After playing with the snakes for a bit, Hao Xuan recalled them back into the Mind Palace and went to sleep. The next morning a loud knock woke him up.
"Ninth brother, are you back??" shouted a voice. Still half asleep, Hao Xuan got up and opened the door only to be met with a blinding white light.
"Ahh!" Hao Xuan almost lost his eyesight from the sudden exposure.
"Oh my bad, sorry sorry," said the voice and the light turned off instantly. Hao Xuan slowly opened his eyes again and saw Fourth standing there with an awkward expression.
"Fourth brother, are you trying to kill me perhaps?" he asked with an annoyed expression.
"Hahaha, no way no way. I was cultivating a new technique and forgot to turn it off. Since you're awake, let's go out! It's been so long since we saw each other. Everyone else is still on missions so it's just us two," Fourth said with a wide grin that gave Hao Xuan cold chills.
"Fine, but it's your treat. Give me a few minutes, I'll change and meet you near the gate," with that he closed the door and went to wash up. As he was about to leave, Zhurong woke up and jumped on his shoulder with an unnatural enthusiasm. Usually, he would spend the whole day sleeping but today he woke up so early that it was worrying.
"You wanna come with?" Hao Xuan asked with a frown and got a cute "Meow" and a nod in return.
"Mhm, sure. We still have to talk about the stunt you pulled at the waterfall," he said with a smile that slightly scared the little fluffball.
He met up with Fourth and they both departed. Fourth had also changed into normal clothes and in his pants and shirt, he looked like a normal teenager from earth.
Hao Xuan, on the other hand, was wearing an old-school Hanfu which was completely white in color. He had picked it up the day before from a shop after reaching Fortuna City.
One had to remember, after coming out from the cocoon, Hao Xuan had changed significantly. His hair were long, bone structure was that of a model, and with his current height of 8+ feet, he would be the center of attention anywhere he went, especially dressed like he was.
And with Zhurong in his embrace, he looked like a young master from some powerful clan and gave everyone an ethereal feeling.
*Whistle*
"My god, Ninth brother since when did you become so handsome?!" Fourth whistled and asked with a surprised expression.
"What are you talking about? I was always handsome. Did you not notice before?" he replied with a smile and started walking down.
"Ninth brother, if you meet any cute girls you must remember me," he shouted from the back and followed after.
They walked for a good hour or so until a huge shopping district appeared in front of them. Obviously, this wasn't Hao Xuan's first time coming to such a place since he had passed through once before with First.
But at that time he didn't have any memory of Earth or any similar knowledge so he didn't notice a lot of things about the people and the world in general.
Like quite a lot of people seemed to be wearing a bracelet of some kind on their left hand which attracted his attention.
"Fourth brother, what is that thing everyone is wearing?" he asked pointing at a person's wrist.
"Hmm?" Fourth followed Hao Xuan's line of sight and then looked at him as if he was looking at an idiot.
"…ninth brother…..do you really not know?" he asked suspiciously.
Hao Xuan glared at him, "Are you going to answer or not?"
"Um, I don't know if you're messing with me or not, but I'll answer anyway. That's a Spirit Band, it's used to…."
And for the next 10 minutes, he explained its functions. It had the same functions as a cell phone from earth. But unlike cell phones, it wasn't made with microchips and other components as such tech was completely outdated in this world. Instead, they used extremely complicated runes and formations to get the same functions out of it and much more.
It was connected to a network, just like the internet from Earth where you could meet and chat with all kinds of people from all over.
But one key difference was that the area it covered was limited. There were Six continents on Beast world, and each of them had its own network. So Hao Xuan would not be able to get in contact with anyone from another continent, for now.
The networks were controlled by the main cities in each continent. The continent Hao Xuan was in was simply called 'Tertium' and its city was the 'Saint City' so everything would be controlled from there.
But even though it was 'limited', the size of most Grade-2 kingdoms was larger than the entire planet earth, and with thousands of such kingdoms, even bigger Empires, Ancient Clans, Sects etc, it did not feel restricted in any way.
"Seriously? How come I didn't hear about this before then?" Hao Xuan asked with a questionable gaze.
"I should be asking YOU that. Although we aren't allowed to use our personal spirit bands during missions, everyone still has them," Fourth was stupefied, and rightly so.
Imagine someone from earth asking what a computer was, this was the same as that.
The spirit band was, of course, a luxury item and had many different types. It wasn't the government's job to provide you one and you had to buy one with your own money.
"What the hell, how do I get one then?" he asked eagerly. Imagine how easy it would make things.
"Well since we're in the military, we can go to the R&D department and get the latest model for free," Fourth's mood suddenly changed for the better and he led Hao Xuan into one of the many restricted areas.
Of course, they were only restricted to normal people. They went to a place similar to the Beast hall but much smaller in scale. With Fourth's BSing skills, both of them quickly got brand new Spirit Bands.
Hao Xuan had to register since it was his first time. They scanned him and took a drop of blood for verification and then used the information from his Red Legion identity badge to expedite the process.
Within a couple of hours, they were back on the streets.
Hao Xuan chose an extremely simple complete black band. It just looked like a piece of black steel. It was connected to his nervous system and when activated, a screen would pop up that was only visible to him, unless he chose to show others in which case a hologram would pop up above the band. It was all controlled through the mind and he just had to think to navigate.
They went to a restaurant and ordered some food. Fourth and Zhurong seemed to be having a competition on who could eat more in the shortest amount of time, while Hao Xuan was calmly sitting back and browsing the network.
The similarities between Earth and this place were too many. But that was to be expected when the entire civilization of Earth was guided by the Ancient ones (explained in the starting chapters).
There were shows, movies, songs, every kind of entertainment one could think of was there.
There were even some music festivals coming up in a few week's time.
He searched up some videos regarding the world and saw a lot of unimaginable sceneries. They could only be better in real life.
There was a place with hundreds of floating Islands, an ocean completely black in color, a beast so massive that there was an entire city on its back.
Fourth smiled looking at Hao Xuan's bewildered expression. "Ninth brother, here looks at this."
He had added Hao Xuan as a friend on his own spirit band and they were able to talk to each other and chat whenever needed. He sent him a link to a video.
"What is it?" Hao Xuan asked but opened it without waiting for an answer and was shocked by what he saw. It was a video of an idol group performing somewhere, but what caught his attention was that he had met one of the Six girls before.
One of the girls from the group was from the Four he had seen in the Royal Palace [Ch14].
"Fourth brother, who is she?" he made the screen visible to others and pointed at the girl with orange hair.
"That's the most popular girl in the group. Her name is Lisa. She is the daughter of an extremely powerful expert from one of the ancient clans. Do you like her?" he asked with a mischievous grin.
"Like her? I guess you can say that," Hao Xuan didn't even notice Fourth's expression as he was too engrossed in the video.
"Haha, brother, I think you should focus on your cultivation first. She is already at the profound realm."
"Profound realm?! At her age? Are you sure?"
"Of course, it's common knowledge. You can look it up yourself," he said while stuffing a whole egg down his throat.
As Hao Xuan was looking at her, his eyes color changed to red for an instant and then returned to normal. It happened so quickly that no one noticed, not even he himself.
He then saw some videos of gigantic flying ships racing with one another. One thing after another, he just kept getting amazed by the things that were available in this world.
"Brother, what are these?" he showed the video to Fourth.
"Oh, those are cruisers. There are different sizes of them and many, MANY different types. These ones are completely man-made as you can, but there are some that are giant flying fortresses, treasure mountains, huge trees, etc. Almost anything that has a special origin can be refined into a cruiser. Depending on the size and use, they have different names. These ones are only for personal use but there are some with military applications as well. We even have one," he said with a know-it-all's face.
"We? The Mei Kingdom has one?"
"Yup, it's nothing like the ones you see in the videos, I've only seen a picture of it once. We haven't had the opportunity to use it yet," he said disappointingly.
"Just one? Why not more?"
"Brother, do you have any idea how much even a single one costs? After using the entire wealth of the kingdom we were able to buy just one, so you can imagine how expensive they are."
This was a lot of information to take in. He never paid much attention to the world around him but after thinking about it a bit, it wasn't that surprising. There already were screens everywhere and they must be connected to share information with one another, but it never crossed his mind what it actually meant.
Ever since he came to the Beast world he had spent his entire time either with the military or with the Khan family at the farm and had no opportunities to explore much so this wasn't that unexpected.
"I need to make some money. Breakthrough to the profound realm as soon as possible and get out of here to explore," he thought inwardly.
***
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
I know this might be a bit unexpected for some of you but this was always hinted at from the beginning. The mix of technology and old-school cultivation, I always wanted to do something like this. And ever since Hao Xuan came to the beast world, there were "computer" like things and screens all around.
Still, if you have any questions then ask away in the comments and I'll try to answer them all without spoiling anything.
