Seeking Confusion

Reluctantly, Li Junshan drew his gaze back from her and looked at the people behind her. One look, and he felt as if he had swallowed a fly whole.

It was an old man Li Junshan guessed to be in his fifties, wearing a black silk top, with a few wisps of ratlike beard on his chin and a pair of tiny eyes that looked almost the same whether open or shut. Whenever he glanced around, his gaze was either vicious or lecherous.

But when he looked at the girl in front of him, the old man's eyes turned greedy. Li Junshan noticed that on his chest, he wore a golden badge just like the ones on the black-clad guards' chests.

"Sit here. It's quiet here." The old man ran to a corner of the inn and eagerly brushed his sleeve over a bright, clean stone stool a few times, warmly calling out to the girl.

The girl ignored him and went straight to a nearby stone table, sitting down.

"A bottle of Bloody Anya," the girl called after she sat.

The girl's crisp voice reached Li Junshan's ears, and he felt a faint itch between his brows, every pore in his body opening with comfort.

"Brother, I'll sit on your side." As Li Junshan spoke, he sat down beside Robin. From this angle, he could see the girl from the front.

Robin glanced at him, shook his head with a smile, and went back to drinking on his own.

The old man did not treat himself like an outsider either. He plopped himself down across from the girl, all eager and fawning, and was just about to speak when the girl frowned, stood, and went to meet the serving girl bringing the wine. She took the bottle of Bloody Anya, pulled out the stopper, tilted her head back, and poured it into her mouth.

The vivid red wine flowed between the girl's luscious lips. Her tender neck arched in a beautiful curve, her small throat bobbing up and down with swallowing sounds. In an instant, the girl had drained the bottle completely.

Her skin was white as snow, and a smear of bright red wine stained the edge of her crimson lips. Everyone in the inn looked over and felt a beauty so stunning it shook the heart.

She stretched out a fair wrist and wiped the wine stain from her lips with the back of her pale hand. Then her hand turned, and a small cloth pouch appeared in her palm. She tossed it onto the table with the clinking sound of gold coins striking together, then turned and walked outside.

"What are you looking at?" Seeing the serving girl stare at him, the old man glared with his tiny eyes and snapped at her, then hurriedly chased after the girl.

"Xiaoshan." Seeing Li Junshan crane his neck to peer outside, Robin could not help saying, "Did she move your heart?"

Li Junshan drew his head back and smiled awkwardly. He raised his wine cup and clinked it with Robin's, but said nothing.

If this had been Windfire Town or Floro City, even Auston City, Li Junshan would have followed her without hesitation. Even if he had to use some melodramatic trick, he would definitely have gotten to know that girl.

Unfortunately, this was Blood Canyon, the strange Blood Canyon that devoured people without spitting out the bones.

Settling his thoughts, Li Junshan and Robin, both good drinkers, downed more than a dozen bottles of Bloody Anya in a row before finally heading outside.

Paying the bill naturally fell to Li Junshan. Elvis's Space Ring held quite a few good things, and there was also a Magic Crystal Card with a balance of ten million gold coins.

After returning to the Warrior Habitat, Robin found someone and asked around. Once he learned Slanbi had already come back, he brought Li Junshan toward the stone chamber in the middle.

"Mr. Slanbi, I was entrusted by Instructor Gelu to seek your advice on something." Li Junshan did not let Robin introduce him. Standing before the stone cave with its tightly shut stone door, he spoke loudly.

Rumble... The stone door rose, and a voice came from inside. "Come in."

Li Junshan nodded to Robin in thanks, then walked in alone.

Inside the cave stood a very unconventional, avant-garde old man. His messy hair looked as if it had been treated with a foil perm, forming an exaggerated explosion of hair. His beard, clearly untended for years, was even more of a chaotic mess, almost hiding his lips from view.

On his upper body, he wore a suit of leather armor made from the hide of some unknown magical beast, covered in colorful wine stains and filth, ragged beyond belief. The trousers on his lower body were not much better, with two large holes at the knees that exposed his blackened kneecaps.

An exaggerated look, eyes faintly filled with vicissitudes and decadence.

"Don't obsess over me, bro is just a legend." Looking at this old man, Li Junshan's mind instantly brought up that classic photo that had once gone viral on the internet in his previous life.

"Gelu?" Slanbi's drunken eyes looked toward Li Junshan as he said, "That damned old man? I haven't seen him in ages. What does he want with me now?"

Li Junshan did not dare be careless. He stepped forward, bowed, and said respectfully, "I am Mr. Gelu's student. I ran into some difficulties while cultivating spiritual force, so I came to seek your guidance."

"Bullshit." Slanbi reached out a finger as thin and withered as firewood and picked his nose. Rolling his eyes, he said, "I'm not a summoning instructor, nor am I a mage. If there's a problem with spiritual force, what damn use is it coming to me?"

Li Junshan smiled bitterly inwardly, but the respect on his face did not change. He repeated his own strange and bizarre situation to Slanbi, then finally said, "Mr. Gelu thought it over and still had no clue, so he said you were well-informed and experienced, sir, and might have a way."

"You're pretty good at flattery, kid." Slanbi rolled his eyes and said, "If it were a matter for old man Gelu, then after knowing him for so many years, I couldn't refuse to help. But this is your problem. Kid, give me one reason why I should help you."

Li Junshan could not help choking up. His mind spun rapidly, but he could not come up with a suitable reason.

If he says that, does it mean he knows something about the strangeness of it?

Does he have a way to solve it?

Is he just brushing me off?

Li Junshan was still thinking when Slanbi rudely issued the order to leave.

"Kid, don't disturb my quiet cultivation. Get out."

Li Junshan was afraid of angering him, so he could only bow and helplessly walk out.

Rumble... The stone door closed behind him.

"Xiaoshan, how did it go? Did you get an answer?" Robin had not left. He had been pacing in front of the cave entrance the whole time.

Li Junshan shook his head with a bitter smile and asked, "What does Mr. Slanbi like most?" Since the other party refused to help, he could only find a way to cater to his tastes.

"He likes drinking, and he especially likes Bloody Anya." Robin understood what he meant as soon as he heard it and said, "But someone of his level can freely take whatever he likes in the canyon. He doesn't have to pay when he goes to drink either. That path won't work."

The joy that had just risen in Li Junshan's heart vanished at once.

"Also, he loves food, especially all kinds of delicious food. But that's useless too. There are only those few restaurants in the canyon. What hasn't he eaten before?"

"Really?" Li Junshan was overjoyed when he heard this.

Robin nodded and looked at Li Junshan a little strangely. "Don't tell me you can make something good he's never eaten before?"

After finding out what time Slanbi went to the street to eat every day, Li Junshan did not dare act too recklessly on someone else's turf. Holding back his laughter, his shoulders shaking violently, he said goodbye to Robin and hurriedly ran back.

Robin was infected by his mood too. He shook his head and laughed a few times, then turned and walked toward his own stone cave.

Early the next morning, Li Junshan asked Gelu for a day off. Gelu knew what it was for and naturally agreed. Li Junshan dashed to the street, found the first restaurant by the roadside, and rushed inside.

"I'll give you ten thousand gold coins. I need to borrow a corner of your kitchen right now. Don't ask anything. For every question you ask, I'll pay one thousand less. If you don't want to, I'll go to the next place." Li Junshan found a middle-aged man inside the inn, took a large bag of gold coins from his Space Ring, and shook it in his hand with a jingling clatter.

"You want to do wha... do whatever you like." The middle-aged man's eyes lit up, and he instinctively started to ask, but halfway through, he reacted and quickly changed his words.

"Good thing I reacted fast. Saved myself a thousand gold coins." Beaming, the middle-aged owner accepted the bag of gold coins and pointed Li Junshan toward the kitchen.

Li Junshan walked into the kitchen. Inside, a fat, plump chef was roasting meat on an iron griddle and looked at him strangely. At that moment, the owner squeezed in from behind and whispered a few words to him. The fat chef nodded and went back to his own work, no longer paying attention.

"Do as you please. If you need anything, just say so." The owner greeted him warmly, and only after seeing Li Junshan wave him off did he leave in high spirits.

Li Junshan glanced at the ingredients under the worktable. Wild boar meat, Savage Bull meat, and everything else were all there, and there was even the corpse of a black snake more than ten meters long—yet there happened not to be the Snow Chicken he was looking for.

"Boss, why don't you have Snow Chicken here?" Li Junshan rushed into the hall and grabbed the smiling owner, who was counting gold coins, to ask.

"That thing doesn't have much meat. Who'd eat that?" The owner looked up at Li Junshan and scoffed.

No wonder the owner said that. A snow chicken was only a little bigger than an adult's fist, and it was full of bones, so people in this world rarely treated it as food.

Helpless, Li Junshan ran out onto the street. Guessing that Slanbi was about to arrive, he grew anxious and simply shouted, "Five thousand gold coins for one snow chicken!"

"How much? You didn't say that wrong, did you?"

"Snow chicken? You mean that kind of snow chicken that doesn't even count as a magic beast?"

"Kid, you're not tricking us, are you?"

Several stallholders by the street and passersby shot over with a "whoosh," instantly surrounding Li Junshan in the middle as they bombarded him with questions.

"That's right," Li Junshan shouted loudly. "A snow chicken. Best if it's a top-grade one with a red crest and white feathers. I only want one. First come, first served. Five thousand gold coins for an ordinary one, ten thousand for a top-grade red-crested, white-feathered one."

Boom! The onlookers scattered at once.

Li Junshan stretched his neck and stared until his eyes went straight, his jaw nearly dropping to the ground.

"That auntie is actually a Grand Battle Master." Li Junshan stared at an old woman even fatter than Anna, and saw her hefty body wrapped in blue battle aura. Like the Wudang Cloud-Stepping Ladder he had seen in movies, she rose dozens of meters with a whoosh, borrowed force from the stone wall by the street with one foot, and shot away with astonishing momentum.

"This brother is much more handsome." Li Junshan blinked as he looked into the air. A middle-aged mage was muttering an incantation, casting the level-five wind magic Gale. Wind rose from the flat ground, and his body streaked across the sky like lightning, already vanishing above the street corner.

"Uh, this one's the most practical." Li Junshan saw a fellow summoner. The man summoned a level-six magic beast, a Cloud Leopard, and had just flipped onto its back when the Cloud Leopard carried a sharp rush of wind with it and vanished from the street in an instant.

A gust of wild wind swept up fallen leaves. Li Junshan looked around a few times. The street that had just been filled with pedestrians was instantly empty.