Chapter 1 The Naiser City

That group of bandits who attempted to rob Su Zhou were forced to contribute quite a bit of information before they were wiped out.

Among them was the location of the largest sanctuary city nearby, Naiser City.

Naiser City was located within the former Thousand Lakes Country, next to three large freshwater lakes. It was a lakeside city that was easy to defend and difficult to attack. Su Zhou stood on the hill and looked into the distance, and he could see its towering city walls and the large areas of farmland beside the city's lakes.

"Looks normal enough." Su Zhou didn't see much chaos in the city, nor did he see much death aura. It seemed that the Naiser family, which was almost wiped out, had responsibility and a bottom line. Even if their clan was about to be destroyed, they didn't choose to remove the protection array and let the nearly one million people in the city die or migrate with them.

Of course, it was also possible that the mysterious forces that attacked them didn't give them the opportunity—but that would be too difficult.

Before officially setting off for Naiser City, in order to avoid trouble, Su Zhou dismantled some tents in the bandit camp, used those fabrics to cover his luggage, and disguised himself as a dusty traveler. He also scavenged some local currency from the bandits' corpses.

The local currency of this world was a peculiar metal alloy, dark gold in color. The original name was quite long and complicated, so Su Zhou called it 'Gold'.

One standard Gold, about 100 grams in weight, was enough to buy food for a family of three for more than half a month. The entire bandit group was hired to find the heir of the Naiser family, but they only received a reward of 30 Gold. If they caught the heir, they could get an additional reward of 100 Gold.

After being melted, this alloy could be directly used to cast high-level, fine weapons, and was a recognized hard currency in many regions. Even if it wasn't used as money, its value as a raw material was not low.

The forty or fifty bandits had a total of fifty-seven Gold on them, which was a considerable sum of money. However, it was also very heavy, so Su Zhou found a box and carried the money on his back.

With money in hand and strength in his fists, theoretically, he should have been worry-free, but even so, Su Zhou was still a little worried: "After all, it's the apocalypse. What if the city guards insist on asking me for more bribes, or want to check my luggage? If there's a conflict, I can't stand that kind of anger, so I'll definitely have to kill them all."

"But I'm going to gather information, not to kill people—what should I do?" Saying this, the benevolent Su Zhou couldn't help but sigh.

"You're overthinking it." Yara, who was watching all of this, poked her head out of Su Zhou's hair. She shook her head slightly, not directly saying something like, 'With your aura of having just killed someone, at least a dozen, without any concealment, no city guard would be crazy enough to stop you.' She casually said, "Listening to these bandits, that city currently has no ruler, and no one else has had time to gain control of the city... In this situation, how could the city guards work normally?"

What Yara said was absolutely true.

When the city guards of Naiser City saw a young adventurer with luggage, covered in dust, walking from the desolate northwest avenue, which was said to be frequented by bandits recently, they felt a strange sense of danger.

"Traveling alone through the blockade of Old Anda's group, passing through the wilderness so leisurely... Don't provoke this kind of wilderness traveler!"

Even some old city guards taught common sense to the younger ones: "The easiest to extort are small teams of seven or eight people. As long as the amount isn't too large, they can split it up and pay. Even if they are strong, they may not bother arguing with people like us to avoid trouble."

"But those loners who dare to walk alone are either powerful experts who are not afraid of the wilderness undead, or lucky fools—where are the fools in this world? It's not our turn to squeeze oil from them."

Therefore, Su Zhou, who originally thought he would be persecuted and would have to fight, was only required to pay a small piece of alloy worth about one-tenth of a Gold as an entrance fee because he was a stranger.

Afterwards, the city guards gave him a wooden sign engraved with runes as proof of identity, and Su Zhou entered the city without any difficulty.

From beginning to end, Su Zhou didn't even speak, and his luggage wasn't inspected at all—it was clearly a fantastic big city with city walls more than twenty meters high, but the city guards were so lazy! This immediately made Su Zhou shake his head in distress: "There's definitely something wrong with this world!"

"You're the one with the problem." The serpent spirit clicked its tongue and shook its head.

Naiser City was surrounded by three large freshwater lakes, and only three narrow land entrances had city walls. Most of the lakeside was farmland.

The entire city and all the farmland planting areas were shrouded in a layer of translucent light. When Su Zhou entered this light layer, he immediately felt that various attribute spiritual energies were several times more active, even more active than on Earth.

However, this activity was not the activity of the spiritual energy itself, but the activity of the attributes.

For example, the spiritual energy density of a world is like the water in a cup. When spiritual energy is cut off, the water becomes less, and when spiritual energy recovers, the water becomes more.

The activity of attributes is like how easily the water in the cup freezes or vaporizes, and how easily the form changes.

Previously, when he first came to this world, Su Zhou felt that although the spiritual energy density of the alien world was a little thicker than that of Earth, the attribute conversion speed was frighteningly slow.

This was certainly not a good thing. On Earth, the speed of spiritual energy attribute conversion was very normal. The water spiritual energy in the ocean, after leaving the sea and rising into the sky, would be converted into wind-attributed spiritual energy. If it was higher, it would be converted into light-attributed spiritual energy due to direct sunlight. This was a natural cycle, similar to the conversion of material forms, and synchronized with the material world.

If the attribute conversion speed was too slow, it would cause spiritual energy to interfere with each other. The water spiritual energy rising into the sky could not be quickly converted into wind spiritual energy, which would interfere with the normal material world's rainfall and wind, leading to climate imbalance.

For example, it's like heating water to 100 degrees Celsius, but it takes a long time to boil... This is just a simple example. In fact, this is a major event that could destroy the world. Not to mention anything else, plants would have a hard time surviving.

Of course, a conversion speed that is too fast is not a good thing either. A little higher is fine, but once it's excessive, it's similar to the high altitude, where water boils at less than 100 degrees Celsius due to insufficient air pressure, making it difficult for people to eat cooked food.

Su Zhou could sense that the spiritual energy conversion speed of this world was about to plummet, probably within a few decades—if it was the era of spiritual energy depletion, it would be fine. After all, in a purely material world without spiritual energy, it doesn't matter how slow the spiritual energy attribute conversion is. But if spiritual energy recovers and fills the world again, the abnormality of the spiritual energy will instead lead to the destruction of the material world.

However, after entering the range of the great array that the bandits called 'Elemental Order', everything returned to normal, and people could normally plant and live.

The city walls of Naiser City were very high and thick, with an average height of about twenty-one meters, and there were obvious traces of magic shaping. However, after seeing the hundred-zhang city walls of the Nanhe Heavenly Barrier in the Divine Wood World, Su Zhou had resistance to the strange architectural styles of various extraordinary worlds—with spiritual energy, what kind of buildings can't be built? (Zhang is a Chinese unit of measurement.)

The town planning of Naiser City was surprisingly advanced. The blocks were neatly arranged, the sewer facilities were also well-developed, and it was not as noisy and chaotic as ordinary western ancient cities. The streets were not very dirty, except for the large number of guards. The stone buildings were also carefully cleaned by their owners, and there were no traces of dirt.

It's just that now, every household was tightly closed, and most of the pedestrians on the road were in a hurry, not daring to stay on the street for too long. They would only look up at Su Zhou, a stranger carrying a large package, before quickly lowering their heads in fear.

In the entire city, only a few places that seemed to be taverns and markets could feel the noisy popularity.

"Looks like there's no other choice." After passing through the city gate and arriving in the city, Su Zhou randomly chose the most popular tavern.

As soon as he entered, the originally bustling tavern quieted down, and then slowly returned to the noise. When Su Zhou walked to the counter and directly slapped two Gold on the table.

The sound of metal colliding with wood was not loud, but it was very pleasant.

The tavern owner, who was originally watching and observing, immediately squeezed away a waiter. He walked up and asked extremely politely, "This guest, do you need a private room? And this is too much money, no wine here is worth this price."

Of course, Su Zhou couldn't understand what he was saying. Fortunately, he was a transcendent, so he directly used soul communication: "Bring your best wine, and some signature dishes. I've been traveling alone in the wilderness for several months, and I'm starving, so bring me five servings first."

Soul communication!? A transcendent professional sir?

How could this kind of person come to this ordinary adventurer's tavern!

Sensing a bit of aura that Su Zhou faintly released, the burly tavern owner, who was probably an adventurer in his early years, suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. He repeated what he had said before in soul communication, and then respectfully said, "Sir, even if the table is full, it doesn't need this much money—a quarter of a Gold is enough."

As Su Zhou learned the price of the tavern's food and drinks, he roughly knew the purchasing power of one Gold: "The purchasing power of one Gold is roughly equivalent to two thousand Zheng Country Yuan, which is not surprising." (Zheng Country Yuan is a currency.)

Of course, it couldn't be ruled out that the meat and wine in this world were very expensive, and were luxury goods... But even so, it wouldn't be too different.

At this time, the other voices in the tavern also cooled down.

"Why would an elite professional sir come to our tavern?" They whispered to each other in confusion—ordinary adventurers were mostly in the apprentice stage, just beginning to comprehend magic. And adventurers who had obtained official professional titles were enough to be a captain if they applied to a lord. If they continued to be adventurers, they could also form a large team.

Elite professionals had only gradually increased in number in the last few decades, when the magic tide returned to the world. Before that, even the beginner level was rare. No matter where they were, they were real masters, big shots.

Adventurers weren't stupid. When they saw that Su Zhou hadn't even opened his mouth, and the tavern owner was respectfully replying, how could they not know that this was a transcendent professional who could use soul communication? As for the language problem...

Hey, the four great kingdoms of the past couldn't understand each other's languages. Now that the kingdoms have been destroyed for nearly a thousand years, and the sanctuary cities in various places have developed independently, dialectization is serious. Even if the sanctuaries used to be in the same country, no one can understand the languages they speak to each other.

"Money is not a problem." Facing the tavern owner's question, Su Zhou smiled and said, he was still using soul transmission: "I just came back from the wilderness. Traveling alone was too boring. Now, I just want to hear people talk, and by the way, learn about the recent situation in this city."

Saying this, Su Zhou turned his head and looked at the other seats in the tavern. He began wide-area soul communication: "I'm treating everyone to wine today—there's only one requirement, that is, everyone who wants to drink for free needs to tell a story."

Saying this, he took out a few more Gold and slapped them on the counter, proving that he not only had strength, but also money.

——I have wine, do you have a story?