The day before their journey to Big Tree Vilge was scheduled to begin, while Fu Anwen was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Mei to bring out lunch, his mother walked down the stairs alongside the woman who he'd seen performing various lewd acts while peeking into his mother's room two weeks earlier. The women were holding each other's hands, rosy blushes coloring their cheeks.

  "Annie," his mother announced, "this is your new Aunty Murong. She's been assigned as our personal protector from now on, so we'll all be going to Big Tree Vilge together."

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, Little Prince," the woman greeted him with a bow.

  Fu Anwen nodded in acknowledgment. "Welcome to the family."

  Upon hearing that, his new Aunty Murong smiled brightly. The group soon ate their lunches before returning to the task of packing up their few remaining items.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Fu Anwen, his mother, and their new guard were riding together in a rge covered wagon down a well-maintained dirt road.

  Mei and her daughter Hua were riding in another wagon just behind them, while Jing and her daughter Ying were in a third wagon at the back.

  This was already the third day of their journey. Even though they were spending ten hours on the road each day and the kingdom's strongest mortal horses were pulling the wagons, the group had only traveled about ninety miles so far. There were still about 1,600 miles left to go.

  Fortunately, being royalty, they were able to stay somewhat comfortable during their long trip thanks to riding in the kingdom's finest wagons. The driver's bench of each wagon was covered with soft, fluffy cushions for them to sit on, so the group felt as if their butts were bouncing on clouds as they traveled down the road.

  While the bumps on the road were gently massaging his bottom, Fu Anwen's mind was focused on his inner space, where a small area now contained a number of small pnts. It looked like a combination between a chef's herb garden and a physician's medicine garden. Dozens of Luminous Pearls were floating in the air above, hopefully providing enough light for the recently relocated pnts to grow.

  After the first few dozen miles, he had set aside most of his concerns about being observed by some powerful being's spiritual sense and started pulling anything interesting that their group passed by into his inner space. However, he always made sure that anything he pulled in was hidden from a possible observer's eyes, which meant that he was still leaving almost every valuable resource behind.

  While he still had some lingering concerns regarding the use of his ability above ground, anything valuable he saw that was located deep underground was cimed instantly. In fact, the first items that he'd pulled in on the trip had been hundreds of rge stone sheets sliced out from deep underground.

  Many of those would be fused into the space in the same way that he'd fused the coin during his earliest tests. The floating stone sheets would then end up acting as supports to keep soil and water in pce. The remaining stone would be used as construction or crafting materials in the future.

  He'd been especially happy when the wagon had passed over a rge section of limestone, which was a key part of the crafting process for countless different items. Most notably, after being processed into lime powder, it was an ingredient needed to produce a few different types of high-quality paper.

  While Fu Anwen pnned to gain practical experience by testing out nearly all of the different recipes he'd learned eventually, even the lowest quality ones, his pns for the future involved printing countless books. His demand for high-quality paper was practically endless.

  He had long designed a house of his own that he pnned to build in his inner space before ter moving it somewhere near Big Tree Vilge. The past few days had allowed him to already piece together the foundation and basement levels. Now, all he needed was an opportunity to collect some trees into his space, and he would be able to finish the construction quickly.

  Having thoughts as fast as lightning in addition to the ability to easily manipute anything inside his inner space however he willed allowed him to perform any type of carpentry, stonework, or simir task at an absurd speed.

  It was just unfortunate that he hadn't seen a lot underground that had been worth collecting. He'd been hoping to find huge deposits of metal, but either they were located deeper underground than he could reach, or there simply weren't any in this area. All he'd found so far had been water, a few different types of stone, and dirt.

  Still, he couldn't compin about his findings overall. He even had food growing inside his inner space now in case of emergencies, though it was only a few varieties of root vegetables for now. Due to growing underground, those were easy to safely pick up.

  To avoid anyone noticing his actions, most of the food and herbs he'd pulled in had been in the form of seeds or bulbs. If a powerful being happened to be nearby and had their spiritual sense activated and focused on the seeds inside of a particur piece of rotting fruit at the exact moment when Fu Anwen pulled those seeds into his inner space, well, with that level of bad luck, he was destined to die young, anyway.

  As for collecting seeds and bulbs instead of grown pnts, in addition to being safer, there also wasn't any need to rush. It had been only a little over two weeks since he'd turned six, fixed his health problems, and gained his new abilities. His entire life was still ahead of him. How could he be so impatient that he couldn't even wait for a few seeds to sprout?

  ~-o-O-o-~

  The seeds were taking way too long to grow!

  Another three days had passed, and there wasn't much worth pulling into the space anymore. The pnts in this area were only so diverse, after all. The main additions recently had been enough root vegetables and mushrooms to keep him fed for over a month in case of an emergency, and that wasn't counting the fact that more of both were constantly growing inside the space.

  Objectively, he knew that it would take longer for the seeds to sprout, and that was assuming they could even grow inside the space at all. Some of the bulbs might even take months to sprout.

  Subjectively, however, each day felt like it was thousands of hours long. The wait was excruciating.

  The only factor making the wait less terrible was that he could see the growth progress of the seeds through the soil. Some of them were definitely beginning to sprout. He just needed to find some way to distract himself so that he could stop focusing on his new farm.

  However, that task wasn't so easy to accomplish.

  Riding in a wagon all day was more boring than anything else he'd ever experienced in his life. He only saw the same trees, the same sky, the same clouds, the same everything, every single day.

  At least the bench cushions were amazing. While they couldn't make up for how dreadfully boring everything else was, it was close. He'd have to find a way to get some of these cushions for his new house.

  "Baby, why don't you go py us a song," his mother looked over and said. Fu Anwen was sitting on the right side of the driver's bench, his mother was in the middle, and their new guard Murong Xinyi was cuddled up against his mother on the left.

  He had to admit that the journey had been countless times worse for his mother and her growing harem than it had been for him. The only exception was this new Aunty Murong, who was finally able to hold onto his mother directly every day instead of having a gss door stuck between them.

  Jing and Mei had both looked absolutely miserable every time he'd seen them during meals. Their fun times with his mother were currently on hold, and it almost seemed like the withdrawals were killing them.

  "Okay," he quickly agreed, also needing the distraction. He stood up and crawled back into the cramped body of the wagon where his guqin was already set up. He'd been pying it quite a bit during their journey to break up the monotony.

  As soon as he moved inside the wagon, he immediately blocked off the two women up front in his outer vision. He'd learned that painful lesson the first time the two dies had sent him into the back to py his guqin. He hadn't even had a chance to sit down yet before their hands were already stuck in all sorts of pces he didn't ever want to see them go.

  Presumably, since his mother had waited until the road ahead was clear before asking him to go inside the wagon to py, more of the same was going to happen this time.

  'I'm surrounded by perverts,' he helplessly thought.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  After finishing his third song and making sure to give the two women up front plenty of time to wrap things up, Fu Anwen stood up and made his way back out to the bench.

  His mother's face was flushed, while his Aunty Murong had a smirk on her face as she licked her fingers.

  As soon as Fu Anwen saw what their new guard was doing, he froze.

  Honestly, he still wasn't sure if the women thought that he was such an innocent little child that he had no clue what they were up to all the time, or if they were all such degenerates that they simply didn't care. Both options seemed equally likely at this point.

  Consequences be damned, he was going to move into his own house as soon as they got to Big Tree Vilge. The dies could all go and filth up their own house as much as they wanted. He was done with it.

  "I'm moving to a different wagon," he loudly announced. He crawled over to the edge of the bench and was about to hop off, but stopped and turned back to Murong Xinyi, "And you're gross," he added.

  With a light hop, he nded firmly on the ground before walking off toward the other wagons.

  He didn't know if the two dies were too embarrassed to follow him or if they were too shocked to react, but he soon made his way to the very back and climbed onto Jing and Ying's wagon, giving a wave to Mei and Hua as he passed by.

  'Six more weeks...'

  ~-o-O-o-~

  "...pumpkin, watermelon, and," Fu Anwen paused, looking around, "actually, just give me a bag of everything."

  "Right away, young master!" the shopkeeper cheerfully replied.

  Their group of seven had arrived in Shining Crane City an hour earlier. Eighteen days had passed since they'd left the Jade Court, and this was the first major city that the group was passing through.

  Fu Anwen wanted to make sure he explored the city as much as he could, as this was his first time ever seeing a city. The city's massive, twenty-foot-high city walls were even more impressive than he'd imagined. According to the books in the Royal Library, most cities were surrounded by thick stone walls due to the threat of potential beast tides.

  He was currently in a shop that sold a variety of farming and gardening supplies, ranging from simple tools like hoes and spades to dozens of different varieties of seeds. Unlike the wild seeds that he'd been harvesting so far, which would produce unpredictable results when grown, these were high quality heirloom seeds guaranteed to produce delicious crops.

  The shopkeeper briefly ccked around on an abacus while pcing small pouches filled with seeds into a wooden crate. "Your total comes out to one gold, thirty-six silver, and twelve copper" he announced.

  Currently, in the Fu Kingdom, one gold coin was worth forty-five silver coins, while one silver coin was worth sixty copper coins. The rates changed based on metal avaibility, new mining sites opening, wars in nearby countries, and other factors that Fu Anwen didn't care enough to try to follow.

  "Can you deliver these ter today?" he asked.

  The shopkeeper nodded, "As long as we're delivering within the city limits, the fee's three copper. If we have to deliver outside the city, the delivery fee depends on how far we need to go."

  "We're staying over at the Red Raven, room seven. Someone will be waiting to accept the delivery whenever you show up." He handed the shopkeeper two gold coins. "Keep the change."

  "Thank you, young master!" the shopkeeper beamed, cupping his fists in a bow. After standing back up, he quickly called over an assistant to arrange the delivery.

  By then, Fu Anwen and Mei had already set off. The pair were walking quickly down the street while keeping an eye out for any interesting shops.

  "Don't buy too much, An'er," she reminded him. "Remember that we still have to haul whatever you buy with us to the vilge."

  In the interest of keeping a lower profile, everyone was forbidden from calling him Little Prince while they were traveling.

  "I know."

  After walking through a decent portion of the city, Fu Anwen had been pleasantly surprised to find that burying one's wealth wasn't restricted to royalty. He kept finding treasures hidden all over the city.

  The two main differences between the treasures buried in Shining Crane City and those back at the pace were the quality of the buried items and how deep they were buried.

  Here, it seemed like burying items even one foot deep was fine, while the shallowest treasures he'd found buried back at his old home had been buried more than ten feet underground. Some had even reached a depth of twenty feet.

  As for the quality of the items, suffice it to say that he hadn't even bothered pulling a single item he'd found in the city into his inner space.

  Still, he thought that treasure burying was an excellent habit for people to have. He wouldn't mind seeing more of it in the future, especially in wealthier locations.

  While Fu Anwen was browsing for anything new and interesting with Mei, he suddenly stopped, and his face clouded with anger.

  Mei noticed that he wasn't moving a few seconds ter and turned around, confused. "Is something wrong?" she asked, her voice filled with concern.

  He let out a long sigh.

  "No. I just forgot to stop by a shop earlier. Let's turn around."

  "Okay."

  Not thinking much of it, she followed along behind him, not noticing the dark look still on his face.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Moments earlier, in a house a little over two hundred feet away from the spot where Fu Anwen had stopped, an old man walking through his kitchen had suddenly colpsed to the floor. Unbeknownst to him, a few very important parts of his skeletal and nervous systems had just disappeared from his body.

  At the same time, a section of floorboards hiding a staircase leading down to a secret basement below his home had vanished.

  A few minutes ter, in the office of the city magistrate, a stone tablet suddenly appeared in the center of his desk, sitting right on top of the paperwork that he was in the middle of reading. He quickly scanned over the words carved on the stone tablet, then hurriedly stood up in shock and bowed to the air.

  "This humble one obeys your command, senior!" he shouted before quickly rushing out of the room. Soon, he and a small squad of the city's strongest guards rushed out of the building, then raced off down the street.