I ran in the direction of the scream. I found a powerfully built young man crouched in front of a glass case. The young man was staring at the price tag beneath it. A look of utter devastation covered every inch of his face.

Damn, this guy was hot. I’m not gay, but even I could tell. My heart filled with gratitude for God’s grace. Thank God I wasn’t the main character in some anime or light novel! I could already imagine the army of fangirls drawing up weird fanfictions between me and this greek statue of a man.

“Senior apprentice-brother, you’re making a scene.” The guy who had given me directions earlier jogged over. He gave me an odd look and went back to talking to the guy on the floor. They both wore identical robes. “What happened?’

“Look at this!” he said, pointing at the price tag. A crowd started to form around him, while more of the people wearing his uniform also stepped forward. I realized that the people wearing the uniform weren’t working for the medicine store.

A couple people from the crowd pointed at me and whispered, but I couldn’t figure out why.

“Senior apprentice-brother, it’s alright. It only costs twenty thousand shards. You brought enough, right?”

“I didn’t! I only bought ten thousand.” He turned around and saw the crowd. He blushed, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to cause a ruckus, nothing bad happened.”

Seeing his apology, the crowd left to continue shopping. I was the only one that didn’t leave.

Everybody else in his group immediately emptied their pockets. They passed every last shard, stone, and jade they had to him. All of them showed tremendous generosity to this “senior apprentice-brother”, whatever that meant.

His eyes watered from their kindness. He crouched and the others crouched as well, forming a circle. I peered over his shoulder and saw him laying the money on the floor and counting it out.

My dao of mental math was a couple stages above theirs. “You don’t have enough,” I said, my mandatory state sponsored education finally coming through.

Every head except for the leader’s turned and glared at me with hostility. I felt like a pack of lions were glaring at me with glowing eyes, in the middle of the night. “Aww, you’re right,” their leader muttered. The rest of the pack averted their eyes.

“You’re a thousand off. A thousand fifty one, to be exact,” I said.

He started pushing money back to their respective owners. “Hey wait, I can lend you one thousand fifty six if you want.” I was still carrying the box of jades. I took one out to show him. His face blossomed with a dazzling smile.

“Yes, please!” he did a half bow, bending by forty five degrees.

“Senior apprentice-brother!” the others groaned simultaneously.

“What?” he asked.

“Your reputation! Don’t bow to an outsider like him,” one of them said.

“We’re on Blue Fire Sect grounds, there aren’t outsiders here,” he said.

They pointed at me. I looked at myself as well. “Oh, you’re not wearing blue?” His smile faltered for a second. I was wearing the red and black robe Chen Wei had bought me. “Which sect are you from?”

So all the sects are color coded. “I’m not from any sect, I just happen to be wearing red today. Sorry about any confusion.”

“See? He’s fine,” he comforted his pack, who were all giving me the death glare again. Damnit, I want his charisma stat.

“One little thing though, let me touch the plant after you buy it.” I said, “I won’t take anything, I just want to touch it.”

“Sure, of course,” he beamed.

I handed him a jade. “Also, give me the change, kay?”

He bobbed his head up and down. After he purchased it, an employee unlocked the case and handed it to him. I read the name tag on the case, it read “Life Absorbing Vine, Twenty Thousand Shards.”

He took it with a grin and held it out for me. I tapped a leaf growing off the vine and used Identify, “That’s it. I’m done.”

“I’m in debt!” I’d never seen somebody so happy while announcing their debt.

I bought a backpack and a couple vials with the change and followed his group out of the store. I spoke with him along the way. He was easy to speak to, anybody who talked with him immediately felt like friends. “I still haven’t asked you for your name,” he said.

“I’m Jin,” I replied.

“Well hello then, Jin. My name’s Fei Huo Tian, of the Sapphire Fire Sect!” he said. Hou Tian was an extremist. Not a political extremist, but an emotional extremist.

“Oh, I thought you were from the Blue Fire Sect. Sorry, I’m new here, which sect is that?” I asked.

He pointed to my left. “My sect is over there.”

All I saw was a cluster of mountains and valleys. “Which mountain?” I asked.

“All of them,” he said. I raised my eyebrows. Maybe the Blue Fire Sect really was a small sect if this random guy’s sect owned a small mountain range.

“So I’m guessing the Blue Fire Sect and your sect are friendly?” I said.

“Very much so! The politics in this city are usually pretty messy, but our sects are close friends and have been so for hundreds of years,” he paused his explanation. “You say you’re new here? Did you mean new to the sect or to the city?”

“Both”

“And you’re living in the Blue Fire Sect?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“Then you’ll really need to know this. There’s this sect called the Crimson Fire Sect. They’re trying to take the Blue Flame territory. My sect is one of the reasons they haven’t been able to do it. My sect is very powerful, able to rival the people from Crimson,” he said proudly, “Crimson isn’t able to attack the Blue Fire Sect up front, so they’re trying a bunch of other techniques.”

“That doesn’t sound good. I’ll keep that in mind. Oh, by the way,” I said, “Does your sect have any prison cells that can hold fourth stage experts?”

“I think so. Why?” he said.

“Nothing.”

We kept talking until we reached the sect gates, where we parted. He handed me a slip of paper telling me where I could find him in the future. I headed back home afterward. I unlocked the gate and opened it.

As I expected(and planned), Hui Ming was nowhere to be found. The vine that had tied her to the Prison Pineapple lied on the ground, snapped in two.