Ultimate True Lord

Dajing, Yanzhou, Wangyue City.

The dog days of summer are scorching hot.

Wangyue City is like a piece of brocade spread out, surrounded by low hills.

The main streets crisscross the city, with bluestone slabs dividing the entire city. The houses along the streets in the inner city are mostly black-tiled and white-walled, with a few blue brick shops interspersed, their eaves and corners upturned, uneven in shape.

On a street near the eastern market, crowds thronged, the air was filled with noise, and shouts of vendors rose and fell.

A quiet narrow alleyway nearby had a low stone placed against the wall, which could be used as a temporary desk.

Jiang Ming, dressed in gray cloth, avoided the scorching sun and squatted on the side of the bluestone, with a piece of rough, thin yellow hemp paper spread out in front of him.

"Brother, could you please help me figure this out again? I just can't seem to make sense of the income from the past two weeks."

At the alley entrance, a vendor, sweating profusely, walked in, wiping his brow with a coarse towel around his neck while handing over a slightly damp piece of coarse paper.

Jiang Ming took it and saw that it was just some scribbles. Most of these street vendors who made a living were illiterate, and their bookkeeping was a mess.

Sell ​​one item, draw a vertical line. Receive payment, circle it. Outstanding debt, cross it off. At night, when the accounts are tallied, the income and profit/loss are all a blur.

The lines on the rough paper were messy and chaotic, but fortunately, Jiang Ming had been working here for more than a month and practice makes perfect.

He picked up a thin stick, first gesturing it on the ground, then using a low stone as a tabletop, and wrote the sorted accounts on the back of coarse paper with charcoal sticks, listing them out one by one.

A moment later, the man who had sorted out the accounts left satisfied.

Jiang Ming's hand, blackened by charcoal, now held a copper coin engraved with the inscription "Jingning Tongbao". He sighed and stuffed the coin into the inside pocket of his clothes.

There's nothing I can do; I'm young and entered the industry late, so this is the price I get.

In addition, most of his customers are small vendors, so a simple accounting would only result in this amount.

Sometimes, if you encounter someone who is really penniless, giving them half a pancake, a steamed bun, or a small handful of vegetables can be enough to settle the debt.

Two months have passed since Jiang Ming transmigrated to this world. He has been making a living by helping people with accounting and sometimes writing letters home. In this world, which is similar to ancient China, being able to write and do arithmetic is already a great advantage.

At the narrow street entrance, vendors constantly come and go, and time passes by.

As the sun set, Jiang Ming stood up, stretched, and patted the dust off his pants.

The contrasting patch on the trouser leg is conspicuous, but the stitches are even and the seams are neatly finished, suggesting that someone in the family is very skillful.

He took a deep breath, and his stomach rumbled loudly, much to his dismay.

Jiang Ming raised his right hand. In the sunlight, a scallion pancake wrapped in dried lotus leaves was soft and fluffy with a wheat color. The surface was covered with a thin layer of oil, and the aroma of scallions mixed with the heat was tempting.

This is an old pancake vendor who had just asked Jiang Ming to write a letter home. Seeing how hard he had worked, he gave Jiang Ming a hot pancake as payment.

At the alley entrance, Jiang Ming looked at the scallion pancake, his Adam's apple bobbing slightly as he swallowed hard.

"No, my little sister is waiting for me at home. I'll go back and share the food with her."

He turned around, put away the charcoal sticks and coarse paper, and walked out of the narrow alley.

Jiang Ming still remembered that two months ago, when he had just transmigrated, the original body had a persistent high fever.

If it weren't for his twelve-year-old sister decocting and preparing the medicine, soaking a cloth in water and applying it to his forehead to cool him down every now and then, and staying by his bedside day and night for five whole days, he probably would have died long ago.

"It's a pity that my elder brother disappeared while on patrol not long after he became a constable. Otherwise, with his salary, our family wouldn't be in such dire straits."

Jiang Ming pressed the dozens of copper coins on his chest and sighed inwardly.

The Jiang family originally consisted of five people. When the parents were alive, the courtyard was always filled with the aroma of food and the sounds of laughter, making it very lively.

Unfortunately, fate intervened. Two years ago, a sudden illness took the lives of his parents. With the pillar of the family gone, life took a sharp turn for the worse.

Finally, my elder brother was promoted to constable, and we could finally breathe a sigh of relief. But a month and a half ago, he suddenly disappeared without a trace while on patrol, neither alive nor dead.

Now, only Jiang Ming and his younger sister remain in the empty house, relying on each other for survival.

On the long street, Jiang Ming glanced at the afterglow of the setting sun, quickly quickened his pace, and carrying the fried dough sticks, weaved through the crowd.

At the street corner, in a conspicuous spot, two scribes dressed in plain white were chatting idly by a wooden table covered with plain paper.

The two men glanced at the fried dough in Jiang Ming's hand, then noticed his old clothes and hurried demeanor. They exchanged a look and chuckled.

"Earning a pittance through unorthodox methods, isn't it pathetic?"

Jiang Ming seemed not to hear, and continued walking straight towards Dongning Ward in the outer city.

He knew perfectly well that these two ghostwriters from Rice Alley Street were just talking nonsense and were contemptuous in words, but they wouldn't really do anything to him.

Jiang Ming knows his limits and understands the boundaries.

The men who write letters, legal documents, and large accounts on the street generally operate in fixed locations and make a living long-term. They all rely on this for their livelihood, and each has their own circle and local connections.

If an outsider suddenly tries to steal your business, you'll either be surrounded or forced to leave.

Therefore, he never overstepped his bounds, nor did he set up a table in a conspicuous place to hawk his wares. Instead, he huddled in a quiet alley beside the main street, specializing in accounting and writing letters for small vendors whom the ghostwriters looked down upon.

That one or two coins wouldn't even be enough to fill their teeth, so it wasn't worth taking action to ostracize Jiang Ming.

Walk east along the long street.

At first, the street still retained some semblance of decorum. On both sides were taverns with blue banners hanging and shops exuding the scent of cosmetics.

But the further east you go, the more dilapidated the surrounding scenery becomes. The bluestone slabs turn into yellow earth, the taverns become crooked sheds, and the hawkers' cries are mixed with a few curses in the local dialect.

Passing through Dongningfang and going deeper into Fenghepu, several narrow and cramped streets and alleys come into view.

As Jiang Ming entered the muddy alley, he was immediately hit by the faint smell of excrement and urine from the outhouse at the alley entrance. Mixed with the musty smell of damp clothes, thick sweat clung to the air, making it impossible for the smell to dissipate in the narrow alley.

He covered his mouth and nose, quickened his pace, and just as he avoided a puddle of black sewage mixed with rotten vegetable leaves, he almost stepped on a pile of yellow excrement.

I don't know if it was human poop or dog poop.

Not long after Jiang Ming turned into the muddy alley, Aunt Chen, a neighbor, happened to come out of her house. She was slightly taken aback when she saw him and quickly reminded him.

"Jiang boy, hurry back inside and check! The Gray-Clad Gang just knocked on your door, banging on it like crazy, they're really aggressive!"

"My little sister is still at home!"

Jiang Ming's heart tightened, and before he could even thank them, he rushed towards his house.

At the far end of the alley, in front of a low, old house, a tall, strong man slowly turned around.

He wore a short gray shirt, his forearms were strong and the veins bulged. His round face was fleshy, and a black mole the size of a soybean stood out on the tip of his nose.

"It's Zhang Heimao."

When Jiang Ming arrived at his doorstep, he recognized the person at a glance.

Zhang Hu, nicknamed Zhang Heimao, was a member of the Gray-Clad Gang and quite famous in the nearby alleys. This was because Zhang Hu was the one who collected "peace money" from door to door every month for the Gray-Clad Gang.

"Oh, it's Ming. When are you going to pay your family's 'peace money' for this month?"

When Zhang Hu saw Jiang Ming return, he gave a forced smile, a hint of malice lurking in his dark eyes. It was as if he would immediately attack if Jiang Ming said he had no money.

As the sun began to set, Zhang Hu stood like an iron tower in front of the door, his body radiating a pungent, sweltering stench of sweat, his thick arms even stronger than Jiang Ming's thighs.

Jiang Ming was just a teenager, standing in front of him, as thin as a twig in the wind.

Jiang Ming remained silent for a moment, then took out a dozen slightly blackened copper coins from his pocket and handed over nearly half of today's harvest.

Zhang Hu weighed it in his hand, chuckled, and the tuft of black hair on his nose trembled. Without saying another word, he turned and walked away.

Only after the burly figure disappeared into the alley did Jiang Ming slowly breathe a sigh of relief, a dark glint flashing in his eyes.

Their family didn't used to have to pay this "peace money." Two months ago, even if Zhang Hu had ten times the courage, he wouldn't have dared to come to their door asking for the money, since his older brother Jiang Ping was a constable working for the government.

But now that the news of his eldest brother's disappearance has spread, things are probably not going to be easy for him from now on.

"I'm back."

With a creak, Jiang Ming unlocked the door and entered.

A small, thin figure immediately rushed out of the room.

"Second Brother!"

My younger sister, Jiang Tao, was only twelve years old. She was thin and wore a faded, patched old cloth shirt. Her hair was simply tied into a small bun, with a few stray strands sticking to her forehead.

Her face wasn't particularly plump, but her features were delicate and clean. However, at this moment, she was so frightened that her face turned pale, her eyes were red, and tears were hanging on her cheeks. As soon as she saw her brother, she rushed into his arms with a sob in her voice.

"Brother, that guy was banging on the door really hard, I hid..."

Two minutes later.

Jiang Ming sat on a rotten wooden stool in the dark room, looking at Jiang Tao on the other side, who was crying while eating a scallion pancake. Her cheeks were bulging out, making her look rather cute.

His gaze was unfocused, and his thoughts drifted away.

The world is getting harder and harder.

Exorbitant taxes and levies led to rising prices and rampant banditry.

The epidemic that started in the south of the city seems to be gradually spreading here as well.

He had just been exploited by a gang.

Jiang Ming had only been in this world for two months when he vaguely sensed a scene approaching the end of a dynasty. He didn't know if this situation was limited to Wangyue City or the entire Great Jing.

"In this chaotic world, it is extremely difficult for those at the bottom to live well."

"Luckily, I still have that thing."

He raised his left hand, and on the back of his hand was a bronze furnace that only Jiang Ming could see, covered with mysterious Taotie patterns, which were now faintly glowing.

The [Primal Furnace] has a simple function: it can combine multiple martial arts techniques to enhance a certain ability of one of them.

The price paid was none other than the loss of one's own life essence and blood.

Human essence and blood are used as a one-time furnace, and one cultivation technique is used as a refining material to strengthen another cultivation technique.

The Taotie pattern on the original furnace is fully formed and glows slightly, which means that the essence and blood are abundant and the ability can be used once.

The reason he was so familiar with the function of the bronze furnace was because this primitive furnace was clearly a roguelike game he played in his previous life. It probably traveled with him and became his innate ability.

"Right now, the only thing I lack is the cultivation technique."

"This technique is different from normal free-fighting boxing; it must be something extraordinary. The rudimentary boxing techniques I've encountered before were completely useless. Once you master the technique, the enhancement slots on the Primal Furnace will display the name of the technique. But the previous boxing techniques were all ineffective."

"It seems the only option is to go and see Old Man Liu's Red Sand Palm."

The Red Sand Palm martial arts school is located in Fenghepu. It's said that there are real masters there, capable of taking on more than a dozen people single-handedly. If they were wearing armor and carrying weapons, they would probably be even more formidable.

"We have to give it a try, what if it still doesn't work..."