Deal

"To be honest, I don't fully buy your touchy story and you shouldn't expect me to. I run a business here not a charity home. But I'm willing to give you chance. You'll be on probation for a week and trust me when I say I'll be watching your every move like a hawk. The tiniest slip-up and I'll have you handed over to the authorities. But if you impress me, I'll make your job permanent. What do you say?"

"It's a deal."

Mr. Lee bore witness to all that happened. He thought old man Shen would reward him with Zhi Luan's dish but was disappointed to see it handed to Zhi Luan.

"You're hungry," said old man Shen.

"Eat this and follow me when you're done."

Zhi Luan didn't stand on ceremony since he made the food and wolfed down everything in a matter of minutes. Zhi Luan took a couple of deep breaths and followed the man to a room upstairs. Mr. Lee was already done eating and left, since everything was settled.

Old man Shen flung open a door,

"This is where you'll be staying for the time being. Seeing how you have no luggage, I'm guessing what you're wearing is all you have. There are some clothes in the closet over there. I don't think you'd fit in them… you'll just have to manage them. The bathroom is just down the hallway," said Mr. Shen as he walked out of the room.

"Oh… work starts by six in the morning." He said before leaving the room.

Zhi Luan sighed and plopped on the bed. Never would he have thought he'd be in this position; a position where he had to serve. In his era, cultivators like him were revered and treated like emperors, and some of the stronger ones were revered as gods. To think that he would be reduced to the level of being a cook was unimaginable for him.

However, Zhi Luan dispelled the pity he felt for himself and sat up cross-legged on the bed, closing his eyes; today's experience was too much to filter.

Zhi Luan tried to probe his energy again and it yielded the same result as before. Energy was to flow from his core through his channels before they could be used. However, though Zhi Luan could feel the presence of his energy, there was no response from it.

However, another discovery got him puzzled. The gift the heavens blessed mortals with, Qi, the untainted power that flows through everything that breathes, had almost vanished!

The heavens blessed mortals to wield the power of the divine, but only a selected few could absorb and use this power. After their core of energy was unlocked, Qi is drawn into their body through their energy channels. However, this alone does not make them cultivators. After the Qi is drawn into their core of energy, their energy channels refine this power as it circulates through their body to every part of it, before returning to their core of energy. This refined energy is called Ryu, and its existence in one's body makes them a cultivator.

As people who could use Qi, cultivators were sensitive to its energy. And at this moment, Zhi Luan couldn't sense Qi anywhere, or rather, its energy was weak to the point that it was undetectable.

Zhi Luan was confused as he silently mused about the situation. In his era, there were indeed places with little to no presence of energy, and coincidentally, they were mortal settlements. As if natural, Qi is always drawn to cultivators, even if not absorbed by them. This meant that Qi was always denser in cultivator settlements than in mortal settlements. 

Remembering this fact relieved Zhi Luan a bit. He remembered that he hadn't seen any cultivator since he had arrived in Sanxing City, so maybe it was just a mortal settlement. But he was yet to figure out if it was a good thing for him at the moment or not. Just when he could finally put everything behind him, the stinging pain on his thigh reminded him of another issue he had resolve quickly.

Zhi Luan went straight to the bathroom and unwrapped the wound. The blood made the cloth stick to the wound, making it painful to remove. Having removed the cloth, the next thing to do was remove whatever was stuck inside his thigh, but as to how that would be done, Zhi Luan had to improvise. While biting back his urge to scream, Zhi Luan applied little pressure around the wound after binding a piece of cloth a few inches above it and digging into the wound to remove the bullet with his fingers. After a couple of excruciating minutes, Zhi Luan heaved in relief as he held the small metallic object in his hand.

"Barely an inch long and as wide as my little finger… what a devious killing tool."

The hard part was already over, all that was left to do was clean up the wound and apply the final dressing. There was no first aid kit around, and if there was, Zhi Luan would have no idea how to use it. He treated himself in the crudest yet efficient way possible. Additionally, his thigh now had a hole in it, to which Zhi Luan could only sigh and go to sleep from exhaustion.

~Sanxing City Precinct~

After getting all the information he could at the scene, detective Lang went straight to the office. With how sensitive this case was, it appears none of them will get any sleep tonight.

The detective was doing some paperwork, scanning through past documentations on the case, when his colleague dropped a file on his table.

"What's this?" asked the detective.

"They are test results we got from the lady and Mr. naked."

"Mr. naked? What did you find?"

"We took a blood sample from the lady and found traces of Curare in the same quantity as the other victims. It was almost impossible to detect by sight alone, but a needle wound was found on her forearm. And this knife was found on the scene too,"

The detective's colleague took out a transparent bag with a military dagger inside.