The night is gradually getting late, and Jianmen was sitting alone in the inn’s lounge, with two especially tall and thick incense sticks burning in two separate incense burners on the reception’s desk in front of him.
“Well well, the elusive Mr. Yu is here by himself. What happened?” the figure of a tall young woman in dark jeans, dark purple boots and a dark purple jacket appeared in front of the inn’s front door, and she said in a curious and slightly sarcastic voice: “Where are your students?”
“Good evening Josephine.” Jianmen looked up from his phone and said: “What are you doing here? Need help with something?”
“Do I need a particular reason to come here? I’m just in the neighborhood and in the mood.” Josephine Wong, the up and coming action starlet, sat down by Jianmen’s side, toying with a sword shaped decoration hanging from the metal bracelet on her right wrist: “Looks like a lonesome night, you and I could both use the company.”
“Thanks. But I am kinda in the middle of an anxious wait.” Jianmen smiled and pointed at the direction of the diner: “Want some special rice wine? Fruit wine? Rib soup?”
“How’s your coffee endeavor going? If you did it I’d like a cup, if not then just some matcha ice cream.” Josephine smiled as she watched Jianmen going into the diner: “Don’t know if you’ve heard. I met one of your students the other day.”
“Coffee’s a bust so far. And I’ve heard. Jason’s a fan.” Jianmen took out a whole mini bucket of matcha ice cream and a big spoon with a bottle of light yellow rice wine, “And Caroline doesn’t even know who you are, so on average you are still well-liked by people in this inn”
“Aww, that also means you don’t hate me, aren’t you the sweetest grumpy old man.” Josephine Wong chuckled and took a big scoop of ice cream and pointed at the two incense sticks: “I thought performing divination on a fellow cultivator is not polite.”
“It is if they are my students. ” Jianmen took a huge gulp of the rice wine, “And if they are going through tribulations.”
“Ouch, I remember that.” Josephine Wong made a painful face: “How far along are they?”
“Today’s the ninety-ninth day.”
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As she triggered the wooden card with a hornet relief sculpture, Caroline found out that she grossly underestimated the power of the card and the recoil that it generated: as several bolts of concentrated Xuanli arrow shot from the card and hitting Simon on the stomach, shoulder and face, the card also flew off from Caroline’s hand.
Simon tumbled backwards from the hits and smashed a wooden shelf behind him. Caroline had absolutely no intention to waste the opportunity, with concentrated shiny orange Xuanli on her left palm, she unleashed a basketball-sized fireball aiming at Simon.
The same kind of green energy explosion occurred, Caroline’s fireball was weakened and pushed aside, and ended up landing on the floor right beside Simon’s left foot. An earth-shattering explosion threw Simon in the air and out of the kitchen window.
The explosion also shook Kane up from his paralysis, and after Caroline promptly retrieved the now cracked up wooden card, he and Alex were finally able to stand on their feet. “Come on, come on Kane, Alex.” the use of the wooden card almost instantly drained Caroline half of her Xuanli, and the fatigue and weariness was no joke - if she was not holding onto the idea that she had to get Alex and Kane out of the warzone, she would have fainted.
“You little prick...” as Caroline tried to get Kane and Alex across the living room and towards the front door, a man with a heavily burnt face and only his body from the waist up crawled to the upper end of the staircase and stared at Alex, Caroline and Kane, “Let’s see what you can do without that thing!” Then he pushed on the ground forcefully and “leapt” towards the Bakers with full force.
“Watch out!” Kane tried to aim and shoot at the man who had only half his body with only one hand holding the shotgun, the many tiny pellets sprayed all over the target’s right arm but they barely impacted the man’s movement, and the recoil just made the shotgun jump right out of Kane’s hand. And in the next moment, the man’s sharp nails on his left hand clawed Caroline on her face and neck and knocked her on the ground.
“Birdshot?! Fuck you Rubin! ” Kane cursed at his client and reached into his back to retrieve the handgun half tucked into his jeans and tried to aim at the man, but the man’s movement was too fast even with only two arms, and Kane was tackled to the ground without firing a shot.
Just when the man with only the upper body raised his left arm and was ready to claw Kane just like he did Caroline, a fire arrow pierced his left shoulder and exploded, immediately stopping his next attack, almost completely severing his left arm from his body, and instantly causing him to roll to the side and writhe in anger and pain.
”Fuck you and your motherfucking cult, dickwad.“ Kane held up his handgun and pointed it at the man’s chest in point blank range, while Caroline covered Alex’s eyes and ears he emptied his entire magazine on this man. Bullets penetrated the man’s chest, shoulder and stomach, black and green blood poured from his body and slowly covered large parts of the ground.
Black smoke rose from this man’s body, but before Caroline could do anything, the smoke shot through a broken window and disappeared, as if it was sentient and escaped out of fear.
The darkness around the house started fading away, as lights from the street lights and neighboring houses at a distance began to appear in their sight.
Caroline went to her backpack on the floor, took out her flask and took a big gulp of the fruit wine. As the cool and calming liquid flowed down to her stomach, she felt that her Xuanli and the power of her mind and will started slowly replenishing.
“Alex, are you feeling okay? Alex!”
A huge thank you to all my readers!
It's been quite a daunting experience writing this novel and putting it up online - but with your support I've never felt more confident.
I genuinely hope you enjoy what is about to come in this story, and please do not hesitate to leave me any feedback you have!
Thanks again!
I'm glad that you are keeping up with writing this. I don't know why it's not on trending when it is clearly a much better read than half of them by this point. I still think more people would read it if you gave the chapters some titles but maybe that's just me.
Thank you! The reason I did not use chapter names is because I am really terrible at it and the chapter names will become super long if I did ...
@EgaoChan I think a better cover COULD entice more too... Just fifty-ish to go. Still very, very good. I wish it had more followers too.
@Loggar Thank you! From the start I thought the concept was pretty cool for a fiverr job that cost 25 dollars. But looking at other cover arts looks like it may not have been as good as I thought.
@EgaoChan Eh, definitely not, if not by your high counting of chaps and a cool looking story maybe I wouldn't have stopped by. There is some tags lacking, but yeahhh~ Maybe Cultivator Inn would trace more people to it, I know what a really different name can do to the story, or the cover, like I told you, people change the cover to really attract more people, a friend of mine even used a sexy cover to help (it really helped), even though his old cover was cooler, so yeah I do feel your pain... Btw, I'm sorry for being soo touchy, but guuurrrlll, I can't believe you payed 25 bucks for the cover.. The guy ripped you off.
@Loggar Well I thought it was nice and I liked the vibe, it was more on me not knowing about the market. And cultivator inn might be too on the nose. Maybe I should look for a different artist that catch the vibe better.
@EgaoChan if still don't get you the feeling it should give, try the mild fan-service/exotic one - any cover that look like a non-nude Caroline or something, it will ALWAYS bring exposure. If videos use click baits why not writers? But surely, im liking more and more your novel. You are doing great!
@Loggar Thank you very much! I think fan service might be better fit for Josephine Wong, LOL
@EgaoChan I thought about her, but since she shows up just now and then I didn't mentioned it. Oh, I didn't noticed something, did you in any place mentioned how Jianmen looks like? If he's old or new? Bald or have a long hair?
Seriously, Mat gave every chap a "Nice." He should try to get copyrights.
@Loggar Josephine Wong will become very important, and sexy is probably more her style. Maybe I should make here more prominent on edits.
Matthew is such a nice guy!