Chapter 237: Redfire City
By the time Bai Yunfei walked out of his room, a large group of people was already gathered there in wait for him.
Tang Xinyun, Huangfu Rui, Ye Zhiqiu, Mo Xiaoxuan, Xi Yan, Zhong Xuhao, Liu Mang, Zhang Shanxian, Si Kongxian, and even Fei Nian was there to make a total of ten. As soon as Bai Yunfei came out from his room, the group greeted him with a smile and friendly greeting. Even the sparrow-sized quickshade bird could be seen perched on top of Tang Xinyun’s shoulder as it combed its own feathers while the red magiboar was currently being hugged in between Huangfu Rui’s arms. Every so often, the red magiboar would let loose a snort from its maw.
“Haha, my apologies for making everyone wait.” Bai Yunfei spoke up apologetically as he approached them.
“Not at all, you’re just on time, Yunfei.” Tang Xinyun smiled. “We only just got here when Huangfu Rui called you out.
Sticking her nose up coyishly, Huangfu Rui spoke, “Everyone else but brother strawhat was here, so I called him out. Hmph! We should’ve gone down first and let him panic when he can’t find us!”
Taken aback at first, Bai Yunfei then grinned in response. “You know, Doraemon. If you don’t take me with you, I won’t be able to buy you toys when we get to the city!”
The nickname of Doraemon was given to Huangfu Rui thanks to her tendency to pull out practically anything she wanted from her pouch. But only Bai Yunfei knew the meaning behind the nickname of course.
“Aah!” At first, Huangfu Rui panicked at the thought. But then when another idea struck her mind, she stuck her tongue out at Bai Yunfei, “Hmph! Sis Yun will buy me something, who needs you!”
“Haha….okay, okay. Junior Rui, we’ll have to get to Redfire City first before we can buy anything!” Mo Xiaoxuan laughed. “Let’s get going then!”
But before they could move, Bai Yunfei asked, “Hey, where’s junior Tian? Isn’t he going with us?”
“Yuhang is at a very important stage in his training, so he couldn’t come with us this time.”
“Oh, that’s unfortunate. Let’s get going then; walking there’ll take some time.”
“Yea, let’s go!!”
……
Plans were made for everyone to go to Redfire City before, but because of how ‘addicted’ Bai Yunfei was to crafting soul armaments, those plans were pushed back to today.
Since Si Kongxian was familiar with the road, they led the group down Mt. Crimson. As they traveled towards the city, the group laughed and chatted with one another merrily.
It was early morning when they left the Crafting School but two in the afternoon when they arrived at Redfire City–a feat that left Bai Yunfei wiping at his sweat in embarrassment. How could he possibly tell everyone that when he tried to get to the base of Mt. Crimson from Redfire City, it took him two entire days!
Just how big of a detour did he take!!
Redfire City was located at the very center of the Great Plains Province. As the geographical center, the city was prosperous in many ways. Not only were they the capital city of the province, they were also the closest city to the Crafting School.
There were almost ten thousand students to the Crafting School. And in their daily expenditures, the biggest factor was their need for materials for crafting. It was a terrifying sum when totaled, but with the amount of low tier soul armament they crafted, the exchange was profitable for both sides.
Though low tier soul armaments were a very common sight in the Crafting School, they may as well be priceless treasures to outsiders. There were countless of schools in the world, and the amount of soul armaments the Crafting School made was nowhere enough to supply them all.
Furthermore, it was strictly forbidden for regular students to negotiate trades of any soul armaments of the earth tier or above. Human tier soul armaments may be traded as each individual student desired, and sometimes several materials wouldn’t be provided to them by the Crafting School so several students would sometimes trade soul armaments for materials.
There were also plenty of traveling soul cultivators or other school members that’d come to the Crafting School to plead for a trade of some sort.
In short, Redfire City became a central hub for plenty of major figures and strong soul cultivators. As such it could be said that the city was where the strong hid amongst the weak and where the evil mixed with the good.
Keeping watch over this city was one of the 56 warlords of the Tianhun Continent and administrator of the Great Plains Province; Sima Wenxu. A mid-stage Soul King
Bai Yunfei and the group of friend’s arrival into the city had been the center of attention of plenty of people; but when they started to blend in with the other traveler on the streets, not much interest was paid to mind. The streets were vast, and even the group of eleven wouldn’t be able to hold up the streets even if they tried.
The group was clearly holed up in the Crafting School for far too long; as they all started to grow visibly excited from all the sights. Even from the moment they stepped into the city, many of them pointed at a nearby store or stopping in one of them to purchase something. For every hundred meters they progressed into the city, ten minutes would pass at the very least.
“Wow! There’s so many people here! Sis Yun, look! That guy over there is balancing so many bowls on his head!!” Huangfu Rui shrieked with excitement as she ran off. When everyone else looked up to see where she was going, they all saw a crowd of people gathered around what appeared to be a sideshow performance.
Though the group were all powerful soul cultivators and could perform the acts that the commoners were doing, the fact that the commoners were able to do it so smoothly was enjoyable to see. The younger ones of the group, namely Zhong Xuhao and Liu Mang were the next to follow Huangfu Rui off to look at the excitement with craned necks.
A faint smile graced Tang Xinyun’s lips, “If Xiao Rui is so interested, we should take a look as well.”
Having no objections, the rest of the group moved to follow after Huangfu Rui when all of a sudden, the person in question cried out again, “Wow! There’s tanghulu over there! I want some, I want some!”
Turning her head to look at Bai Yunfei, Huangfu Rui smiled wildly with glee, “Brother strawhat, I want to eat some tanghulu, can you buy me some?”
When he turned his head to look, a vendor could be seen selling tanghulu over a hundred meters to the left of where they were.
Curiously, a faint memory popped back up in Bai Yunfei’s head, causing his heart to jerk slightly as if a wound of some sort had been poked. A deep mental wound that was still raw to the touch.
“Yunfei, are you alright?” Tang Xinyun spoke out in concern when she saw the strange look overcome Bai Yunfei’s face.
“I’m fine….” Bai Yunfei shook his head before smiling back towards Huangfu Rui. “Okay then. I’ll buy you some. Let’s go on over and I’ll have some bought for you.”
He then turned his head to look at Zhong Xuhao and Liu Mang, “Do you two want to eat some?”
“Tsk!” Zhong Xuhao frowned, “Only girls and little kids would want to eat that. I’m far too old to be eating stuff like that….”
“I walk the road of serious business, I don’t eat stuff like that….” Liu Mang spoke coolly as his eyes glossed over at several pretty looking girls on the street….
“……”
Completely disregarding the two self-delusional kids, Bai Yunfei asked the others for their thoughts before going off to buy some.
……
After walking the three hundred meters necessary, Bai Yunfei was just about to buy some tanghulu when a small voice called out to him from the right side of the street.
“O’ heroic one, I’ve a reading of your trigram today….”
Pausing mid-stride, Bai Yunfei turned his head to look. A single 24-25 year old young man was currently seated on top of the corner wall of a building as he smiled down on Bai Yunfei.
This young man was a handsome one, but his dressing was of an extremely strange taste. He wore an extremely wrinkled monk’s robe, but the look in his eyes made him seem more like a young heir with naught a care in the world. Right besides him was a pole about as tall as he was with a white-clothed banner that had the words ‘fortune diviner’ written on it.
“Uhm….Are you talking to me?” Bai Yunfei asked after looking around himself.
Nodding, the young man hung his banner onto his shoulders and walked up to Bai Yunfei. Giving him a looking over, the man slowly said, “O’ heroic one, the dark lines on your glabellum indicate that disaster approaches…..”
Staring quizzically at him, Bai Yunfei asked with narrowed eyes, “Are you….”