Chapter 29: A Little Addictive
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When a noise and flashing light from my HUD informed me that I had reached my destination, I spat the now-warm water from my mouth through the metal grating that acted as ground in this part of the city tier. Next, I drained each of the cups in a single mouthful and sat down panting with my back against the front wall of the barbershop.
I know such a display of poor decorum should have embarrassed me or my family. In this world, I had no family to shame, and if I caught anyone looking at me with any sort of disdain, I could always just beat them to or within arm's reach of death.
I honestly didn't see a single person even glance at me sideways while I sat there recovering my breath. Knowing what I did now about The Labyrinth, what the locals called this winding mess of tight streets and giant pipes. I figured most people around here probably saw people in worse states of dishevelment every day.
Despite not worrying about reputation or decorum, I must say I was still extremely unimpressed with my own physical abilities. After such a short run and simple exercise, my arms and legs shouldn’t shake the way they did. I also shouldn’t need as long as I did to feel my heart return to normal. It was more than enough to make me miss the ability to channel Qi.
Still, my training regimen was paying dividends. I could both feel the difference in my physical fitness from the day I arrived here, and see the numbers change on my so-called stat sheet.
I won’t lie, watching those numbers go up was getting more than a little addictive. I think it had something to do with the certainty of it compared to the nature of getting stronger in my old life. Sure, you knew that someone at the Nascent Soul stage was far more powerful than someone at the Qi Manipulation stage, but the sheer amount of variation from the bottom of a stage to the top was so immense that you only kind of knew where you stood.
Well, that wasn’t true for me, obviously. I knew where I stood by virtue of having proved my superiority over everyone on the field of battle. It was still nice to be able to witness my growth as it happened, rather than have to intuit it from the size of my muscles and the weights I could lift.
When I had first awoke, my stat screen had looked like
[ Lu Bu
Legendary Warlord
Lvl:1
Might: 60/170
?Alacrity: 60/170
?Durability: 55/170
?Cunning:30/170
?Acumen: 15/170
?Quintessence: 10/170 ]
Now, when I brought up the page on my HUD [Might] was at sixty-three, as was [Alacrity], while [Durability] had moved to fifty-nine. My [Cunning], [Acumen], and [Quintessence] had remained unchanged.
Having finally caught my breath, I pulled myself to my feet and turned to face the store I had come here to patronise.
I said that I had sat leaning against the wall near the entrance, but this has likely left you with the wrong impression of the barber's storefront. Yes, there was a doorway and windows. There really wasn’t a wall, at least not anymore. It was more like a door with a little waist-high barrier of cement on either side. You could even still see the bits of gridded metal supports sticking up from the shattered wall remnant.
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When I was up on the city tier that could see the sky above each building, and business had a little sign that would appear and name it on my HUD. While Diaochan could interpret stores and display what they were for me,the businesses and such down here had real physical signage.
In the case of this store, it was ‘L&J Barbers- Helping you look good.’ I had no idea what the little symbol between L and J meant; maybe it meant nothing. I didn’t care, I wanted a shave and a haircut, and unlike Ji-Ho, I didn’t deign to do it myself.
Every time I had been past this store, there were at least three customers along with the two ancient men who ran the place, and today was no different. I am not what you might call a patient man, and had I been in my homeland, there is a good chance I would have simply insisted that the owners kick the rest of the customers out until I was ready to leave.
As I was so frequently reminded, this was not my homeland, and it had been repeatedly advised to me by both Ji-Ho and Ha-Rin that the barbers around this city tier were held in high esteem. If I strutted into one of them and started throwing my weight around, I would find myself enemies with every clan in the area.
An older man with skin the colour of wet earth with an immaculate white beard directed me to take a seat in a waiting area consisting of an eclectic range of seats in various stages of disrepair. I honestly didn’t mind so much, just as the front of the store was practically missing, the back walls had also been removed.
This meant the store itself was almost like an open-air establishment, but more importantly, it gave it a spectacular view from the waiting area. I am Lu Bu. I have conquered cities of impossible beauty, I have shattered or taken monuments that multiple generations labored to complete, and I have seen multitudes of breathtaking things. I have never laid eyes on a view quite like this one, though.
The lack of walls revealed that this store was actually situated atop a man-made cliff of stone and metal. This same tier continued past where the ground ended, but the gap itself was huge, at least the size of two non-terrace rice paddies. The edges of the artificial chasm were covered in the twinkling lights of human habitation, and while that was pretty, it wasn’t what had caught my attention.
That honor went to the display at the bottom of the cliff, hundreds of feet below. You could call it a road, but that description falls so far short you may as well call a waterfall a spilled glass. It was more like dozens of roads side by side and swarming with the car vehicles. I had seen them before when I first arrived in Abeyance, but not on this kind of scale, and certainly not from this angle.
These cars didn’t take to the air like the ones on the sky tier, yet it was still awe-inspiring to see this unrelenting stream of them flow by at speeds even my horse, The Red Hare, would have struggled to overtake. Obviously, he could have done it; my horse was a cultivator of power greater than most humans who walked that path, but he wouldn’t have had an easy time of it.
The vehicles down there came in all shapes and sizes, some covered in lights or intricate designs, others little more than brown boxes on wheels. There was a pattern to the flow of cars, a rhythm to it that dictated the movement of the vehicles. Once I spotted that, something else became apparent, and I found myself leaning forward in the cracked off-white plastic of my seat.
There were cars and bikes down there that were competing, racing with each other among the moving obstacles that were the driving cars. It took a few seconds for me to identify who was competing, and with whom. I was all but certain I was looking at separate individual races taking place around each other , rather than a pack of racers that were wildly separated. It was annoying to figure out from all the way up here, so I just made Diaochan do it.
Sitting back, I split my attention between the awe-inspiring level of vehicle maneuverability taking place below me and the deft hands of the pair of old men who operated the store, as they performed their craft.
Half an hour later, they were chattering away about inane nonsense as one of them worked on me. Half an hour after that, I looked good, really good.
I have to say I was a little uncomfortable with how short they cut my hair, but the style fit in with those of the city’s dwellers, and the shape complimented my face.
Perhaps more importantly, the scraggly beginnings of a beard that had taken up residence on my face were gone.
I ordered Diaochan to transfer the required digi-creds to pay for the service, and then I was just as gone as my beard.
I had a job to do tonight: keeping the siblings safe when they went to speak to the crime lord who ran the local clan. I assume it was to do with the riders who had tried to extort them, though if that were the case I was unsure why it had taken them so long to do it?
Whatever the reason, I intended to be there, and I intended to be level two when I did it. Which meant I was very much on a time frame.
Can you blame him? Number go Brrrrr haha
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