Meeting Shi Lai Again

The emerald-green river burbled along.

Young men and women admired the scenery and poured out their hearts to each other, old men fished with rods in hand, and fortune-tellers manned their stalls.

Xia Yi walked past them without stopping, like a spectator. All sorts of information drifted to him on the breeze, and the useless bits blew away again.

He had not returned straight to the inn.

Instead, he had taken a slight detour.

After walking a kilometer, he finally spotted the sign he wanted in the distance: "Pitying Lord Pavilion."

Of all the pleasure houses he had passed yesterday, this one had the prettiest girls and the best name.

He smiled faintly and headed toward it.

Pleasure houses and brothels were not the same thing.

One was high-end, the other low-end.

Pleasure houses were naturally the high-end variety. Most of their girls were talented women, and some were even cultivators who had awakened Saint Souls. The vast majority sold their talents, not their bodies, and those who did sell their bodies generally served only a single client.

The Pitying Lord Pavilion Xia Yi entered was one of Lieyang City's most exclusive pleasure houses. Its madam's surname was Dong, though people generally did not call her a madam, respectfully addressing her as "Master Dong" instead.

Although Master Dong was nearly fifty, she retained her charms; people would have believed her if she claimed to be thirty-four or thirty-five. Hearing the bell ring at the entrance, she immediately glided over to greet him.

"Oh my~ Which of our guests was missing our girls so early in the morning? Most of them aren't even up yet." Coming from her lips, the words carried no sarcasm at all and instead tugged at the heartstrings.

But when she saw Xia Yi, even someone as socially adept as her could not help briefly stiffening.

Xia Yi, however, wore the air of a seasoned visitor. Smiling faintly, he held his right palm upright before his chest. "This humble monk is Yi Xia. Might I ask, benefactress, whether the young ladies of your establishment need a blessing?"

Master Dong looked a little amused, but her expression quickly returned to normal. Through all the ups and downs of these past years, what sort of person had she not encountered? There were plenty of men whose kidneys had not aged along with the rest of them.

"You certainly know how to joke, my good sir." She did not address Xia Yi as an old gentleman. "This must be your first visit here? Let me brew you a cup of flower-selecting tea to try."

This so-called flower-selecting tea was the admission fee for a first visit to a pleasure house. It averaged a thousand copper coins, enough for an excellent meal with wine for two, which showed how expensive pleasure houses were.

"I'm not here for that," Xia Yi said. "By blessing them, I mean bestowing flower names."

Master Dong stopped in her tracks and turned around.

"I didn't realize you were in the same trade. You've come to the wrong place. I've mastered the Beauty Register Saint Soul myself, and I've already bestowed flower names on the girls."

Xia Yi raised both hands as though surrendering.

Master Dong froze.

Xia Yi looked at his left hand. "Five-star mastery."

Then he looked at his right. "Five hundred taels per girl."

He lowered his hands. "If you're not interested, I'll go next door."

Master Dong's expression instantly became quite a sight.

Five-star mastery? There's already a five-star Jade Balance expert in my trade, someone powerful enough to be made a marquis? Is competition in the pleasure-house business this brutal these days?

Who the hell could turn this down?

The two-star Saint Soul Beauty Register was an exceedingly rare Saint Soul that very few people sought to awaken, because it was useful only to those working in pleasure houses.

Its effect was to bestow flower names upon pleasure-house girls, such as "Spring Orchid" or "Autumn Chrysanthemum." Those granted flower names would gain a measure of charm.

Charm was something elusive and hard to explain, but it truly existed. A flower name bestowed through a Beauty Register at five-star mastery could raise someone's looks an entire grade in the eyes of others.

Master Dong believed that if she turned him down, her competitors would fight to have him. Then she could only watch helplessly as those little hussies climbed over her head and strutted about.

As for why Xia Yi had mastered it, and even raised it to five stars?

Pleasure houses were an extremely profitable business.

The very first pleasure house in Human Race history had been opened by Xia Yi, and he had created the Beauty Register too!

A short while later, Master Dong summoned ten girls downstairs, a bevy of beauties, each lovelier than the last.

The girls chattered as they asked Master Dong what was going on. Two of them saw Xia Yi, exchanged glances, and whispered in surprise.

Xia Yi smiled. "That's right. I'm the penniless old pedant, the old lecher you were talking about yesterday evening. And I'm a petty old man too."

"No flower names for you two. Bring in replacements."

An hour later.

Master Dong struggled to maintain her smile as she watched Xia Yi leave with ten thousand taels that had belonged to her.

She recalled how, after blessing the ten girls... pah, bestowing flower names on them, that shameless old rogue Xia Yi had said, "I never said I'd only bless your establishment. I'm counting on this to make a living, unless you give me another five thousand taels."

The thought made her teeth itch with hatred.

Ten thousand taels was no small sum. Even the most popular non-prostitute courtesan in her pavilion, a cultivator raised from childhood who had awakened a zither-type Saint Soul, had a redemption price of only around ten thousand taels.

But after thinking it over carefully, she smiled again.

"I'll earn the money back soon enough. This fellow tradesman is rather interesting."

"Oh, has Mama fallen in love? He's already gone, and you're still staring." A young girl's clear voice teased her from behind.

Master Dong turned around irritably. "Getting cheeky, are you? Back to your rooms and get dressed up, all of you! Until you earn those ten thousand taels back, none of you are buying your freedom!"

"Heeheehee, Mama's fallen in love..."

Outside the Pitying Lord Pavilion.

Xia Yi did some quick calculations. "As long as I don't eat like I did last night at every meal, ten thousand taels should last half a year. Oh, I still need to buy a house with a courtyard. When I run short, I'll switch to the three-star Saint Soul Beauty Record and bestow flower names on them again. Hiss~ Will they beat me out the door?"

"Good thing they can't beat me."

Chuckling softly, Xia Yi set off to find Xiao Xian at the inn. But the moment he looked up, the bedraggled youth approaching him made the corner of his eye twitch. What a coincidence. We meet again.

Should I hide first?

But in that instant of hesitation, Shi Lai spotted him too. His eyes immediately widened... and he hurried toward Xia Yi, hopping on one leg.

Hopping on one leg?

Only then did Xia Yi notice that someone had broken Shi Lai's right leg. It hung limply, blood still slowly dripping from it. With an injury like that, anyone other than a player would have long since been in too much pain to move.

Judging by Shi Lai's expression, even with his pain settings lowered, it clearly still hurt terribly. By the time he hopped up to Xia Yi, tears and snot were streaming down his face. He grabbed Xia Yi's arm and bawled, "I finally found you! If I couldn't find you, I was going to delete my character! This garbage game! My leg got broken, so I logged off, but when I came back the next day and used Reloading a Save, my leg still wouldn't heal! It hurts so damn much! %@%? Waaah..."

He was so full of resentment that he was barely coherent.

Xia Yi was speechless. You really are the worst player I've ever seen. Calling you hopeless wouldn't even begin to cover it.

Huh, Reloading a Save? He used Reloading a Save in between?

Why didn't I feel anything?

Could there be... a distance limit too?

Xia Yi recalled that Shi Lai had been beside him during every previous reversal of time, and sank into thought. If there's a distance limit... what happens elsewhere? I'll have to find a chance to kill him a few more times and test it.

"You promised to teach me swordsmanship! I went looking for you the next day, so why did you... why did you... waaah!" Shi Lai cried out in anguish.

Coming to the prefectural capital had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, but Xia Yi did not deny that he had partly intended to avoid Shi Lai. It was for no other reason than to test what would happen if Shi Lai completed a "quest he had issued" and he refused to give a reward.

Would some sort of system affect him?

So far, it had not.

Looking at the utterly miserable Shi Lai, Xia Yi fought back a laugh and temporarily set aside the idea of killing him a few more times. He reached out to ruffle his hair and comforted him. "Don't cry, don't cry. How did you end up like this? And who broke your leg?"

"I... waaah..."

"Take your time. Tell me one thing at a time. I'll take you somewhere to get your leg treated first."

Five minutes later, at the Hu Clinic.

Physician Hu, a man in his fifties, kept stroking his white beard, his face full of amazement.

"Young man, you actually went so far as to break your own leg just to become my disciple?!"

Shi Lai was first dumbfounded, then delighted.

I have a chance of becoming his disciple?

"Yes! Please take me as your disciple!" With tears and snot streaming down his face, he threw his arms around Physician Hu's leg.

Xia Yi slapped a hand over his face.

This player is far too embarrassing.