Vol 1 SS: The Anomaly

The evening sun was gentle on the lively Grassfloor Town.

On the streets, those who faced the sun had to squint their eyes to see, and those who faced away found the familiar town tinted golden.

The streets were busy, but the people felt a rare sense of comfort in the air, so they went about their ways with more contentment in their hearts than usual.

It was one of those unremarkable moments in life that people tended to remember whenever they would feel nostalgic.

However, the dusk which followed the gentle decline of the sun was anything but unremarkable.

Stargazers spoke with horror in their eyes, oracles spent a dreamless night, and those pursuing immortality felt a profound sense of 'wrong' as if a certain sacrament had been violated right before their very eyes, yet they were unaware of it.

They could not understand this sudden, planetwide phenomenon.

For the briefest of moments, the stars had disappeared from the sky.

In the least comprehensible vision, the seers of the future beheld a shift of the universe so massive it changed how they viewed the path of an oracle.

With the powerful insight of the immortal cultivators, they came to discover, to their horror, that absolutely nothing had changed, no laws had been meddled with, and not a single element of importance was out of order on the planet.

So what had caused the upheaval? ...Or, Who?

None knew, except perhaps one cultivator in the Grassfloor Town. But that man had gone insane that very moment. The secret remained one to be explored someday, with most people unaware that something so significant had even taken place.

* * * * * *

Meng Qi opened his restaurant early the following day, feeling disgruntled. Last night, he had felt especially energetic. So he had decided to do something he had been putting off for a while now.

He had gone through his ledgers and discovered a huge error in his records. Almost every day for the last few months, enough food to feed a big family had gone missing from his kitchen, with no records of transactions made on the items. It was as if he had not written down the accounts of the transactions.

The loss was not huge, in all honesty, but it was significant enough to make him enquire.

Were his workers stealing from the kitchen?

Before he could make up his mind to question the workers in the kitchen, a horde of customers flooded through the door swiftly, taking seats in an unusually disciplined manner.

With one look, Meng Qi realized why. These were mercenaries, escorting an oddly dressed man who looked to be in his fifties.

A foreigner, eh?

Meng Qi's nose flared as he smelled the scent of profit to be made so early in the morning.

The questioning could wait.

"What may I serve you with, guests?" he said loudly through the commotion.

The dozen-something mercenaries looked up at him in unison and spoke two words together.

"Soup! Bread!"

A common breakfast in these regions. These people were experienced, from the looks of it. They knew they wouldn't find unpopular food here so early in the morning.

Meng Qi nodded emphatically and passed the order to the kitchen as he rushed to place the bread that had been prepared beforehand on the tables.

"Master Zi, anything extra?" said the mercenary sitting the closest to the foreigner.

The old man looked unsure of himself as he said, "Do you serve tea? The red one."

Meng Qi usually did not. It wasn't a part of the menu. But for the money, he nodded and slinked off towards his storeroom.

There was a bag of month-old leaf extract there, a luxury few enjoyed in these regions. Tea leaves were not hard to find, but processing them properly wasn't easy.

Meng Qi prepared the tea himself and carried over the cup on a tasteful tray. When he reentered the chamber, he found a newcomer, a bright-eyed youth, sitting next to the old man, having an enthusiastic exchange.

"Such a coincidence! I am headed to the Crimson Snow sect as well! We can head out together!" exclaimed the young man.

"If you want to, sure! Why are you headed there, by the way?" the foreigner replied.

"They're recruiting disciples. I got an invitation!"

The young man pulled out a card from the pouch he was carrying. Meng Qi had never seen an invitation card from the Crimson Snow Sect. He took a long, concentrated look at it.

The old foreigner, Master Zi nodded vaguely upon seeing the card as he sipped on the tea.

"Well, that settles it. We'll go together. The journey isn't very safe. Stick with my men and you'll reach the sect unharmed. Can't let a potential disciple of the sect be harmed if I can help it."

Master Zi's decision appeared rather swift. Meng Qi couldn't help but feel envy. That one invitation card was all it took to make this rich master treat a youth like his kin?

The Crimson Snow Sect's influence was like a royal banner in the fight region of this continent. No one dared to challenge it here.

"Where are you from, child?" asked the leader of the mercenaries once they finished the breakfast.

"Uh, here! Have lived in this town my whole life."

The young man's answer made Meng Qi frown.

The kid's face did not seem very familiar.

Odd. Why is he lying about this?

But he didn't voice his thoughts. Because it was time for the customers to pay.

The money he got put a big smile on his face. The first transaction of the day was enough to wipe off a good portion of the losses he had suffered the last two weeks. These mercenaries had an appetite any businessmen would appreciate!

Happily, he saw them off, standing at the door and requesting them to visit once more on their way back from the mountains.

"Uncle Qi, your soup is the best in town. They'll definitely be back!" the boy shouted from the front of the group.

"Uncle Qi?" Meng Qi was puzzled once more. How did this kid know his name? Was he really a native of the town like he had claimed?

"Little Xuhan, why didn't you help us get a discount if your relationship with the boss is that good?" one of the mercenaries hit the boy in the back playfully.

"Oh, he doesn't do discounts. Never. Been buying his stuff for years and even I never got charged a coin less. Uncle Qi got a funny nickname for this-"

The voices grew inaudible as the distance between them increased. Meng Qi was left on his door, more confounded than ever.

How did this kid know all that? Meng Qi didn't know any kid his age named Xuhan...

Such an odd morning to start the day...

And then he saw the mass of purple clouds rolling forward overhead, heading towards the mountains.

This was not the season for lightning storms!

This was the last day of winter!

Meng Qi shuddered and slinked back inside his restaurant, feeling a bit safer under the shelter of bricks and stones.

"Are those guys going to be alright? I hope they haven't rushed too far away. The purple clouds are the absolute worst, striking without making a sound..."

One of the workers cleaning up the tables voiced his concern.

Meng Qi didn't feel as troubled. The old man had given him a spirit stone as the price of his prized tea. That indicated that he was a cultivator. He'd probably know what to do.

BOOM! Boom! BOOM!

"That doesn't sound like the storm..." the worker trailed off, freezing in his tracks.

The ground vibratrd rhythmically.

Meng Qi felt his heart palpitate.

"The mountains. Something probably happened in the mountains. It's the sound of the mammoth horde!"

All the workers rushed out of the restaurant to watch the distant mountains. If the mammoth horde was angered into heading their way...the town would have a hard time defending itself. Usually, those gargantuan beasts were gentle and cautious, rarely venturing towards human localities. That's why Meng Qi and his neighbors hadn't feared any consequences when they constructed their homes and shops a good distance away from the main town.

But the feared tide of beasts did not come. Everything appeared as normal as ever if one ignored the purple clouds gathering over the mountains.

A large group of people came out of the town, passing by their restaurant swiftly. None of them looked familiar.

More foreigners?

Meng Qi followed their group for a minute and caught enough flying words to know what was going on.

These people were headed to the sect as well, all for that disciple recruitment ceremony. They had spent the night in the town and would've left much earlier had it not been for the purple clouds. Now that the clouds had moved far ahead, this group was taking the opportunity to cut some distance as fast as possible.

"Boss!" One of his workers suddenly called.

"What is it?"

"Did you hear? Those guys were saying there's a ghost, or demon of some sort haunting the town."

"...What?" Meng Qi was stunned.

"Yeah," his worker reaffirmed with a pale face.

"All of their rooms got ransacked last night, apparently, even though most of them spent nights separately. The ghost only targeted the foreigners!

Some of them were from influential families, with mystical talismans and magical protections in their rooms. Some of them hadn't even slept last night. Nothing worked against the ghost! All the bags, all the hidden pouches were found ransacked out of the blue. But the ghost took nothing except a bottle of pills from one guy!"

Meng Qi was listening with his mouth open."What kind of pills?" he immediately asked.

"Healing pills. That guy bought the bottle from Flowerheart Valley City. It was worth 500 spirit stones!"

Meng Qi felt his guts churn. Whoever could afford pills worth 500 spirit stones could also afford protection magical enough to stop any regular thief.

Recalling the ghostly discrepancies in his ledgers, Meng Qi felt jittery.