Family Cultivation: Rise of the Wilderness

Chapter 424 Wei Fei's Intelligence

Only after the seat fees were collected by the supervisory board did Li Xiangming feel relieved.

This idea was actually something he came up with on the spur of the moment.

Although he kept telling Chi Laiyong, Li Jihu, and others to solve the demon-hunting team's finances themselves, in reality, he had been bleeding money out of them for the past few months.

In Puyin Mountain, if you hire a mid-stage Qi Refining cultivator to guard a shop, 5 spirit stones a month might be enough. But if you want him to go into the mountain to hunt demons, you must pay him at least 7 spirit stones a month.

Taking Li Jihu's Crimson Flame Demon Hunting Team as an example, if they still support eleven or twelve people like they did a few months ago, even if there are two or three late-stage Qi Refining cultivators among them, the monthly salary they receive is only a little over a hundred spirit stones.

The Crimson Flame Demon Hunting Group enters the mountains at least 10 times a month, hunting five to ten early to mid-stage Spirit Summoning demon beasts each time. The value of the demon beast materials obtained is between two and three hundred spirit stones.

In other words, the Crimson Flame Demon Hunting Team still had a considerable surplus after paying off their salaries.

As the leader of the group, Li Jihu would take half of the profits, and use the rest to buy pills and talismans to distribute as benefits to his members.

Only in this way can one win people's hearts and minds, and prevent one's capable subordinates from suddenly running away.

But things are different now. The Crimson Flame Demon Hunting Group has expanded rapidly, reaching a size of nearly fifty people, and their salaries alone cost more than 400 spirit stones.

The problem is that the income of the demon-hunting team did not increase in a stepwise manner as the number of members surged.

The reason is simple: Puyin Mountain is vast, and hunting demons in the mountains depends on luck.

Sometimes, even if you find a valuable monster, it can easily escape because it is cunning and familiar with the terrain.

At this point, the demon-hunting team must weigh the pros and cons: should they risk delaying the hunt by two or three days and venturing into unknown territory to continue pursuing the demon beast, or should they simply give up?
Most demon-hunting team leaders, in order to reduce risks, will not forcibly pursue the prey.

After all, even if a demon beast in the Spirit Awakening stage is stripped clean, it is worth at most ten or so spirit stones. However, if the demon hunting team suffers casualties, the medical expenses and compensation paid will be far more than that.

Practical considerations dictated that the demon-hunting team could only "bully the weak with the strong".

This also means that the vast majority of monster-hunting operations will be in vain.

To avoid wasting time, Li Jihu divided his demon-hunting team into four squads, which took turns going into the mountains.

That's equivalent to four monster-hunting teams!
In reality, the income of the Crimson Flame Demon Hunting Team did not increase fourfold as a result. The demon beast materials they harvested last month were only sold for about 600 spirit stones.

This amount seems sufficient to cover salaries, but the remaining two hundred dollars are not enough to handle even an emergency, let alone enable a demon-hunting team of dozens of people to operate with ease.

Every month, Li Xiangming would give the Crimson Flame Demon Hunting Team and the Mad Lion Demon Hunting Team a subsidy of 200 spirit stones, the Mysterious Cat Demon Hunting Team and the Vicious Dog Demon Hunting Team a subsidy of 300 spirit stones, and the Divine Wind Demon Hunting Team and the Golden Eye Demon Hunting Team a subsidy of 500 and 700 spirit stones respectively.

Of course, this huge sum of spirit stones was not paid for by him alone.

Li Qianxiong sent him to Puyin Mountain and prepaid him 1,500 spirit stones, saying it was for three months of operational funds.

The Beast-Catching Bureau already had a support plan for the two major demon-hunting groups, Shenfeng and Jintong, distributing 500 spirit stones every month, which has now fallen into his hands.

More importantly, he obtained the permission to operate Monkey Valley on his own.

In Monkey Valley, the Taibai Restaurant's monthly revenue reaches over 700 spirit stones, with profits accounting for 60%. Other business income, such as selling intelligence and renting out secret rooms, also brings in nearly 200 spirit stones.

Besides Taibai Restaurant, the Li family also had other shops in Monkey Valley, such as Guanyinzhai.

Guanyinzhai specializes in selling elixirs, which mainly come from the Li family's alchemy workshop and the Qingyang Taoist.

However, the best-selling items were the Burning Evil Pills purchased from the Liu family or Zhangning Mansion.

Because Zhao Jindou and Li Xiangming had an agreement not to actively sell Burning Fiend Pills, Guanyinzhai suddenly occupied more than 60% of the Burning Fiend Pill market in Puyin Mountain, bringing in more than 200 spirit stones in profit every month.

In short, Li Xiangming could get between 1,200 and 1,500 spirit stones from Monkey Valley every month.

If you do the math, these three sources of income just covered his expenses with the demon-hunting group.

However, that's not how the accounts are calculated.

Both the spirit stones from Monkey Valley and the Li family provide stable income, which we can call static income.

However, the matters concerning the demon-hunting team he was in charge of were dynamic.

For example, the merger of the Golden Light and Spirit Eye demon-hunting teams would be a great thing!

But Li Xiangting needs to pay a settlement fee to the Ling Tong Demon Hunting Team, and he has no money. What should he do?
The resettlement expenses for dozens of people are not a small amount. Even if the Li family is willing to reimburse them, there is still a process to go through, which takes more than half a month. By the time the news reaches Puyin Mountain, it will be too late.

Therefore, Li Xiangting could only ask Li Xiangming to pay the fee in advance.

This is just one expense. With six demon-hunting teams and more than 300 demon-hunting cultivators, unexpected situations occur almost every day.

Li Xiangming may not need to interfere in the specific affairs of the demon-hunting team, nor does he need to know the details, but when Li Jihu and others reach out for money, he cannot refuse to give it to them, because there is a reason why he has to give it to them for every single transaction.

To alleviate the pressure, he had to try every means to generate income, such as opening Baishengfang and Chunyilou in Monkey Valley, building cave dwellings for rent and sale, and opening up sales channels for spiritual herbs.

But during this reform of the Puyinshan Guild Hall, he suddenly came up with a perfect solution.

It is common knowledge that Puyin Mountain is not safe, and traveling merchants are making a fortune, so they have a need to hire guards.

The expanded demon-hunting team has become bloated, and sending all of them into the mountains to hunt demons is not cost-effective.

Astute merchants in the guild halls, upon learning of the merger of the Golden Light and Spirit Eye demon-hunting groups, have already lowered the prices of demon beast materials—they judge that the demon-hunting groups of Puyin Mountain are expanding, and the trading volume of demon beast materials is about to increase.

After much deliberation, Li Xiangming concluded that the best solution was to place his demon-hunting team under the care of the Puyin Mountain Guild Hall.

Anyway, the traveling merchants were not happy that he took the seat fee, and he himself was also troubled by this problem. So he simply let the guild use the "seat fee" to hire guards. As long as he controlled the supervisory board, the guards hired by the guild would always come from the six demon-hunting teams under his control.

In this way, he can both help the demon-hunting team increase its revenue and make the issue of who owns the seat fee irrefutable.

Some might ask, if the use of the seat fee was diverted to traveling merchants, didn't Li Xiangming just lose a large sum of spirit stones for nothing?
All I can say is, it's like losing it.

Each time the six demon-hunting groups complete a protection mission and receive a seat fee, they can improve their own finances. As their finances improve, the spirit stones that Li Xiangming subsidizes them will decrease.

However, at the same time, the number of spirit stones that Li Xiangming received from his home and Monkey Valley remained unchanged.

In other words, as long as he can make all six demon-hunting teams profitable, he will still make money, even if he doesn't exploit them.

The traveling merchants couldn't see through Li Xiangming's intentions, not because they were stupid.

Rather, it's due to an information gap between the two sides.

No matter how hard they racked their brains, they would never have imagined that the Demon Hunter Guild was also under the control of the Li family.

Of course, they also made a profit.

The establishment of the supervisory board can be considered a win-win situation.

With a sigh of relief, Li Xiangming decided to focus his energy on the management of Monkey Valley.

The unsold cave dwellings still weighed heavily on his mind.

Just then, someone knocked on the door.

"Come in."

Soon, Li Xiangguang came over.

Li Xiangming glanced at him and asked, "What happened?"

"Your visiting card is here."

"Oh?"

Li Xiangming took the invitation and quickly scanned it.

The message was very simple: a request to meet him.

The signature in the lower right corner is simply "Wei Fei".

"Wei Fei?"

Li Xiangming was surprised. This person was Ge Yi's confidant, the former leader of the Lion Demon Hunting Group. When he dealt with Zhang Mazi, Ge Yi was also defeated. Wei Fei played the role of a traitor during this time.

No one has a good impression of a traitor, and Li Xiangming was no exception. However, considering the deep-seated hatred between the Mad Lion Demon Hunting Group and Wei Fei—it was said that Wei Fei had cut off Lin Hao's arm—Li Xiangming spared Wei Fei's life to keep the Mad Lion Demon Hunting Group in check.

"Let him come over."

Li Xiangming gave the order.

"Yes!"

Li Xiangguang withdrew.

Before long, a lean young cultivator tiptoed in. Upon seeing Li Xiangming, he excitedly bowed and said, "This subordinate greets Master Li... no, Hall Master Li!"

"Get up."

Li Xiangming responded calmly.

Since he achieved foundational status, more and more people have been trying to uncover his true identity.

Many people know that he once served as the head of the Li family's Foreign Affairs Hall. Although he has now left the Foreign Affairs Hall, this is a secret within the Li family. Whether people are unaware of it or respect it, outsiders still habitually refer to him as the head of the hall.

And he was too lazy to correct him.

"Thank you, Hall Master Li!"

Wei Fei revealed a simple and honest smile, and used both his hands and feet to get up.

Li Xiangming narrowed his eyes. This kid was only at the fourth level of Qi Refining a few years ago, but now he has reached the sixth level of Qi Refining. His progress is incredibly fast, yet he still pretends to be ugly and hides his skills in front of him. Could he have some unspeakable secret?

Faced with Li Xiangming's sharp gaze, Wei Fei felt a chill run down his spine, as if he were naked. He quickly lowered his head and trembled just right.

Li Xiangming was speechless for a moment, then asked, "What do you want from me?"

"I have intelligence to provide."

With that, Wei Fei respectfully presented two jade slips with both hands.

"intelligence?"

Li Xiangming's heart stirred, and he suddenly remembered that it was he who had discovered Wei Fei's meticulousness that led him to give him twenty spirit stones to keep an eye on the rumors circulating about Puyin Mountain.

But Wei Fei never provided him with any information, so he naturally stopped funding him.

In fact, after raiding Ge Yi's stronghold, he never saw Wei Fei again and had almost forgotten about him.

However, when the topic of intelligence came up, he vaguely recalled that when Yu Chong rebelled and fled to Puyin Mountain, he seemed to have been defeated by an intelligence dealer named Wei Fei.

Could they be the same person?
Li Xiangming immediately became interested and took the jade slip to examine it.

After a long pause, he frowned and asked, "Are all these records authentic?"

Wei Fei respectfully replied, "I have personally verified all the events recorded on the jade slip. I dare not say they are 100% accurate, but there are reliable witnesses or physical evidence for more than 80% of them."

Li Xiangming hesitated even more, not because he didn't believe it, but because the matter was of great importance! He stared intently into Wei Fei's eyes and asked in a deep voice, "Do you know what these two jade slips represent?"

This time, Wei Fei remained calm and answered with his hands at his sides, "I know, that's why I've come to see you."

Upon hearing this, Li Xiangming got up and paced back and forth in the room.

The two jade slips actually tell the same story.

The first jade slip analyzed hundreds of cases of demon-hunting cultivators disappearing, being injured, or dying in Puyin Mountain.

These cases alone do not seem to prove anything.

After all, everyone knows that Puyin Mountain is dangerous, and countless people have died there over the years.

But when Wei Fei compared the timelines horizontally, Li Xiangming immediately noticed something was wrong.

The probability of demon hunters getting into trouble in Puyin Mountain in the past two months is far higher than before, especially last month, with more than 30 cases, with someone dying in the mountains almost every day.

It's important to know that these cases represent only a small fraction of what has been discovered.

There are countless other tragic cases where bodies were never even recorded, never even reaching the ears of others.

If the number of cases is not enough to tell the story, then plotting these cases into a graph will reveal that the originally slowly extending wavy curve suddenly spikes dramatically.

This unusual situation could not be ignored by Li Xiangming.

The second jade slip records some newly emerging demon-hunting groups.

Forming a monster-hunting team doesn't require many conditions; as long as you can recruit people, you can call yourself the team leader.

No one is so bored as to deliberately deny you.

Even the standard set by the Demon Hunter Guild is that a group of three must be formed.

Of course, it's unrealistic for just three people to join the Demon Hunter Guild.

Getting back to the main point, Li Xiangming was already used to the emergence of a large number of new demon-hunting groups every month in Puyin Mountain, but he was still surprised when the jade slip revealed the activity range of some of these new demon-hunting groups.

These places are forbidden zones in the map of Puyin Mountain drawn by the Divine Wind Demon Hunting Group, where powerful demons of unknown cultivation levels roam.

The most powerful demon that Li Xiangfeng fears must be at least at the Bone Fusion stage.

Therefore, any demon-hunting group that has seen this map will deliberately avoid the territory of the great demons, while the emerging demon-hunting group in the jade slip claims to have been active in these forbidden areas for one or two months.

Li Xiangming didn't know how Wei Fei had gathered this information, but if the two jade slips were genuine, then they all pointed to one thing—the monsters of Puyin Mountain were migrating!
Only through migration could monsters abandon their territories and allow humans to invade. Only through migration can we explain why Puyin Mountain suddenly became so dangerous.

But monsters don't migrate for no reason.

"Demon beast" is a term given by humans; in human language, it is a general term for both demons and beasts.

However, the monsters themselves do not have this concept, and no monster would refer to itself as a monster or a beast.

For example, when Xiao Hei encounters other snake demons, its eyes are always solely focused on the desire to eat. If Li Xiangming doesn't stop it, Xiao Hei will devour every snake demon it encounters—until it meets another Blackwater Serpent.

Even though they are both snakes, Xiao Hei shows no mercy.

Battles and fights between different kinds of demon cultivators are commonplace.

The practice of simply categorizing all demon cultivators into one race is inherently inaccurate.

However, there's nothing the cultivation world can do about it. When two wild bulls of the same kind achieve success in their cultivation, they will transform into two bull demons with different physiques and characteristics. In other words, during their cultivation process, they themselves evolve into a new species.

Only their descendants belong to the same race as them.

This phenomenon is ubiquitous, resulting in a complex array of races and tribes among the demon race.

At this point, it's meaningless to categorize them into specific races, because there simply aren't enough to define them all, and no one would remember so many different kinds of demonic beasts. Therefore, the cultivation world simply uses the term "demon race" to refer to them collectively.

The demon race is not united. Most demon cultivators prefer to live alone. Migration may occur in a certain group, but it will never affect other types of demon cultivators.

Unless the monsters generally feel threatened!

Many years ago, when the Immortal Xuanling suddenly launched an attack and killed the locust demon that was wreaking havoc in Puxian County, it caused turmoil in Puyin Mountain.

At that time, the monsters around Puyin Mountain were all hiding and fleeing, and the scene was chaotic.

Li Xiangming was caught up in it and almost didn't make it back.

However, the monsters' panic was very obvious that time, and most of the demon hunters could tell something was wrong at a glance. So they all withdrew from Puyin Mountain, and the riot did not cause them much harm.

This time, the demon-hunting cultivators have already lost dozens of people, but the remaining demon-hunting cultivators and demon-hunting groups are completely unaware and are still continuing to enter the mountains.

Seeing that Li Xiangming remained silent, Wei Fei grew anxious and reminded him, "Hall Master Li! The demonic beasts are migrating in an organized and planned manner. Although I am foolish, I know that this situation is not common and is often accompanied by the birth of a powerful demon."

Only powerful demons can disregard racial boundaries and issue a strong call to action. The so-called migration is actually a gathering of low-level demons towards high-level demons.

(End of this chapter)