Master of Strange Dao

The hungry ghost chef is essential. Without the hungry ghost chef, fake beef jerky cannot be made, so there's not much to say about it.

The ability of the deceitful ghost, no matter how you look at it, is to better conduct business and earn money, to be a better deceitful merchant.

However, upon closer inspection, gathering intelligence is also for being a deceitful merchant. Focusing solely on intelligence gathering can also be extremely useful.

Yu Ziqing has long coveted the Shadow Great Mirror of the Shadow Department, but this item can only be envied from afar.

Even if it were given to him directly, regardless of the cost, he might not be able to use it effectively.

When the deceitful ghost reaches a location, he can backtrack the sounds made within the past month. If used well, it can be extremely useful.

But the limitations are likely the same as the Shadow Great Mirror: if a stronger person deliberately erases traces, it's likely that nothing will be heard.

The current advantage is that most methods of erasing traces are targeted at artifacts like the Jade Mirror. Perhaps sometimes sounds might remain.

Therefore, Yu Ziqing doesn't want many people to know about this, and he also told the deceitful ghost not to reveal his abilities outside.

In critical moments, this ability might capture crucial intelligence.

Currently, just let him operate his shop honestly, building a network of interests centered around Jinlan Mountain.

Communication between powers is unlike that between individuals, where emotions might be key bonds.

The most stable bond between powers is interest.

Since the sweet rain, Yu Ziqing has never had a single person control the entire chain of interests.

In essence, he's only treating it as an upstream, distributing the sweet rain to several people, and however they choose to handle and further distribute it is not his concern. He doesn't inquire.

The filth bucket is the same; because it's an exclusive item, he only needs to occupy the upstream position.

Yu Ziqing knows that the derived interests from this will be much greater than what he receives.

But the more the better, the wider the coverage, the better.

The overall strength of Jinlan Mountain, apart from the top-tier strong, is terribly unbalanced in structure.

Not fearing challenges is fine, but Yu Ziqing still tries to avoid situations where there could be direct warfare with major powers.

After all, you can't always rely on the strongest to handle every issue.

As it stands now, with so many forces aligned, from the weakest to the strongest, aboard the Jinlan Mountain war chariot, when something happens, it depends on whether they'll dare to rebel.

So far, just speaking of the filth buckets, Dazhen is absolutely dependent on Jinlan Mountain's filth bucket.

Without this item, Dazhen would have difficulty maintaining stability because traditional random outputs, due to climate reasons, cannot sustain everyone within the smaller living area.

With the presence of filth buckets producing better fertilizer continuously, crop yields and pasture recovery rates will improve significantly.

Even if it's only a one or two percent addition in proportion.

But without this one or two percent, traditionally, it's not that each person has one or two percent less, but rather represents that at least one or two percent of people can't survive.

And once such a scenario arises, causing panic, under Dazhen's current situation, it will undoubtedly lead to more resources concentrating in the hands of the strong, more than ever before, while the weak have even fewer resources.

By then, it wouldn't just be one or two percent unable to survive, but a major chaos causing at least thirty percent loss of life before returning to peace.

You Zhen is unwilling to return to Dazhen, not only because the prophecy of disaster when emperors meet.

King Xiang urgently sent his descendants to Jinlan Mountain.

And it's not just because of good relations among everyone; various ties are incredibly complicated.

Meanwhile, on the side of Dali, the west of Dali is vigorously developing, with increasing population, all requiring adequate resource support.

Due to the presence of the filth bucket, derived from it is reduced plagues and annually reoccurring diseases.

Increased food production, more production of basic Spiritual Medicine, given Dali's scale, even a one percent increase is an extremely significant figure.

Each year, the money and resource conveniences given to Jinlan Mountain because of the filth bucket are just a drop in the bucket.

If not, with the Crown Prince of Dali's temperament, things wouldn't be so straightforward.

Plus, sweet rain binding High Tier cultivators.

Nowadays, materials from the Devil are almost monopolized by Jinlan Mountain's hungry ghosts.

If they want to increase the price of a certain material, just slightly reducing the supply is enough.

Yet Jinlan Mountain just wholesales, and prices are genuinely not high; thus expanding, all industries requiring Devil materials will profit from this.

Materials worth ten Spirit Jades, when leaving Almsgiving Town, might leverage tens of thousands of Spirit Jade worth of interests.

These people are spread across the entirety of Dali.

With this bit by bit layout, today, Dali must maintain friendly relations with Jinlan Mountain.

With a cake this large, Yu Ziqing hardly receives a major slice, but if one day he becomes displeased and cuts off supply on something, it will have severe repercussions.

Just like the filth bucket, without Yu Ziqing saying he's stopping sales, by merely stating that Gege accidentally got beaten half to death and is in a coma recovering at Jinlan Mountain.

In just a few years, the massive amount of filth collected by Dali, left uncollected, would cause a chain reaction — while it might not collapse many industries, Dali's economy would surely take a severe hit, forcing the Dali Crown Prince's development strategy to either stifle or pause, and they may not even maintain stability in the end.