It is foreseeable that he won’t be going out for quite a long time in the future, and judging by the frequency of being able to use the ring once a month, he can easily summon enough martial arts manuals during this period to aid his own cultivation.

Rubbing his chin and looking around, at this moment the sun had just risen. Standing on the mountaintop, basking in the morning sunlight, William Clark let out a long breath.

“Since Senior Brother has decided on this place, let’s go find a craftsman and build two houses first!” Emily Carter had not spoken all this time. She saw William Clark standing there, happily looking here and there, then falling silent in place. Knowing that her increasingly inscrutable sect leader senior brother was probably pondering something important again, she didn’t disturb him further.

However, she was a bit annoyed at not getting any response to her question, so her tone was a bit stiff and her expression not very pleasant.

It was only then that William Clark remembered his junior sister. When he was thinking just now, he had completely ignored Emily Carter, considering everything solely from his own perspective.

Only at this moment did he recall there was another person by his side.

“Junior Sister, how much silver do you still have? After building the houses, will there be enough for the two of us to cover our living expenses?” This concerned how long the two of them could live in seclusion and cultivate, so he had to clarify it first.

Emily Carter replied stiffly, “After building the houses, if we’re frugal, what’s left should be enough for the two of us for more than two years!”

What she meant was that with the remaining money, if the two of them only bought basic food, living on the mountain for two years wouldn’t be a problem. What she said next was even more favorable to William Clark’s plan for secluded cultivation. “If we buy some vegetable seeds and grow our own on the mountain, then the rest will only need to be spent on grain, which should last us three or four years!”

William Clark remembered that the money they had stripped from those eight bandits, plus the weapons and miscellaneous items they sold, and the bounty reward, all added up to less than 50 taels of silver. At this time, that was already a considerable fortune.

According to what William Clark had seen these past two days and what he had indirectly learned from Emily Carter, in this era, an ordinary family’s annual living expenses were just a few taels of silver. If they were thrifty and grew their own food, only buying oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar, they might spend just a little over 1 tael a year.

From this, it was clear that the two of them had inadvertently solved a major problem by pulling off that job. Otherwise, they would have had to chop wood and build the house themselves, with no spare money to hire people to build a proper residence.

However, since they wanted to give the newly reestablished sect a decent front, the money for building the house would likely cost quite a bit. If they finished building, at least half of their fortune would be gone (especially since labor costs on such a high mountain would probably be much higher than in the county town).

So, if they could have about 20 taels left in the end, that would already be pretty good. If the two of them were frugal, those 20 taels might last two years, but if they did anything else, it might be gone in less than a year.

“Sigh… It seems that making the sect strong again—learning how to make money is a skill in itself!”

This was very different from the management games William Clark had played before. Who knew how sects in this era made money? He couldn’t just go out and rob people like those bandits. As for collecting protection fees? It didn’t seem like a small sect like Shushan would have the right to do that…

Emily Carter didn’t interrupt, because she didn’t know how to solve this problem either. As for the former Shushan Sect? They relied on a few plots of land left from before, hired a few servants and vegetable farmers, and basically grew their own vegetables, only needing to buy rice and some sundries.

These expenses weren’t much, and with the Shushan Sect’s former “wealthy” foundation, they could still get by. But Emily Carter knew that her master often worried about this issue and didn’t know how to solve it.

Originally, she thought that once she left, this problem would be left for William Clark to solve. Who would have thought that William Clark would soon lose the sect to someone else, along with those plots of land and the two servants and vegetable farmers? If William Clark’s master found out, who knows if he’d be so angry he’d come back to life.

And so, the problem had come full circle and landed on William Clark again. Emily Carter didn’t know if her senior brother, who seemed to have lost his soul, could come up with a good idea. She was waiting expectantly for William Clark’s next words, but instead, she heard something that almost made her cough up blood.

“Whatever, we still have plenty of silver anyway, at least there’s nothing to worry about for now! We’ll deal with it when the time comes!”

After saying this, he didn’t care how ugly Emily Carter’s expression was, and headed straight down the mountain, calling out to the seemingly frozen Emily Carter as he walked, “Junior Sister, let’s go down the mountain and find a few craftsmen! And hire a servant and a vegetable farmer while we’re at it! From now on, we’ll be living up here on the mountainside, and since it’s so inconvenient to go back and forth, let’s try to solve as many problems as we can up here…”

……

Time flew by. Ever since William Clark finalized the sect’s location and went down the mountain to hire craftsmen, nearly a month had passed in the blink of an eye.