"You've probably been here before, right? Does nobody drink it every time?" Chu Feng asked.
"Most of the time, it's like today, actually. That's perfectly normal."
"After all, most of the people who come here are visiting cultivators from other places. They have status and strength — they've seen the world and enjoyed fine things. It's only natural that they wouldn't care for our tea," the young man said.
"Then why keep bringing it?" Chu Feng asked.
"Because on a few occasions, I've met someone like you, Big Brother Chu, who genuinely enjoys our tea. That made me feel like what I'm doing has meaning," the young man said.
"So it's not your grandfather forcing you — you do it because you want to?" Chu Feng asked.
"Yeah. I know I don't have any talent for cultivation. I'm destined to never become a powerful martial cultivator."
"But doing things like this makes me feel like I have value," the young man said.
Chu Feng smiled, thinking the young man's character was rare.
Especially having seen how much deception and ugliness existed in this world, and still choosing to act this way — that made it all the more remarkable.
"Then if you had the ability, what would you do?"
"I wouldn't bring this kind of tea anymore. I'd research a tea that actually helps martial cultivators, and then give it to everyone," the young man said.
"Then it'd be snatched up in an instant," Chu Feng said.
"That would be amazing." The young man actually looked excited, but then laughed. "But that day will never come."
"I know my limits. I'll never have that ability, haha."
Watching the young man like this, Chu Feng asked, "Do you genuinely believe that good people are rewarded with good fortune?"
"I do. My whole family believes it."
"Besides, we really have received blessings. Meeting Lord Shimo is a blessing for our entire family," the young man said.
"Where is your home? Point me in the direction," Chu Feng said.
"It's over there."
The young man pointed in a direction for Chu Feng.
Following where the young man pointed, Chu Feng looked out. Before his eyes, everything blocking his line of sight vanished, and his gaze finally settled on a city.
The city wasn't large, but it was densely populated — every household was lively and bustling.
Chu Feng quickly found a courtyard near the outskirts of the city that looked very much like the young man's home.
The courtyard was simple, the house modest.
Inside lay a middle-aged man and an elderly elder.
The elder had simply lived too long, though "too long" was relative — only a little over a thousand years. But for someone with such poor cultivation, that thousand years had reduced him to skin and bones, bedridden, with every bodily function deteriorated to the point where he could die at any moment.
As for the middle-aged man, he was ill, but on his face Chu Feng could still see features very similar to the young man's.
Besides these two men, there was also a woman inside the house attending to both of them — presumably the young man's mother.
As for the courtyard, a young man who looked to be in his twenties was cultivating there.
He was practicing a martial technique, but his talent was poor. In Chu Feng's estimation, it was the kind of technique one could grasp at a single glance.
Yet the young man repeated the same move over and over, never once reaching its essence.
"So it seems the problem isn't with them — it's an external force," Chu Feng suddenly said.
Only those within the Spirit Space heard these words — he was speaking to Eggy.
"What do you mean?"
Eggy knew Chu Feng had discovered something.
Every single person in that city carried the aura of the Dark Hall.
And among the city's inhabitants, there were several children with rather good talent.
"Could it be that they've been kept and raised by the Dark Hall as nourishment?" Eggy asked.
Using martial cultivators as cultivation resources was already a common practice among wicked factions.
And though the Dark Hall proclaimed itself orthodox, it was universally recognized as the most evil of all evil sects in the martial cultivation world.
To implant Dark Babies into people against their will — that was already a crime beyond redemption.