The Big Show Begins

"Good evening, sorry to bother you..."

Just then, Liu Shuyue came downstairs. Seeing the two of them, she couldn't help but freeze.

Lin Qing was reaching for some potato chips, her shoulder almost pressed against Chen Xuan's.

"Sorry, did I come at a bad time?"

Liu Shuyue asked, but she made no effort to look away.

"No, we were just discussing a few things." Chen Xuan coughed twice and stood up as if nothing had happened. "Would you like coffee or tea?"

"Tea, please. Could you make an extra cup?" Liu Shuyue beckoned toward the second floor. "Come on down. The shopkeeper isn't going to eat you."

There was someone else?

Chen Xuan looked toward the stairs in confusion. A burly man came down hesitantly. He recognized him: the man had once been a hunter and was among the first members of the Hunting Squad.

"Are you... Fu Jiaolu?"

The man immediately looked flattered. "Lord Chen, I can't believe you remember me!"

"Of course. Back in Zhangwei City, you were shouting that you supported the immortal master."

"Heh." He scratched his head, a little embarrassed. "I'm a simple man and couldn't think of anything clever to say, so I could only cheer the immortal master on with my big voice."

"Come have some tea." Chen Xuan brought two cups over to the coffee table.

"Thank you, thank you..." Fu Jiaolu hurriedly bowed his head in thanks and sat down on just the very edge of the chair.

"I've more or less made all the arrangements for Mala Village, and I'm ready to leave," Liu Shuyue said as she sat beside Lin Qing. "But the two places are so far apart. Shopkeeper, could you register Fu Jiaolu as one of those... VIP customers too? If his room connects to the Great Wilderness, I'll be able to return to the village whenever I need to."

"I see." Chen Xuan immediately understood the advantage. The back door of a room followed its owner, so if two customers each had a room connected to a different place, it would be like setting up a portal between the two. "That won't be a problem."

"Good." Liu Shuyue turned to Lin Qing. "You seem to have recovered quite well."

"You're Miss Liu, the one who treated me, right?" Lin Qing took her hand. "Chen Xuan told me about you. I'd only just woken up last time, and my head wasn't clear, so I forgot to thank you properly... Thank you for treating me. If I get the chance, I'll repay you someday."

Perhaps taken aback by her enthusiasm, Liu Shuyue paused, then smiled and drew her hand back. "I didn't do much, so there's no need to be so formal. Miss Lin, do you have any suitable clothes here? I could get you a couple of outfits."

Lin Qing's only clothes were her one-piece combat suit. She was currently wearing one of Chen Xuan's oversized T-shirts.

"Thanks for offering, but I've already picked out some clothes online. They should arrive tomorrow."

"Online?"

"Mm... It'd be a little complicated to explain. If you're interested, I can show you around now."

"Sure. I'd appreciate that, Miss Lin."

The two of them were already getting along.

Chen Xuan's mouth twitched. Did this count as cross-cultural communication across eras?

"By the way, does this shop need some special treasure to repair it?" Liu Shuyue suddenly turned back to Chen Xuan. "It was in tatters the last time I saw it, and it still is now. Won't that affect business if it stays like this?"

"Not really. It's like fixing up an ordinary house. It's just hard to find someone to do the work," Chen Xuan explained. He could find people to fix the lights or pipes—there were plenty of phone numbers posted on utility poles—but finding a reliable bricklayer was difficult. "And I've been busy lately, so I haven't gotten around to it."

"How about... I ask the villagers to come help fix it up?" Liu Shuyue suggested.

"Exactly!" Fu Jiaolu nodded again and again. "There are carpenters and masons in the village, and they're very skilled. Especially after becoming cultivators, they've gotten even better at the trades they were already good at. Of course, they can only work with ordinary materials. They probably wouldn't know what to do with anything from the Immortal Realm..."

That was right. How had he forgotten about that?

The shop was so mysterious that, aside from its functions, everything about it was ordinary. Having the people of Mala Village help repair it seemed perfectly suitable.

Chen Xuan agreed at once. "Sure. Let them give it a try."

Before long, Fu Jiaolu brought over a group of villagers. They entered the room with the same mix of awe and nervousness as he had, as if they'd stepped into some sacred place. After a brief discussion, everyone rolled up their sleeves and got to work with remarkable enthusiasm and care.

They hauled away all the broken furniture, then fashioned new cabinets and small tables out of solid wood. They patched the holes in the walls with mortar, then covered them with animal hides and bones for decoration. They even swept and mopped the floor several times, making sure not to miss a single corner.

In less than two hours, the shop looked brand new.

If the hall had once had a simple, elegant style, it now had a luxurious, elegant one. The hand-polished furniture exuded an air of nobility, and the horns, dragon claws, and tiger pelts on the walls only added to it. These were the sort of decorations one usually saw only in museums, and they instantly elevated the shop's atmosphere to a whole new level.

"How does it look? Are you satisfied?" Fu Jiaolu asked hopefully.

Chen Xuan patted him on the shoulder. "Great work."

The villagers were overjoyed, as if they'd received the approval of a heavenly immortal. Their excitement was plain to see.

Chen Xuan was deeply moved too. They'd busted their backs for him without asking for a single coin. All they wanted was his approval. They were the kind of excellent workers you couldn't find even with a lantern!

When assigning Fu Jiaolu a room, Chen Xuan used the Scanner Gun to check everyone's abilities. He found that most of them had cultivated the Heart Calming Incantation. Some specialized in talismans, others in combat techniques, and all had made decent progress.

In that case, the benefits Mala Village could bring him seemed to go far beyond the Performance Points earned by exchanging abilities...

"Could you leave one day later?" Chen Xuan asked Liu Shuyue.

She considered it. "Just one day should be fine. Do you have something planned?"

"Yeah, there's something I need your help with."

Perhaps he could put on a little trial run first—for this world that had yet to open its eyes.

The next day at noon, Chen Xuan and Lin Qing took a car to the flood-control scenic promenade along the Sha River.

The great river split the city in two, so several bridges had been built across it over the last twenty years. But the busiest was the Shajiang Bridge One right in front of them. It had been built first and connected the city's most important main road. Though it was a little old, it still carried more traffic than any of the other bridges across the river.

What was more, both riverbanks were popular scenic spots, with green belts and riverside parks. Even on a weekday, plenty of people could be seen enjoying themselves along the shore.

"It's about time. Let's begin." Chen Xuan opened his phone's camera.

A moment later, three columns of water suddenly erupted from the river, each more than ten meters high!

The unusual commotion immediately drew gasps from the visitors along the promenade.

"Was that an explosion?"

"Is someone fishing with explosives?"

People who had been playing and camping on the park lawns rushed toward the flood-control embankment.

"Mom, there are people standing on the water!" a child shouted.

"Holy crap, is this some kind of stunt show?" More and more people stared in shock as three figures appeared where the columns of water had fallen.

They were three tall men, dressed in animal hides, with their chests and arms bare. Their pectoral and abdominal muscles were sharply defined, and their arms were packed with bulging muscles, radiating strength. Their appearance was even more eye-catching: patterns were painted across their light brown skin, they wore horned helmets, and bone necklaces hung from their chests. They looked just like savage wild men.

"But they don't have any equipment on them. How are they floating?"

"Check Kuaishou. Is anyone livestreaming?"

The crowd buzzed with chatter.

"Enough!" one of the men suddenly roared. His voice drowned out the surrounding noise and rolled across the river like thunder. "You've gone too far! We left our homes and fled all the way here just to stay alive, and you still won't stop hunting us down. If that's how it is, I won't run anymore! Come on!"

"Heh, he's doing pretty well," Lin Qing said happily. "He was so stiff during rehearsal. I thought he'd get so nervous when it was for real that he wouldn't be able to speak."

"They're just inexperienced, not cowardly," Chen Xuan said. In his eyes, anyone who could lead their whole family across half of Qingzhou and survive famine, where people resorted to eating each other, was neither incompetent nor timid. Fu Jiaolu and the others might not understand what their performance meant, but as long as the shopkeeper asked them to do something, they would give it their all.

As for getting nervous in front of a crowd, that wasn't much of a problem. Once they activated the Heart Calming Incantation, they could calm their minds, focus their attention, and carry out their task. Chen Xuan knew that from experience.

"Who's hunting you?"

"I support you calling the police!" people around them jeered.

But the next moment, everyone fell silent.

"Is that so? All the better. That saves me from searching for you one world at a time... Let's settle this." The cool female voice that followed seemed to send a chill through the air, as if it had frozen the entire river. Even before they saw the speaker, the lingering echo of her cold rebuke was enough to set their imaginations running wild.

"Look, on the bridge!" someone shouted, pointing toward the bridge.

Everyone looked up at the bridge structure, fifty or sixty meters above the water—

A woman in flowing white robes stood on the railing at the edge of Shajiang Bridge One.