Steam Era: The Lord of 'Puluo' Chapter 1423: Lai Baifan

Chapter 1423: Chapter 641: Lai Baifan

The young man was lying in the snow. He slowly opened his eyes and muttered: “My hand hurts, it hurts.”

Li Banfeng handed the hand back to the young man: “Your hand’s right here. If it hurts, just rub it.”

From his left shoulder down it was empty. The young man cried, “Who are you people?”

“Businessmen. We’re here to do business with you. First we’ll give you an Ocean Dollar as a down payment, how’s that sound?” Li Banfeng took out a Silver Yuan.

The young man saw there was still blood on the Silver Yuan and shivered with fright.

Li Banfeng wiped off the blood: “My sister was putting on lipstick just now and accidentally got a bit on it. You take the money first, then we’ll talk about where we go next.”

The young man cried, “Where are you taking me?”

Light Bulb laughed: “What kind of question is that? Aren’t we all following you? Where are you taking us?”

The young man sobbed for a long while and said, “There’s a stone quarry up ahead. If you go work there with true sincerity, as long as your sincerity is enough, you can do proper Body Cultivation. The more sincere you are, the better you’ll turn out.”

Dumpling asked, “What do you mean by ‘turn out better’?”

“If you’ve got ten-tenths genuine devotion, you can turn out as decent living creatures like cattle, horses, chickens, ducks. If you’ve only got sixty percent devotion, you have to be spiders, ants, that kind of lowly trash.”

Light Bulb asked, “And if you end up as Three-Headed People?”

The young man shook his head: “This stone quarry was opened by the Body Cultivation Grandmaster. As long as you work honestly under the Grandmaster, you definitely won’t turn into Three-Headed People. Those who did turn into Three-Headed People, their hearts just weren’t sincere!”

Light Bulb said to Li Qi: “Seventh Master, guaranteed profit, no loss. Now that’s how you do business.”

Li Banfeng asked the young man again: “When you deliver a person to the stone quarry, how much does the Body Cultivation Grandmaster give you?”

“Eighty per person.”

Dumpling said angrily: “Only eighty bucks and you sell people off?”

Light Bulb said: “He isn’t the one who finds them, the old lady does. He doesn’t have to handle anything afterward either, the stone quarry takes care of it all. He just guides them for this stretch of road in the middle. Eighty’s not bad,

and he also took a whole Ocean Dollar off us. That’s a nice two-sided profit. It’s just that on this particular deal today, he really has lost his stake.”

Li Banfeng left the young man lying in the snow and took Dumpling and Light Bulb to the stone quarry.

The stone quarry was huge; more than three hundred workers were cutting Stone under Luobo Mountain.

These Stones weren’t for building houses. The Heavenly Light on Luobo Mountain wasn’t all that dense, but it was still in the territory of Three-Head Fork. The mountain had been bathed in Heavenly Light year after year; the Stones they cut down were ground into powder, mixed with water and drunk to accumulate Taoist Fate.

Materials for accumulating Taoist Fate weren’t cheap. Back in Medicine King Valley, Li Banfeng had heard that some families, just to raise one Cultivator, spent their entire savings clean dry just on accumulating Taoist Fate.

Li Banfeng looked up at this stone quarry. They weren’t mining Stone, they were mining gold!

These workers didn’t need to be paid, and who knew who they were renting this mountainside from. This really was a big business with profit in the millions.

Strange, why were there still Three-Headed People working here?

For Body Cultivation, growing two extra heads meant Entering the Path had failed. Once they’d already failed, what were they still working for the Grandmaster for?

One Three-Headed Person was carrying a Stone down from the slope. The Stone had plenty of sharp edges, and his shoulders were covered in bloody marks.

Watching the Three-Headed Person wobble and struggle along, Dumpling kept frowning.

There was a mountain path on the slope; if they’d at least given him a wheelbarrow, this job wouldn’t be such torture.

The Three-Headed Person had just carried the Stone down to the foot of the slope when a foreman came up with a leather whip and lashed him twice: “How long do you plan on dawdling? Didn’t you eat? Run for me!”

The whip was as thick as two fingers. The Three-Headed Person was thinly dressed; one lash and his clothes tore, and so did his skin and flesh.

With the Stone on his shoulder, the Three-Headed Person staggered forward at a run. The foreman chased behind, whipping him: “I told you to run—don’t you understand human speech? What, you think you’re hard done by? Let me tell you, if you don’t want to work, get lost. Plenty of people are lining up to come!”

The three of them watched silently from a distance. Dumpling gnashed his teeth, Light Bulb’s face was expressionless, and Li Banfeng’s cap brim was pulled so low that no one could see his face.

The foreman walked over, looked at the three, and asked, “What are you doing here?”

Li Banfeng gave a simpleton’s smile: “We’ve come to see the Body Cultivation Grandmaster and beg for a bit of entry Medicinal Powder.”

This foreman was named Ge Yugen, everyone called him Mr. Ge. In this stone quarry, he counted as someone with a bit of status.

He thought Li Banfeng’s cap looked decent and reached out to take it off. Li Banfeng moved just a little, looking displeased, but no matter what Ge Yugen did he just couldn’t reach it.

“Why are you dodging?” Ge Yugen got angry. “Can’t I even have a look at your cap?”

Li Banfeng stated his purpose again: “I came to see the Body Cultivation Grandmaster.”

“With that attitude, you think you deserve to see any Grandmaster? People who come to the Grandmaster with sincerity all throw in their whole lives here. I ask you for a cap and you’re dodging around; with vision that small you think you can Enter the Path?”

As he spoke, Ge Yugen reached for Li Banfeng’s cap again and again, but still couldn’t touch it.

Ge Yugen got anxious. He stamped off the ground and jumped up. From the way he took off, he should’ve been a grasshopper.

That one jump took him more than two meters high. Ge Yugen flew over Li Banfeng’s head, bent down in midair and still tried to snatch the cap.

He stretched his hands out several times in the air, but just couldn’t get it. As he came down to land, Light Bulb sprinkled a bit of oil on the ground. Ge Yugen couldn’t get his footing and went straight down into a pile of snow.

“Ow!” Ge Yugen was furious. “Someone come! We’ve got troublemakers here!”

There were more than fifty foremen in the stone quarry; over thirty of them came over with weapons in hand: “What is it, Mr. Ge?”

Ge Yugen pointed at the three and shouted: “These three are using the excuse of paying respects to the Grandmaster. They talked filthy to me and even laid hands on me!”