“Turns out we really are neighbors.” Lauren’s deep voice carried a hint of excitement. “We’re right next door. Is that your house? It seems like no one’s lived there for a long time.”

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Ethan Brooks’s steps paused almost imperceptibly, but he quickly returned to normal. “No, I’m here on a commission, just responsible for cleaning.”

Lauren let out an “oh.” “So you’re a new student?”

“That’s right.” Ethan Brooks nodded. He could already tell that Lauren probably rarely went out.

Sand puppets’ intelligence could grow over time. The battle sand puppets Ethan Brooks had seen in the wild were all cunning and ruthless, true killing machines.

In the wild, there was a saying: if you want to know what a soil cultivator is like, just look at his sand puppet. Judging by Lauren, it was clear his master, that Mr. Parker, was a soil cultivator who ignored worldly affairs and focused solely on cultivation.

“We’re here. This is the Blade’s Edge Dojo.” Lauren pointed to the old house at the end of the alley ahead.

“To build a dojo in such a remote place, really…” Ethan Brooks shook his head. Maybe it was his three years of experience at a sword cultivator’s dojo that made him extra sensitive to anything related to dojos. He’d thought the location would be out of the way, but seeing it in person, it was even more secluded than he’d imagined.

Could this be another tragic, boss-type character?

It was possible. Didn’t the old man say the owner hadn’t been in touch for over twenty years? The subtext was probably that no one knew if he was alive or dead.

Fine, Ethan Brooks thought he was worrying too much about other people’s business. He was only here for the payment anyway. The dojo had nothing to do with him, and the owner’s fate had even less to do with him.

The main gate was covered in spiderwebs, and a thick layer of dust coated the wooden plaque above the door, making the characters on it almost unreadable. If he hadn’t known in advance that it said “Blade’s Edge Dojo,” he wouldn’t have recognized it.

He took out the key and easily unlocked the door. He was in the right place.

As he pushed open the gate, a thick cloud of dust fell like snow.

He stood at the entrance for a while, waiting for the dust to settle before Ethan Brooks walked in.

The courtyard was in a state of utter decay, with weeds growing taller than a person. Most of them were swordgrass, looking like clumps of blades pointing at the sky. Ethan Brooks’s eye twitched. Growing swordgrass at home—what a bizarre hobby the owner had.

Swordgrass was mainly used to make grass swords. Ethan Brooks’s own weapon was a grass sword made from swordgrass.

But seeing a whole yard of swordgrass taller than himself, his head immediately started to ache. Swordgrass was extremely tough, far stronger than steel, and cutting it was a grueling task. Worse yet, swordgrass grew in dense clumps—if you accidentally wandered in, you’d almost certainly end up covered in cuts.

Ethan Brooks shook his head with a wry smile.

What made him even more frustrated was that these swordgrass plants were too old and coarse. If they were five-year-old swordgrass, he could at least sell them for some money—the leaves at that age were just the right size for making grass swords. Older, coarser swordgrass had leaves that were too big to be of any use.

“I can help,” Lauren said to Ethan Brooks.

Ethan Brooks shook his head. “I’ll do it myself. You need to check your sand core. What you did just now was just an emergency measure—it won’t solve the problem.”

“All right.” Lauren tilted his head. “You can wait for me to come by tomorrow.”

“I’ll do it myself. I took the money, so I have to do the job.” As Ethan Brooks spoke, he opened his old cloth bag. He wasn’t in the habit of leaving his work for others.

“Okay, then I’ll head back.” Lauren didn’t say anything more. His body turned into a pile of flowing sand, seeping into the ground and disappearing.

Swordgrass was a troublesome plant, a real headache for most people—but not for Ethan Brooks.

After three years in the wild, Ethan Brooks was practically a half-expert on plants. It was a pity his constitution wasn’t wood-type; otherwise, he felt his prospects as a wood cultivator would have been much brighter than as a metal cultivator.

His old cloth bag was stuffed with all sorts of odd things: animal bones, hides, plant seeds, unusually colored stones—a jumble of everything. These were his spoils from three years in the wild, and all his worldly possessions. Most of them he’d collected himself, some were gifts from high-level cultivators, and some were scraps that other cultivators didn’t care for.

Ethan Brooks kept them all carefully. No matter what happened, he’d never lost his bag.

He fished out a small red bottle. This was a type of fire poison he’d carried in the wild, called Burning Wood. Its toxicity wasn’t strong enough for combat, but in the wild, it was an essential item everyone carried. Its main use was for clearing weeds.

The wilds were overgrown with plants, blocking out the sky, and many places were nearly impassable. When camping, you had to clear a large area.

The plants in the wild were incredibly resilient, and there were countless weeds even tougher than swordgrass—handling them by hand was nearly impossible. Ordinary fire was useless; you had to use a fire poison like Burning Wood.

Ethan Brooks uncorked the bottle, and a strong smell of sulfur spread out. The red, lava-like Burning Wood was poured into the swordgrass clumps.

As soon as the Burning Wood touched the swordgrass leaves, the green swordgrass instantly turned gray, and the gray spread at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The sulfur smell in the air actually faded. In about five minutes, the once-green swordgrass clumps had turned completely gray.

“Puff!”