Volume 1, Chapter 77 – Reputation

“Zhao Lie, what’s wrong?”

Seeing the strange look on the man’s face, Shi Tianlu frowned.

“Your daughter is now already a centurion in the Demon-Suppressing Army. Don’t try to fool me—has she really only started walking the martial path less than a year ago?”

Shi Tianlu was stunned for a moment.

Centurion? How is that possible?

To be promoted to centurion, one needed to have earned over two hundred thousand battle merits, and their cultivation had to have reached the Innate Realm. Either condition alone wasn’t something Shi Lan could achieve.

“Could it be someone with the same name?” Regaining his wits, Shi Tianlu asked.

Zhao Lie shook his head. “No mistake, unless you have two daughters called Shi Lan.”

Shi Tianlu temporarily pressed down the doubt in his heart and said, “Can you confirm her position?”

“We can only get a rough direction, but the margin of error could be tens of thousands of li. Right now Nine Skies City can’t spare that many people to go searching.”

“Since your daughter’s cultivation has already reached the Innate Realm, as long as she’s careful and avoids beast hordes, her life shouldn’t be in danger. Relax.”

Seeing that there was still worry on Shi Tianlu’s face, Zhao Lie offered a few words of comfort.

“I understand. Thanks.”

Watching Shi Tianlu’s departing back, Zhao Lie rubbed his chin, thoughtful. It seemed he’d have to arrange for some people to quietly ask around later.

Such a young Innate Realm martial artist should hardly be some obscure nobody, and someone like that couldn’t just be left wandering outside. There was never such a thing as too many geniuses, after all.

And if what Shi Tianlu said was really true, that Shi Lan had only been training in the martial path for less than a year…

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……

“Sizzle——”

A drop of fat fell into the firepit, splashing up a shower of sparks.

Shi Lan sat before the fire, turning the beast meat roasting on the wooden rack.

A withered yellow leaf slowly drifted down, was caught by the tongues of flame, and turned to ash in the blink of an eye.

The weather was growing cooler; it was already late autumn.

In the blink of an eye, it had been nearly half a month since Shi Lan left Twin Moon City. Because her escape light was too conspicuous and easily attracted flying beasts, she had been traveling the whole way on foot.

Fortunately, with the aid of the Flying Cloud Boots, her speed running across the ground wasn’t much slower than riding a flying artifact.

Over this half a month, Shi Lan had personally experienced what it felt like to grow stronger even while just sitting still.

Even if she didn’t circulate her cultivation art, the surrounding spiritual qi would constantly seep into her body, bit by bit transforming into Innate true qi and increasing her cultivation.

If she operated the Yuqing Creation Art, her rate of absorbing spiritual qi would surge nearly tenfold. In just a dozen or so days, her cultivation had naturally broken through into the second stage of the Innate Realm.

When she broke through, Shi Lan didn’t even feel the existence of a bottleneck—she only felt as if she’d poked through a thin membrane, and then she was through.

Seeing that the roast meat was about done, Shi Lan took it off the rack and wolfed it down in just a few bites.

Although she no longer needed to rely on eating to maintain her body, going too long without food always left her mouth feeling a bit bland.

Besides, the flesh of Innate Realm beasts also gave a noticeable boost to the Jade Tempering Art.

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Of course, the most important point was that this beast meat simply tasted too good. Even without any seasonings, it had an indescribable freshness to it.

Even though Shi Lan wasn’t someone particularly greedy for food, she couldn’t help getting a little hooked.

After finishing that piece of roast meat, Shi Lan placed another slab of raw meat on the rack, then pulled up her system panel.

Host: Shi Lan

Cultivation: second stage of the Innate Realm

Root bone: 9 (Innate spiritual body, once-in-a-millennium.)

Cultivation arts: Yuqing Creation Art (first layer), Vajra Divine Fist (mastery), Jade Tempering Art (fourth refinement)

Divine ability: Heaven’s Eye Qi-Sight (three-star)

Strength evaluation: some minor achievements

Reputation: -350 (nameless nobody)

Looking at her reputation still in the negatives, Shi Lan couldn’t help but let out a soft sigh.

After she had memorized the entire formation manual—or rather, the introductory outline of basic formations—she left Twin Moon City.

She had originally planned to use the time before the next main quest to find a blessed land amid mountains and rivers, set up a spirit-gathering formation, and focus on improving her strength.

But the system didn’t give her that chance. Very soon, it issued her a reputation quest.

It wanted her to turn her reputation positive within three months.

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The punishment for this reputation quest was rather harsh. If she failed, she wouldn’t suffer any physical harm, but from then on, the chance of drawing nothing from basic lotteries would increase to fifty percent.

A fifty percent chance of getting absolutely nothing.

If her luck was a little bad, it was entirely possible that after finishing a quest, she’d end up with nothing to show for it.

This was something Shi Lan simply couldn’t accept. Compared to that, she would rather take some kind of bodily punishment.

However, when it came to quests issued by the system, she had no right to bargain.

Over this half a month, everyone she ran into—none of them escaped receiving her help.

Of course, Shi Lan also ran into plenty of people with crooked thoughts. Turmoil might be a nightmare for ordinary folk, but for some people, they lived even more like fish in water.

As for those people, Shi Lan naturally sent them where they ought to go. In her eyes, those whose hearts were already dead were no different from beasts.

Excluding those sorts, along the way the number of people Shi Lan had helped was at least several hundred, if not a full thousand.

Yet even so, her reputation value was still negative.

Staring at her status panel, Shi Lan’s expression suddenly changed. Her reputation, originally at -350, began to drop again, finally falling by another 50 and stopping at -400.

“System, what’s going on here? Why is my reputation still dropping?”

【A drop in reputation indicates an increase in the number of people who hold a negative view of the host.】

“……”

There was a sentence in Shi Lan’s heart that she wasn’t sure whether she should say aloud—when did she pull another wave of aggro? Was she really that unlikable?

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Feeling a bit stifled, Shi Lan closed the system panel—out of sight, out of mind—then took the roast meat off the rack and tore into it viciously.

“Gulp——”

A faint, almost inaudible sound.

Shi Lan’s ears twitched slightly. Her expression didn’t change as she put the meat back on the rack and slowly rose to her feet.

“Whoosh——”

A spark of spiritual light leapt out, and the Purple Star Seven-Section Halberd appeared in Shi Lan’s hand. The halberd light pulsed, extending out over three zhang as it cleaved toward the source of the sound.

In the dead of night, someone lurking nearby—even if it wasn’t a beast—was definitely harboring ill intent. Shi Lan didn’t hold back in the slightest; from the very first move, she went all out!

Before the halberd light even arrived, the surging force already swept up a storm of fallen leaves, pressing the shrubs flat and revealing a white figure.

The night did nothing to hinder Shi Lan’s current vision. When she saw what that white figure was, her expression changed, and she twisted the halberd shaft in her hands, shifting its direction.

“Boom——”

The halberd light crashed down, carving a gully over three zhang long and nearly two chi deep right beside that white figure.

The white figure stood up, patted the fallen leaves from his body, then pressed his palms together as he chanted a Buddhist phrase, saying,

“This humble monk was just resting here for a while. I did not mean to disturb you, Benefactor. My apologies, my apologies.”

Looking at the gleaming bald head before her, shining a bit under the moonlight, Shi Lan couldn’t help feeling a little strange.