Unsheathed

The divine general reverted back into an adorable, miniature fiery dragon that wrapped itself around her wrist, and it immediately fell into a state of slumber, snoring gently as it did so. During this battle on Hibiscus Mountain, it had devoured two Golden Core Tier earth immortals and a young man carrying abundant martial fortune, and it was feeling a little stuffed.

Right at this moment, Ruan Xiu asked Palace Minister Song a question that caught him completely off guard: "Can I take some Hibiscus Stones back to the Dragon Spring Prefecture? I want to open a seal and feng shui stone shop in the small town."

Palace Minister Song had always been renowned for his mental astuteness in the Great Li Empire's imperial court, yet even he was struggling to figure out the reasoning behind this request from Ruan Xiu, and after some contemplation, he smiled as he replied, "As long as you have enough space in your minimization treasure, you can take the entire Hibiscus Mountain with you if you'd like."

After receiving this answer, Ruan Xiu immediately instructed Dong Gu and Xu Xiaoqiao to begin chipping away at the mountain. While the two of them were serving as manual laborers, Ruan Xiu turned to Palace Minister Song and said, "Rest assured, Mr. Song, I'll see to it that you won't have come all this way for nothing.

“As long as we're still taking the same route back to the Great Li Empire, I'll help you find three suitable candidates, and the three of them combined should be able to make up for a single... What was his name again, Xu Xiaoqiao?"

"Han Jin," Xu Xiaoqiao replied from afar.

"That's right. The three of them combined won't be inferior to Han Jin," Ruan Xiu promised. "The first one will be the grandson of the old pastry salesman at the Green Parasol City city lord temple, he's the one that's closest to us. The second one will be the little girl that I gave that piece of candy to at the candy stall in the Sweet Dew Monastery of the Stone Brush Nation, that adorable little girl with the apple-red cheeks.

“The final one will be a local boy that I met at the Carriage End Ferry Station. At the time, I'd bought a large bag of yellow osmanthus dried persimmons. He challenged me to an eating contest with those dried persimmons, and in the end, he developed a toothache from eating too many and ran crying back to his parents."

The three Great Li Empire sticky rod officials were left in disbelief upon hearing this. Was this meant to be a joke?

To their surprise, Palace Minister Song agreed to this arrangement without any hesitation.

"Once Mr. Dong and Ms. Xu have collected enough Hibiscus Stones, we'll return to Green Parasol City to find that child by the name of Tong Shan."