Nothing happened that night, and Chen Ze slept soundly at last.
Early the next morning, after getting up, Chen Ze ate some rice cooked from Spirit Rice to fill his stomach, then headed straight out.
Now that he did not need to cultivate personally, there was no need to keep cooping himself up in that shabby house.
Since someone was watching him in secret, he decided to step into the open.
The other party must have been wary of the City Lord's Mansion's rules, which was why they had chosen to drug him with a Knockout Drug at night and harm him in secret.
After leaving, Chen Ze followed the alley out of the Commoner District and headed toward the crowded market.
Though he did not know the other party's background, the more people there were, the less they would dare to make a move.
Still, Chen Ze could not understand what he had that was worth coveting.
As he pondered the chain of cause and effect behind the matter, Chen Ze had already reached the market.
For a moment, Chen Ze had no idea where to go first, so he simply strolled from stall to stall.
Whenever a cultivator wanted to buy something at a stall and the vendor began explaining it, Chen Ze would stop and listen carefully to the introduction.
He knew far too little about this Cultivation World, and the original owner had not left behind much useful information either.
When he grew tired of walking, he would find a place to squat down and rest. Once he had rested enough, he would continue wandering around.
This is a pretty good life. I don't have to do anything, just wait for my cultivation to rise. The only problem is that I don't have any Spirit Stones.
Should I set up a stall someday and sell items from the Myriad Things Shop?
Chen Ze did not want things to be this way either, but after the Myriad Things Shop recycled items, the Spirit Stones all turned into Points, and those Points could only be used in the Myriad Things Shop.
But he still needed to survive in the Cultivation World. He could not do without Spirit Stones.
"Hey, I've been watching you for half the day. I haven't seen you buy anything. What exactly are you doing here?"
Chen Ze looked around before realizing that the vendor of a nearby stall was watching him from beside the place where he was squatting to rest.
Chen Ze sized up the vendor. Like him, the man was at the Qi Refining Third Layer, though he looked much younger than Chen Ze.
"Are you talking to me?" Chen Ze asked uncertainly.
"Who else? Look around this street. Who's as idle as you are?"
"Heh heh." Chen Ze gave a dry laugh. "Sorry for disturbing your business."
Chen Ze was about to get up and leave when he heard the other man say, "You didn't disturb anything. I'm just a little curious."
"Curious about what?"
"I'm curious because you aren't buying anything or selling anything. And judging by your age, you should be quite a bit older than me, but your cultivation is still lower than mine. So I wanted to ask how you came to walk the path of cultivation."
Hearing the vendor's words, Chen Ze wanted nothing more than to beat him up on the spot. But seeing the smile on the man's face, it did not seem like he was mocking him.
Chen Ze said helplessly, "I used to be a Service Disciple of the Qingyun Sect. Now I've been kicked off the mountain. Satisfied?"
After saying that, Chen Ze turned to leave, only for someone to grab his arm.
The sudden move caught Chen Ze off guard, and he reflexively prepared to cast an Ignition Art.
But when he turned around, he saw the vendor's face again. Only now, it no longer held merely a smile—it was filled with sincerity as well.
"Wait, Fellow Daoist. I expressed myself poorly just now. I didn't mean it that way."
"Then what did you mean?"
"I'm just like this. People used to say I couldn't speak properly all the time. I'm sorry, Fellow Daoist.
Let's get acquainted again. My name is Zhou Quan. May I ask your honorable name?"
Chen Ze looked at Zhou Quan suspiciously. Unsolicited kindness hides either treachery or theft.
Still, Chen Ze said, "No need for formalities. Just call me Chen Ze."
"Fellow Daoist Chen, hello. Come, come, sit over here and let's talk."
Zhou Quan pulled Chen Ze over to his stall and even brought him a small stool to sit on.
Chen Ze thought about it. He had nothing to do right now anyway, and Zhou Quan did not look like someone with deep schemes.
So he simply sat down, wanting to see what Zhou Quan actually wanted to say.
He looked over Zhou Quan's stall and saw several talismans laid out on it.
Chen Ze could not understand the uses of those talismans, but he still knew that the talisman path was highly practical.
Especially when one had no spiritual energy left, talismans were life-saving treasures.
He wondered whether the talismans Zhou Quan was selling had been drawn by Zhou Quan himself or bought from others for resale.
There was only one small stool, and Chen Ze was sitting on it, so Zhou Quan simply sat cross-legged on the ground.
Setting up a stall meant spreading out a piece of cloth on the ground, placing the items one wanted to sell on it, and sitting wherever one pleased. There was not much to fuss over.
Seeing Zhou Quan sitting on the ground while he himself occupied Zhou Quan's stool, Chen Ze felt a little embarrassed.
Zhou Quan seemed to see through Chen Ze's thoughts. "It's fine, you sit. I set up stalls on the ground all the time, so I'm long used to it.
It's a coincidence that I happened to bring a stool today. That means we're fated."
"Who said you couldn't talk?" Chen Ze had not expected the person who said those earlier words to be the same person speaking now.
"Fellow Daoist, you flatter me. I really do have a problem with speaking poorly; that cannot be denied.
But to run a stall, I still have to learn some polite words.
Otherwise, not only would I fail to sell anything, I might even invite a vicious beating." Zhou Quan said with a smile.
Looks like he's taken quite a few beatings from society. Society truly is the best school—it teaches you nothing else before teaching you how to behave.
Though Chen Ze grumbled inwardly, his expression did not change as he said, "Go on. You deliberately kept me here, so you must have something to ask."
"It's not anything major. Since Fellow Daoist came from the Qingyun Sect, I just wanted to ask about some matters concerning the Qingyun Sect."
Chen Ze understood. It seemed Zhou Quan wanted to join the Qingyun Sect as well.
"I'm only a Service Disciple who was kicked out of the Qingyun Sect. What could I possibly know about the Qingyun Sect?"
Zhou Quan pressed further, "Then would it be convenient for Fellow Daoist to say why you left the Qingyun Sect?"
"Left? Fellow Daoist, there's no need to put it so tactfully. I was kicked out, plain and simple. There's nothing embarrassing about saying it."
It was the original owner's affair anyway, so Chen Ze had no psychological burden in speaking of it. He continued, "My aptitude was too poor, and my cultivation was too low, so I was kicked out."
After Chen Ze finished speaking, Zhou Quan seemed to mutter to himself, "Aptitude too poor?"
"Could it be that you want to join the Qingyun Sect too? Haven't you already begun cultivating? Isn't being a Rogue Cultivator good enough?" Chen Ze asked.
Zhou Quan sighed. "Sigh, the path of a Rogue Cultivator is too difficult.
There are no resources and no backing, and one must face all kinds of dangers at any moment.
If one wants to cultivate immortality, one still needs an orthodox sect's inheritance to go far."
Chen Ze asked, "What aptitude do you have?"
"A Mid-grade Spiritual Root."
"That's not bad. In the Qingyun Sect, you could at least become an Outer Disciple," Chen Ze said thoughtfully.
In truth, Chen Ze was somewhat surprised. Zhou Quan looked only a little over twenty, yet he was already at the Qi Refining Third Layer.
Even among cultivators with Mid-grade Spiritual Roots, that counted as fairly good.
He could not understand why Zhou Quan, with such a realm at such a young age, still had anything to sigh about.
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