The room looked worse in daylight.
There was a crack beside the window, and someone had pushed a strip of cloth into it. Most of the cloth had already fallen out.
I'd been too drained yesterday to really look around. Now that I did, the place wasn't in particularly good condition.
Still livable, at least.
I wasn't going to bother repairing anything when I'd probably leave sooner or later. Hell, if I fixed the place too well, I wouldn't even be surprised if they raised the rent because the room was better.
It had happened to me before.
That was one reason I'd eventually started renting from bigger families. They usually kept their contracts. Unless you somehow turned the house into something worth several times what you'd rented, there wasn't much reason for them to damage their reputation just to squeeze a little more money out of one person.
A small inn like this was different. I didn't know who owned it, what kind of background they had, or whether they cared much about their reputation.
Then again, renting from a bigger family hadn't exactly saved my house in Yuansu Town.
Thinking about it still hurt.
I'd spent months getting my life there into something decent. The money I'd put into the house was one of the main reasons I'd been so broke, which was also part of why I'd accepted that escort job.
Now I was even more broke than before.
If I wanted to earn more than enough to barely get by, hunting was probably my best option. Hunting with one arm barely working, though, sounded like a good way to turn one injury into several.
That would have to wait.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stretched my legs. They felt fine. Still a little stiff, but nothing worth worrying about.
A night's rest was enough for a Tier 1 to recover from walking too much.
Then I moved my left arm, and a sharp pain spread through my shoulder.
Right.
That hadn't improved much.
I checked the bandage. There wasn't much fresh blood, and the wound on the surface had mostly closed. Couldn't say the same for whatever I'd damaged deeper inside.
I adjusted the loose part of the bandage and carefully pulled my shirt back on.
My palm was doing better. Opening and closing my right hand only hurt when I stretched it too far.
Good enough.
For now, I needed another job and more food. I only had four loaves left.
I gathered everything I might need and left the inn.
This time, I walked toward the mission hall more slowly. Yesterday I'd been tired, hungry, injured, and mostly concerned with finding somewhere to sleep. Now that I had at least some stability, I started paying more attention to the town itself.
There were more people on the streets than I'd noticed before. Not all of them looked like they had somewhere to go.
Several were sitting against walls or beneath overhangs in clothes that looked like they'd been worn for weeks.
Homeless?
For a moment, I wondered why. There were missions at the hall. Anyone could collect Bitterleaf, couldn't they?
Then I thought about yesterday.
Maybe not.
It had taken me several hours of walking around to collect fifteen, and that was with a Tier 1 body. Other gatherers had reached plants before me more than once too.
For someone without cultivation, that much walking would take more effort. More effort meant more food. If they were unlucky with what they found, the mission might take more than one day.
And that wasn't even the biggest problem.
They'd have to leave town.
Without a permit, coming back in cost five copper. The Bitterleaf request only paid two.
They could stay outside until they'd completed several missions, I supposed, but that meant having enough food to survive out there in the first place.
Or being strong enough to hunt.
Most of the people I was looking at didn't seem to have even one copper, never mind five. If they walked outside without a permit, there was a decent chance they wouldn't get back in for quite a while.
Maybe not at all.
As I walked, my eyes drifted farther into the alleys.
They were...
Filthy.
There really wasn't a better word for it. Even compared to Yuansu Town, these were on another level.
There were stains and piles of things along the ground that I couldn't identify and didn't particularly want to. Some were probably human waste.
Others...
Yeah. Better not think about it.
How had this place not had an epidemic?
Maybe it had. Or maybe one simply hadn't happened yet.
Most people I'd met in this world didn't seem to understand germs. The few who might know something about them were probably cultivators or physicians, and stronger cultivators barely had to care about ordinary illnesses anyway.
That probably didn't help. The people who could actually do something about it probably didn't care much when most of them couldn't even get sick from this stuff anyway.
I kept walking.
This might actually be the worst town I'd seen so far. It was also the first one I'd visited that charged people every single time they entered.
Usually, if a town charged anything near five copper, paying once got you some kind of permit. You didn't keep handing over the same amount every time you came back.
I still didn't understand why they'd decided to do it this way. From what I could see, it couldn't be helping much.
How much were they really earning from the gate compared to the taxes they collected from shops and other businesses inside the town?
All they were doing was making fewer people want to enter. In the long run, that could cost them more than the fee earned.
Or maybe I was underestimating how many people passed through the gates.
I thought back to yesterday. There hadn't been a decent number, and most of the people I'd seen entering already had permits.
So they weren't paying either.
...Whatever.
I didn't have enough information to know anything for certain. I was probably only thinking about this so much because, for once, I had enough free time to think about things that weren't immediately trying to kill me.
I glanced toward another alley. A few of the people inside were looking back at me now.
Not particularly friendly looks either.
Right. I'd probably been staring for longer than I realized.
Better to stop before somebody decided to ask what my problem was.
I picked up my pace and stopped looking directly into the alleys. Still, it was difficult not to notice how bad they were.
Thankfully, the closer I got to the mission hall, the cleaner the streets became. There was less rubbish on the ground and fewer people sleeping beside the buildings. By the time I reached the hall, the difference was obvious.
I stepped inside.
The woman behind the counter looked up.
"Hi."
Then she went straight back to whatever she'd been doing.
Reading, apparently. I couldn't see what, and I didn't particularly care.
I went over to the request board.
Most of the missions were the same as yesterday. The request asking for information about whoever had supposedly destroyed Yuansu Town was still there.
Reward: one copper.
I looked at it for a few seconds. It still pissed me off.
I kept reading.
There were more beast-hunting missions than before. Some of yesterday's requests had disappeared too, probably completed, but more hunting missions had been added than removed.
That might not be good.
Were more beasts gathering outside the town?
Maybe. Or maybe nobody wanted them.
Whatever. I'd looked at this board twice. I had no idea.
I moved on.
There were still gathering requests, but I wasn't doing that again today. I wanted to try something else.
My eyes landed on a delivery request.
One copper.
The reward was worse than Bitterleaf, but the package only needed to go from one part of town to another. Even if something slowed me down, it probably wouldn't take more than an hour.
One copper in an hour was better than two after spending most of the day searching through grass.
At least in copper per hour.
There weren't many delivery requests left. The ones still there required Tier 1.
That probably explained why these were still here.
The Tier 0 ones were probably taken almost immediately. Easy work inside town, no fighting, no need to leave the walls, and no entrance fee afterward.
A Tier 1 had better options. Beast hunting paid a lot more than carrying a package across town, so most probably wouldn't bother with this unless they had a reason to.
While reading the request again, I noticed something I'd missed yesterday. A number was written in the bottom-right corner.
343.
Mission number. That made things easier.
I walked to the counter.
"Hey. I want to take mission 343."
"Mhm."
The clerk put down her book and started moving things around beneath the counter.
After a moment, she pulled out a sheet of paper.
"Mission 343 requires Tier 1."
"Yeah."
She looked at me.
I realized what she meant.
"Do I need to prove I'm Tier 1? How?"
"Don't worry."
She leaned down and started searching beneath the counter again.
After some digging, she came back up holding a dark piece of stone.
"You're lucky this branch has connections to the core branches. Put some blood on this."
I looked at the stone.
"What is it?"
"A test stone. Put your blood on it, and it gives a number based on how much Qi is circulating through your blood."
"So it tells cultivation level?"
"More or less. It's not perfect. Some people have more Qi in their blood than their cultivation would normally suggest."
"Why?"
"Usually talent. Some people naturally have more Qi in their blood than their cultivation would suggest."
I looked at it again.
"How does it work?"
She stopped and looked directly at me.
"How do you expect me to know?"
"..."
"I'm a clerk. I'm not the one making these things."
Fair enough.
I looked down at my hands. My palm was already injured, but reopening that cut just for this seemed unnecessary.
"You have a knife? I've only got my sword. Bit annoying to use that for a tiny cut."
"Yeah, hold on."
She leaned down again.
I watched her move things around beneath the counter. Couldn't she put the things she used regularly somewhere easy to reach? Was organizing this place really that difficult?
Eventually, she came back up with a small knife.
"Here. Drop some blood on it."
I rested my left hand on the counter and took the knife in my right. Then I made a shallow cut near the tip of a finger on my left hand.
A few drops formed. I held the finger over the stone and let them fall.
The moment the blood touched it, the drops began moving.
I leaned closer.
They slowly shifted across the surface, gathering into lines. The stone was vibrating—not much, but enough that I could feel it through the counter.
That was probably how it moved the blood. How it knew what shape to make was another question.
Eventually, the blood settled.
3.
The clerk looked at it.
"Mhm. Alright. You're Tier 1."
She slid the mission paper across the counter.
I took it, but glanced back at the stone.
"What does three mean?"
"Fresh Tier 1 usually reads around one. Five is roughly the middle of Tier 1."
"So three means..."
"You're above someone who just broke through, but you're not halfway through the tier yet."
"Now go do your mission and let me keep reading."
"Alright. Thanks."
She'd already picked her book back up before I finished speaking.
One copper still wasn't much. If this took less than an hour, though, I'd take it over staring at grass for half the day. I put the mission paper away and headed for the address near the gate.