Chapter 21: Turning Point
Negotiations ended very quickly. It wasn't much of a negotiation and more of the guild master giving an offer and Xue Chang quickly accepting.
Honestly Xue Chang couldn't be bothered too much on things like this. As long as what the guild offered was just a couple dozen of gold pieces a day, he'd be happy.
To his surprise, their offer was much higher than expected. Although Xue Chang acted with maturity far above his (physical) age, he was still a child (physically). How could one expect that this mysterious hunter actually held such low expectations for the reward, the guild master was sure he wanted to extort the guild considering the way he acted before.
So he started with a quite a generous offer in order to see how much Xue Chang sought. But unexpectedly Xue Chang immediately agreed to the sum of cash without even attempting to haggle. His completely threw the large man into disarray, and before he knew it Xue Chang was already up out of his seat collecting the beast core.
He quickly gave the guild master information on where the corpses of the monsters were found and left without another word. After all he had work to do.
The compensation he received from the guild was collected by Tian Hai while Tian Kai was transporting all of their stuff back to the villa. Finished with his work, Xue Chang returned back to his house and immediately went to his bedroom.
Immediately hopping into his bed, AP he grabbed his pillow at the side and shoved his face into it.
"Oh how I've missed this!" He laughed wildly while bouncing up and down all over his bed in delight. His screams and laughter rang everywhere inside the house.
And as expected, Tian Kai appeared soon after with a smirk plastered across his face. Pulling out his own pillow that was brought from his own room, he charged in and swung at Xue Chang madly.
The two of them smacked each other back and forth with pillows like children during a sleep over, and only stopped when they heard the front door opening.
Tian Hai entered the villa tiredly and tossed a large bag of coins onto the counter near the kitchen. But the. He turned around to find Xue Chang and Tian Kai standing there frozen with a strange look on their faces.
Seconds later, Tian Hai could be seen running across the house with two people following behind him throwing their pillows at him.
Although these acts seemed quite childish, it was a great relief from the constant danger and action they faced the past few days. This was a rare chance for them to act like the young adults most of them were. Although Tian Hai and Tian Kai seemed quite mature, they were still quite young considering everything.
Once the three of them finished playing around, Tian Kai spent some time making tea while Xue Chang and Tian Hai played chess.
Moving his pieces around the board slowly, the two people talked a bit while playing.
"So now what? Are we planning to go on another hunt later?"
"No, not this time. We have bigger fish to fry..." taking another one of Tian Hai's pieces, Xue Chang's face became much more grave than usual, "The fight we had back then made me realize something, I am still far too weak. I need to find a way to increase my strength in a short period of time."
"But how will you do that without cultivation?" This time it was Tian Kai talking to him. The tea was finally completed and he had poured out a cup for each of them.
"I have my ways, I discovered something quite interesting recently. And my intuition tells me that I'll obtain some great success soon enough. Right now I just need to temper myself. Luckily I have a rough understanding of my own strength, I'd say I'm equal to at least a peak level two Qi refinement cultivator."
Going quiet again, he took another piece quickly and added it to the dead pile. Picking up the tea and drinking it, he screeched out lightly from the scalding water.
"Careful it's hot..."
"It dwoesn't mwatter. The pwoint is I need to go into secwusion swoon." Sticking out his burnt tongue, he allowed his life force to quickly heal the wound. At the same time, he reached i to his robes and pulled out something.
"While I do that, I have something you two can work on."
Sliding over the manual he had been working on, he also placed down the beast core right in front of them.
Tian Hai stopped playing for a second as he picked up and opened the manual. As he began reading its contents, his eyes widened in shock.
"This is-"
"Hey let me see!" Tian Kai walked over and also read the contents but he couldn't make heads or tails of it.
"I don't get it, what is this?"
Xue Chang didn't respond as he was too concerned with the chess match. Smirking quietly to himself, he sat there frozen in surprise.
Despite losing almost half of his pieces and taking only two, Tian Hai succeeded in being able to put him in checkmate. With a cold sweat flowing down his back, he turned to face his friend who seemed to be comprehending the manual well.
This was the turning point for all of them.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
UnjustlyUnderpaid
UnjustlyUnderpaid This is probably one of the shortest chapters I have written by far. I did enjoy writing this chapter though as while it doesn’t really do much to the plot itself, this can be considered like a true starting point of the arc. Everything else was almost like an introduction to this moment, but don’t think that means every chapter before this was unimportant! Anyway I hope you enjoyed reading thus far and I hope to see you in later chapters as well!
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