Heading Out

He eventually reached the small inn that Parker, the bearded man had told him about.

It was a small wooden building with an elevated entrance.

Nothing was broken down, but its weathered appearance told him that it had been years since it had been fixed or renovated.

He walked up the steps and noticed that they had a slight dip where they had been eroded down by the countless feet of previous customers.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

"Hello?"

He looked around but received no reply. He went up to the receptionist's desk and saw a middle-aged woman sleeping there.

*Zzz*

She was drooling slightly, and her bristly hair covered her eyes.

'I feel horrible waking her up.'

'She's probably Parker's wife, the one who made the rice balls.'

"Excuse me…"

"Muee?" She raised her head to look at Yeon.

Her drowsy eyes displayed her confusion and a bit of her hair stuck to the end of her mouth where her saliva had been.

"I'm sorry to wake you. Senior Parker referred me to this inn."

"Oh, my husband did?" She cleaned herself up and made herself look presentable then greeted Yeon with a perfect business smile.

"Welcome to our inn! How may I help you?"

'Is she just going to pretend that just didn't happen?'

"I would like any available room."

"There are plenty of rooms to choose from, what grade would you like? I recommend out silver tier rooms for 20 coppers a night with inclusive meals!"

"But the thing is, I don't have any money…"

"…" She looked at Yeon weirdly.

Her eyes seemed to be asking why Yeon was here if he had no coins to pay with.

"So you woke me up just to tell me that you can't afford a room?"

"But Auntie, I'm a cultivator. I'm only planning to stay for one night right now and I promise to pay you back double soon."

She looked Yeon up and down and decided and seeing his robes and graceful face, realized that he was telling the truth.

'You should have told me that from the start!' She screamed internally. She had just been incredibly familiar without using elevated speech and was slightly worried that she had offended him.

"Esteemed cultivator, I apologize for my rudeness. It's just that cultivators tend to stay at better inns that I wasn't expecting it."

She became much more polite after learning that Yeon was a cultivator.

The status difference between mortals and cultivators was like the difference between the heavens and earth.

Confronting cultivators was always difficult for mortals, and all the more so for powerful cultivators.

Not only would they not know the strength and importance of the cultivator unless they made it known, but many of them were entitled and difficult to handle after having been treated like royalty for centuries.

Anger a powerful cultivator and you could wake up to find everything you cared for destroyed and everyone you care about dead. They simply didn't have the means to stop them.

This sort of activity was looked down upon by both mortals and cultivators but what could they do.

The actions of any individual could never be taken back. A dead man couldn't be revived simply because he was innocent.

"Here are the keys to your room. But the rooms go up to gold tier but this is for a silver tier room," She put on an apologetic expression.

"I'm sorry but the best rooms are already occupied. If you'd like then I can wake them and have them moved to another room…" She looked at Yeon to observe his reaction.

"Auntie, don't worry. Please don't treat me like that. Your husband was very kind to me today and I promise to repay this favour in the future." He smiled and his charming face calmed her down.

"Does the room have a bath?"

"It does, but I would have to take the hot water up there myself. I'm afraid that it's only a simple wooden bath…"

"That's fine. I'll handle the water myself so don't worry Auntie. Thank you again for the room. Once I finish hunting some magical beasts then I will pay you back manifold."

"Magical beast hunting!" She gasped.

She knew how dangerous it was, and even if Yeon was a cultivator, if he had bad luck, then he could encounter a magical beast above his limit and end up dead.

"Please be careful and have a pleasant stay, esteemed cultivator."

"Just Yeon is fine." He coaxed with a fake hurt expression.

"Then I will not hold back." She smiled back at him.

Yeon quickly went up to his room. It was a small room that only had the bare essentials, but that was more than enough for him.

"With Beatrice's memories, I don't think I'll ever have to worry about my sleeping quarters. Falling asleep shouldn't be a problem at all."

He thought back to the cold concrete on which she spent her childhood sleeping and looked at the hard bed. The cheap mattress suddenly seemed much more luxurious and soft.

He summoned some jugs filled with water from his spatial ring and took a quick cold shower.

He scrubbed himself clean of the smell of impurities that had been plaguing his body.

'Senior Parker in the queue was the only person who had come close enough to properly smell me, yet he still treated me fairly.'

'In fact, considering my appearance, that's probably why he was able to approach me in such a friendly manner. He probably thought I was just a good-looking farmer or something, he saw that I only had 1 silver coin on me as well…'

Yeon's face reddened slightly in embarrassment.

'A cultivator with no money…'

But he was glad for the misunderstanding since both the husband and wife were kind people. He was determined to pay them back for their grace.

He used the same bar of soap present to wash out the blood from his robes and went to sleep on the hard bed.

*****

Yeon had entered the city through the West gate but was now leaving the city through the North gate.

He only had enough food that Adil had stored in the spatial ring to last him a few days, and he planned to hunt as many magical beasts as he possibly could during this time.

He had spent the morning asking around where the safest place to hunt magical beasts were and combined with his knowledge from Adil, this was the area he had selected.

He had to be extra careful when hunting magical beasts because, without proper planning, he could be the one being hunted instead.

Just North of the city, where Yeon was heading now, there were two potential hunting zones he could scour.

There was the vast swathes of forest to the north-east and separated by a river, there was the Kanju mountain that extended towards the north-west.

The forest was dominated mostly by wolf-type magical beasts of many types and the further into the forest you went, the higher level they would be.

The more powerful magical beasts would reside in the areas with higher qi density and the weaker ones would then be driven out to the outskirts.

This repeated until 'zones' or 'rings' formed around the centre where similar leveled magical beasts lived.

Yeon had heard from the locals at the city that around the core of the forest lived an incredibly powerful beast, a level 7 Olcan Wolf. It was only a rumour since no one lived to tell the tale after seeing this legendary beast, and it never left its home if unprovoked.

The Kanju mountain had a similar ecosystem and was named after the Kanju Monkeys that dominated the area. They were weaker on average than the various wolf-like magical beasts, but they were more intelligent and cowardly.

The highest region of the mountain was where the level 6 Kanju King lived who ruled over all the other Kanjus such as the level 5 Kanju Lords and level 4 Kanju Underlords. But as long as Yeon stayed clear from the mountain peak that would take days to reach, there was little chance of meeting these deadly magical beasts.

Yeon had decided to stay on the outskirts of the Kanju mountains near the river so that he could hunt some lone level 0 Sub-Kanjus that had yet to fully develop into Kanjus. If any level 0 wolves came to the river to hunt for some fish or water, Yeon could ambush them as well.

He would also have a source of water and somewhere to bathe and rest during the night.

Yeon had decided to focus on hunting Kanju since wolves tended to move in packs and finding a lone wolf to ambush was more rare. But he also wanted to get more practice fighting human-like monsters.

'After that one time, I have never killed anyone…'

Beatrice had promised 'her' that she would never kill, and she kept that promise. That didn't mean that she didn't secretly order others to do it for her, but she had never taken a life with her own hands apart from when she was a child - before she met 'her'.

He understood that this world was much harsher than Beatrice's, and in fact, he had already come to experience this difference with the slave market.

And so, he also knew that killing was inevitable in this world and that eventually, he would have to end someone's life to save his own. But he didn't know how he would react to this action.

Understanding something and experiencing something were two completely separate things after all.

He had been fine with killing the level 0 Mountain Hog, but that had been a pig, something that resembled livestock. It was easier to justify in his mind since he had eaten pig plenty of times before in the past, and to eat pork, pigs had to die. Simple.

But it would be different for the Kanjus.

He wanted to test himself to see if he could handle killing these humanoid magical beasts and whether he would lose his fighting spirit when fighting against a face with easily recognizable 'human' expressions and emotions.

He had been walking along the road when he saw the backs of two women.

One tall with long black hair with an erect back and perfect posture who was accompanied by a short brunette who kept circling around her as if she were pestering her.

'It's them…'