Flying was forbidden within the city, so Xiao Shou hired a spirit beast carriage.
After telling the driver the address, the carriage immediately set off.
He only felt the carriage passing through a long stretch of bustling streets from the city gate.
Then the route gradually became more remote.
After some time, when night had fully fallen, the luminous stones along the road also became fewer and fewer.
He cautiously remained on guard.
Although fighting was forbidden within the city, every place had its lawless dark corners.
One careless moment could lead to an ambush.
Could this driver be a robber? How would he deal with him?
He was only at the sixth level of Qi Refining, but if there were no accomplices, he was not afraid.
While Xiao Shou was letting his imagination run wild and staying alert, the driver suddenly pulled on the reins and said cheerfully, "Fellow Daoist, we have arrived at One Hundred Tavern. It is this street. Go through that alley and you will see it ahead. This alley is too narrow for the carriage, so I can only bring you this far."
"Sorry for the trouble. Here is your fare."
Xiao Shou was stunned for a moment, then awkwardly smiled and quickly took out spirit stones to pay before getting off the carriage.
He could not help but think that maybe this world was not as bad as he imagined.
After all, novels always followed the protagonist's point of view, so they were often biased.
After the spirit beast carriage left, he carefully observed his surroundings.
Compared to the bustling area earlier, it felt like the difference between a modern slum and a city center.
The light was dim, the alleys were dark, and various smells mixed together, forming the stench of dead rats.
The smell made him very uncomfortable.
After cultivating immortality, his sense of smell had become even sharper, making it even harder to tolerate.
After all, he had personally chosen this place based on the recommendation that there would be no aristocratic cultivators coming and going, that it was cheap, and that it was relatively peaceful.
Since he had chosen this path himself, he would have to walk it even on his knees.
He looked left and right, took a deep breath, and walked toward the pitch-black alley pointed out by the carriage driver.
His legs moved quickly, though from the outside it still looked like normal walking.
In reality, he was so frightened that he almost activated his movement technique to fly straight across the alley.
Just as his vision became slightly blurred while he hurried forward, something suddenly tripped him from beneath his feet.
Already extremely tense and not yet fully adapted to his improved physical body, he stumbled forward and half fell to the ground.
Instinctively, he braced himself with both hands, only to feel something sticky beneath his palms.
Something quickly crawled past with a rustling sound, and at the same time, the buzzing of many flies or similar insects filled his ears.
A strong smell of rot and blood rushed into his nose.
The soft, squishy sensation beneath his legs and other details made Xiao Shou freeze in terror.
Even in his original world, when a doomsday occurred and his relatives turned into walking corpses, because his entire family lived in the city center, they were quickly rescued by the military and sent to a shelter base.
Later, when his ability awakened, because of its special nature, he did not dare to reveal it, and could only pretend to be an ordinary person living in the base.
He can survive relying on relief supplies and manual labor.
He could only secretly train his ability.
Even so, he still managed to survive because of it.
Until three months later, the small safety base he was in was breached by beasts.
Before that, he had never experienced anything truly bloody or violent, so his courage had not been trained yet.
A sense of foreboding flashed through his heart.
Xiao Shou crawled up and knelt on a flat patch of ground nearby.
H took out a night-light stone to illuminate the area while trembling uncontrollably.
In front of him was a tightly bound red cloth sack soaked in blood.
Beneath the sack, a pool of dark red liquid slowly spread outward.
Flies and unfamiliar insects crawled all around it.
His hands, legs, and clothes were all stained with blood from the ground.
Looking at all this, he hesitated and then reached out to untie the sack.
When the sack was opened and slid downward, a face appeared.
It was a man with black hair and covered in countless knife wounds that was no bigger than a palm.
Xiao Shou's hands trembled as he reached to test the breath under that face's nose.
There was no breathing, but the body was not yet completely cold.
While biting his lip, he quickly pulled the sack off completely.
At just one glance, his eyes turned red.
How could there be such a cruel person in this world?
From the face alone, the victim looked to be no more than ten years old.
The entire body was soaked in blood, not only covered in facial wounds, but even the clothing had multiple cuts.
The most cruel thing was that the killer had actually severed the child's limbs, leaving only the torso and head stuffed inside the sack.
Such things had been seen many times on television, but witnessing it in reality was the first time.
Was this child already dead?
...
"Tian'er, I'm sorry. For the sake of the entire Ao family and your younger brothers and sisters, you must die."
The beautiful woman with tears streaming down her face stabbed a dagger into the boy's chest.
"Why? Mother… you are my mother!"
"Young master, run! The Ao family can no longer accept you."
"Young master, as long as I present your head to that lord, I will receive an astonishing reward. Power, wealth, authority, all of it will be mine."