Entry and Exit Registration

The training grounds had a rest day once every ten days.

Early morning.

The moment when night and day had just traded places, when the sunlight was still exceedingly faint.

Seeing Ling Wuyuan's not particularly tall frame fully armed in black fitted clothes, with a medium-sized basket on his back, a short bow, a quiver, and a longsword at his waist, the gang members guarding the White Crow Gang's gates all wore sincere smiles.

Though they had not yet asked what he was going out to do, they had vaguely guessed Ling Wuyuan's intentions.

It felt rather like seeing a newbie in the starter village decked out from head to toe before heading out to fight goblins.

After smiling and exchanging glances with their companions, a fairly pretty young female gang member asked with a smile, "Little handsome, what are you heading out to do?"

Ling Wuyuan did not hesitate and told the truth directly. "I want to go gather herbs and earn some bounty money. While I'm at it, I want to see if I can hunt some game."

What he intended to do was not some shady deed worth concealing, so he had no intention of lying. At most, he would hide certain gains when he returned.

Since his clothes and equipment already made it fairly easy to guess what he planned to do, nobody doubted him. After nodding, they casually pointed to a table nearby.

"Alright."

"Go register your entry and exit first."

"Fill in your identity, what you plan to do outside, and the times you leave and return."

Naturally, Ling Wuyuan casually replied, "Alright."

He walked over there.

While he silently filled out the form.

A male gang member in his thirties offered a casual but well-meaning reminder. "You know the terrain and environment around here, right?"

"If you don't, you'd better carefully read some of the relevant notices in the gang before heading out. They clearly describe which nearby areas have more medicinal herbs, which have fewer, and the general distribution of nearby beast species..."

"Although the gang regularly clears out dangerous ferocious beasts and even demon beasts within several dozen li of the area, you have to understand that those animals have legs. They run around and hunt everywhere. Maybe an area gets cleared today, only for more to appear again tomorrow. So the information has a shelf life. At best, you can believe seven or eight parts out of ten—you absolutely must not trust it completely. Don't think you can let down your guard just because the gang has marked an area as a low-risk zone that was recently cleared. Every year, some unlucky fellows die unnatural deaths because they trusted the intelligence too much..."

After saying that, he reached into the wooden table beside him and rummaged around before taking out a somewhat old tobacco pipe. He slowly lit it, then leaned against the table and smoked it in lazy puffs.

In this world, tobacco was not particularly rare.

As long as they did not lack food, many people would make some local tobacco to smoke.

Overall.

He held neither a positive nor negative view of a little ghost like Ling Wuyuan going out to gather herbs and hunt, even though he knew newcomers often returned empty-handed from such ventures.

Practice made perfect.

After enough attempts, everyone would eventually gain something.

Moreover, many families truly were not well-off. In order to gather more wealth for cultivation, taking gang assignments was simply the most normal thing in the world, even for someone fairly young.

Children from poor families grew up early.

In this world.

There were many proverbs that meant the same thing.

Thus, he could understand why so many young newcomers kept burrowing into deep mountains and old forests.

Though it was not particularly safe.

Everyone had their own hardships.

At present.

The only thing that puzzled him was that although Ling Wuyuan's clothes were ordinary and not worth much, the weapons he carried were not cheap.

Having spent nearly twenty years in the gang and long since grown accustomed to all kinds of people and objects, the man could still tell, despite Ling Wuyuan's slight attempts at concealment, that both the short bow and longsword he carried were fine weapons worth a considerable amount.

Take the short bow on Ling Wuyuan's back.

The bowstring alone, made from the sinew of a ferocious beast, proved that it was no cheap item. It had to sell for at least twenty gold coins.

As for that longsword.

Though the blade was already sheathed and could not be seen from the outside.

The special mark engraved on the hilt by the White Crow Gang's blacksmith shop was enough to explain many things.

That mark meant the longsword was not some ordinary standard-issue weapon, but a carefully selected premium piece from the blacksmith shop, generally priced at around thirty gold coins.

Likewise.

The man had even spotted several rather expensive special arrows in the other party's quiver.

Those were items used only to hunt large ferocious beasts or deal with cultivators.

Ordinary prey did not deserve such treatment at all.

In short.

After pretending to smoke while stealing a few glances, the man felt that Ling Wuyuan's equipment was truly rather valuable.

It was practically like carrying half a house on him.

"..."

After a brief silence.

The man hesitantly spoke to Ling Wuyuan, who was about to finish registering his information. "Kid."

"You need to understand that outside is not the gang's grounds. Out there, many people's malice is blatant. So unless necessary, it's best not to have unnecessary conversations with others while gathering herbs or hunting, lest they develop evil intentions. And... I think it would be more appropriate to use many of those fine weapons when you're a few years older. At too young an age, it's easy for problems to arise."

Hearing this, Ling Wuyuan's hand, which had just been about to put down the brush, paused slightly.

He understood what the man meant, and he understood that the man meant well.

So he politely replied, "Thank you."

"I understand all of that. There's no need to worry."

"I'm only carrying them to prevent unexpected trouble."

At that.

The man could only shrug helplessly.

"Alright, then. I wish you a safe return."

To be honest.

He felt that Ling Wuyuan was even more likely to run into trouble while carrying that set of equipment.

However, since the other party understood his meaning yet still insisted on his own course, he had no obligation to continue advising him.

He could only watch Ling Wuyuan slowly walk out of the gang, staring at his back with some exasperation as he silently thought, At his age, if he can already use equipment like that, his family probably isn't short on money. Why would he risk going out to complete assignments... Could it be just to experience life?