Will woke up at noon again. That seemed to be common now. He felt like he should fix it at some point, he used to get up at sunrise. Well, it wasn't like there was actually any real reason to get up earlier, anyway.

The carriage had apparently started moving while he was still asleep. From what he could see of outside, they seemed to be in a forest now. A normal one, with normal trees. He'd seen it in the distance before he got in the carriage the night before. It was where that bandit had run off to as well. Hopefully that wouldn't become an issue. Not that it would be an actual issue if it did become an issue. He felt like at most maybe their boss would be challenging.

He saw the woman and the girl notice him when he woke up. They were both sitting in the carriage on the bench on the side. His sleeping setup was on the side opposite them, with his left side slightly under the other bench. The benches only ran half the length of the carriage, with the other half being storage. Overall, it seemed like a pretty nice carriage. It wasn't shaky either. He wondered why they couldn't hire stronger guards with a carriage like this, but he didn't really know how expensive guards were.

He decided to greet his fellow carriage riders.

“Hi.”

The woman, who he was assuming was the girl's mother, smiled politely at him.

“I hope you had a good rest?”

“Yeah.”

He decided to ask if she was actually the girl's mother.

“Are you her mother?”

He pointed at the girl.

The woman suddenly felt a bit embarrassed. They hadn't introduced themselves yet. Hopefully the young cultivator didn't mind.

“Ah, I forgot about introductions. Yes, this is my daughter, Li Yingran. And my name is Xu Lanhua.”

Will realized he hadn't actually known their names yet. He didn't know the name of anyone in this world until now. Well, other than himself.

The mother's name seemed to be just a generic flower name. The daughter’s name, on the other hand, was something about cherry blossom trees burning. He didn't know why she was named that, but it didn't matter much. He decided to share his name as well.

He focused. He needed to get this right. He was not going to say his name was Wiww. That sounded stupid and wasn't his name. He had to say it properly.

“My name is Will.”

He did it! That was oddly stressful.

The sword he was holding burst out laughing.

“The fuck kinda dumbass name is that? How do you even spell that?”

The sword laughed even harder.

“The fuck is that? You sound like you're casting a fucking curse! Nice to meet you, Will. Spelled double-you eye el el. The fuck even is an el?”

According to Will’s Automatic Universal Linguistic Knowledge Database Accessor, it was an elevated railroad.

“The fuck is a railroad?”

“Alright, pfft, Will.”

Outside of Will's mind where he was conversing with the sword were two very awkward smiles. Xu Lanhua and Li Yingran were, well, they were a bit confused. That wasn't a name. It wasn't even close! And it was only one syllable! Didn't this cultivator have a surname? Just that one weird noise and that's it? And it also didn't even give any clues to whether they were a boy or a girl!

Li Yingran spoke first.

“Um, n-nice to meet you, um, Weill was it?”

Will shot a hurt glare at the girl. The unintended consequence of this being the girl starting to cry from fear.

“Will, not Weiww, Will.”

He couldn't pronounce the mispronunciation right, but he at least pronounced his own name right. The girl didn't respond. Instead, her mother did.

“Sh-she really didn't mean to offend you, we're very sorry, please spare our lives.”

Will was in a bit of a mood now. Normally, he'd clarify that he wasn't going to kill them. He didn't this time.

“Then say it wight!”

The mother and daughter both flinched, terrified. They should've just not done introductions. Now they had to pronounce this kid's name right or die. The mother tried first.

“Weel?”

“No! Will! W ih ll. Ih, not ee, ih.”

The daughter tried next.

“Well?”

“Where are you getting eh fwom!? Will! It's Will, not Weel, not Well, not Weill, it's Will!”

The mother gave it a shot.

“Wih-ull?”

Will was excited! It was really close!

“Yes! Wih-ull, now put it together! Will! Like that!”

The daughter tried next.

“Will? Is that right?”

Will beamed a happy smile.

“Yes, Will, my name is Will.”

The two were relieved. They got to live another day. That was close.

The sword made fun of him.

“You look like a lunatic. The poor girl looks like she's about to piss herself after that.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Yeah, you're a lunatic, but you don't normally look like one too.”

Will ignored it.

The woman spoke meekly.

“U-um, do we get to live?”

It finally sunk in for Will that he'd just threatened two people's lives over their pronunciation, like some kind of language arts themed death game. He felt kind of bad about that.

“Sowwy, I was a bit worked up, haha. I wasn't actually gonna kiww you.”

Their hearts froze at the word ‘sowwy’ before calming down after the rest of the sentence.

Will also found that he was able to speak a bit better now. Turned out all he needed was practice. He probably should've done that in the cave. It was too late now, so whatever.

The atmosphere in the carriage was very awkward. The atmosphere outside was too, as they just overheard two people get forced into a game of pronounce-or-die. Will felt like he should give an apology gift. Luckily, he had a whole nineteen rings full of possible choices for that! He sifted through his rings, looking for something small enough to fit in the carriage while being actually likely to have value.

After a second of searching, he found it. A deer corpse. He decided to warn them before just bringing out a corpse like some kind of unhinged maniac.

“Um, can I offer, um, a beast cowpse as an apology?”

The two were scared. This could be some test. They didn't know anymore. If they said yes, did they die? Or did they die if they said no? Would they die from both and they actually had to do something else? They didn't know anymore.

Will didn't wait for an answer. He wasn't asking as much as he was warning. He pulled the deer corpse out of his ring and placed it in the cargo section of the carriage. It wasn't too heavy, so nothing bad happened.

Both mother and daughter were terrified at what they saw. That was a spiritual beast! A terrifying one! The damn thing was sparking! And it was dead! Was this this kid's idea of an apology gift? Just dropping a monster that might as well be a god in front of them? What were they even supposed to do with it!?

Their last question was quickly answered.

“Wanna stop for bweakfast?”

It was a bit late for breakfast, but it didn't matter that much. At least not to Will. His two carriage companions were still a bit shellshocked. They were supposed to just cook this thing? Just casually cook a slice of god meat? They didn't know if this thing even cooked! They didn't know what it was!

“Do you need cooking supplies?”

Will pulled out a pan he stole from the Sick Freak. After an awkward minute of no one moving, he felt the need to say something.

“Uh, so… the last food I cooked awmost poisoned me to death and would've buwned my house down if it wasn't a cave, so…”

Li Yingran took that as her cue to start cooking. They were in a forest. If this kid almost managed to burn down a cave, she didn't want to know what would happen in a forest. She was good at cooking anyway.

Seeing the girl move, he moved to hand her the pan, which she declined. Then she reached the deer and realized she wasn't able to move it. Or cut it.

Will understood the issue. He placed it back in his storage ring and brought it outside, placing it against the side of the carriage. The coachman had already stopped back when the talk of cooking had started, so everything worked out well.

Li Yingran looked at Will.

“Would you be willing to help with cutting it?”

Will smiled and gave a thumbs up.

“Of couwse!”

The girl smiled back. It seemed that the kid was just really touchy about their name, and not someone who made people play games with their lives on the line for fun or something. She started setting up the cooking equipment.

The only thing Will could call it was a grill. It was pretty nice too. It looked like someone took some dad's grill and just lazily tried to make it look like an antique. It was somewhat shocking how it looked completely normal in this setting while also looking like it would be at home in a suburban backyard.

After setting up the grill, Li Yingran then went over to instruct Will on where to cut the meat. Will noticed that she didn't seem scared of him anymore, which was nice. Once he'd finished cutting, she took the cut of meat from the deer and placed it in the grill. She went back to get another cut and repeated this process until she had six pieces of meat on the grill, one for everyone.

Then she lit the flame in the grill and started cooking. She kept at it for a while, flipping the meat and doing all sorts of chef-looking things. Will had started copying the scene into his Document Storage so he could watch it again later.

Once the venison steaks were done, she told everyone to bring plates over. Xu Lanhua handed him a plate and some silverware, since he didn't know where they were, and everyone went over to get a piece.

It was good. It really gave him a deep understanding of how ass his snake meat had been. He honestly felt a little proud of how bad he made it. So hot it hurts, but also pretty much completely raw. This venison, on the other hand, was cooked perfectly. He'd never had venison before, but he had a feeling it wasn't always this good. He attributed half to the meat and half to the chef. He felt it was the same for his cooking but he'd just gone into the negatives.

The venison steak had a pretty unique taste. It tasted like a slightly different steak at the core, but it also kind of tasted like licking the metal of electronics. Except it somehow managed to make that really tasty. Honestly, it felt like it was mainly putting it on meat that made the difference. Metal from electronics never really tasted that bad, it was the fact that it was metal and had no other taste that was the issue. Comparing it to his snake meat, his tasted more like licking battery acid out of a carpet. He didn't have experience licking battery acid out of a carpet like he did for licking the metal from electronics, but he felt like his snake meat definitely tastes like the former.

The texture was also good. It had a nice chew to it that brought it all together, though with his enhanced jaws, he could just bite through it. Comparing it to his snake meat, the snake meat kind of felt a bit like scraping off the top layer of ice cream with a spoon, except the spoon was his teeth and the ice cream was meat.

Starvation was really the best seasoning around, huh?

Lack of cooking skills aside, the venison was pretty good. Li Yingran even got started on seconds as soon as she finished hers. She was a pretty fast eater too. Though, she wasn't as fast as he was.

All in all, everyone has a good meal. Will felt like he got along with everyone better now. They seemed to be less worried that he'd murder all of them on a whim. Which was nice.

But their fun was soon cut short. By bandits. Because of course there would be more bandits. He wished they could get the memo that they'd served their purpose as a convenient tool to let him get a ride.

One exceptionally arrogant bandit decided to yell out a funny line he was probably coming up with for multiple minutes.

“Hey, I see you're having a nice meal over here. You wouldn't mind sharing some with us would you?”

It was pretty obvious the bandit was just trying to be clever. It was clearly rhetorical, and there wasn't any expectation that they'd just join the cookout they were having. Will didn't care. He had multiple of the deer they were eating, and they hadn't even finished the first one. He felt generous today. Generous and lazy.

“Yeah suwe.” he ran over to Witty McSmartGuy, and dropped a deer in front of him.

“There you go, now go bye-bye now.”

There was a noticeable awkwardness over the bandits. There were a lot of them today too. He could count about twenty of them. He decided to copy all of their appearances into his Document Storage in case some authorities could use it.

One of the bandits whispered to a bigger bandit next him.

“Hey, boss, do we just, like, take it and go? What's the plan?”

The ‘boss’ responded, not in a whisper.

“What's up with the thing they dropped? Is it something good? Cuz if it's good then it's probably best we just take it and leave.”

One of the bandits close to the deer corpse spoke up.

“It seems like some kinda lightning deer. I can feel qi rollin' off the thing. Seems good.”

The bandit boss issued an order.

“Then we're takin' the deer and headin' back.”

The funny guy who started all this and a few other guys nearby picked up the deer corpse and hauled it away.

The mortals that were with Will felt like it was a bit anticlimactic. They were expecting a huge battle, but instead the kid just… bribed them? It was a bit confusing what actually happened. They felt like the deer they were eating might've been more valuable than they'd thought.

The sword was laughing it up, but Will ignored it. He sat down and went back to eating the venison steak on the plate he was still holding.

After seconds, they all had thirds. After finishing their thirds, everyone felt pretty full, so Will put the deer corpse back in his storage ring. He hopped back into the carriage, because he couldn't get up if he didn't, and sat down. Once the other two were on board the coachman got the carriage moving again. Will was sat with his head upside down off the edge of the bench. He was sat in one of those classic weird sitting positions kids did. It was a luxury he hadn't been afforded since he was little in the other universe, and he planned to enjoy it.

Will decided to make some small talk.

“You two evew cultivate?”

The mother and daughter pair seemed a bit surprised by that question. The daughter replied.

“No, not at all.”

Will remembered the black gas he still had. Maybe they had some too?

“You clean out your mewidians yet?”

They both shook their heads.

“Can I do it then?”

They were both greatly shocked. Clearing impurities from the meridians was something that clans did for their young using treasures and pills, and something less fortunate cultivators had to work hard to do themselves. They felt like they couldn't accept something like that. They'd feel too indebted if they did. The mother responded.

“I'd feel too indebted if you did such a thing for us. We could never repay something like that.”

Will wasn't really asking. He flipped over backwards off the bench into a standing position in a way only cultivators and gymnasts could, then turned around to face them.

“Yeah, that was mowe of a couwtesy ask. It's not really fow your sake. It's fow mine.”

The two were confused but decided to just give in. They couldn't do anything about it anyway. Will started with Yingran. He placed a hand on her arm, and attempted to communicate with the black gas. It responded immediately. He asked it if it could bring the black gas and impurities out of the person he was touching without hurting them. The black gas gave the impression it was easy. Then it got to work.

It took only a moment for the black gas to leave his body and pull all the black gas from Li Yingran with it. She appeared to be just fine. The black gas also just felt like it had grown, instead of feeling like there was two separate black gasses. It was interesting. He quickly repeated the process with Xu Lanhua, then headed back to the bench on the other side, now sitting in a different weird way.

The mother and daughter were both a bit stunned. They'd expected some… well, anything to happen. Maybe a treasure being used, or a technique, or even just some light. But no. It was just palm on the arm, palm on the arm, sit back down. No wonder the cultivator didn't care about debts. It was literally nothing for them!

The sword had questions.

“Hey, Will pfft, what the fuck was that?”

“Not my fault you have such a funny name. Anyway, answer the question.”

“What black gas?”

“What?”

“Huh? Doesn't make sense? It's spiritual energy. It's everywhere. How can it not make sense?”

“Yeah, I'm sure you'd know, with your vast experience in traveling between worlds.”

“I'm sure you have. Glad the only person who can wield me is a delusional lunatic. I was getting scared I would be stuck with just a regular lunatic.”

Will ignored it. He didn't feel like explaining the mechanics of quantum true soul duplication phenomenons anyway.

He didn't really know what to do now. Wait, he could cultivate. He could just do that here. He wouldn't get attacked by a horde of beasts for it.

“Mind if I put up a spiwitual energy gathewing array? I wanna cultivate.”

The mother responded.

“Of course not. Go ahead.”

Will was actually asking this time, so he was glad it was okay. When he went to start exporting arrays onto the carriage floor, he suddenly remembered something. He had points right now. He could get a better array. He quickly went to the Information Manual Exchange Marketplace and bought ‘Basic Spiritual Energy Gathering Array’. It cost half of his points. It really was expensive to get anything other than useless garbage. And the useless garbage was expensive too.

He placed a small one on the bench, blew on it until it turned on, and copied it. Then he placed ten of them in the floor of the carriage, as big as he could. The change was immediate. It was faster than even his cultivation doors. It didn't take long for the room to be flooded with spiritual energy. But as he was about to cultivate, he noticed the two others in the carriage were… well they looked bad. It was like drowning but not really. He was pretty sure it was the arrays. He quickly stabbed through them to scratch them out.

The two mortals in the cabin were confused when they saw Will stabbing the carriage floor, but when they felt that feeling of choking while their blood runs in reverse dissipate they understood why.

Will pondered. It turned out mortals can't take spiritual energy like he could. He had a feeling it was qi deviation. The sword confirmed it.

“What was that about? You almost just gave them qi deviation and killed them. You do know not everyone is immune to qi deviation, right?”

“You really need to start being more careful.”

“Figure it out. It's not a hard question.”

Will thought about it for a bit before he realized. He could just put arrays in his dantian!

After a couple seconds he realized the solution was actually to just make a smaller array just around himself, but honestly the new idea sounded more fun.

“Yeah. That's what I meant. Sure.”

This kid really was a fucking lunatic, huh?