Li was very satisfied with this.

After he switched to practicing the Nine Netherworld Taoist Scriptures, the ghosts he needed for his practice were many more than before!

Now, he was a big consumer of ghosts. Without any replenishment during this period, the ghosts in the burial coffin were already running out of money.

He took out the Yin Burial Coffin and poured five bags full of souls into the coffin, which finally added a lot of fresh blood to the coffin.

With the concentration of spiritual energy in the coffin still increasing, it won't be long before these 50,000 souls can become useful ghost soldiers.

I don’t know how many souls Yan Hong will be able to bring back from Yinnan Kingdom. Considering the population of Yinnan Kingdom’s capital, the number should not be small.

Putting away the soul, the second clone pushed open the trapdoor above the secret room and walked out.

Here, it was still a basement. But unlike down there, the air here was hot and the sound was noisy. There were forty or fifty children wearing the uniforms of the outer disciples of the Sutra Valley, surrounding a huge furnace and smelting metal.

This is one of the businesses of Manjianghong shop.

Yan Hong would purchase large quantities of ores of different qualities at low prices, and after smelting, he would make them into metal ingots that met the specifications and then sell them at a fair price.

Generally, larger stores will choose to directly refine the materials into weapons and magic tools and sell them, which will obviously bring in much higher profits.

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But Man Jianghong is now in its infancy, and under him are only ghost market craftsmen whose skills are barely better than those of ordinary people, and they are simply unable to refine magic weapons independently.

So I had to settle for the next best thing and take some jobs that didn't require much technical skills to earn some hard-earned money.

Jiang Li took a rough look and found that there were forty-six people working in this underground workshop. They were all very young, ranging from ten to fourteen years old, and half of them had not even started to practice Qi.

Yan Hong acted quickly. Jiang Li had just talked about it for a few days when this person came to him.

These forty-six people are all outer disciples who have just joined the Sutra Valley this year. They are still young and their cultivation is shallow. They are also within the protection period of the sect, so they don’t necessarily need to come out to carry out missions.

However, the Man Jiang Hong mission, which paid well and took good care of newcomers, was hard for them to refuse.

Senior Brother Jiang Li and Senior Brother Yan Hong are really good people! Their work efficiency is very low, and it is actually not worth the salary they get.

But Yan Hong didn't care much and just told them to work with peace of mind and not to think too much.

But today, an uninvited guest came to their workshop.

"My dear guest, have you come to the wrong place? The dining area is upstairs."

A disciple wiped the sweat from his face and looked at the clone, but the coal dust on his hands had rubbed his face black.

The target customers of Manjianghong Inn are all kinds of monsters and ghosts. Jiuyou's clone looks like a tree monster, so he is naturally considered to be a guest who has taken the wrong path.

"Zhao Asan, the wood element spiritual root is in the early stage of Qi training, not bad."

The second clone reached out and grabbed a wooden sign on the other person's chest, took a look at it, and was very satisfied.

These disciples all have wooden plaques with simple content like this hanging around their necks, which makes it easier for them to identify and manage their subordinates.

And under the wooden sign, there is an inconspicuous black dot.

The black dot means that they are on a list of 2,121 people in total.

Jiang Li had specifically instructed that the disciples on the list should be concentrated as much as possible and arranged separately from other ordinary disciples.

So these forty-six people are actually all targets.

The second clone stretched out his hand and grabbed the other person's neck, lifting the seemingly honest and simple boy into the air.

"Don't pretend in front of me."

"Oh, I almost forgot. Before the pseudo-spiritual root grows to a certain extent, it cannot affect the host's mind."

The hands of Jiuyou's clone gradually tightened like an iron hoop. Zhao Asan's face flushed red and his eyes bulged.

A moment later, suddenly his greasy black hair began to turn white from the ends, his muscles lost elasticity, his skin became dull and wrinkled, and his life was being quickly sucked away by something!

"My dear guest! This is the Man Jiang Hong Inn, which is owned by Sutra Canggu. We are all outer disciples of Sutra Canggu. If you don't stop, we will call for help!"

The commotion from Jiang Li's clone's side was quite loud and attracted a lot of people's attention. Several outer disciples nearby shouted this while running quickly towards the exit.

However, a coffin was thrown over and blocked their way.

"Don't you know by now? I asked you to come here to smelt the ore because it is soundproof and you can't run away."

Dense and flexible roots suddenly stretched out from the coffin, entangled the remaining forty-five people and pulled them into the coffin little by little.

The cultivation level of these disciples is almost insignificant, and they have no power to resist at all.

Poof! After a moment, Zhao Asan opened his mouth and spat out a slightly shriveled seed.

These forty-six people were the more than two thousand children who were discovered by Jiang Li and others during the mission in Southern India and eventually brought back to the sect.

Thanks to them, Jiang Li was appreciated and rewarded by the sect. With the help of the scripture-transmitting token, he obtained the Heart Sutra of Guanyin, which has benefited him greatly to this day.

But because of this, Jiang Li planted 2,121 time bombs in his own sect.

Jiang Li had always kept this matter in mind, but he had not taken any action because he was unable to explain the reason directly to the sect, and he was also afraid of being retaliated by the parasitic monks who might be lurking in the dark.

However, there is cause and effect in everything.

Without the achievements of these two thousand pseudo-spiritual root disciples, he would not have obtained the sutra-transmitting token, and without the sutra-transmitting token, he might not have obtained the Heart Sutra of Guanyin.

It was precisely because of the second incarnation of the Guanyin Heart Sutra that he successfully mastered the Nine Nether Branches, which could then be used to resolve these unstable factors.

It turns out that the person who tied the bell must be the one to untie it.

You have to deal with the consequences of your own actions.

Although such beneficial causes and effects, the more the better.

Jiang Li controlled the spiritual root clone and threw the seed into the coffin.

In the coffin, the trunk of the Nine Netherwood branch looked a little shriveled at this time.

The statue part separated from the main body and became Qingshan hermit in the Jindan stage. The trunk part of the main body was only supported by a layer of bark, which looked a bit miserable.

But even so, it is still no problem to deal with a few newbies like this.

One by one, the seeds of spiritual roots were squeezed out of their bodies.

It is quite troublesome to generate a new spiritual root seed. Not only does it require specific resources, but it also takes time to accumulate slowly.

When the seed-carrying scale monster was captured by the caravan, the scale monster tribe attacked the caravan with great fanfare just for a seed.

When he takes all the more than 2,000 spiritual root seeds in the sect for himself, won’t the spiritual root branch be heartbroken and go crazy?

(End of this chapter)