After a bowl of noodles and two steamed buns, Wu Ling felt comfortable from head to toe.
"These little stalls still have that feeling. They remind me of the roadside stalls Dad and I used to eat at when I was small. What a pity. Those stalls from back then were all shut down for one reason or another."
Wu Ling rubbed his full stomach and let himself remember the past for a moment.
"Boss, the bill."
"Coming, young master. One bowl of noodles and three buns, three copper Spirit coins total."
Wu Ling casually placed one silver Spirit coin on the table.
"Please wait a moment, young master. For one silver Spirit coin, I need to give you seven copper Spirit coins in change."
"No need. Keep the rest as a tip."
Wu Ling stood and left while the stall owner was still looking for change. Behind him, the owner clutched the seven copper Spirit coins in his hand and bowed deeply toward Wu Ling's retreating back.
"Safe travels, young master!"
After breakfast, Wu Ling wandered leisurely through the streets. First, it helped him digest. Second, he wanted to admire the scenery of the Polaris capital.
He had visited the Polaris Empire many times, but this was his first time in its capital.
People came and went around him, most of them hurrying from place to place. People strolling around like Wu Ling were not entirely absent, but they were rare, and most of them were elders.
The most obvious difference Wu Ling felt was that most people in the Polaris capital were ordinary civilians, while most people in Spirit City were Spirit Masters.
The Polaris capital had ordinary vendors like the noodle stall from earlier. Spirit City also had merchants, but most of what they sold was related to Soul Beasts.
Take prices, for example. The small vendors here mostly dealt in copper Spirit coins. Silver Spirit coins were already rare, and gold Spirit coin transactions usually appeared only inside larger merchant guilds.
In Spirit City, the cheapest things started with silver Spirit coins. Even the corpses of the most ordinary ten-year Soul Beasts could sell for more than one silver Spirit coin. Slightly better materials were priced in gold Spirit coins.
As for the auctions jointly run by several major merchant guilds in Spirit City, if you did not have at least a few hundred thousand gold Spirit coins, you would be embarrassed to even enter.
Wu Ling strolled for nearly half an hour before finally reaching the main Spirit Hall.
The two guards standing outside immediately straightened when they saw him. They opened the gate and respectfully welcomed Wu Ling inside.
Wu Ling smiled and nodded at the two of them, then entered the hall.
To be honest, Wu Ling sometimes felt rather troubled. A person as handsome and gifted as he was had no chance to pretend to be weak and then slap faces.
If anything, his current situation was closer to the minor villain who gets beaten by the protagonist, brings out the older generation behind him, and ends up getting his entire family exterminated as a plot fuse.
Of course, Wu Ling was not comparable to some minor boss. At the very least, he had to be the level of a hidden mastermind villain.
While his thoughts wandered, Wu Ling returned to his temporary residence. Coincidentally, Ember and the other two clones were training in the courtyard.
As he passed Ember and Azure, their focused state made Wu Ling, the tyrannical round-the-clock boss, nod in satisfaction.
When he reached Rose, however, he found her eating a lollipop and staring blankly into space.
For Rose, Wu Ling had chosen a free-range approach. After all, she was his precious treasure.
At present, Rose had developed a potion and paired it with an elementary cultivation method, raising Azure and Ember's cultivation speed by more than twenty percent. Once advanced cultivation methods and potions came out, even a fifty percent increase would be conservative.
Eight clones at one and a half times cultivation efficiency, compared to nine clones at ordinary efficiency. Anyone who knew even a little arithmetic could see which number was larger.
Wu Ling immediately sat cross-legged beside Rose and asked with concern, "Rose, why are you not researching today?"
Rose glanced at Wu Ling, tilted her head toward him, and let herself fall. She rested her head on Wu Ling's lap, rubbed her face hard against his stomach a few times, then opened one eye and looked up at him.
"Even with materials on hand, researching outside my own Workshop just does not feel comfortable. I studied for a while, then came out."
Wu Ling's eyes softened. He gently stroked Rose's hair. His appearance was clearly still young, yet in this moment, he gave others the feeling of an elder.
"Then rest properly for the next few days. Last month you worked on potions, arrays, and cultivation methods. You must be tired."
"A little. But is that not your fault, Original? You gave me so many tasks." Rose puffed out her cheeks slightly, complaining to Wu Ling without a trace of actual resentment.
Wu Ling reached out and pinched Rose's soft cheek. "Fine, fine. My fault. Since Grandpa Ghost is busy with awakenings today and will not be here, I will not cultivate today either. Let Ember and Azure cultivate. I will spend the day playing with you. How does that sound?"
In the distance, Azure and Ember had quietly stopped cultivating. They watched the interaction between the original and Rose, then started whispering to each other.
"Original and Rose are really close. It feels like brother and sister," Ember said with emotion as he watched the warm scene.
Azure disagreed. "No. Not brother and sister. It feels more like father and daughter."
Azure made an expression as if he had seen through everything with those eyes of his.
"Because Original's body is young, his mental age may not have decreased, but it at least has not grown much either.
"His soul age is different. His soul has truly existed for nearly thirty years. If Original had not transmigrated, he would already be thirty now.
"Although in his previous life, he was twenty and had not even held a girl's hand, by thirty... hm, he probably, maybe, would have been married.
"So when a thirty-year-old soul sees Rose, who has a similar face and is also split from the same soul, he probably starts treating her with an elder's mindset without realizing it."
Ember thought about Azure's words while scratching his head. Then he suddenly said, "Wait. If you put it like that, does that mean Original thinks of us two as his sons?"
"Impossible! In a man's heart, girls and boys are not even the same species, all right?" Azure firmly rejected Ember's statement.
"Really? Why do I feel like you are lying? I train hard because that is my personality, but your effort is harder to explain. Original never actually demanded that we work ourselves so hard."
"... Go train."
"Are you embarrassed?"
"... Fine. Forget training. Roll as far away as you can."
Ignoring the bickering between Ember and Azure, Rose told Wu Ling about something.
"What? An invitation? From Xue Qinghe?"