Therefore, it can be imagined that after beginning cultivation, the progress would be even slower than that of the Great Strength Vajra Internal Energy, but before that, what Danny Goodwin needed to do was not to absorb the fire attribute energy from the world, but to transform all the mixed and impure internal energy produced by cultivating the Great Strength Vajra Internal Energy within himself into fire attribute Lihuo internal energy.

After truly understanding the method of cultivating internal energy, besides feeling happy, Danny Goodwin felt even more a trace of worry in his heart.

“I’ve only obtained the most basic internal energy manual and body refining techniques, but with just these, I can already deduce what kind of power I’ll possess in the near future. Then, what about those who have even more advanced internal energy manuals and body refining techniques? How powerful could they become? Damn, this world really is quite terrifying. Right now, I’m just a country bumpkin holed up in a small mountain village. Life is fleeting, like grass and trees in autumn. Unless I really activate some legendary protagonist mode and encounter a series of miracles, I’d better take it easy!”

“Staying holed up in this little mountain village isn’t a solution. The old man wants me to become an apprentice—maybe this is an opportunity. Qingyang Market, haha, I’m really looking forward to it!”

He lay on his bed here thinking about Qingyang Market, and at the same time, in Qingyang Market, there were also people thinking about this small mountain village.

Qingyang Market, a small town on the very edge of Mangcang Mountain in Yun Prefecture of Great Jin, is remote but bustling, because it is the most convenient passage to Mangcang Mountain and the main trading hub between the “Hundred Thousand Mountains” and every part of Yun Prefecture.

Yun Prefecture is the most remote of the thirteen prefectures of Great Jin, and Mangcang Mountain is the natural border between Great Jin and Beiyuan.

However, although Great Jin and Beiyuan have confronted each other for hundreds of years, not a single war has ever broken out in Mangcang Mountain. This is mainly because Mangcang Mountain stretches for ten thousand miles, known as the “Hundred Thousand Mountains.” The mountains are teeming with snakes, insects, and fierce beasts, and even some powerful demon beasts that humans simply cannot contend with. If you say that a super expert, relying on their own extraordinary strength, could cross Mangcang Mountain from Great Jin to Beiyuan, while unlikely, it’s not impossible. But if you say that tens of thousands of troops could cross Mangcang Mountain, that would be a joke.

Therefore, neither Great Jin nor Beiyuan would set up any fortresses or military installations on the edge of Mangcang Mountain. Instead, some merchants are very interested in the furs, beast cores, and medicinal herbs produced in Mangcang Mountain, which is the reason for the prosperity of this remote Qingyang Market.

Prosperous as it is, it’s still just a small town. Qingyang Market isn’t very large, with at most four streets, two running north-south and two east-west, dividing the whole town into a “well” (井) shape. The most bustling area is naturally the center of the “well,” where all the major warehouses are concentrated, known as the “Well Market.” Incidentally, this “well” layout is a feature of all small towns in Yun Prefecture of Great Jin. Besides the central “Well Market,” the town has “East” and “West” entrances, the north is where the government office is located, and the south is home to some small workshops and shops. All the town’s warehouses and inns are concentrated in the northeast area, because that’s near the entrance to Mangcang Mountain. The southeast area is where the town’s prominent figures live—it’s the wealthy residential district. As for the small peddlers and commoners, they mostly live in the northwest area. The southwest, like the government office in the north, is a restricted area; that is the territory of the Black Dragon Society.

The Black Dragon Society, a mid-sized gang in Yun Prefecture of Great Jin, controls more than a dozen small towns and markets including Qingyang Market, and controls the water and land docks here. Whether transporting goods out or bringing goods in, a considerable fee must be paid to the Black Dragon Society, which is one of their main sources of income.

The gangs in this world are not entirely like the underworld. In a sense, they are monopolistic organizations that control effective resources through great strength, a kind of economic entity with underworld characteristics. Their main income is not, as Danny Goodwin saw on TV, from collecting protection fees or debt collecting—those are things done by small-time thugs.

What they do is control the entire local economic lifeline. Don’t you need water transport for your goods? You need boats, right? You need docks, right? You need workers to load and unload, right? All of these are in their hands. And as for the goods coming out of Mangcang Mountain, outside merchants can’t just buy them as they wish. Generally, for small mountain villages like Danny Goodwin’s, the game they harvest in a year, when brought to Qingyang Market, can mostly only be sold to local trading firms and merchants. Most of these local merchants have intricate ties with the Black Dragon Society, and many vendors are themselves members of the Black Dragon Society. The largest warehouses in Qingyang Market are also controlled by the Black Dragon Society, so the Black Dragon Society is the true ruler of Qingyang Market. For villages like Danny Goodwin’s, after Tyler Walker came, their harvests did increase greatly, but when they get to Qingyang Market, they still have to sell their goods to these local merchants with close ties to the Black Dragon Society. It’s just that now they have a bit more room to bargain. This is the unspoken rule, the tacitly accepted unspoken rule. As for the government, it’s like the chairman of a big company—doesn’t need to do anything, just collects taxes when the time comes.