Yanhe Pavilion.
At the first-floor counter, it was already late at night, and there weren't many customers.
"Today's earnings are pretty good..."
Bandit Brother smiled as the abacus in his hands clacked away.
It had not even been two breaths.
When he heard cries of astonishment coming from outside the inn, he suddenly noticed a handsome man standing in the first-floor hall.
More importantly, the man had walked in through the air!
"A cultivator!"
Bandit Brother cried out in surprise. The abacus kept clacking in his hands, his palms trembling with shock.
"There's a cultivator..."
"We pay our respects to the grandpa cultivator!"
"Immortal!"
At the same time, the other customers inside the inn and the people outside all tried to prostrate themselves.
But Chen Changhong gave a slight wave of his sleeve, and no one could bow down.
Only Bandit Brother, who had come around the counter, still fell to his knees.
"Grandpa cultivator, please spare me..."
From the corner of his eye, Bandit Brother saw that no one else had bowed, yet the cultivator had singled him out and made him kneel. His heart was filled with trepidation, along with a bewildered curiosity.
"Do you know why I came looking for you today?"
Chen Changhong took two steps forward. His palm glowed faintly red, and the temperature inside the inn rose a little.
"That's the legendary magic of the immortals..."
"Is this... a spell...?"
Everyone stared at the scene, too afraid to speak, their hearts pounding with shock.
It was the first time they had ever seen a spell.
"I... don't know..." Facing Chen Changhong, whose palm was turned toward him, Bandit Brother was so terrified that his mind went completely blank. He could only shake his head unconsciously.
"Grandpa cultivator... Grandpa cultivator... Did you... mistake me for someone else...?"
"No." Chen Changhong gave a cold laugh and glanced at the people inside and outside the inn. "Twenty years ago, this man was a bandit. He killed my grandfather, Chen Guan, in the woods outside town.
Do you remember?"
"Chen Guan? Chen Guan?!" How could Bandit Brother not know that name?
It sounded similar to Young Hero Chen's name.
And twenty years ago was when he had escaped from prison.
In particular, his brother had been beaten to death by a black bear, and he had escaped the bear's jaws only to be imprisoned again.
That had been a turning point in his life.
He had a fairly good memory, so when someone brought it up today, he still remembered what had happened.
But he truly didn't know what the old man had been called.
He had never imagined that the name sounded just like Young Hero Chen's.
Just then,
accompanied by the sound of heavy footsteps,
Chen Guan walked in from outside and looked at Bandit Brother, who was casting him a desperate, pleading glance.
The most formidable person Bandit Brother knew was Chen Guan.
And he also felt that Chen Guan had been deliberately following him lately.
So when Chen Guan came in,
Bandit Brother seemed to have grasped a lifeline. He shouted at Chen Guan,
"Brother Chen, save me!"
After shouting, he pinned all his hopes on Chen Guan.
Meanwhile, everyone else inside and outside the inn was too afraid to look at Young Hero Chen or the cultivator.
"Young Hero Chen is done for..."
"To fight an immortal... He's bound to die..."
"Young Hero Chen... Don't do anything foolish..."
Everyone was panicking, but they didn't dare speak in front of an immortal, much less try to persuade Chen Guan in the dead silence.
But before the crowd and Bandit Brother could recover from their fear,
Chen Changhong saw Chen Guan arrive, and the killing intent in his expression vanished. He bowed respectfully and said, "Grandfather, how should your grandson deal with the man who harmed you in your past life?"
"What... Did the cultivator just say 'past life'?"
"Do people really have past and present lives?"
"This immortal is Young Hero Chen's grandson?"
Everyone froze when they heard those words.
"He..." Bandit Brother's mind roared. "Young Hero Chen... He... He's that old man..."
"Shopkeeper." Chen Guan's expression was calm. "Since things have come to this, I won't hide it. I, Chen Guan, was the old man traveling on the road back then.
You took my life in my past life, so naturally, I've come for you in this one."
"Please spare me, honored immortals..." Seeing that his crime had been exposed and there was no escaping his fate, Bandit Brother stopped making excuses and kowtowed for mercy.
"Who would have thought the shopkeeper of Yanhe Pavilion was a bandit..." Seeing this, and hearing Young Hero Chen and the immortal speak, the others finally understood the gist of what had happened.
At that moment,
Chen Changhong raised his palm and finished forming the spell, preparing to kill the bandit and then seize his soul.
"Wait!"
Seeing his grandson about to strike, Chen Guan called out sharply.
Chen Changhong heard his grandfather. Though the spell had already been released, he still tried to change its direction, sending it into the ground beside Bandit Brother.
Boom—
The next second, a blast rang out.
Under the horrified gaze of the crowd, the wooden floor shattered. Stones and splinters flew everywhere, and a pit dozens of meters deep was blasted into the ground.
Some scattered silver pieces lay inside the pit.
"The silver I buried decades ago..."
Bandit Brother stared at the silver and suddenly froze.
The reason he had returned to town and changed his appearance was all because of that silver.
But later, through a twist of fate, he had become a shopkeeper and started making dozens of taels a day. Gradually, he had forgotten about the buried silver.
Amid the prosperity and peaceful life, he had come to feel that the silver no longer mattered.
He had even stopped wanting to remember those events from his past.
Whoosh—
The next moment, while Bandit Brother was lost and terrified, he saw Chen Guan rush toward him with a blade, accompanied by a gust of wind.
Then he heard a quiet confession,
"To be honest, I was the Flying Thief, too..."
The blade flashed.
Bandit Brother felt the world spin around him. It was as though the memories at the bottom of the pit were drawing ever closer.
Thud—
Bandit Brother's severed head dropped into the pit and rolled over to the silver.
At the same time, Chen Guan saw the words in the Scroll in his mind.
[You have resolved the Karma of Killing Tribulation from your first life] [Scroll character: Bandit]
As the words appeared, the bandit in the first picture became clearer.
[Choose an inheritance from "Bandit"] [1: Basic Fist and Foot Talent, proficiency: 102/1000] [2: Reciprocity] [3: Soil Research]
Chen Guan glanced at the options while his grandson extracted the man's soul and everyone inside and outside the inn stood frozen in fearful silence.
He looked at the first option.
[Basic Fist and Foot Talent: Common, growth-type, applicable to the vast majority of living beings]
This was good. It could grow.
Chen Guan then looked at the second option.
[Reciprocity: Common, applicable in most situations] [Effect: When you give an item to someone, slightly increases the chance of receiving a gift in return]
Chen Guan understood this one at a glance.
Back when he had lived in the real world, he had given gifts, too, but most of them were like "meat buns thrown to a dog, never to return."
A lot of people simply didn't believe in returning favors.
But this trait increased the chance that a gift wouldn't be given in vain.
Still, it didn't seem to mean much.
With his current strength, he had no need to give gifts to anyone in town.
As for the influential people he wanted to befriend, he couldn't reach them. And even if he did, they might not think much of his gifts.
A common trait really was somewhat useless.
Finally, he looked at the third option.
[Soil Research: Common, knowledge-type, applicable to all living and nonliving beings] [Effect: Grants some knowledge and memories related to the structure of soil and stone]
"Digging tunnels?"
Seeing this, Chen Guan suddenly remembered that Bandit Brother seemed to have escaped prison by digging his way out.
But compared with this kind of "prison-escape earth-burrowing technique,"
Chen Guan's gaze lingered on the growth-type first option.
[Basic Fist and Foot Talent: 102/1000] [Effect 1: You have a natural familiarity with ordinary fist and foot techniques] [Effect 2: Your ordinary physical strength increases slightly]
He chose it.
The next second,
Chen Guan suddenly felt his whole body grow lighter, and his strength increased by over a hundred jin.
He also felt as though he had spent years practicing fist and foot techniques, with the habits to match. It was just like when he had acquired Basic Blade Technique before: every move and every stance seemed to flow as naturally as the turning of a hand.
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