Too Traditional

"You want to drive me away? I think what you really want is to kill me." Zheng Yichen glanced at the broken wooden spear on the ground, feeling a little annoyed. Someone had been murdered in town, and now they were deeply suspicious of outsiders? Well... uh, that did kind of make sense, didn't it?

Especially in a place as backward as this, in an age like this.

"No, no, no. We only want to ask you to leave, sir. We absolutely have no other intentions." The mayor hurriedly shook his head and explained, "We'll compensate you..."

"Don't bother. I'll just ask a few questions and then be on my way."

Zheng Yichen wasn't interested in compensation. He could tell from looking at the town that it didn't have much money. Maybe they had some gold or silver jewelry, but what was that stuff worth...? Well, if they had any, he could take some as travel money when he left.

The mayor hurriedly agreed. Zheng Yichen mainly wanted to learn about the world. Though the town was remote, it still maintained contact with the outside world; it wasn't cut off from civilization. The mayor answered all of Zheng Yichen's many questions one by one.

But when Zheng Yichen asked about things like ghouls and Vengeful Spirits, the mayor's expression changed. It was... delight? That seemed to be the right word.

"Are you a Demon Hunter?"

"Huh?" Zheng Yichen blinked. They had that kind of profession here, too? Then again, considering the rotting corpses he'd encountered earlier, it wasn't strange that such a profession existed in this world. "You could say that, though I'm not very professional."

He wasn't lying.

"That's wonderful!"

In the mayor's eyes, Zheng Yichen was no longer just an outsider of unknown origins. He was an outsider Demon Hunter of unknown origins. Since he came from elsewhere, it made sense that he didn't know much about the local situation. And his oddly different clothes seemed perfectly normal for a Demon Hunter.

His clothes looked different from theirs, but it was obvious they were protective gear meant for combat.

Once the mayor warmed up to Zheng Yichen, he answered practically every question. Zheng Yichen learned even more about the world.

There were plenty of Supernatural Events in this world. There were vampires, ghosts, ghouls, witches, and even demons. With creatures like those around, it stood to reason that there would be organizations like the Church, too.

After learning the details, Zheng Yichen nodded. The Demon Hunters in this world weren't like the ones he'd imagined. They weren't the sort who were constantly stiffed on payment and couldn't afford medicine. Nor did Abnormal Creatures appear all that often.

For many people, those Abnormal Creatures existed only in stories. But they were real. The mayor had seen a priest from the Church exorcise an Evil Spirit when he was young.

He'd seen it with his own eyes, but most people in town had never encountered an Abnormal Creature.

With enough information to go on, Zheng Yichen had formed a general impression of this world. Its technology was still developing. In addition to Abnormal Creatures, there were firearms, including Flintlock Guns, though bows and crossbows were more common at long range.

Abnormal Creatures weren't something you could just run into three or five of anywhere. Most could only be found in places with few people or in other unusual locations. The abandoned graveyard where Zheng Yichen had first appeared was sparsely populated, and there were plenty of corpses there, so Abnormal Creatures had gathered.

Places bustling with people were much less likely to have things like ghouls. Most of those creatures hid in graveyards. They were quite vicious, but as long as you had enough people, you could still kill them.

The dozens of corpses Zheng Yichen had encountered in that abandoned graveyard couldn't really be called ghouls. They were more like zombies... They were frightening, ignored pain, and fought to the death, but their bones were brittle and their rotting flesh offered little protection. If you worked up the courage, even an average adult with a stick could take down several.

This world probably didn't have things like magic that could destroy an entire town at the drop of a hat.

The mayor said he'd only read about vampires and witches in a few books, so he knew very little about them. The town didn't even have firearms like Flintlock Guns, and Zheng Yichen didn't know whether it had bows or crossbows.

In Zheng Yichen's view, this world was probably low-magic. Supernatural Power existed, but to most ordinary people, it was like an Olympic gold medal on Earth: undeniably real, but very few people could earn the genuine article through their own efforts, apart from fakes.

You could learn of its existence through various means, but you might never get the chance to encounter or even see it in person in your entire life. If there were special powers like magic, they were probably mostly useful for support...

The main reason the mayor knew so much was that, as mayor, he had a few books at home. One of them had been bought from the Church. It was a rare thing for ordinary people to own, and it recorded information on all sorts of Abnormal Creatures... or, as they called them here, Evil Creatures.

It was basically an educational book.

Zheng Yichen took a look at the book in the mayor's home. He had to admit it was quite well-made. It wasn't printed by a modern industrial press, but it thoughtfully included some illustrations. The creatures Zheng Yichen had encountered in the abandoned graveyard were Rotters, Zombies, and the like.

Ghouls were much stronger than those things. They ranked above Zombies in the food chain, and their bodies were powerful enough that even three or five grown men might get hurt fighting one.

Vampires in this world died in sunlight and feared silver. They were the traditional kind of vampire. Not like the ones in all those anime on Earth, where even vampires were too embarrassed to leave the house with the traditional weaknesses of their kind.

The illustration of a witch showed an ugly old hag. After reading the book, Zheng Yichen, as a modern person, couldn't help thinking... This is way too traditional.

So traditional it's like the Renaissance. As a vampire, you're afraid of sunlight and can't even wear silver jewelry to go shopping? Does that make any sense? And as a witch, you're not a sweet, perhaps even somewhat airheaded, cute girl? Does that make any sense?

More importantly, the illustrations were one uglier than the next. He couldn't tell whether the creatures really looked like that or whether they'd been drawn so hideously to emphasize that they were Evil Creatures. As a transmigrator, whenever he heard the word "Church," he couldn't help thinking of people like Yue Buqun and Hua Tiegan. Uh, maybe that wasn't quite appropriate?

After finishing the book, Zheng Yichen started thinking about what he should do next. He had to find some Abnormal Creatures; otherwise, his body would wither again if too much time passed. It was like tending flowers, except he had to water himself regularly, and there was no one else to do it for him.

He also had to look for anomalies. He was worried that the Abnormal Creatures in this world might not be enough to meet his abnormal needs in the future, so he needed to find anomalies and make contact with more powerful worlds.