"Oh? To whom do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

Looking at the big guy who has just spoken out, I decided to ask a bit and hear what they had to say first even though his style of talk irritated me a bit…

'I'm not that impulsive after all…'

It was only due to the fact that I had to waste another 10 days of my time for nothing that I was a bit moody today, but with them coming for something meant that I might be able to kill my boredom sooner than I expected so my mood was getting better by the second…

"Oh, me? People call me senior mountain, you can use that name."

"Oh, I see, so it's senior mountain and…?"

"I'm Sean and she's Clara, pleased to meet you... Mr. Lan?"

The earth practitioner guy who got the seventh rank in the 'Show Off Tournament' stood off as he offered his hand for greeting...

"Ah… I see you already got my name, I guess you must be seeking me for something really important if you searched for that much about me…"

Shaking his hand back, I could only affirm that it was something completely serious if they have gone that far…

"Yeah, it's truly something that we can't do without your help…"

"So it's not something that you necessarily need me for, you just need me to do something for you…?"

"Well, it can be said that way, but that's not necessarily true either…"

Seeing that my probe question was only answered by this puzzling statement, I no longer decided to beat around the bush…

"Alright then, tell me what it is, if it's not too troublesome I have no problem with providing my help…"

"That's great! Then we should move to another place…"

"Fine with me, lead the way…"

Walking with the trio out of the hotel, I simply followed them to see how this would turn out…

`~~`~~`~~`

"So, what's this all about?"

Reaching what seemed to be a secluded eatery whose owner seemed like he knew the big guy, as we were served with some noodle soup, which reminded me somewhat of the instant noodles that people are used to eat back in reality…

"Well, let's start with the main point of this whole thing, I will be frank with you so there is no need to get offended…"

As we were seemingly the only ones inside the whole shop, it didn't look like there would be anyone else who listened to this other than us four, even the shop owner himself who left after serving the food…

"I wouldn't mind…"

"Alright then, the main cause of this is a piece of information that I got during the recent auction that took place in the sect district…That piece of info was regarding the set of earth conducting elemental items that was sold separately as distinct items before being announced as being a part of the same collection in the end…"

'Oh?'

"As we somehow know that you have one of these items which we need according to that piece of info, we wanted to give you one of two choices on what would you like to do."

"Do tell…"

"You can either sell us the item in your possession, which we will buy for even higher than the price you have spent on it, or we can share that piece of info and you would join us on the quest of unveiling the truth behind that info and potentially benefiting from it…"

'Interesting…'

"And if I don't choose any of the two…?"

I wasn't really going to sell the crossbow as I still needed it for my 'Lightning Cloud' and I was obviously too bored to say no for going on a mysterious quest with possible benefits on its end, but I was also interested in seeing their reaction just as much as I was interested in going on this quest thingy…

"Well, in that case, you can just hand it over…"

The big guy put his hand on the sword's handle as he threatened me, as he seemed quite itchy to try his new toy…

"Senior, please, no need for unwanted fighting, this would be better solved peacefully for the interest of everyone here..."

The Earth practitioner, Sean, suddenly stood as he tried to calm down the mountain guy, before giving a troubled look…

"Well, there's no need to take it this seriously, I'm honestly quite interested in what might be this piece information's content, sounds like a fun thing to do in these boring 10 days of wait…"

"Humph…"

As old mountain sneered, Sean put on an 'All is good' smile as returned to his seat.

"That's all good then, Should I take your word that you are going to follow through with us after hearing the information?"

"Sure."

"Great. According to the trusted informant that gave me this piece of info, it seems that this set of items is actually both a map and a key to something that's much bigger, any part of the set will be incomplete as a map or a useless key on its own, but once they are put together they will do their worth and more!"

'Oh! I knew that my senses didn't fail me!'

"I'm totally in then, how are we supposed to complete the map?"

"The map parts are actually slightly hidden in a strange sequence that I already obtained the way to solve, I will just need to borrow your item for a few seconds so that I can copy that part and start translating it and we can head out as soon as I'm done if you aren't busy with something else…"

"Okay with me, gimme a sec…"

Knowing that these three won't possibly pose any threat to me if they were actually scamming the Crossbow out of me, I put my hand in the magical 'Excuse' bag and pulled out the Crossbow after storing away the random filler and handed it over to Sean...