Li Banfeng did not think about the short saber at all. He was sitting by the doorway of the central room, talking to himself like he was two people.

"The gramophone didn't kill me. She's still fond of me. But when she suddenly sings, it's a little scary.

"What's scary about it? She sings so well.

"It doesn't matter how well she sings. One day, she could eat you and not even spit out your bones.

"If she wanted to eat me, she would have already. She probably does not like eating the living.

"What if her tastes change one day? When she's angry, she might roast you until your outside is crisp and your insides tender and devour body and soul, without even leaving crumbs!

"You are heartless;the gramophone has protected you from the start. How can you speak so badly of a young lady?

"How do you know she's a young lady? Maybe she's a fearsome fiend that sings!"

Li Banfeng waved his hand over his forehead, trying to clear his mind. Arguing with himself was utterly pointless.

He gathered his thoughts and tried to figure out how to deal with the gramophone.

Should I throw her away?

he thought.

Of course, it would be a pity to discard such a good dwelling spirit, but that wasn't the reason for his hesitance.

The main problem was that Li Banfeng did not dare to throw her away!

He feared that if he even had that thought, the gramophone would scald him to death.

She had slain Luo Yuni in an instant. She could probably be able to scald him to death with one belch.

The ideal result would be to successfully subdue the dwelling spirit, but the prerequisite was that he had to know the spirit's name.

How was he going to find out what it was?

The only way he could think of right now was to ask Shopkeeper Feng, but that meant he would have to return to the Inner Gully.

However, before going there, he had to clean up this courtyard.

The master of the house and the dwelling spirit were both gone. Li Banfeng felt deeply saddened by that fact and decided to tidy up their belongings.

He wasn't after the little bit of money the inhabitants of the house had possessed;he was just treating them with respect.

Li Banfeng first went down to the cellar. Xiao Yeci had said there were many things stored there.

She hadn't lied. The old woman had stashed most of the loot in the cellar, with the rest hidden in a cabinet in the main building of the residence. Li Banfeng gathered everything together and found 763,236 yuan in cash alone.

In addition, he found a good amount of gold and silver jewelry, as well as other valuable items. Since he didn't know their exact worth, he estimated them at two hundred thousand yuan.

After selling the pills earlier and buying the gramophone, he still had two hundred and thirty thousand yuan left.

Excluding small daily expenses, Li Banfeng now had assets totaling 1.18 million yuan.

Is this real? I have 1.18 million!

From the day Li Banfeng was born until now, his savings had never exceeded ten thousand yuan. And now he actually had 1.18 million!

Of course, in Yuezhou, this amount wasn't even enough for a down payment for a house.

However, for Li Banfeng, this was his second peak moment of financial success. The first peak moment had been when he sold the Speckled-Snake Pills.

The house also had some miscellaneous items that he could make use of.

The second son, Demao, had been a Martial Cultivator. There were many martial arts manuals in his room, and Li Banfeng picked out a few to keep.

In the old woman's room, there was a table and two chairs that looked decent, so he took those as well. He also kept a sewing kit, which seemed like it would come in handy.

He also found a pocket watch, likely stolen from some passerby. It was gold-plated and stylish at first glance, though not as finely made as the one Shopkeeper Feng had once recommended.

Li Banfeng had always wanted a timepiece, so he decided to keep the pocket watch as well.

Demao also had a bathtub, which Li Banfeng kept, of course. Normally, inside the Pocket Dwelling, he could only fetch some water with a wooden bucket to wipe himself down. It had been a long time since he had enjoyed a proper bath.

Li Banfeng took everything that was useful. He even stored away some items that seemed of no immediate use.

He also stored away Decai's bottles and jars for concocting poison, along with some rare herbs. Who knew what use they might have one day?

There was a spear in Demao's room. Li Banfeng didn't know how to wield such long weapons, but since Demao had books on the subject, he could learn it slowly in the future.

There were also several dart-like concealed weapons in Decai's room. They carried a strong fishy stench, likely from being soaked in poison. Though Li Banfeng didn't know how to use concealed weapons, he took them anyway.

Once he finished storing away the items, he located the corpses of Decai and Demao.

He had originally intended to put the corpses into the Pocket Dwelling to be made into pills.

However, under the current circumstances, he was a little afraid of going inside the Pocket Dwelling.

Then again, it was pointless to be afraid. After all, he had to spend at least two hours inside the Pocket Dwelling every day. That was the daily foundational cultivation requirement for a Homebound Cultivator.

Steeling himself for the worst, Li Banfeng opened the door and dragged everything inside—cash, valuables, tables, chairs, even the corpses.

The gramophone made no sound at all. Perhaps it was fast asleep. The Arcane Crimson Lotus was still asleep.

Something's not right.

Li Banfeng thought.

With such fine corpses before it, how could it not want to eat them?

Studying it more closely, Li Banfeng noticed a faint halo shimmering around the Arcane Crimson Lotus.

It's making pills. What pills is it making?

Wait, damn it. That saber! The saber that drank blood! That was a top-grade weapon. Was it really being turned into pills just like that?

Li Banfeng's heart ached at the loss. He wanted to pry open the lotus petals and snatch the knife.

However, the Pocket Dwelling was now cluttered with things. As he stepped toward the Arcane Crimson Lotus, he tripped over the bathtub and nearly fell. The cloth pouch at his waist slipped off.

Clang!

The pendulum inside the pouch slid out.

Whoosh!

The gramophone's flames flared to life.

𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Steam hissed out.

I woke up the gramophone?

Li Banfeng realized.

Chime, clang, clang, clang~

"Oh, my dear husband~!" the gramophone began to sing.

"Oh, my dear wife~!" Li Banfeng sang back.

The gramophone was someone he could talk with. She wasn't frightening at all.

"Oh, my dear husband~! Where did you get all this furniture from?"

Her voice was warm and gentle, not frightening in the least.

"Oh, my dear wife, I just happened upon them."

Li Banfeng wiped the sweat from his brow and slowly walked toward the doorway.

"My dear husband, you've worked so hard~" The gramophone sang that line with warmth and tenderness. She wasn't frightening at all!

"My dear wife, you've worked hard too~"

Li Banfeng darted outside and shut the door.

The gramophone puffed out a breath of steam, carrying the set of table and chairs next to the wall. Then she propped the bathtub upright and set it in a corner.

The gramophone noticed the broken pendulum lying beside the bathtub. The pendulum was Luo Yuni's only relic.

Hiss~

The gramophone sounded displeased. She didn't like this object.

"That madman, seriously. Why did he have to bring this wretched thing back again?"

Screech~

The petals of the Arcane Crimson Lotus opened, and both the corpses and the broken pendulum on the ground were pulled into the lotus core.

Hiss~

The gramophone gave a mocking hiss. "Oh, you didn't want this pendulum a moment ago, yet now you've picked it up to consume. Seems you're too hungry to wait for something better, willing to abandon your pride and eat something that nasty.

"You wretch. You used to roar across the world, commanding awe from all sides. And now you've fallen so low, reduced to picking up trash for food. Truly disgraceful;people will sneer at you. How laughable, laughable beyond belief!

Hahahahaha~

"

Splat!

A clear dewdrop had shot out from the lotus core, landing squarely on the gramophone's large horn.

The gramophone's laughter stopped abruptly.

"You dare spit on me?" the gramophone roared in fury. Streams of smoke rose from all three of her horns as a cloud of steam wrapped around the Arcane Crimson Lotus. "You dare rebel? Today, I'll make you experience the discipline of this family!"

However, the Arcane Crimson Lotus showed no fear. Droplets of dew danced up and down within the steam.

***

When Li Banfeng returned to the courtyard, its familiar walls had vanished, replaced by a dense forest that stretched out before him.

The old woman was dead, Luo Yuni was gone, and the gramophone had devoured all the ghosts. The illusions had vanished.

After wandering through the forest for some time, Li Banfeng came across Xiao Yeci and Lu Chunying.

The mother and daughter were battered all over. They clung to each other tightly, not daring to move.

When they saw Li Banfeng approaching, Xiao Yeci cried out in a trembling voice, "Benefactor, you're finally here! We got trapped in by a ghost wall."

There was no need for Li Banfeng to ask any more questions;he could already tell what they had been through.

"You want to go to the Inner Gully, right?"

Xiao Yeci and Lu Chunying nodded vigorously. "Yes, benefactor!"

"If I escort you to the Inner Gully, how much can you pay me?"

"Name your price, benefactor!"

"One thousand!"

"Deal, benefactor!" Xiao Yeci exclaimed.

She was overjoyed;it was less than she had expected.

Li Banfeng didn't ask for more. He recalled how the medicinal trading houses had forced the price of the speckled-snake chrysanthemum down to twenty-five yuan a stalk.

One thousand yuan could be used to buy forty stalks of the speckled-snake chrysanthemum. It was enough to make many people risk their lives. It wasn't a small sum.

Of course, Li Banfeng had to set some other conditions.

"One thousand is just the base escort fee. If we run into real trouble, the price will go up. And if I suffer losses, you'll have to compensate me accordingly."

Xiao Yeci nodded repeatedly in agreement. She thought the terms were fair.

Li Banfeng led Xiao Yeci and Lu Chunying out of the forest.

Along the way, Xiao Yeci trembled with fear, while Lu Chunying clung tightly to her mother's back.

The branches of the trees had lashed at them wildly earlier, terrifying them out of their wits. Yet, as they walked behind Li Banfeng now, not a single branch struck them.

The ghosts in the trees were all gone, so it was no surprise the mother and daughter weren't attacked again. However, that was a fact they didn't know.

"What kind of person is he, really…" Xiao Yeci was amazed. "He fights so well. To think that he even knows spells and can subdue ghosts."

Lu Chunying tugged at her mother's sleeve. "Mom, use that silver tongue of yours and win his heart."

Xiao Yeci shook her head. "Your mother doesn't have the skill to do that. If you think you can, then you try."

As they emerged from the forest, Li Banfeng saw a stone stele.

There were two words carved on it:

Hearthstay Village.

He had seen this stele when he first entered the place and had truly believed there was a village here.

But now it seemed that this so-called Hearthstay Village had been nothing but an illusion that the old woman and her dwelling spirit Luo Yuni had conjured. In reality, there had only ever been a forest and a single residence. That explained why only one house had its lights on when he entered the village.

Yet, the stele itself looked real and ancient.

Perhaps there truly had been a Hearthstay Village here once upon a time, and maybe the old woman and Luo Yuni had killed everyone in it.

A whole village disappeared, yet no one cared?

That certainly hadn't been the case when he argued with the ticket clerk at the train station. There had been patrol officers, an indication of a higher authority.

Just what kind of order exists here in Puluo?