The fuck happened here?!!!

Ju Hui quickly searched around for the spirit grade sucrose herbs. She had to do it quickly as the young man was still lost in thought. She glanced over at intervals with a cute smile on her face, but inwardly, she was screaming in her heart.

'Where the hell are the god damn herbs?!'

They had been there merely a minute ago, when she had kicked them away in profound annoyance, bit now she could not find them no matter how hard she looked. The young man outside had begun to frown slightly as she was taking a bit long. Was this what they called karma?

'Come on sucrose herbs! I promise, I won't hit you anymore!'

She searched long and hard, yet the Spirit grade sucrose herb evaded her line of sight. Luckily, the young man had perfect eyesight too.

"Uh, miss? I think they're over there."

Seth had watched as the girl furiously ravaged the small shack while searching for the spirit grade sucrose herbs, while they were just a foot away from where she was bent over. She blushed brightly, her face turning a bright shade of pink, as she looked up in front of her. There the spirit grade sucrose herbs sat, by the chair she had stood up from.

'Damn it...'

She had ended up totally embarrassing herself in front of the hunk before her. How could she have face to ask him out now! But it was not really a total loss, was it?

'If he saw the herbs before I did, then doesn't it mean that he was staring at my...'

Indeed, she really was bent over with her backside facing him. The only 'reasonable' explanation the lovestruck Park Ju Hui could think of, was that he was indecently staring at her. It did not even cross her mind, that Seth had already seen the herbs the very moment she groggily stood up.

"H... Here you go. That would be three ascended Qi shard please."

Another thing that Seth had learnt during his stay, was that they neither used Yen, Won or Yuan. It was only Qi shards. Qi shards were like the gold value on which all forms of trade were made. An object's value would be considered against that of the Qi shards of different tiers, and its price would be fixed according to the value. He knew how hard it was to kill an Ascended tier beast, and thus, knew how much it's shard was worth. The spirit grade sucrose herb was darn expensive!

'Good thing I have quite a few dozen hundred mundane tier Qi shards.'

Baek Sunghoon had helped him to sell each and every one of the equipments he forged during his three to four month stay, and they had brought him quite the pretty penny. A hundred mundane Qi shards were the equivalent of one Awakened Qi shard, so that would mean...

"One thousand mundane Qi shards."

That was almost all he had. But, he had promised the annoying little girl, and would make sure to fulfil his promise.

"I'll buy it."

***

In a few ten minutes, during which the girl at the store continuously pestered him while claiming to 'help him get to the other side without any disturbances', he was on Baek Sunghoon's flying sword and well on his way back to Old man Shiro's home. He still had about four hundred mundane Qi shards left, and was planning to give them all to the old merchant. However, as he crossed over the red flag that served as a territorial border, the small village like neighborhood was eerily quiet. Normally, people would be going about doing their own thing here and there, but today was quiet. Way too quiet.

"Something isn't right."

He willed the flying weapon to move faster, and faster it moved. Such that in a few minutes, he had landed in the middle of the village. But this was not the place he had left. The bamboo houses had either been burnt or broken down, the smell of smoke and ash permeated the air, and the ground was covered in dried blood. Instantly, Seth's complexion paled as he rushed over to old man Shiro's house. To his dismay, it was in even worse condition than all the rest, seeing as it was completely razed to the ground. Here the smell of blood was so thick, that it was sickening. He froze in his steps, at the sight in front of him, as just behind old man Shiro's home, hundreds of bodies were piled high into the sky like...

"Like sacks of potatoes..."

He remembered the dream Asami had told him about the say he had left, and instantly all strength left his legs as he fell to his knees. For at the very top, he could see the little girl, or at least, what remained of her. The closest corpse to his positioned was slightly decaying, as if it had been there for quite a while. All signs pointed to the fact that a war had been fought, and old man Shiro had not mentioned it even once. Seth grimaced as the smell of rotting flesh wadted Intl his nose, the man's stomach had been busted open, and his entrails were littered all over the floor. The sight of seeing a dead man for the first time in his life, made him double over and puke, then the sight of his vomit over the corpse's entrails made him puke even more.

Eventually, Seth had emptied his guts, and only then could he manage to walk forward. His legs shook with each step. He could not believe that each and every person he had seen before be left, full of vigour and vibrance, were now laying dead on the cold stone floor. The disembodied small hands and feet littering the floor served as proof that even the children were not spared. Heck, the head of one child he used to see playing around was rolling freely on the floor, a look of terror forever frozen on her face. She was lucky, it seemed, as she had died without feeling any pain.