Soon after, Fang Hai left Li Chenyuan alone.
Ever since that night, his attacks of demonic qi had gotten worse and more frequent. He had splitting headaches every night. Usually, planting some small thoughts in others' heads relieved his aches, but his meridians had been somewhat injured that night by the rush of demonic qi forced into him. Thus, he was unable to do anything but curl up and cry. Li Chenyuan clenched his hands so hard that his fingernails broke into his skin!
Upon the breaking of one headache, Li Chenyuan lay in a pool of icy sweat. His stomach rumbled. If only Qiu Yunru was here. He'd probably pity him and bring him some food. If the food came from Qiu Yunru's hands, he'd surely be able to eat it.
It was at this moment that Li Chenyuan resolved to himself:
I'll find Qiu-ge. He must be out there. I'll dedicate my life to finding him if I have to!
Li Chenyuan was a smart young man, but when it came to people who showed him love, he was like a moth drawn to a torch. He couldn't stop fluttering closer until he was burned, and even then, he didn't mind. In his mind, it was a thousand times better to cling to a person who loved him, than to go on crawling through life alone.
_____
Qiu Yunru had been wandering the Demon Realm for a week now. He was, to be honest, quite happy with his progress.
He figured that the best first step on the path to escaping was to scope out the area. Since there had never been an official map released, he had no idea how many kinds of terrain there were, what the layouts of the cities and towns and such would be, and what kind of bosses resided where. Thus, the first logical step to his plan was reconnaissance.
He had managed to map out several towns and one major city so far. Over the course of just a week, he'd travelled long and far, slowly recovering from that influx of demonic qi that had almost killed him.
I can't believe my luck, Qiu Yunru thought to himself as he strolled through a market in the demon city of Ming Rou. For once, it's good!
Just a few days before he'd died in his past life, he'd religiously read all of the DLC hints for the Demon Realm. These had included information on demon classes, notes about geography, and, most importantly, an extensive list of flora and their uses.
Though most people enjoyed its RPG and combat elements best and ignored the rest, at its base, Qiu Yunru had always thought the game had an obsession with alchemy. The Spring Blossoms, Autumn Fruits devs clearly had a love for it. Every time new mechanics were introduced, they involved some kind of complex potions and ingredient-hunting!
Due to his having read up on the DLC material, he'd been able to survive this past week by slowly healing himself with various herbs. Seeing as he'd lost his sword on that cliff in Heixi Gorge, he had also stocked up on many of herbs that were poisonous to demons. Carrying a leather bag that he had managed to steal in a rather harrowing low-level quest, he now had access to a variety of plants that could keep him strong and ward off any attacks if needed.
He had, of course, also stocked up on a few other things. For example, there were herbs considered highly valuable to demons--those that healed demons, but killed humans--which he had picked bundles of.
"I'll take two charcoal Ye baozi," Qiu Yunru said to a vendor. That vendor had the head of a pig, and was wearing an apron that was splattered with blood. The pink let out a snort, eyeing him.
"You got money?" He asked. "Or trading?"
"Trading." Qiu Yunru pulled out a bundle of withered flowers with bright red petals.
The pig demon's beady black eyes widened. "Spider Roses? That's too much. This isn't even human meat--no need for such an expensive item."
"How about ten bao buns?" Qiu Yunru suggested, placing the small bundle down next to the pig's boiling pot. "I'm on a diet anyways. No human meat for me."
He'd found that the demons in Spring Blossoms, Autumn Fruits were surprisingly honest in their bargaining. Seeing as their economy, unlike the human economy, was based off trading, they knew how to properly appraise items and were wary of taking advantage of customers. After all, in the Demon Realm, if you took advantage of someone and they found out, they might come back and rip your head off without a second thought!
"Oh. Gotcha," the pig demon grunted, tossing a host of buns into a paper bag. "Must be tough. Human meat's got ten times the energy of wildlife meat. If I could get my hands on some to sell, I'd have my own restaurant by now."
Qiu Yunru thanked the pig demon and moved on, munching on one of the buns. It wasn't really to his taste--he'd found that in the demon realm, everything was just slightly unbearably spicy and had a bitter aftertaste--but he still needed to eat to survive. Also, much of the protein here was, well...
Human meat.
Human jerky, pulled human, roasted, fried, baked, dried. Getting human meat in a fresher form was extremely expensive, but it wasn't too costly to get some jerky or dried meat. It had taken Qiu Yunru a few days of searching to find anywhere that sold meat other than human!
He had almost been on the verge of giving in and nibbling some jerky when he'd come across a baozi stand. It had a large, badly painted wooden sign hanging on the front:
TRADITIONAL YE MEAT; WILD MEAT, NO HUMAN!
As it turned out, baozi with non-human meat was something of a tradition in the demon realm. It seemed to have originated from the lowest of the lowest of demon classes--those with the heads of animals. This made sense to Qiu Yunru. Being of such a low class, these demons had little money, and therefore couldn't afford human meat at all. Thus, they had been eating the meat of wildlife for years, and it had grown into a fond tradition that was still cheap to purchase.