Chapter 8: - The Inn’s Name

The inn.

Rear courtyard.

Zheng Fan’s bedroom.

People filled every seat around the small round table in his room.

It was still morning, some time before the inn opened for the day.

Of course, since Master had summoned everyone, business could naturally be set aside for the moment.

Even the wooden box containing the black stone had been placed on the table.

Everyone was present.

“...And that’s roughly what happened.”

Zheng Fan lifted the teacup in front of him and took a sip.

What came next would really depend on what these “Demon Kings” thought.

Even if they had all become ordinary people for now, losing their powers did not mean they could be judged by the standards of ordinary people.

Blind Man Bei tilted his head slightly upward, apparently thinking.

Xue San crouched on his chair, looking from Liang Cheng to A’Ming and then back again, showing no intention of speaking.

Fan Li hunched his enormous body inward so the two people seated beside him would have enough room. He did not look like he was thinking at all.

The stone remained a stone.

The silence became awkward.

To hide his discomfort, Zheng Fan had no choice but to take several consecutive sips of tea.

Why was no one saying anything?

A’Ming’s words last night about never abandoning one another had warmed Zheng Fan’s heart.

This silence, however, was already making him feel as though he were sitting on needles.

His own thinking was actually very simple.

Even Blind Man Bei had previously said this was an ordinary world, merely one with an ancient setting.

But Zheng Fan had just seen with his own eyes a creature that could not possibly exist in an ordinary world.

So instinctively, he felt everyone should know.

At last, it was Feng Siniang who broke the uncomfortable silence.

She stood first, picked up the teapot, refilled Master’s cup, then sat back down. Facing Zheng Fan, she spoke with a serious expression and complete sincerity.

“Master.”

“Mm?”

“We can set aside what you just told us for now. Before discussing that, there is one question we want to ask you first.”

“A question?”

“Before, Master was unconscious. But now, you’re awake. So we want to know which road Master intends to take from here.”

“Which road?”

Zheng Fan was confused.

How had this suddenly turned into a dispute over strategic direction?

“One road is to live out the rest of your life peacefully and ordinarily in this world. We will protect you and make sure your life remains stable. You can marry. You can have children. We will provide your food, clothing, and daily needs. If you choose this road, then the question you raised earlier no longer matters. Whether this is a high-martial world or an ordinary one, it must still possess some environment in which ordinary people can survive.”

“And... the second road?”

Feng Siniang smiled.

Xue San smiled.

Fan Li grinned honestly.

Blind Man Bei smiled as well.

Everyone smiled.

“Master, the second road is...”

At this point, Feng Siniang suddenly pointed toward the front hall outside.

“I don’t know whether Master noticed, but the signboard of our inn only says ‘Inn.’ There’s no name in front of it. When we first opened the place, all of us discussed it. In the end, we decided to wait until Master awakened before adding the name.”

“The name?”

“Yes, Master. For example, whether we call it Tongfu Inn or New Dragon Gate Inn is entirely up to you.”

Zheng Fan understood.

The first road was to eat, sleep, and wait for death.

The second road was to stir shit up!

“Master, you can think about it carefully,” Fan Li said.

He was an honest man.

In his view, Zheng Fan truly ought to consider a choice like this in depth.

Besides, Zheng Fan had not even been awake for two full days yet.

But Zheng Fan barely thought about it at all.

There were only two roads.

Left or right.

Clear and simple.

“The second.”

The answer came immediately.

So decisively, in fact, that everyone seated around the little table froze for a moment.

Even the black stone inside the wooden box gave an almost imperceptible tremble, as though expressing respect.

“Master, you don’t want to think a little longer...?”

Joy was already obvious in Feng Siniang’s voice.

Even so, she forced herself to suppress it and offered Zheng Fan one final reminder.

The others at the table, including vampire A’Ming and zombie Liang Cheng, both famous for their dead expressions, now had a different light in their eyes.

Xue San licked his lips.

Fan Li squeezed his knuckles until they cracked.

They were looking forward to it.

They had been waiting for this.

They were almost unbearably eager.

Zheng Fan, however, only smiled with complete certainty.

“The second road. No question about it. And I’ll say something you’re all welcome to laugh at. What I liked most before was exactly this sort of thrilling, terrifying thing, because it excited me. It gave me pleasure. Unfortunately, in my old world, the only way I could experience that atmosphere was through comics. And in this world, other than all of you, I have no family and no ties. You could say there’s nothing holding me back. Take ten thousand steps backward. I’m someone who already chose to die once. Every day I live in this world now is profit. So why would I choose to keep eating and waiting for death? I’d rather find something interesting to do. And if we eventually get ourselves killed, then the game simply ends. I was the one who put the coin in. There’d be nothing to regret.”

The smiles around the table grew wider.

Feng Siniang stood and turned her gaze toward Bei, who had been sitting there staring blindly toward the ceiling.

Bei nodded.

Both hands came to rest on the table, his fingers tapping lightly and nimbly as though what lay before him were not a small round table but a piano.

He did not lose himself in the performance, however.

Instead, he spoke.

“Xue San.”

“Yup.”

Xue San clicked his tongue and shifted until both feet were planted on the chair. His little body bobbed up and down, already unable to hide his impatience.

“Visit the Tiger Head City yamen tonight. Court letters, official documents, anything written that you think might be valuable, bring it all back. Move quickly. Leave at one in the morning. You have half an hour to get the material out. Before dawn, everything you remove must be returned to its original place.”

Xue San was small.

Before becoming a Demon King, he had actually begun his career as a “gentleman of the rafters,” a thief.

It was indeed a profession unusually well suited to his build.

“Got it.”

Xue San looked delighted.

His bouncing grew even faster.

“Fan Li.”

Fan Li clenched both fists and answered in a powerful voice.

“Hasn’t the leader of that Barbarian caravan always admired your strength? Go find him tonight. Tell him you’ve decided to work for him after all. Get yourself into his caravan, enter the desert, look around at the customs and conditions there, and see whether there are any suitable places for us to settle. Remember: the whole trip there and back is not to exceed one month.”

“Got it.”

Fan Li nodded hard.

Sending Fan Li into the desert was, in truth, also a way of preparing an escape route for everyone.

Compared with the State of Yan, the desert’s looser tribal structure would make it easier for the group to find somewhere to establish themselves if necessary.

“The wife of the Patrol Lieutenant Commander has suffered for years because she has no children. She once came to me for a divination. This afternoon, I’ll seek her out myself and deliver some talisman water.”

Then, Blind Man Bei’s invisible “gaze” settled on Feng Siniang.

“Fourth Lady, take a customer tonight.”

“Sure. I’ll spread the word in a while. Tonight, this old lady is receiving a guest personally. Highest bidder wins.”

Blind Man Bei nodded.

Their personalities differed.

Their identities and attributes differed.

But at their core, they were all the same kind of people.

No matter how honest or foolish one of them might appear, not a single person here could be called kindhearted or innocent.

And after half a year together while Zheng Fan remained unconscious, they had already come to understand one another much better.

Now that they had truly begun moving, the coordination came naturally.

Feng Siniang was a flower.

A beautiful, mature, brilliantly blooming flower.

But she had never received customers herself.

She only managed the women beneath her.

Over the past half year, far too many men in Tiger Head City had taken an interest in her.

So spread the word.

Highest bidder wins.

That would eliminate the penniless laborers first.

Catch one big fish as her bedchamber guest.

Then pry information about this world from his mouth.

Ordinary commoners merely stumbled through their lives in a fog. Unless some great upheaval occurred, most of them would probably continue the same way until death: working, paying taxes, performing labor service, growing old, falling ill, and dying.

That was exactly why, over the past half year, the people at the inn had learned so little.

Their social level was too low.

Their range of activity was too narrow.

So Blind Man Bei had never encountered anything belonging to a “high-martial” world.

Of course, it was also possible that they had instinctively rejected such things, wanting only to remain quietly in place until Zheng Fan awakened.

Blind Man Bei raised his hand again and pointed toward A’Ming and Liang Cheng.

Everyone might have become ordinary people, but each of them still retained a faint trace of his original nature.

Liang Cheng, for example, could still perform the old “breaking a boulder on the chest” stunt.

“A’Ming, Liang Cheng, you two assist the Fourth Lady. Don’t let some accident happen and leave us losing both the lady and the troops.”

The joke was not funny.

It was disrespectful.

Yet everyone laughed.

The Fourth Lady laughed too.

And while laughing, she even cast Zheng Fan a shy, flirtatious glance.

They were Demon Kings.

Monsters who killed without blinking.

Why would they care about things like this?

Zheng Fan, on the other hand, became a little awkward at that final joke.

Clearly, he still had not fully blended into their atmosphere.

At the same time, Zheng Fan was stunned by the sheer decisiveness and speed everyone displayed once they began acting.

During the half year he had spent unconscious, these people had simply run a business honestly and lived quietly.

But that was not their nature.

Somewhere in the dark, there seemed to be an invisible thread connected to Zheng Fan, linking all of them together.

They had been waiting for him.

Waiting for him to wake.

Waiting for him... to give the order.

The words A’Ming had spoken the night before echoed again in Zheng Fan’s mind.

Zheng Fan had asked him:

Aren’t any of you curious about this unfamiliar world?

A’Ming had answered:

While you were still asleep, it had no meaning.

At last, Blind Man Bei sighed.

“If only our strength could recover. Even a little. We’d have much more room to maneuver.”

Everyone fell silent again.

Obviously, this remained a sore spot for all of them.

“Well... there’s no need to rush that. We’ll find a way eventually. Let’s eat first.”

At this point, Zheng Fan stepped in like some “leader” trying to smooth over the atmosphere.

Everyone gave him face and picked up their chopsticks.

They began eating and drinking.

A’Ming silently put a piece of blood curd into his mouth.

Then, just as silently, he spat it back into his bowl.

Feng Siniang looked at him in confusion.

“The cook mess it up today?”

A’Ming nodded.

“Gone bad.”

[End of Chapter 8]