Volume 1, Chapter 91 – Quest Rewards

After leaving the courtyard, Lin Fan returned to his own room.

Once inside, he walked to the wall and pulled a hidden mechanism, revealing a dark passage that led straight downward.

Following the passage, Lin Fan arrived at a large underground secret chamber. The chamber was very spacious, nearly five zhang high and several dozen zhang long and wide. Several Night Pearls were set into the ceiling, leaving not a trace of shadow anywhere and lighting the place as bright as day.

The secret chamber was crammed with things like puppets, crossbows, wooden wheels, and all sorts of exquisitely crafted wooden devices. In the center of the room stood a massive puppet nearly three zhang tall.

A puppet less than half a zhang high, holding a tray in its hands, walked toward Lin Fan step by step. Aside from its slightly stiff movements, it was almost no different from a normal person.

On the tray sat a spirit crystal about the size of a human head and a pot of chilled tea.

Looking at the puppet and recalling Lin Yusheng’s words, Lin Fan felt a wave of melancholy. He and Shi Lan had only met once, so there was no deep affection to speak of. It was just that Shi Lan had left him with a good impression.

What really made Lin Fan feel dejected was that Lin Yusheng’s words had dealt him a blow. His life had always gone smoothly, and the allure of mechanism arts meant he had never once thought about improving his own strength.

Lin Fan took a gulp of chilled tea, then picked up the spirit crystal and walked to the back of the massive three-zhang-tall puppet. After fiddling with it for a while, he placed the spirit crystal into a hidden compartment on the puppet’s back.

“Hum——”

“Clack——”

A deep, muffled grinding of gears sounded. The massive puppet seemed to have life injected into it and slowly lifted its leg.

Seeing this, Lin Fan’s face grew a little excited.

When the puppet’s leg was halfway up, it suddenly froze and stood there in a daze.

Reαԁ οn ΚаtReaⅾingCαfе

“Boom——”

Losing its balance, the puppet crashed to the ground, the thunderous impact echoing through the secret chamber.

The excitement on Lin Fan’s face turned into disappointment. His mood, already somewhat suppressed, grew more irritable.

With a dark expression, Lin Fan left the secret chamber. After spacing out in his room for a while, he left the City Lord’s Manor and, feeling a bit uneasy, headed toward the inn.

……

Not long after Lin Fan left, the massive puppet in the secret chamber slowly struggled to its feet and began wandering around the room.

After trampling many of the devices underfoot, the puppet slammed straight into a wall.

It stood before the wall for a long while, then raised its half-human-sized fist and punched the wall.

“Thud… thud…”

With a series of booms, the puppet’s fist kept hammering the wall. In just a few blows, the wall was covered in cracks, and the puppet’s fist had split open as well. The puppet, a dead thing, still knew no exhaustion and continued to swing its fist.

The pit in the wall grew larger and deeper.

……

Lin Fan arrived at the inn and stood in front of the entrance for quite some time before finally going in to ask the innkeeper which room Shi Lan was staying in.

Read oո КαtRеaⅾіոɡСαfе

When he learned that Shi Lan and the others had already left, Lin Fan was stunned. He blurted out, “Where did they go?”

“Young City Lord, please don’t blame me. Aside from that young lady, everyone in that group was burly, thick-waisted, and fierce-looking. Not a single one of them seemed easy to mess with. I really didn’t dare ask,” the innkeeper said awkwardly.

Lin Fan walked out of the inn, feeling complicated. Could it be that he and Shi Lan were truly not fated to meet?

A figure dropped from the sky and landed beside Lin Fan, speaking in a rush. “Young City Lord, you’d better hurry back and take a look. The ground under your room has collapsed!”

Collapsed?

Thinking of the years of effort he had poured into the secret chamber, Lin Fan’s expression changed dramatically.

“Back to the manor!”

……

After leaving Purple Flame City, Shi Lan led Wang Ning and the others out of the city. Following the route marked on the map, she visited several cities near the canyon.

The reactions of those cities finally gave Shi Lan some comfort. There were plenty of people who bore deep hatred toward the bandits entrenched in that canyon.

Her reputation, which had been stagnant for so long, finally began to rise.

Seeing Shi Lan’s somewhat odd behavior, Wang Ning and the others also sensed that something was off, but they simply thought Shi Lan liked fame and didn’t think too much of it.

There were plenty of people in the Demon-Suppressing Army with strange quirks.

Rеаd οո ΚatRеаⅾiոɡСafе

……

Several days after leaving Purple Flame City, in a small town about three hundred li from that canyon.

In the town center, on a square nearly a hundred zhang across, a temporary high platform had been erected, and crowds of people packed in around it.

Shi Lan stood on the platform, a horse-cleaving saber in hand. Beside her knelt the last surviving member of that bandit gang, an older bandit chief.

The previous men had already been beheaded in public by Shi Lan in the earlier towns to appease the people’s anger.

The man kneeling on the ground looked somewhat numb. After sweeping a glance over the furious crowd surrounding them, he turned to Shi Lan, who was wiping her blade, and said with a mocking look in his eyes, “You’re just a young woman. What use is chasing after all this empty reputation? And trading other people’s lives for your own name—doesn’t that make you feel guilty?”

Shi Lan tossed aside the cloth in her hand, glanced at the system panel where her reputation value was still at minus ten, and said calmly, “When you chose to become bandits, killing and robbing, you should have known this day would come. I’ve always acted with a clear conscience. What guilt should I feel?”

“A clear conscience? You’re just deceiving the world and stealing its praise, a hypocrite! These old eyes of mine have seen more people than I can count. I can tell.” The kneeling man’s expression turned sinister. “You’re not cut out to be a good person!”

“I never wanted to be a good person, but I don’t intend to be evil either.” Shi Lan walked up to the bandit chief with a calm expression and slowly raised her blade. “Once you’re in the ground, you can properly wash off the blood-debt on your hands.”

“You think there’s less blood on your hands than on mine? I really do want to see what kind of end a crooked-hearted girl like you will meet. I’ll be waiting for you down below!” The bandit chief let out a sinister laugh and closed his eyes.

Shi Lan’s face remained calm. Her blade rose and fell, a flash of steel, and the bandit chief’s head flew as blood spurted nearly three chi high.

“Boom——”

“Gulp……”

Rеаԁ оո ΚαtRеαԁіոɡСafe

The head slowly rolled down from the platform, and a cheer erupted all around, ringing endlessly.

Shi Lan tossed the bloodstained horse-cleaving saber to the Demon-Suppressing Army soldiers standing below the platform, then looked at her system panel.

Her reputation points were visibly rising, turning from negative to positive, finally stopping at forty-five.

【Congratulations to the Host for completing the reputation quest. Quest rewards issued.】

【Congratulations to the Host for obtaining two primary lottery draws. Chance of drawing nothing reduced to five percent.】

【Congratulations to the Host for achieving the hidden achievement: “Turn Over a New Leaf and Start Anew.”】

【Achievement rewards issued.】

【Congratulations to the Host for obtaining one intermediate lottery draw.】

The string of notification chimes left Shi Lan a little dazed.

When she heard the words “intermediate lottery,” her heart clenched. With a thought, she opened the system panel and entered the lottery interface.

The lottery wheel had become two. In addition to the original one, there was now another wheel almost ten times larger, giving off a faint golden glow that made Shi Lan’s heartbeat quicken.