Chapter 288

  Moonlake City (II)

  ... right.

  The system indeed spawns the most insane shit ever, doesn't it? But it also meant that the task itself would be proportionally difficult.

  As far as my immediate reaction, it was quite obvious: there's something sapping Life Qi of everyone here, stealthily, without any notice. There's really just one answer, isn't there?

  But also, how?

  It's one thing to plant some vines in the middle-of-nowhere village where nobody can truly source an answer to the misery, but this was a heavily trekked area--far more so than even Silvercrest City, with an abundance of strong cultivators coming and going on a yearly basis--and, yet, it still somehow remains undetected.

  I glanced over at the still waters, wondering just what lay beneath that calm surface; was it vines again? Or maybe something else?

  The closer we got to the city, the more excited the kids got, happily chattering away about what they wanted to do. It's been a while since we've had any of the luxuries that a civilized place offers, and it was clear they were yearning for them.

  "Hot, freshly baked bread," Xi Zhao declared. "With a spoonful of strawberry jam!"

  "Corn," Wan Lan said. "I'll buy some flamed corn."

  "A full chicken!" Dai Xiu said. "I'll buy the whole chicken and eat it all by myself, without any of your dirty paws touching it! Humph!"

  "Ale," Rayce said. "I really want to drink some ale."

  "What does ale taste like, Junior Brother?" Dai Xiu asked, and Rayce, as though finally recognizing he'd let something slip he shouldn't have, quickly responded.

  "Utterly bitter," he said. "It coats your mouth, and it stings like someone stuck a thousand needles in there."

  "A-ah! Why would you drink something so horrible?! Never! I will never drink ale!"

  At some point, Lao Shun took the front, as he was the only one who had ever been to this place, though there wasn't much point to 'leading' just yet, as it was just a long, curving limestone path that paralleled the shore's shape.

  Surprisingly, there were no city walls or gates, as there were no guards 'checking' people in, but I did notice slight vibrations in space any time somebody would move into the city, so there was likely an array doing that work. Even so, we had to line up--considerably--behind about two hundred people walking on foot, just like us. And, just like us, their clothes looked like they'd seen better days.

  All the while, any time a flying chariot or another would appear, they would gently descend and land at the central square before the group disembarked.

  Though the city had a certain design to it, it still felt very much like an organic sprawl--there wasn't much rhyme or reason to the way structures were organized, though there at least seemed to be a concept of districts present.

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  I was most interested in the piers and the houses floating at their sides--if it magically remained dry, it was actually kind of my dream home. I'd always had this fantasy that Yas used to laugh at, where we bought one of those bungalows with a hatch leading to the sea below, where I'd be able to wake up in the morning, put on a pot of water for coffee on a stove, and while waiting for it to boil, dip through the hatch and have a morning swim.

  Considering we could barely afford that thing we called an apartment with our jobs, it was a distant dream, at best.

  "I feel it here, too," Lao Shun spoke up rather suddenly as we inched closer to the 'entrance'.

  "Feel what?" I asked.

  "Thin strands of energy trying to tap into my Life Qi reserves." Oh? Despite everything else about him, I suppose, he is an experienced Alchemist who managed to catch onto what the Sages are doing all by himself. "They're not trying to sap me, though I suppose that would come later. Is it possible that their tendrils extend this far out, too?"

  "Isn't it more shocking that nobody else noticed?" I asked right back. "Silvercrest City is one thing; you could say that it's a low-level city with scant few experienced cultivators, but isn't this place sort of a hub?"

  "... are you suggesting there's somebody in the city deliberately working to mask it?"

  "Or that they bothered masking it themselves here, unlike elsewhere."

  "Oh."

  "We'll look into it," I said. "But we need to be careful. There are far too many eyes and ears here."

  "Hm. Once we find a place to stay, I'll quickly concoct some Life-Bearing Pills. If we don't stay for too long, they should keep us safe from any attempts to sap our Life Qi."

  As there were no guards 'checking' people individually, our turn came rather quickly, and we simply walked through; I felt strange energy zap through me momentarily and try to invade my dantian--which was when it was directly destroyed. I panicked for a moment, thinking it would ring some alarms, but nothing happened.

  "You're meant to destroy it," Lao Shun smirked at my confused expression. "It is simply there to store an individual's unique Qi signatures so that, in case of a crime, they would know who it is. That's the official reason, anyway."

  I worried a bit, especially for Wan Lan; though nobody--not even Lao Shun, from what I can tell--saw through her and realized she was using Demonic Qi, it's one of those things where I feel you're safe until that one time you're not, and that one time is plenty enough.

  However, my suspicion seemed unfounded, as nobody stopped us or attacked us or yelled at us; we merely joined the continuous stream of people going into the city, dispersing amongst its many streets.

  It was immediately there that the vendors of dreams, as I liked to call them, began to hoot and holler at all of us, offering 'precious treasures mined from the lake's depths' and the ilk that could 'upend one's fate and rewrite their history overnight!'.

  I casually inspected some of the things, and they really just looked like some random trinkets you could pick from any body of water: slightly oddly shaped stones, weathered algae with a bit of strange hue, a piece of wood shaped somewhat like a blade...

  "This way," Lao Shun led us as though he'd been here a thousand times--the way streets were layered was quite odd, with countless intersections of smaller alleyways jutting into central roads whose sides looked like they'd been slowly encroached by stalls and buildings over the course of decades, if not centuries.

  It was crowded, so much so that our pace slowed down to a crawl before he took us through one of those alleyways. I fell back to the rear, ensuring that all the kids were in front of me, and followed.

  Despite the seeming chaos, there were no fights breaking out, even when people would bump into each other and words were exchanged. It seems that whoever ruled this place had an iron grip on it, for better or worse.

  "We're here," Lao Shun said as we stopped in front of a small, limestone-built shack shorn of windows, with a slanted, slightly cracked roof through which smoke was slowly billowing out.

  ... I wasn't expecting a Plaza or anything, but it looks like we'd be at more comfort literally pitching our tent in the middle of the street.

  And yet, despite seeing our expression, that dolt was grinning, probably because, somehow, he was about to prove us wrong...