During these days, the craftsmen hired at considerable expense had already built a wall around this vast open land, and constructed a rather imposing main gate. The huge plaque above it bore the three large characters ‘Shushan Sect’, giving off quite an impressive aura.

However, the inside was not as grand as the wall. Apart from a main hall for receiving guests, there were no other buildings that looked particularly imposing.

The spacious courtyard was completely empty, not even paved with stone slabs. As for the area behind the main hall, aside from a rear hall for honoring the founder and a large house suitable for living, there was only a kitchen for cooking and a side room for the servants.

Spending so much money on the wall had already made Emily Carter quite dissatisfied. After all, properly renovating the main and rear halls was a matter of the sect’s reputation and respect for the founder, but what was the point of making the wall so lavish?

Although William Clark had given the explanation, “First enclose the area, since we’ll use it all eventually, and this way no one else can take it! Besides, walls are something you’ll have to build sooner or later,” which wasn’t entirely unreasonable, she still felt it was a bit wasteful. It would have been better to use a fence for now, and only consider building a wall once the sect became stronger.

What she didn’t know was that William Clark already regarded this place as his private property, absolutely not allowing outsiders to encroach, which is why he enclosed it early on. In William Clark’s eyes, this was a new starting point for himself.

What made Emily Carter even more dissatisfied was that just a single large house and a side room had cost so much money. She couldn’t understand what all those odd requirements from William Clark were for—the hard earthen beds, the stove that looked more suited for cooking, the hollow iron pipes running throughout the house, and the iron chimney leading to the roof. She had no idea what any of it was for.

Although the large house William Clark had built was divided into two separate rooms, and could even be further partitioned to accommodate more people, there were still so many inexplicable things that she couldn’t see the point of spending money on.

But William Clark simply didn’t bother to explain to her. With a single sentence—“You’ll understand in a while!”—he ignored her, instead running off to his bedroom to tinker with something, and hadn’t been seen practicing martial arts.

Emily Carter didn’t know that William Clark had been waiting a long time for this day, so he hurried back to his bedroom and channeled all his internal energy into the index finger of his right hand.

To be precise, into the ring on his index finger!

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Chapter 10: Speculation About the Ring

After nearly a month of recuperation, William Clark’s injuries had fully healed, with absolutely no lingering aftereffects. During this time, aside from nursing his health, he also supervised the craftsmen’s work, occasionally offering his own suggestions.

Things like the fire pits and heating in several rooms were all his own designs.

The reason for these contraptions was that, at this time, people mostly relied on braziers for warmth in winter. William Clark had already confirmed this in conversations with the craftsmen.

As for the location of Shushan, while winters weren’t especially harsh, it did snow. What’s more, the spot the two of them had chosen was halfway up the mountain. In summer, it felt cool and pleasant, but in winter, relying only on braziers would be far from comfortable.

Therefore, William Clark would rather spend a bit more money to prepare these basic winter necessities in advance—if they waited until winter, their funds would likely be much tighter, and then they’d have to worry about what to do if the money ran out.

So he simply took advantage of their current surplus to get everything done. In William Clark’s view, as long as he was living here, these things would have to be installed sooner or later. After all, he didn’t want to suffer from the cold in winter. Even on TV, it was clear that braziers weren’t very effective for heating.

Sitting on the heated brick bed he had designed himself, which was connected throughout the entire large house, William Clark calmed his mind and carefully controlled his internal energy as it moved through his body, slowly directing it toward his finger.

During these days, he had already learned from his fragmented memories that these two senior and junior disciples had never practiced any advanced internal arts, only some basic breathing techniques. Even those had been found by the fifth-generation sect leader—their grandmaster—during a trip down the mountain, taken from a notorious bandit.

Although he had managed to kill the bandit and bring both some income and a beginner’s breathing technique back to the Shushan Sect, the grandmaster had suffered severe internal injuries and passed away not long after.

This technique merely established a basic circulation within the body, mainly to cultivate a sense of qi and strengthen the body, and was never meant for combat. William Clark had started practicing it from a young age, and even at twenty, he only had a vague sense of qi, with pitifully weak internal energy. If not for William Clark’s soul having survived transmigration and merged with some of the lingering spirit of ‘Sect Leader Ye’, giving him much stronger mental strength than ordinary people, he probably wouldn’t have been able to control even this meager internal energy.