Finlay was ecstatic! He would jump up from his bed and dance if he could. The reason for it is that this is the night of the 7th day. He knew that after tonight, he would be able to move and that meant that he didn't have to endure the walking test of the Dao of patience, Li’er, anymore. The little devil had just left for her dinner and would not be returning till tomorrow. At least she helped bring up the language comprehension upto 26%, it’s become slower to increase though, no doubt due to the lack of vocabulary from the chatterbox.
After the unforgettable first week, he knew he had to start his plans to prepare for the second round of gut wrenching smell bomb event 5 days from now. Before that , tonight is going to be a sleepless one. Most of the first stage transformation will be completed as the muscles, tendons and nerves rearrange themselves. That was bound to be a painful experience and he couldn’t make any noise either, lest the others would see his appearance.
Soon after most of the orphanage went to sleep, it started. Initially, it was just his vessels that were bulging here and there as they wiggled and moved about bizarrely. Next came the muscles, tendons, joints, skin and nerves in that order. He was fine for most of the others except for the time when the nerves were rearranged. He almost shouted and fell off the bed but thankfully, none had awoken.
Once the nerves were done, the pain and the overwhelming tingling sensation gave way to the most peaceful, relieving feeling, directly knocking him back to sleep. He oozed a lot more impurities that night and did not wake early as planned. Mother Bai was beside his bed by the time he opened his eyes.
Mother Bai and another mother of the orphanage were cleaning up the very smelly room the best they could. He frowned at the unexpected situation. He originally planned to leave in the dark, without alerting the rest. He can already tell that while his body was stiff, he could finally move. The smell was pretty bad this time and seeing other strangers cleanup after him, he instinctively wanted to take responsibility for his mess and apologize.
Only, Mother Bai stopped him from moving too much. She then reassured him with her ever loving smile.
“Little Ming, it’s okay no need to worry. Everyone does it once in a while when they are this sick. We will take care of it and then I will get you porridge after we get you cleaned.”
Finlay’s urge to take over only grew hearing that. He was so embarrassed that his face went crimson.
‘She thinks I shit all over in my sleep and rolled in it?!’
He was almost depressed from hearing her misunderstanding. Yet, the fact that the smell was a little similar only made it harder to correct their misunderstanding. Even then, he forcibly got up from the bed and onto his feet, even as Mother Bai and the other woman tried to calm him down. Once he stood up, his joints started popping off loudly and after a series of increasingly loud bangs, as he stretched reflexively, his stiff body loosened and could mostly move around freely.
He quickly grabbed the cleaning equipment from the shocked Mother Bai’s hands and took care of his mess. Mother Bai just dumbly stared at him go. She noticed that Little Ming at the moment appeared a tiny bit taller and noticeably bigger. She realized that he is somehow much healthier looking than the past few days and didn’t hurry to interrupt him.
Once he was done cleaning the room, he was taken to a Bathroom to wash himself. When he first went into the toilet, Finlay had found it peculiar that this Cultivation type non technological world actually had soap that smelled pleasantly, like flowers. Once done cleaning, he finally had some solid foods after reaching this world. Although he wouldn’t criticize the taste of porridge, fed by the only person who nursed him, the meat bun and soup he was currently having was night and day compared to it. He even went ahead and asked for extra servings. Seeing the extra lively boy, Mother Bai couldn’t refuse him and gave him as much food as he could stuff himself with.
“Little Ming, your Mother Bai is glad that you could recover so quickly. I truly feared the worst this time around.”, she couldn’t help shed a couple tears as she finished saying.
Finlay obviously just looked at her, and nodded his head or made a concerned face and mostly, played dumb, trying to calm her down without exposing himself. After a minute or 2, Mother Bair quickly recomposed herself and Finlay took the opportunity to indicate that he wanted to go outside now. He even used some crude words to say the same.
“Want….Go….there…way…”
Mother Bai was initially confused, then it turned into worry, eventually into resignation and acceptance. Obviously, it was his speech or the lack thereof that concerned her.
“It’s okay, you rest for another day or 2. It won’t be too late for you to go play outside at that time.”
Mother Bai gently tried to persuade him, but Finlay was able to communicate to her his determination and was reluctantly allowed to go out for a bit.
He was even given a couple of copper coins, the local mortal currency, as he left. He was told to avoid dangerous areas and shady people to prevent repeating the previous miserable situation.
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After walking out of the orphanage’s grounds, he was on a road without much else in the surroundings. It seemed the orphanage is a bit to the outskirts of the small town. He started off towards the distantly visible buildings and people.
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Yellow Rock town is a mortal small town with a population of about 10,000, under the lands of the True Immortal Sky sect, a small local orthodox sect. The Cultivator who is supposed to ‘choose’ him, will arrive about a year later from the same sect. These lands have been relatively well managed for the mortals and hence they were kinder than normal even if only by a small amount. The facilities, services and security are better than expected, in a world such as this where individual strength triumphs all.
Yellow rock town was only a few square kilometers in area total. Despite that, it has a working set of organizations responsible for various services, like A hospital, a guard force, a public school, a library, a blacksmith, a fire department, Public water, public toilets, rudimentary drainage systems etc. The Guard force even had multiple low level cultivators to help in case they face anything beyond mundane beast attacks or worse, other rogue cultivators.
There was a city wall that could keep most normal mortals and wildlife out of the city. Once inside, the roads were noticeably higher quality and appeared rugged. There was a market place close to the center of the town. There were various hawkers, temporary stalls and even big permanent shops that sold a variety of things from pretty trinkets to healing potions, blacksmith supplies. Food stalls and restaurants, as expected, were the majority still.
Finlay had no intention of spending the 2 coppers today. His main goal for the day was to walk around and listen to as many words as he could of the people in town. He would need to raise his language comprehension as much as possible and quickly. He focused on the words he recognised vaguely and tried to associate them with the actions of the speaker. He also had to stay low key in order to avoid conversations.
Like this, he mainly walked around the merchant area, observing various heated arguments, mostly what he identified as bargaining tactics of all sorts. He kept his head low and tried to ignore the calls from people who seemed to have known the boy. There were a lot more than expected considering the town was not that large to begin with.
He went back to the orphanage to sleep for the night, but not before washing off the small amounts of impurities on his body. He continued his walk in the town the next day but he spent most of his time in the public library to try and learn to write as well which left him at a good 51% comprehension value. At the end of the second day, he noticed trouble. A young lanky man was following him and gave him strange looks. After contemplating, Finlay recognized him as one of the group who beat up little Ming. He was concerned that the group might ruin his plans and decided to seek help from Mother Bai and the Guard.
“How was your day Little Ming? Did you have fun? Was everything fine?”
Finlay broke out of his thoughts and nodded his head.
“Yes mother Bai. I went to the library today. Everything was fine but-..”, he trailed off.
Listening to him speak, Mother Bai was momentarily surprised. The boy couldn’t speak well only a couple of days ago but here he is speaking so fluently now.
“Go on then, tell me what it is.”
“I saw one of those guys following me. I’m a bit scared to go out. Can we get help from the guards?”
Mother Bai was once again surprised at his words. She had previously tried and failed to get their names. So, she readily agreed.
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*The next day*
“Old Chen, he just told me about the culprits and apparently one of them tried to follow him again. You have seen this child’s situation back then, at that time….”
She told the whole story to the concerned and troubled reactions of the guards. After listening to the complaint,
“Rest assured Little Bai. I promise to keep an eye out for the boy. I had already disciplined those worthless delinquents. This boy wasn’t the only victim. If they try anything else, just let me know.”
He spent most of the morning listening to people and buying some supplies at the blacksmith, Alchemy store and some long lasting food. For this purpose, he bought out his savings of 9 copper and the 6 he received from Mother Bai. He also bought a rucksack and a knife that is more appropriate to chop vegetables than stab people. Still, it was robust and was pretty cheap in comparison. His remaining time was spent reading books at the library and successfully reached a 66% proficiency that allowed him to read and write to a common man’s level.
Satisfied with his gains, he wanted to visit other places he didn’t in the past 3 days for the remaining time. During the walk, he inevitably came across 2 people blocking his path ahead and one of them was the young lanky man from the previous day.
“Ohh! isn’t it little brother ming? It must be fate that let you survive and meet this brother. And do I see a large bag full of things??” The new one called out with an evil grin of a high school villian, except the two of them appeared to be in their 20s.
Finlay didn’t bother talking or running. He simply took off the rucksack and brought out his knife. Seeing this, the duo of villains seemed to tense up momentarily but then relaxed. Finlay wasn’t afraid either. He just wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get into trouble from his self defense. Afterall, he was already stronger than a muscular adult human.
“Hmp! You think we’re so easily scared? Big brother here has even started to learn martial arts and body training.”, the lanky man bragged.
Finlay calmly put on his backpack again and slowly started towards them and picked up speed as he got closer to them. Although he couldn’t actually practice and train with the Nine gods, he still understood the concepts of armed conflict and coupled with his strong body, he easily attacked them to scare them back and dashed past them the moment he got a chance.
He could hear screams from behind him as he ran but he frowned because he was aiming to cut up their skin for a bit and hurt their limbs a bit to slow them down. Unfortunately, the knife was truly not good enough to cut through cloth and hurt the skin. Only the stabs he made drew any significant blood.
“Ahhh….Blood! Blood! I’ll KILL you! I’ll KI-....”
Finlay just ignored the shouts from behind and ran towards the place where Uncle Chen was located. It wasn’t far from here and he reached within a couple minutes, along with the chasing duo.
As he approached the guards, Finlay put on a panicked and scared expression. He also wiped as much blood onto his shirt as possible.
“Guard Uncles! You have to say little Ming! Please! It’s those people again.”
Looking at the situation, 2 angry, older men with blood on their arms were chasing a little teenager who had blood smeared on his body. The Guards, quickly apprehended the two and escorted Ming to the Orphanage. As uncle Chen was leaving, he couldn’t help giving a strange look towards Finlay.
“Kid, don’t think you pulled one over this old man. I’ve seen too much as a guard. I know you set them up but don’t worry those lot deserve it. I’ll keep this between us, don't worry.”
Finlay couldn’t help show a genuine expression of panic upon hearing that.
“Ming is thankful for Uncle Chen's support!”
He gave a small bow according to the local culture to show his gratitude.
With his preparations complete, he was going to set off out of town the next day. He spoke to Mother Bai and expressed his intention to go out of town the next day for a walk. She was worried at first but since the trouble makers were caught, she agreed as long as he came back before sunset. Finlay obviously would not be returning so quickly so, he placed the previously prepared letter describing the same, addressed to Mother Bai and set off from the orphanage.
To be continued.