Walker Of The Worlds

Chapter 3531: The First Week In The City

The courtyard fell quiet.

For the first time since arriving in Three Union City, Lin Mu felt something resembling safety.

Cattaleya stretched her arms and laughed softly. ”Finally. A place that doesn’t break when I sit down.”

Meng Bai smiled, tension easing from his shoulders. ”This feels... stable.”

Elyon leaned against the wall, eyes half closed. ”For now.”

Lin Mu gazed toward the city in the distance, where preparations for the grand alliance wedding continued unabated.

One month.

They had one month.

And in that time, Three Union City would only grow more crowded, more tense, and more dangerous beneath its celebratory surface. But for now, at least, they had a place to breathe.

And sure enough, a full week passed in a calm that felt almost unreal, at least from Lin Mu’s perspective.

Three Union City, on the other hand, was anything but calm.

From dawn to dusk, the city pulsed with life. Each day brought a steady influx of people arriving from all directions. Travelers, merchants, cultivators, retainers, nobles, wandering experts, performers, and those simply hoping to witness something historic all poured in through the gates.

The streets that had already felt busy on their first day now felt dense, layered with movement and sound.

Caravans rolled in constantly.

Some came by land, long lines of spirit-beast-drawn wagons loaded with crates sealed in formation lacquer. Others arrived by air, floating barges drawn by flying beasts descending into designated landing zones outside the city. Every arrival brought goods from distant regions of the Fifteen Ryze World and some even from neighboring worlds.

Rare ores, spirit herbs, preserved beast materials, exotic foods, ceremonial fabrics, cultivation treasures, and curiosities of all kinds flooded the markets.

Three Union City had become a crossroads again, just as it had been in the days of the Butterfly Kingdom.

Lin Mu and his companions took advantage of this without hesitation.

When they were not cultivating or resting at the residence, they spent long hours wandering through the outer districts and markets. They avoided the central square and the palace complexes, where security was tightest and scrutiny the highest, but even the outer markets offered more than enough to see.

Lin Mu found himself quietly pleased.

This was the kind of city he liked. Busy, alive, filled with movement and opportunity, yet not so oppressive that every step felt watched.

Of course, that did not mean there were no dangers.

Three large military camps had been erected outside the city, each positioned in a precise sector corresponding to one of the three kingdoms. From a distance, Lin Mu could see the banners fluttering above them, olive green, alabaster white, and deep steppe red.

It was impossible to miss the message.

Each kingdom was here in force.

The camps were not hidden. They were not subtle. They were displays of strength, meant as much for each other as for any outside power that might be watching.

Inside the city, however, there was no army presence.

No marching troops. No armored formations filling the streets.

Only city guards, reinforced heavily, and a constant presence of cultivators from the three kingdoms. Patrols moved through the streets in small groups, observant but not aggressive. Their task was clear: maintain order without provoking panic.

From time to time, nobles could be seen traveling through the city, surrounded by entourages of guards and retainers. They wore fine robes, spirit-threaded fabrics, and subtle defensive treasures that marked them as important without being overly ostentatious.

Lin Mu noted that none of them appeared to be royalty merely nobility.

”They’re staying hidden,” Daoist Chu said quietly one evening as they watched a noble procession pass. ”As they should.”

Lin Mu nodded. ”Too many variables.”

In a city like this, with this many factions gathered, all it would take was one incident for chaos to erupt. An assassination attempt, real or fabricated, could be enough to ignite conflict.

Even Lin Mu, confident as he was in his own strength, had no desire to be anywhere near the center of such a storm.

Instead, he focused on what he did best. Learning, spending and preparing for whatever might happen.

With the influx of merchants, Lin Mu found materials he had been seeking for a long time. Items suitable for nurturing his remaining six cores appeared sporadically, often in small quantities, but enough to matter.

Elemental energy infused minerals attuned to lightning, wind, earth, and rarer composite elements.

Condensed elemental essences sealed in jade phials.

Fragments of beast cores that carried unique elemental resonances.

None of them were cheap, but Lin Mu did not hesitate.

For him, wealth was a tool, not something to hoard.

He purchased what he needed quietly, avoiding the kind of shopping sprees that had made him notorious in other cities. Even so, merchants quickly learned his face. A cultivator who bought high-quality materials without haggling too much was difficult to forget.

Meng Bai, meanwhile, gravitated toward the book markets.

Formation manuals. Array treatises. Notes from independent formation masters. Even incomplete or flawed texts that others dismissed, Meng Bai bought eagerly.

At night, the three of them, Lin Mu, Daoist Chu, and Meng Bai, would spread the books across tables in the residence.

They read them, discussed what could be useful and then argued over the flaws and mistakes in the books.

Lin Mu and Daoist Chu would point out principles, patterns, hidden assumptions. Meng Bai absorbed everything like a sponge, occasionally stopping to stare at a page for long minutes as something clicked in his mind.

”This,” Meng Bai said one night, tapping a diagram, ”this logic... it’s similar to the Lapiz Link Body Array Totemic Art.”

Lin Mu leaned closer. ”But more rigid. It’s meant for a War Chariot.”

”Yes,” Meng Bai said. ”Too rigid for a body technique. But the idea of distributed load... it might work if adapted.”

Daoist Chu smiled faintly. ”Good. You’re thinking correctly.”

Cattaleya, of course, did not let Meng Bai slack.

Every morning, without fail, she dragged him to the courtyard.

Sparring.

Again and again.