“……” Never mind anyone else; even Shen Yi was caught off guard.

He had only said it in passing. Doing business was all about naming a price and haggling.

He had barely arrived in the Divine Land, and he was already carrying two big problems.

The first was killing the immortal. If the Immortal Court found out, from where they sat it would be little different from treason, a crime punished by death by a thousand cuts.

The second was Purple-Caltrop. To protect her spotless name, the woman hadn't even spared her own father, let alone any other living thing in Hongze.

To solve those two problems, he needed either enough strength or enough standing.

Tch. He couldn't even find a job right now. Raising his standing was easier said than done.

As for strength…

Once a cultivator finished the realm of Dao-merging, he earned the title of loose immortal.

It sounded good, with the word “immortal” right there in it.

But the word that really mattered was “loose.”

No lineage, no way in, no chance to go up to the Immortal Court as an official. All his life he could only be an immortal at loose ends, drifting from place to place.

According to the notes the East Dragon King had left behind:

The most orthodox road was of course the Bodhi Teaching or the Three Immortals Teaching, two of the Three Teachings. That road went all the way to heaven, with a glittering future ahead.

A step down were the great immortal sects that had once heard the teachings of those two and then branched off to blaze smaller paths of their own. They might not produce top-tier immortals, but at least they could drop that word “loose.” Becoming a True Immortal, even plucking a Taiyi Dao-fruit, wasn't out of the question.

Shen Yi had only just come out of Hongze and had no way in anywhere. His original plan had been to join the Divine Dynasty first. Once he had some standing, it would be easier to learn about and get in touch with cultivators from other…