Fighting to be Kind in a Cultivation World

Chapter 143: A Thousand Steps

Making my way downtown, walking fast, I see a number of people passing and Im market bound.  

Everyone seems to be heading in the same direction as me. The market is the main draw, with a ton of active centered around and within it.

Regarding my previous followers, my scan shows that the nobles from before have learned their lesson.

While they are still looking for me, they are mostly pursuing their own goals. They are still interested in meeting with me, but are more cautious now in their approach. With that in mind, it was quite easy to avoid them.

The two poorer people Ive already talked with are staying in the dorms, as instructed. Everyone else, on the other hand, was much harder to avoid.

Since they knew where I was leaving out from and returning to, there wasn't much I could do to slip their gaze on the way out.

Any spies that were chasing the previous day seem to have been given orders not to retreat, if I come toward them again. I even doubled back a few times to test their resolve, but they acted like they didn't see me as they were walking past.

So, I did the next best thing. I attempted to lose them.

Using my scan, I move place to place to place. This took me to a variety of places, from seedy areas to wealthy areas.  This helped me to lose most of them, but three were still left to be taken care of.

Luckily for me, the young master with discerning eyes had also decided it wasnt worth it when we went to the seedy areas.

Having already spent 7 hours losing these people, I feel pretty frustrated about the situation.

I decide to take a more direct approach towards this.

I search out each spy individually and confront them directly.

The first one tries to play it cool, like before, ignoring me and acting like they're just a regular bystander. However, when I stand in his way and lock eyes with him, I can see beads of sweat grow upon his brow. He freezes in place, somehow not expecting that I would do this.

Though, now that I think about it, typically spies are ignored and expected in this culture. You rarely confront them, and if you do, it is because you're about to kill them.

I use this to my advantage.

Stop following me. Dont make me warn you again.

 Shakily, he nods his head and turns in the complete opposite direction, before sprinting away.

 The other spies are listening in, and seem to have worried looks on their faces, from the pulse I had sent out. Hoping to send a bigger message, I move my neck unnaturally flexibly. Keeping my shoulders and the rest of my body in the same direction, with only my head turning.

The second spy is well within the normal range of movement for my neck, but I looked straight as his location, even though he's quite a distance away. He gets shaken by this, and seems to get the message, leaving quickly.

I walk in the direction that the 1st spy was heading towards, before stopping my body completely, and turning my head almost 120 degrees towards the other spys location. Also staring straight at where hes hiding. Moving no other part of my body. Part of my neck is strained but heals.

 He makes a verbal cry out, before moving like a bullet in the complete opposite direction of me.

Eh, that might have been overkill. Good thing is, it is still somewhat feasible for someone of my body type to have that sort of flexibility.

 Totally great fun, though.

Finally being alone, with over half the day gone, I head over to the market to check out a few items.

The market I choose to go to is mostly an average one. As I do so, I can't help remember the taste of the carriage food on my lips.

Dry bread that turned soft in my mouth, unlike other things I've had to eat since I've been here. The meat that I had at the alchemists; okay, but still savory. Or the vegetables that made me remember the diet I tried to go on back on Earth and failed at.

 One thing I found is that despite my lack of a need for food, I still experience hunger and having appetite. To be more specific, its not that I feel hungry, but more like I'm in the mood for a snack. Especially if I haven't eaten in a while. When I examine myself, I can see that it's actually a mentally induced food addiction. A carryover from my life on Earth. Of course, it is quickly healed, but keeps coming up because of my subconscious mind.

While I could heal myself of this, a small part of me stops me it makes me wonder if this will help me feel more normal. That it's OK to feel hungry occasionally in what good food

You know what? I think not going to mess with this one. At least, as long as it's not causing too much issues. It makes me feel more human. Not feeling the need to sleep or eat all the time messes with me a little. Its both normal and weird.

So, the only thing on my mind is to head to the market is to grab something to eat.

Hopefully, they'll be something like a bakery or a place with treats. Though, at this point Ill take anything.

My eyes are locked onto to the first place with food I see, small produce area which food brought in from the underground farms.

Practically rushing over there, I can see a wide variety of different types of fruits and vegetables, or what I would consider being their equivalent here. Im not surprised to see poiyos is one item displayed, being a natural underground food in a city that produces its food underground.

The food is pretty cheap as well, being only a few small coppers each. My scan also tells me that these are pretty decent quality ingredients too, which means it's safe to buy.

This being the case, I buy a few that remind me of the ones I had back on Earth. Things like a tomato and an apple. Besides that, I also buy several other foods, like meats and bread that I also devour eat.

Juicy.

With my hunger sated, I set out to explore this market.

Hopefully, I'll be able to find some good deals, so I could either resell them, use them for myself, or use them as gifts to bribe people to help me or, in the worst case, just not kill me.

 To help assist with this, I set my scan to ping me when the selling value of an item near me is much lower than what its actual value is. On the opposite side, it'll pong me, if an item near me is massively overvalued and I could make money on it that way. For this portion of the scan, I extend out larger than my protective scan, since it is quite easier to manage.

When two items are being directly compared, like with the pong, I can see the echo overlay in the distance showing me where to go to buy the paired items.

 Funnily enough, using the scan in this way bypasses secrets. When I first tried this back when I was selling my stuff from earth, specifically my bills, the reason it changed was because I was looking for specific values in a common setting. When I changed my thoughts to include cultivation it showed more of what its true value could be from.

 The scan is about how you ask, as much as what you ask.

 Keeping things general will allow it to pull from all sources. Though, not everyone in the local area will agree with the true value of it.

Nonetheless, I put a tiny weight on the local area, so that I dont grab normal items for this area, unless the disparity is truly that large.

In addition, I have a cone of scan that follows my eyesight which will highlight things in an eye-catching gold color if they are undervalued, and then a red color if it's overvalued.  

As soon as I activate this, the number of things that appear as red seriously depresses me.

Hello Value Shoppers, our sale begins now.