After a rough meal.
Li Xing drained the beer in his mug and let out a belch!
"Thank you, boss! I'm full. Your cooking is great, especially your honey bread. It reminds me of the bread from the bakery back home!"
After clearing away the dishes, the tavern owner smiled.
"You're quite something, young man. In all my time running this tavern, you're the first person I've seen pay with a few damaged coins. But I think there's someone else you should be thanking more."
A faint smile appeared on Li Xing's face. "I know. I was just about to go over! But I still have to say, sorry for the trouble."
The tavern owner simply smiled in response. Encouraged by his smile, Li Xing got up and walked toward a group of young people gathered in the tavern.
The young people in the tavern naturally noticed Li Xing moving.
"Yilaikesi, look..."
The young man named Yilaikesi turned his head to look at Li Xing.
"Should we..."
The young man beside him was about to say something, but Yilaikesi stopped him with a gesture.
And so, the young people at the table all stared intently at Li Xing as he approached them.
Li Xing felt everyone in the tavern once again turn to look at him in unison.
His heart began pounding again.
I'm just a little "ordinary-looking"! Although East Asian faces really are rare in this world, aren't these people a bit too enthusiastic? Li Xing thought.
At that moment, he suddenly understood why, in the world before he transmigrated, foreigners in the country in earlier times had always minded being stared at by groups of locals! Being the focus of a crowd's gaze really was unbearable without some mental fortitude.
And so, under the gaze of the crowd.
Li Xing stepped forward and gave everyone a simple cupped-fist salute.
"Good evening, everyone! My name is Li Xing, and I just moved to Hunter Town today! I live in the little cabin on the hillside north of the town center. I'm repairing the house at the moment, so I can't host you yet. Once the repairs are done, you're all welcome to come visit my cabin!"
After speaking, he gave Uncle Turner a separate cupped-fist salute.
Uncle Turner simply raised his mug in acknowledgment, then went back to drinking alone.
After that brief greeting to Uncle Turner, Li Xing walked over to where Yilaikesi was in the tavern.
"Hello, Yilaikesi!
"It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Li Xing!
"Thank you so much for helping me out in a pinch just now, bringing me back from hunger to a normal state!" As he spoke his thanks, Li Xing held out his right hand.
Yilaikesi had been sitting at the table the whole time. From the moment he saw Li Xing get up and come over, to the speech and greeting to Uncle Turner just now, and the way Li Xing casually wiped his hand on his clothes before extending it while speaking to him, all those scenes and details had imprinted themselves on his mind, showing that the man before him respected him deeply from the bottom of his heart.
And so the young man named Yilaikesi extended his own right hand and clasped the right hand waiting for him.
After a brief handshake, Yilaikesi gestured for the companion beside him to get up and make room. Once the seat was free, Yilaikesi patted it and said to Li Xing,
"Have a seat!"
Once Li Xing had sat down, Yilaikesi began explaining why he had done it.
"Don't thank me! Since Uncle Turner has acknowledged you as a new member of Hunter Town, helping you is the duty of us young hunters of Hunter Town. Besides, I've been hungry before myself, and it really isn't pleasant!"
Li Xing listened to Yilaikesi beside him while occasionally studying the young man speaking before him.
In Li Xing's view, Yilaikesi really was young. He had long brown hair that fell to his shoulders. His facial skin was somewhat rough, perhaps because of his occupation, but his features were sharply defined and full of heroic bearing. His thick beard was an important feature that set him apart from the other young people at the table.
If Li Xing had to describe him, he looked a lot like Thorin Oakenshield from "The Hobbit." Unlike his on-screen counterpart, however, Yilaikesi was a normal-height human dressed in hemp clothes.
The others nearby grew impatient as they watched Li Xing scrutinize Yilaikesi and interrupted.
"Hey! Pretty boy, what else do you want with our boss Yilaikesi?"
"Pretty boy?!"
Li Xing asked in confusion.
"That's right! Pretty boy! Who else would I be talking about?"
The name caught Li Xing off guard.
But after looking around, he came to understand it.
Because of their occupations or their own circumstances, the people in the tavern either had thick body hair—Yilaikesi; looked weathered—Uncle Turner, the owner, and the others; or had dark skin—the young hunters at the table apart from himself.
He, on the other hand, had only just transmigrated, and even before that, he had rarely gone out in the sun. Even his hardest job, working on an assembly line, had been inside a factory building where the sun couldn't ravage him.
And because of the Central Plains custom of regularly applying moisturizing cream, as well as his genes, the changes to his body after transmigration, his habit of shaving, and other factors, his skin was still smooth and fair in this world, and he had little body hair.
Thus, although his complexion might not have been as fair as Snow White's in the eyes of the people here, he was not far off from what they considered a pretty boy who liked living off others.
Once he understood all that, Li Xing accepted the name and ignored it.
"If Uncle Turner hadn't said you were a traveler from another continent, I would've thought you were some noble family's young master who'd run away!" Yilaikesi added his own opinion from beside him.
"You're exaggerating, you're exaggerating!"
Li Xing replied with a smile, then looked at everyone's table.
"Do you usually just sit around drinking like this? Don't you have any entertainment?"
Another young man beside Yilaikesi said,
"Of course we do! We were talking about you just now. Your arrival simply interrupted our conversation!"
Li Xing was quite surprised by how frank he was, so he prepared to ask directly what they had concluded in their earlier discussion.
"Me? What is there to talk about? Didn't I tell Uncle Turner? My hometown is somewhere not far from Pandaria. I'm just a traveler out on the road! After traveling to many places, I settled down here."
At this point, Li Xing asked, "Is there anything you don't understand? You can ask me too!"
After hearing what Li Xing said, the people at the table could no longer contain their curiosity.
A young man in hunting clothes asked,
"Are you a spy the bandits sent to infiltrate our town?"
"Huh!?"
"What kind of place is Pandaria? Is it far from the Kingdom of Stormwind? Are you a noble from Pandaria?" another young man asked.
"Well..."
"Did you come to Hunter Town to hide from trouble because you got into some romantic entanglement elsewhere?"
"..."
What the hell were these questions? After hearing them, Li Xing really didn't know where to begin complaining. For a moment, he stared at everyone in shock and said, speechless,
"What does any of that have to do with anything?!"