The chances of running into Abnormal Creatures had gone way up. Zheng Yichen immediately realized that he hadn't treated his wounds, and the blood was attracting them.
That put him on alert, and he hurried to get away. He didn't even return to the temporary camp. Once he made it back to the city, he found a Shared Bicycle. The trip back had been unbelievably difficult. He should have listened to advice and taken it to heart: before Arno left, the hunter had specifically reminded him that a hunter needed a reliable means of transportation.
Getting around by car was convenient in the city, and he didn't have to look for parking when he went out. But that only applied within the city. Going somewhere like the suburbs was a huge hassle.
Now he knew what that felt like.
Fortunately, the Twilight Chapel was much closer than his home to the Southern Forest. After taking a winding route to get there, he finally breathed a sigh of relief. Some Abnormal Creatures had attacked him in the suburbs, and once he was back in the city, he'd attracted a few Giant Rats and stray cats, too.
Those things had left him with quite a few new little wounds.
"I need treatment." Zheng Yichen spoke at once when he saw a familiar-looking nun at the entrance to the Twilight Chapel.
The nun, whose hair was a milky white, looked him over and nodded. "Come with me."
In a room that looked like a medical clinic, the nun examined Zheng Yichen and skillfully cleaned his wounds. Once she'd treated the larger ones, she covered them with wound-closure strips to hold them together.
Zheng Yichen realized the nun was incredibly strong. She had reset his broken bones all by herself. The process had inevitably made him wince. It hurt.
"Do you want the shot in the butt, or do you want to pick another spot yourself?" After treating Zheng Yichen's fractures and surface wounds, the nun took out a syringe and looked at him without the slightest change in expression.
"Do we really need that?"
"Fine. As long as you don't mind risking an infection." The nun didn't insist. Zheng Yichen thought it over and decided to get the shot after all. He'd been attacked by plenty of small Abnormal Creatures along the way, and he had a lot of new wounds. They weren't big, but who knew what dangerous bacteria those creatures might have carried when they scratched him?
Back on Earth, he might have been able to rely on his own constitution and ignore it. But this world had Abnormal Creatures, so it wouldn't be surprising if it had abnormal bacteria, too.
"Can you give it to me in the arm?"
The bill came to twelve thousand. There was no invoice—just the nun's word and a payment QR code.
"..." Zheng Yichen scanned the code and paid the fee, feeling a little down about it. He'd never been this badly hurt since arriving in this world, and he had no idea how much other places charged. One thing the nun had said made sense: some injuries and illnesses could be covered by medical insurance.
But injuries sustained by hunters definitely couldn't be covered by medical insurance.
The nun was quite good at treating people. Other than the pain when she reset his bones, the rest went smoothly. Not a single thing went wrong during the whole process. She was professional and efficient.
"My name is Changqing. You..."
"Tia."
And that was that. He was kicked out of the medical room. All the wounds that could be treated had been taken care of, he'd had the shot, and he'd paid the bill. As long as he didn't do anything strenuous, he'd be fine. Sister Tia wasn't about to let Zheng Yichen spend the night in the medical room; his presence would get in the way of her cleaning.
Sitting on a chair in the chapel, he checked the information on his phone. The task that had been under review was confirmed as complete, and the commission payment had come through. The amount listed on the commission was exactly what he'd received; the client had already paid the taxes. Zheng Yichen thought that was pretty nice.
With the extra income, he didn't feel quite so bad about what he'd spent on treatment. Now all he could think about was buying a car as soon as possible. If he found cars inconvenient, he could get a powerful motorcycle instead.
Dawn had come. Zheng Yichen hadn't checked the time on his phone. Inside the Twilight Chapel, he'd thought it was still evening. Every time he came here, the lighting managed to "fool" him.
Yawning, Zheng Yichen took the tools he'd borrowed from the nun and started cleaning up. The reason was that he'd worked on the Unicorn Mule's head here. Looking at it, he felt a little regretful. He'd been in too much pain and gotten carried away. After knocking the creature down, he'd finished it off too viciously and punctured its skull.
Now there was a hole in it. He had no idea if that would lower its value.
The horn was excellent. Zheng Yichen had tested it, and it was incredibly sturdy. It seemed like he could make a short sword or dagger out of it.
Its tongue was tough, too. It had twisted the muscles in his arm and cracked his bones, which showed how strong it was.
When Zheng Yichen pulled on it, it stretched like a rubber band. Even after the Unicorn Mule died, it had retained its original strength.
As for the rest... there didn't seem to be anything else. He couldn't exactly use it to make grilled Mule Head, could he?
A few hours later, Zheng Yichen arrived at the Night Banquet Bar. After the bartender told him roughly what hours he'd be working at the bar, Zheng Yichen decided not to show up first thing in the morning.
"Oh, look who it is." Seeing Zheng Yichen walk in, the bartender smiled and brought him a glass of water. "You really did complete that commission."
"I got lucky. I almost got killed." Zheng Yichen raised his left arm, which was still a little stiff. He also had a lot of wound-closure strips on him; they'd spared him from getting stitches. Lowering his voice, he asked, "The news about it won't get out, will it?"
"Haha, you're dreaming." The bartender chuckled at Zheng Yichen's question and looked at the young man in front of him, who was at least a decade younger. "It was just a relatively rare, somewhat clever Abnormal Creature. It's not going to attract that much attention."
"Okay..." Zheng Yichen picked up the glass and drank. "I'm going to take a break for a while. Also, I want to buy a car."
"Sounds like you had a rough night." The bartender spotted the dejected look on Zheng Yichen's face and chuckled. "I can recommend a few good places. When you buy a car, remember to give them my name. You might get around a one percent discount."
"Then I'll still come out ahead." The bartender took out a slip of paper, wrote down a few addresses, and went back to work.
He went home to change, then returned to the Twilight Chapel. He wanted hunter Arno to take a look at the Mule Head and tell him what he thought of it.
But when he got there, hunter Arno still hadn't shown up at the chapel. Zheng Yichen didn't sit around doing nothing. He took out some tools he'd prepared and got to work on a piece of decent-quality wood. He planned to carve out a set of Mahjong tiles by hand.
"What are you making?" Arno's voice rang out. The hunter held a Mahjong tile and looked at Zheng Yichen with curiosity. His instincts told him it was something he'd find very interesting.
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