The Undying Immortal System

As it turned out, I was being a bit rash. Lord Hao was not, in point of fact, Lord Hao. Grandmaster Hao had yet to reach such a lofty position.

This was unfortunate, but I wasn’t going to allow it to delay us. After conferring with Yan, I chose to purchase the title to NanLu City, located on the south bank of the YaLu River. The north side of the river had been Lord Hao’s domain in the previous timeline and was owned by a separate kingdom, though it was still within the same empire. This meant that border raids were allowed and kingdom-level interference was unlikely.

In truth, I had no interest in pillaging Lord Hao’s city and hurting his people. The general plan was to improve the prosperity of my domain and encourage people to leave the surrounding lands for mine. This would no doubt anger the Lords of those lands, and they would strike out to pull me down. We would then need to respond swiftly and decisively to their aggression.

Ultimately, our actions would cause innocents in the area to suffer as their Lords dragged them into fruitless wars, but I had to accept that. In this world, in this sect specifically, everything had been designed to make it easier for the people at the top to step on those below them. I could only try to direct the damage I caused onto those who deserved it as much as possible.

Upon arriving in NanLu City, I was shocked by the state that it had been left in by the previous steward. Walls were crumbling, less than half the houses were still standing, and the city was under severe food shortage.

If I could only use one word to describe the scene, it would be ‘perfect.’ I couldn’t understand why any Lord would leave the city in such a state unless they were completely incompetent. NanLu City was a karmic energy goldmine.

Of course, we hadn’t picked NanLu randomly. We had wanted a place we would be able to quickly transform so that we could rapidly generate a large amount of karmic energy, and Yan’s information had indicated that this city was an ideal candidate. It was just far worse than anything we had expected.

I looked at Yan, and we nodded at each other. We had a lot of work to do, but if we could get this place back in shape, we would be able to earn contribution points at an astonishing rate. We wouldn’t even need to harass the surrounding Lords to do so.

Before anything else, we had to set up our base of operations, so we walked directly to the lord’s manor in the center of the city. In the past, this building would have been a grand sight. It was a large three-story complex with several outbuildings for the different branches of the city’s governance. The sight that greeted us, however, was a ghost of its former glory.