Steam Era: The Lord of 'Puluo' Chapter 1199 589: Soul

Greenwater City, Round Bamboo Square, Li Banfeng returned to his second house.

The so-called second house is where he hid the Greenwater City contract; it appears to be a house, but Li Banfeng actually enters the Dark Dimension Space.

He dug out the Land Seal and placed it on his head.

The human energy in Greenwater City never disappoints Li Banfeng. Sitting by the wall, he slowly enjoyed it, and it took a full twenty-eight minutes to absorb it all.

Currently, Li Banfeng is a cultivator of the Cloud Top Second Layer. Even after absorbing human energy for twenty-eight minutes, he didn't feel any obvious discomfort and could get up after a short rest.

The human energy in Greenwater City is very abundant, but the key issue is that the amount of human energy required for leveling from the second to the third layer is astonishingly large. Even after using up all the human energy from the Land Seal, the quantity is still insufficient.

Fortunately, the shortfall isn't too significant, so Li Banfeng directly went to Bridge Yesong to absorb a second wave of human energy.

Ma Wu was overwhelmed, with far too much to do, and he was somewhat resistant to managing Bridge Yesong, so he hadn't put much effort into it.

He Yuxiu also disliked Bridge Yesong, and she was currently busy managing her own territory.

Only Xiao Yeci seemed obedient. Li Banfeng told her to manage the business well, and she did reasonably well, but in the short term, there was no visible effect; Bridge Yesong remained lukewarm, with very limited human energy.

After draining the Land Seal, Li Banfeng couldn't even gather a fraction of what was needed. Apart from Bridge Yesong, there were other places, so Li Banfeng went to Sleepless Town.

Sleepless Town is a Proper Land, the territory of Mianxiu Wang Zimian. After killing Wang Zimian, Li Banfeng intended to use Wang Zimian's territory to save Shui Yongquan, but until now, he hadn't found a suitable way.

He dug up the contract book and buried it back again, using the Land Seal to gather the human energy from Sleepless Town.

After Mianxiu was expelled from Sleepless Town, order gradually returned to normal. People worked during the day and rested at night, at least living like normal people.

Yet, the human energy of this place didn't change much. Li Banfeng drained the Land Seal, still not enough for the Third Layer.

He had one more Proper Land, Flower Fairy Mansion, Hua Manchun's territory.

This territory is too special; inside the Flower Fairy Mansion, there was only a group of women left by Hua Manchun, and other than that, the vast territory had no other permanent residents, which resulted in very limited human energy in Flower Fairy Mansion.

In such a resource-scarce environment, how did Hua Manchun advance?

According to those women, Hua Manchun's energy for advancement mainly came from business. This suggests that he refined corpses for medicinal powder, which he exchanged for money and human energy.

After Hua Manchun died, this business naturally stopped, and the human energy Li Banfeng could find here was indeed limited.

Having gone through all the Proper Lands, only the New Land remained.

How much human energy could the New Land have? Li Banfeng was not optimistic about it.

Aside from collecting human energy from his territory, Li Banfeng could also borrow some from others. The first he thought of was the Ink Shop.

The Ink Shop is a large city with relatively abundant human energy. It's difficult to define a Local Deity here; it could be understood as one's own lazy pen or the pen that always writes by the lakeside.

No matter which pen, they're not using human energy, and such abundant energy shouldn't be wasted in vain.

Li Banfeng went to the Ink Shop, heading directly to Willow Garden.

Several snows had fallen on the Ink Shop; the city was silver-clad, with an even thicker literary atmosphere.

At the garden gate, a woman called out sincerely, "I knew you would come, because you can understand my longing."

Xiao Yeci?

Li Banfeng was startled and almost slipped on the snow.

Xiao Yeci's cultivation level had clearly improved; recognizing me from such a distance?

Impossible.

In Li Banfeng's impression, Xiao Yeci was a second-level Cultural Cultivator. She received numerous resources from the Lu Family during this period, but even if the elixirs and cultivation kept pace, she could only advance to around the third layer at most.

How could a third-layer cultivator notice a Cloud Top Second Layer Home Cultivation practitioner?

Li Banfeng remained calm, watching Xiao Yeci for a moment.

Xiao Yeci sighed in the snow a few times and wrote the earlier sentence in a notebook.

Oil Peach tugged at Xiao Yeci's sleeve: "Sister, isn't that enough? Can't you recite poems somewhere else? I'm freezing to death here!"

Xiao Yeci looked mournful: "Winter has arrived; it's cold everywhere."

Oil Peach laughed, "It's not cold under the covers."

Xiao Yeci was a bit nervous: "Don't mess around, we're here to cultivate!"

"What's there to cultivate here? One must speak in verbose words. When will proper cultivation happen? I'm telling you, I'll stay with you for a month here, and next month you come with me to Pants Belt Pit."

"I really don't want to go to Pants Belt Pit!"

"Even if you don't want to, you have to. That's what we agreed on."

...

Li Banfeng didn't greet them; he went alone to the Willow Forest, where he found that special willow tree and wrote the character "Wisdom" beneath it with a twig.

The willow tree did not respond.

Was it the untidy handwriting, or was the method incorrect?

Li Banfeng took out the Judge's Pen, letting it write the character "Wisdom" stroke by stroke.

Still, the willow tree did not respond.

"Changed." The Judge's Pen spoke up.

Someone had changed the entrance.

"The Local Deity's causing trouble again?"

"Peddler." The Judge's Pen replied with two words.

The speculation should be correct; the person who changed the entrance is likely the Peddler. After the incident at the Ink Shop last time, the Peddler would have certainly taken precautions.