City - 378

With everything he could think of done, Zhou Fan returned to the Zhou supercluster. He had at least a billion years to waste, and he did not plan to go into seclusion or cultivate. 

He had spent the vast majority of his life cultivating, and he wanted to spend an extremely long time actually living.

He began to wander around the Zhou galaxy. Eventually, he found himself at city gates. After waiting in line, he was asked to prove his identity, but he could not.

"I'm a visitor from another kingdom." Zhou Fan said, hoping that kingdom's and empire's were still in fashion.

"Alright then, here's a temporary pass. It will allow you to stay in the city for a week. After that, you can either pay a fee weekly, or buy permanent residence in the city." The guard explained before waving him through.

Zhou Fan walked into the city and saw bustling streets with carriages and humans. The streets were lined with either shops or other streets. Farther away were houses, inn's, apartments, and so on.

Zhou Fan felt that nothing much had changed over the last hundreds of billions of years. This place was almost exactly the same as Lang Yang city from long long ago.

"In that case, I wonder if there is a library." Zhou Fan muttered to himself as he walked along the roads. Soon, he really did find himself a library, though it was much smaller and more humble than the large library he had known before.

The library had three floors, and each floor was only a hundred feet wide and long. While it was still one of the larger buildings, this was the only place where knowledge and books were stored in the entire city.

"Are you looking for a job?" Someone suddenly said behind him.

Zhou Fan turned around and was greeted by a woman holding a stack of papers. One of the papers was being held out towards Zhou Fan.

He nodded, grabbed the paper, and read it. It was a job advertisement. The library needed librarians. 

As long as one had the most basic of knowledge, they would get the job. It felt different than before, but still very similar. If he recalled correctly, there seemed to have been some sort of competition for the librarian positions in the Lang Yang library. In this city, it seemed that the library had to hand out papers to even get people to think of having such a job.

"Sure. I'll take the job." Zhou Fan said.

His current appearance was different from his usual one. His hair was shorter and his face seemed rougher. After all, he would easily stand out with his previous long hair and face.

His hair was still gray, which stood out as he was not old, but it was simply a single unusual thing.

In the past, cultivators had not existed. Now, someone who had bright red hair would simply be considered a fire Qi cultivator.

Although cultivation was widespread, few people in the city had cultivation bases at all, and those who did had low cultivation.

Even the current city lord was no doubt below the core formation realm.

"That's great!" The woman said. "Follow me."

She walked quickly into the building and led Zhou Fan to a front desk. An old man with wrinkles and short gray hair was reading a book. He was a librarian, perhaps the head librarian.

"Is this young man applying for the librarian position?" He asked after briefly raising his head.

"Yes!" The woman answered with unnecessary excitement.

"Alright." The old man said before asking a few questions to Zhou Fan.

Luckily, they were all common sense questions.

Soon, Zhou Fan was a librarian. He was in charge of half of the 2nd floor.

He would start working tomorrow. As Zhou Fan wandered out of the library, he began to walk around again.

He saw many food stalls serving unique foods and stores selling things from mortal weapons to low quality healing potions.

As the sun fell down and was replaced by the moon, he wandered across a forested area within the city. He did not have a house, and did not plan on buying one. He went into the forested area and slept on the grass.

It was a surprisingly refreshing sleep. When he woke up, birds had landed on him and a few spiders were crawling across his body.

When he moved, the birds flew away. He smacked the spiders off of him and walked to the library.

He did not know what time it was or when he was supposed to start working, so he could only hope that he was not late.

It seemed he had woken up early, as the streets were nearly empty and a morning fog still covered the surroundings.

Zhou Fan came across the library, but it was not open yet. He sat down and leaned on a wall near a door and closed his eyes.

When he came to, the old man from yesterday was tapping on his head.

"You're early, I like your commitment." The old man said jokingly.

"Come inside. I bought a little extra breakfast when I saw you here." The old man said as he unlocked the door to the library.

Zhou Fan nodded and followed the old man through the door. They entered and sat down at one of the many tables on the first floor. Out of a brown bag, the old man pulled a tray and 4 white buns.

"Hot Buns. Bun outside, meat in the middle. Believe it or not, I've eaten one of these every morning for the last 12 years. And it's only twelve because I woke up late once. Ha!" The old man said.

"Thank You." Zhou Fan said as he grabbed one of the buns and ate it. It seemed familiar, but he couldn't remember if he had eaten one before.

"You don't seem to be from around here. Where did you come from?" The old man asked as Zhou Fan ate.

"I came from Lang Yang city." Zhou Fan answered.

"Never heard of it." The old man commented.

"It's in another kingdom." Zhou Fan said.

"That makes sense then." The old man nodded.