“How on earth did you owe so much money?” Lonemoon gave the two a stare.
“Father Niu, I…” Shen Ying was about to answer.
“You shut up!” Lonemoon stopped her directly and turned to look at Chef beside her. “You tell me!” Never mind about Shen Ying, he had been used to getting burdened by her. But since when did even Chef become so unreliable?
“When Master and I arrived, we happened to be in different areas of this city.” explained Yi Qing. “That was past lunchtime. When I found Master, she was eating at Immortal Dining Place in the city. Master was too hungry that she ate a lot…”
“That’s it?”
Chef’s look fluttered before he continued, “I realized that the spirit rice from that shop was good so I got some by the way.”
“Were you eating a king’s meal? Even if you ate and bought spirit rice, you couldn’t have used tens of thousands of spirit stones?” Most cultivators gained Grain Liberation so eating wasn’t necessary. Therefore, most cultivators’ restaurants were not expensive. A bit more than one hundred spirit stones were the maximum.
“It only cost… eighty-three spirit stones.”
“What about the rest then?”
“The rest…” Yi Qing’s expression changed slightly, and he continued with a cough, “We only realized that we didn’t bring spirit stones after eating so… we rented a platform to look for you and bought a seeking firework by the way. And… it became tens of thousands.”
“So…” Lonemoon breathed deeply. “For eighty plus spirit stones’ worth of meal cost, you spent tens of thousands to find me to pay the bills.”
The master and the disciple went stiff, staring at the sky together.
“With that… Don’t mind such details, Father Niu!” She really didn’t know that a firework was that expensive.
“Get lost!” I don’t want to be your Father Niu. “Don’t expect to get your living allowance next month. Go and eat your spirit rice!”
“Father Niu…”
(இдஇ;)
“Hey, are you going to pay the bills or not?” The restaurant owner who kept waiting at the side became impatient. He glanced at the three. “45105 mid-tier spirit stones in total. They must be paid in full by today. Our restaurant accepts no credit. If you’re not going to pay for them, don’t blame me for extracting their cultivation and make it into immortal pills to serve as payment.” With that said, he looked at the two up and down and snorted. “Thought you had some backing. So you can’t afford to pay indeed. Why buy a city marking if you don’t have money?
Don’t have money?
(艹皿艹)
Who doesn’t have money?!
Lonemoon’s look darkened and he directly took out a bag of spirit stones and threw it over. “45105 mid-tier spirit stones right? Here are 500 top-tier spirit stones. Keep the change!” He most hated being called not having money.
“Top… top-tier spirit stones!” The owner was surprised and immediately he smiled like a flower. “It seems that I was over-thinking, then. Should Fellow Immortal want to send another city marking next time, our shop will give you a discount.”
“That’s not necessary.”
Seeing that the other party’s expression wasn’t pleasant, the owner didn’t dare speaking much. “I will take my leave then. Thanks for visiting.” With that said, he went away holding the bag of spirit stones in his arms.
Lonemoon looked at the owner who went away, and something flashed in his eyes. He tried hard to suppress the urge to beat the two up, and gave them a two-hour scolding.
Only after that did he start thinking about the situation of the whole immortal city. Ever since coming to this city, he had felt that every detail about it was absurd. What he saw all the way was too un-immortal like.
Those modern advertisements, and that strange city marking in the sky…
There was a bold guess in his mind which couldn’t yet be confirmed. Thinking about it, he turned to the two behind him after a long while, “Shen Ying, the two of you stay here and don’t walk around. I’ll go and…”
“Buy some oranges?” Shen Ying answered subconsciously.
Lonemoon’s mouth twitched. “Get lost!”
————————
Lonemoon walked around the city asking and finally managed to roughly understand the situation in this world. This was a world of mixed immortal and mortal residences. All the mortals in here could cultivate, from Qi Refinement all the way till Mystic Immortal level. There didn’t seem to be the concepts of Stygian Immortal and Exalted Immortal here. Or nobody ever rose to those cultivation levels.
Besides, they didn’t experience Lightning Tribulation with every rising in level like cultivators of other planes. Lonemoon guessed that they might be because this plane didn’t operate under the Heavenly Dao.
The cultivation system here was extremely complex as well. Besides the five elements of spirit roots, there were actually magic, qi competition, ancient martial arts… and a great many other cultivation methods. For example, the advertisement in the sky that Shen Ying sent to look for him previously was actually a magic array, he got to understand later. Though it was also formed by condensation of immortal qi, it had vastly different uses. No wonder he didn’t see any immortal pressure from the array previously.
There were also many sects, colleges and training camps, etc. in this plane. All of them were places to improve cultivation, and they were varied in quality. But the people here seemed used to that and didn’t find it strange at all. Coupled with those completely different sales tactics that he saw just now, Lonemoon guessed that there might have been more than one intruder in the world.
He had long known that this plane was probably intruded like a sieve being passed through by grains. Yet seeing this sieve personally, he still felt shocked..
“So that’s why Godfiend hid this world?” Yi Qing frowned and said.
“Very probably!” Lonemoon nodded. “He probably concentrated all those intruders into this one world, that’s why it is so strange here.” Godfiend might have separated it from the Three Realms in fear of the intruders affecting other planes.
“But the people here don’t look like intruders to me.”
“No indeed,” said Lonemoon. “I’ve known from just now that everything they knew about the outside world were taught by their predecessors. Those who knew them have long passed away.”
“Which means that the intruders who were put into isolation in this world by Godfiend have actually disappeared long ago. And those in this world now are the descendants of intruders?” Is this a world remade by a time-traveling group?
“This should be the case.
“It’ not possible!” Yi Qing shook his head. “This world is isolated from Heavenly Dao, which means souls from here do not enter the Samsara. Where do the people come from then?” They can’t appear from nowhere.
“I can’t explain this as well.” Lonemoon frowned. Indeed, he couldn’t sense the aura of the River of Forgetfulness in this world, which meant that this was a world allowing entrance but no exit. Yet apparently, there were no less cultivators here than anywhere else. Where did all these people come from then?
“It seems that we’ll have to ask Godfiend about this.” Lonemoon pushed Shen Ying beside him. “Have you discovered traces of that purple gas?”
“Oh.” Shen Ying looked like she just remembered about business. She took out that box of purple gas, and in the next moment a tiny trace went towards the right. “To the South.”
“That’s the North!”
Lonemoon was speechless. He gave Chef a look before flying up on his sword and starting in that direction.
