Both of my lives were filled with struggles. It was like ordeals after ordeals were awaiting me at every nook and cranny. I looked at the restaurants. How could I go back to eating raw and simple roasted meat after tasting delicious meals prepared with exquisite methods? I tried the skewers on the roadside. It was better than the roasted meat we had before but it reached nowhere the level of those restaurants.

I sighed. Why does my lives have to be this difficult? There were restaurants everywhere but I was blacklisted in every singe one of them.

Byakko, Ling and I trudged through the city lifelessly. We were trying to familiarize with this new place. It was always a good idea to have more information. One could never know, we might come across some great fortune in an unremarkable alley.

“Father, I don’t like this place!” Byakko complained. “Why don’t we go to a different city?”

Ling bobbed her head up and down to agree.

It seemed these two fellows had enough of this city. Getting blacklisted from the restaurants and being unable to eat the food they wanted made them hate this city. It was not like I couldn’t understand where they came from. But as long as we didn’t solve our core issues, I felt that we would face similar situations in other cities, too. Reducing our food intake was not an option!

“Don’t worry, everything will be solved. Believe in me.” I could only assuage the unpleasant mood of the two gluttons and buy some time. It wouldn’t be pretty if they took the matter into their hands and resorted to violence.

That said I had no idea what to do.

Being new to the place and all, it was quite difficult for us to find our way through the city well. There were times we would get hopelessly lost. For the moment, our target was a bookstore or a library. I needed more knowledge to plan out our future carefully. If I could, I wanted to leave no hidden menace like the traits. That incident had been quite an eye-opener. That was the reason I had not yet devoured the demon’s meat. I wanted to be ready when a new trait appeared. There was also the matter of [Chimera Transformation].

So far I had no luck finding such places. It was like this whole city was conspiring against me.

“Hey!” I heard a female voice yell. It was loud and brass. I had this weird feeling that I had heard it somewhere. But I wasn’t able identify it. Besides, apart from our plump innkeeper, I had no acquaintance in this city. I decided to ignore it.

“Hey! You!” the loud female voice yelled again. “The boy with the wild hair! The one with the tiger and the butterfly!”

Was she by any chance talking about me? I turned to find a young lady making her way towards me. She was beautiful. She must possess a huge charm value, I thought. Her manly garb and her manly gait made her appear more like a ferocious tiger than a delicate woman. There was this strange feeling again. It was like I knew her from somewhere.

“Big sister, are you by any chance talking to me?” I asked.

The young lady raised her brow in surprise as if she had come across some rare occurrence. After overcoming her initial surprise, she said, “Don’t tell me, you don’t recognize me? We ran into each other in the magical forest.”

When she said that, everything suddenly clicked into places. I was able to recognize her. Now that I look back, due to the influence of my traits, apart from Byakko and Ling, I had seen the whole world in a disconnected and hazy manner. It was only after I had subdued the egos of the traits that I was able to see the world clearly.

“You are that beastnapper older sister!” I yelled out.

“You are the beastnapper! Your whole family is the beastnapper!” she retorted angrily.

I coughed awkwardly. I felt the inappropriateness of yelling out such a phrase in public. As I recalled, in Xanxia and Xuanhuan worlds I read about, they seemed to place a huge amount of value on the so-called ‘face’. The uneasy looks the young lady was giving the crowd and her eventual relief when the crowd didn’t seem to have noticed the minor commotion we caused proved my conjecture.

“This is not the right place to talk!” she hissed.

She took the three of us to a restaurant.

When the manager saw the three of us, he immediately came out, “Lady Yu… This… The three of them had been barred from entering this restaurant,” he said.

“What!” she glared at the manager. “This lady can’t even bring a friend over to one of her clan’s restaurants?”

“It’s not like that… This boy… No, I mean, this sir… I didn’t realize he was Lady Yu’s friend.” He was sweating buckets. Meanwhile, I was taking joy in his misfortune. He had been quite pompous when I had been here the last time. “…Any friend of Lady Yu is more than welcomed here.” The manager finally retreated. I shot him a gloating look.

“What did you do to get blacklisted like this? I even had to exert my power as the Young Lady of Yu Clan for you to be admitted into the restaurant,” she said.

I gave her a helpless shrug. “Nothing. I just ate here.”

She shot me a look filled with suspicion.

“You can order anything you want here. It will be my treat. Treat it as an apology for capturing that little guy.” She pointed towards Byakko.

“No problem~” Byakko easily forgave her. The allure of delicious food was too strong for the little guy with very little space in his brain to resist.

The foods that we ordered were soon placed on our table. I started gobbling it up. It felt like we had waited years for this moment. Our table manners were terrible. It went without saying for Byakko and Ling who had no concept of etiquette. Even someone like me who had who had lived two lives went wild. I tell you, the type of environment that you grow up in could have a huge impact on you.

Ding!

You have consumed a huge amount of High Quality Meal.

Congratulations!

You have gained +3 in all attributes.

“I can see why the three of you got blacklisted in this restaurant. If my guess is not wrong, it shouldn’t just be this restaurant, right?” The young lady had an incredulous look in her eyes.

I scratched my chin awkwardly. What could I say to that? She was spot on. I decided to ignore it. I coughed to clear away my throat as well as to drive away the awkwardness. “Thank you for your treat, Lady Yu.”

“You can just call me Sister Yu or Sister Chen’er,” she said.

I didn’t know what to do. My social skills were lacking. No, that was an understatement. I had no social experiences. In both of my lives, I had very less interaction with other people. In times like this, I didn’t know what to do. In the end, I decided to go with the flow.

“Thank you for your treat, Sister Yu,” I said.

She nodded in acknowledgement.

I turned towards the two little gluttons. They were sleeping on the table with happy smiles on their face.

“You know, you are now quite different from how you appeared in the magical forest,” Yu Chen’er said, breaking the silence. “You had this whole aura that seemed to say, ‘Cross me and I will shred you to pieces’. But now, you just seem like an ordinary boy who loves eating.”

I had been like that in the forest. My real personality was mixed together with those of the egos of the traits. That must have given off a dangerous vibe. I mean, all those traits wanted wanton violence. That was the only explanation I could think of. Naturally, I wouldn’t talk about my traits and all. I waved it off with a few excuses.

I talked with Sister Yu for a while. From what I could tell, she possessed a straightforward personality. She was easy to get along with. I felt she was someone worth befriending. Of course, it could all be a façade to deceive me. But if I kept on being suspicious of everything in life, I would make no progress. Naturally, I would keep my guard up. This was an unknown world. You never know, you could be stabbed in the back if you were not careful.

“You want to buy books?” she asked.

I had broached the subjects of books and how I was not making any headway with it to her.

“Why would you need books? If you want to learn skills and other things, you could always check jade records. Books only contain basic information and theories with no practical application.”

It was exactly basic information and theories I wanted to learn. That was where I was lacking the most. But I didn’t tell her that. I just gave her a vague reason. “I love reading,” I told her. It wasn’t a lie. It was one of the activities I loved doing the most in my previous life. I was able to take my minds off my ailments whenever I was reading and be another person on a great adventure.

She gave me directions to a bookstore. She told me that it was the only one in the whole city.

Bidding her goodbye, I made my way to the store, naturally carrying the two sleeping fellows. It wasn’t too much of a burden since they were quite small but I think I needed to drill some awareness lessons in their heads.

I entered the old bookstore. As soon as I did, I was hit by the musty smell of the old books. It made me quite nostalgic. The store was untidy. It was located in the cranny of an alley. No wonder I couldn’t find it.

“What do you want?” A grumpy-looking old man came out from behind some shelves and asked in a gruff voice.

“I am looking to buy some books,” I said.

The man’s expression brightened. He tried to smile but failed miserably. He beckoned me forward and talked about his merchandize enthusiastically. Seeing the trembling excitement on his body, I couldn’t help but wonder, just how bad was the book business in this city?

“Owner, how much would it cost if I wanted to buy all the books in this store?” I asked. I had no shortage of money. On the other hand, information was something I sorely lacked. From the prices of books the old man had quoted, they seemed really cheap.

The old man looked at me as if he was looking at a saint. “You want to buy all the books?” he asked in a disbelieving tone.

I nodded.

“N-nine gold,” he said in a trembling voice. “E-eleven gold and I will add this store on top of it.”

I promptly handed him eleven gold coins. I still had no exact valuation of this world’s currency. But that didn’t matter. There were mountains of it in my spatial ring. Eleven gold coins were merely pocket changes. It also solved a very important dilemma. I was wondering how I could collect the books into spatial ring. Now, I had no need for it.

“Finally, I can get out of this accursed place. I can now freely roam the world.” I heard the old man mutter. He went upstairs and came down carrying a big leather bag. He hurriedly shoved me some old papers and went out of the door. It was like he was getting away from something dangerous.

I belatedly realized that it was the title deed for the store and some other documents that served as authorization to run the store.

The old man did everything very fast. It was like he was afraid that I would change my mind if he didn’t act fast. I could only stand there foolishly, opening and closing my mouth, unable to say anything. It took me a while to come to terms with everything that happened.

I had gotten more than I had bargained for.

Still, the manner in which the old owner left bugged me. There must be more to this store than he had let on.

I opened [Kaleidoscope Eye: Mode White] and looked for traces of energy. It didn’t take long for me to find it. There was a book filled with malicious energy sitting on one of the shelves.

I picked it up. If it weren’t for [Kaleidoscope Eye: Mode White], I would have dismissed it as an ordinary book.

What do I do with the book? I wondered. The book seemed quite special. At the same time, it seemed dangerous. I checked for more details with [Kaleidoscope Eye: Mode Black] but could find nothing in the end. For now, I stored it into my spatial ring. I could only wait till I had enough capabilities.