“Hm, you said Quin? Why does that name sound so familiar?” Zhang asked.

“You don’t even remember something like this, Zhang?” asked one of the men with a mocking tone. “That kid from Crows’ Road, you know the genius one.”

“Oh, you’re right! Hm, maybe I’m drinking too much these days...” he said. “So boy, are you him?”

So even in a place like this, they’ve heard about me, huh?

“No,” he denied, “Just look at me, do I really look like him?” he asked with a light laugh.

The group eyed him thoroughly and determined that he indeed did not resemble how they had imagined Quin. It was not something surprising as in front of them sat a boy, dressed in fur clothes, filled with injuries that had not even recovered, with a right arm that was missing one and a half fingers and looked significantly less muscular than his left.

“That’s a shame! Then what about you, where you from?” Zhang asked.

“I’m from Crows’ Road as well,” Quin replied.

“So tell us, how are things going over there?” another man asked. “We get some news, but only occasionally. Maybe if we wouldn’t be such an insignificant town we could afford monthly news service which many other settlements have, but sadly the last one came I think more than half a year ago now.” He let out a disappointed sigh.

For more than two hours Quin was bombarded with questions after questions and he barely even had time to eat. He did not mind it, though, as the group was quite friendly and besides he did not have anyone to talk for a long time.

“And why have you come to our town?” Zhang asked.

“Well, it’s not my final destination and I only stopped for the night. It’s been a long time since I get to sleep on a bed. Oh, right, I’ve been traveling for some time now but at some point lost the count of days, what’s the date today?” Quin asked

“It’s the 29th of March, when did you set off?” one of them answered.

“Man, it’s more than a month now,” he said surprised. Then I’ve been in that state for more than two weeks? Damn!

“More than a month?” Zhang asked a bit taken aback. “Have you stopped at every tree for some sightseeing? It shouldn’t take that long for a boy at your age even if he spends half of day by sleeping.”

Quin laughed and shook his head. “If I were in my top form I reckon it wouldn’t have even taken a week to get here, but well, I no longer have the ability to do so,” Quin said with a sigh; it was not his favorite topics to talk about.

The group got awfully silent for a long moment after hearing what Quin told them.

“Sorry about that boy, wasn’t mean to pry,” Zhang said apologetically.

“I know, don’t worry about that, just bad memories,” he replied and forced out a laugh.

“So, you said you’ve just stopped here for the night, then where’s the place you’re really going to?” one of them asked.

“It’s Hounxi, I’ll go there to recuperate. I heard it’s supposed to be a great place,” Quin answered.

“It’s a great place? It’s more than that I can assure you of that!” another man said whose hair was already gray. “I’d the luck to go there when I used to work as a loader back in the days. Those were the good times! The work was hard and never-ending but I got to see so many places.” He let out a long sigh, reminiscing about the old days. “Anyways, one of the best, if not the best place I’d visited was Hounxi. It’s not that much bigger than our town in size but the houses they’ve got there... Let met tell you, they ain’t like the shabby shacks we’ve got here. You know, I’m not that big fan of the art and don’t even know much about it, but every time I saw those houses I became awestruck. Each of them was like the most magnificent pieces of art.”

“Really?” Quin asked a bit skeptical. Speaking of just houses in that manner feels a bit weird, he thought.

“Haha, Li says that every time,” Zhang said. “You can’t even mention the word house without him going crazy and then we’ve to listen for hours long as he tells us how great those houses were. I’m sure if your wife heard you she’d be mad with jealousy!” The whole group burst out at that point, including Quin as well.

“Say what you want, but none of you have been there, so how could you understand?” Li said. “And at least I won’t be beaten to a pulp if I were to go home late like you Zhang!” Even though the laughing started to quiet down, after hearing Li's retort, it burst up once more.

“Oi, that was only a single time! And do you think I’d ever raise my hands again my wife?” Zhang asked trying to get back a bit of his dignity but without any success as the others were still loudly laughing. “Whatever, I’d be happy to see you how any of you’d fare against her! Damn, how come she’s at the third level of Qi Culmination? She’s only thirty-eight! They say that an average human should reach it around the age of fifty... If she'd reached it a few years before that, then I'd have no issue with it, but for god's sake, she did it fifteen years earlier! Can you imagine that? Damn, I need more drinks.” He turned to the innkeeper and said, “Oi, Min, give me another round!”

Entering the third level of Qi Culmination at the age of thirty-five and in a small town like this? Even though I’d have probably entered it even before just like my friends, but we were the best of the country! That woman’s definitely a genius! Quin was quite shocked regarding Zhang’s wife, especially after realizing in what kind of environment did she reach to this level. Although there was not too much difference how people looked at the two gender and they were considered mostly equal in Ade Lai, women still had more difficulty regarding cultivation.

The main reason behind this was simple: pregnancy. While they were pregnant they could not continue their training and their passive cultivation slowed down as well as their body was focused on the task of creating a new life. Families usually had three to four kids in their whole life in the capital and other big cities, however, it was different in the countryside. The number of children they had was often double of that, which consequently meant that they had even more difficulties regarding their cultivation than the women in the cities. Despite all of this, here was this woman, who not only could keep up with the men of this small town but even remarkably outshined them and that was no small feat.

“But it isn’t you who’re always boasting about your wife Zhang, heh?” one of the men asked.

“Yeah, you can't ever stop talking how much you love her!” Li said.

“But that’s only natural! She’s wonderful, beautiful, smart and a great mother, how could I not love her then? It’s just that it should be me the one who protects her if there’s something, not the other way around!” Zhang said shaking his head and took another big gulp of his drink.

Quin felt a bit strange about these things. It’s interesting to see how much more open and honest these people are compared to the one in Crows’ Road. Although it’s a bit weird to hear them talk about their personal life in such detail and so easily, I think it’s quite enjoyable. Even though I know them only for about two hours, it feels like we’ve been friends for years and honestly, I doubt something like this could happen in Crows’ Road. It’s not that there aren’t people that are easy to make friends with, but they are a lot fewer in number there.

After some time Quin decided to ask them about their life.

“To be honest, this is my first time being in a small town, how’s life here?” Quin asked.

“It’s got its ups and down, but all in all I think it’s not bad at all,” Zhang answered. “We’ve got a simple life here, we get up at morning, go to the fields and then after we often come here to drink for a bit. When we got to home our family’s already waiting for us and spend the rest of the night together. We don’t have many interesting things happening here, only maybe some wild gossips. So there’s not much to talk about our life, but I think most of us here are content with it.”

“And how’s the work?” Quin questioned. “Naturally, I know several things about agriculture, however, it’s different to hear it from people who work there.”

“Maybe it could be described the best as tiring and boring,” Li replied with a laugh. “Though it has its charm. I think all of us here can agree that seeing how the plants you’ve planted and tended to for months eventually mature is something that fills you with some kind of satisfaction. You know that it’s the fruit of your own hard work, and there’ll be food on the table in the future because you spent every day on the field tending to them.

“But as I said, it can be tiring as hell. We’ve just begun digging up the field a few days ago to loosen the soil before planting the seeds. You know, we’ve got several earth element users here, but the fields are just too big and even though they can do the work of four or six people, it still takes us weeks to finish it.”

Author's note: Next week's schedule: I'll release five chapters, one every day except on Tuesday and Thursday.

I still won't be doing sponsored chapters next week but I'll probably do in the week after that.