WTYTIAAN Chapter 74

Chapter 74

Yan Yunqing was still unaware that he had been labeled as a soft-hearted and moderately strong hostage. He entered the restaurant and discovered it was a noodle soup shop.

How unusual.

It must be said that many customs in this other world were similar to those of Western countries on Blue Star, especially their eating habits. They mostly favored fried and grilled meat dishes, as well as hearty soups made with various ingredients. They also consumed pasta, but mostly the dry-mixed kind, similar to Blue Star’s Italian pasta.

Very few people ate noodle soup made from flour. He never expected to find a noodle soup restaurant in this Free City.

Yan Yunqing casually found a seat. It wasn’t mealtime, so the restaurant was sparsely populated and felt deserted, almost desolate.

“Boss? Anyone here?” Yan Yunqing called out.

Some movement came from the kitchen, and after a moment, a dusty-looking middle-aged man came out. He had a full beard and a towel draped around his neck. His hair was meticulously wrapped in a cloth. He lifted the curtain and glanced out, not surprised to see Yan Yunqing, a stranger, and casually asked.

“Only vegetable noodle soup is available now. Nothing else.”

Yan Yunqing glanced at the level above the man’s head and was surprised to see that he was a level 39 NPC. What was going on in this Free City? Even a small restaurant cook had a high level.

Yan Yunqing figured that the shop must have been open for a long time and probably wouldn’t be too bad, so he simply replied, “Okay.”

The bearded man nodded, lifted the curtain again, and went back inside. Soon, Yan Yunqing heard the sound of a fire being lit.

Feeling a bit bored, and seeing that there was no door blocking the kitchen curtain, he walked to the doorway, gently lifted a corner of the curtain, and peeked inside.

The bearded man was kneading a ball of dough in his hands, pinching both ends and casually swinging it a few times. The dough in the middle stretched into thin noodles. He folded the ends together and swung it a few more times, making the noodles even thinner.

After repeating the action several times, a bunch of noodles were ready. The bearded man deftly pinched off the end of the dough and threw the noodles into a steaming pot. The broth simmering inside already emitted a meaty aroma, and Yan Yunqing was sure it was made from meat bones.

He never expected that there would be a ramen master in this other world. Yan Yunqing was overcome with emotion. Since arriving in this world, everything from Blue Star had been far away from him. A strange world, strange customs, strange people, everything was unfamiliar.

But the bearded man’s ramen-making skills suddenly stirred up some homesickness in him.

“Instead of waiting outside, you came here to supervise, afraid I’d poison you?” The bearded man didn’t even need to turn around to speak bluntly.

Yan Yunqing wasn’t surprised. After all, this bearded man was level 39. How could he not know that someone had suddenly appeared behind him?

“I was just a little bored, so I came to take a look,” Yan Yunqing said. “Uncle, your noodle-making skills are very skillful. Did you learn it yourself?”

The bearded man turned his head and looked at Yan Yunqing, seemingly surprised that Yan Yunqing would talk to him about noodle-making techniques. He replied calmly, “Not really. This is a family craft. My ancestors were noodle makers.”

Yan Yunqing was surprised. “A family craft?”

“Is that a problem?” the bearded man asked.

Yan Yunqing shook his head. “Not at all. I just find it very novel. It seems like very few other places eat noodles like this.”

The bearded man glanced at Yan Yunqing’s attire and snorted softly. “You’re making a fuss over nothing. The food here is all like this. As an outsider, you’ll get used to it after a few days.”

Yan Yunqing stroked his chin, but he found the bearded man’s statement a bit strange.

Generally speaking, a region’s eating habits vary due to environmental differences. Based on the local customs here, they should be more accustomed to eating meat and drinking heartily.

Instead of eating this delicate carbohydrate-rich noodle soup, which seemed more like something that would be eaten in Bato Vita, where the climate is mild.

But the bearded man said that the food here was all like this, which was completely contrary to Yan Yunqing’s understanding. This was a bit strange.

Yan Yunqing opened the mini-map to study it. Since he had leveled up to 40, the mini-map was no longer just a mini-map. It could be zoomed in and out. Yan Yunqing zoomed it all the way out to see the entire continent map.

Free City…

Yan Yunqing paused. He looked at the location of the Free City and was stunned.

He had never looked carefully at the world map of Ermann before. He only knew that the Free City was located on the southwestern side of the Ermann Continent, in a desert area, an ungoverned region.

Now, after careful comparison, the location of that desert was extremely familiar. Using the unchanging Sea of Death as a reference, that desert should be the location where the Demon King established the Eternal Empire.

He had never bothered to find out what that region had become after the fall of the Eternal Empire. Yan Yunqing had always assumed that the region had been divided up by the two great empires. But now, it seemed that the Eternal Empire, especially the area around the Eternal Capital, had become a desert on the map.

That’s not right. He remembered that the reason he chose to build the imperial capital there was because the game interface showed that the resources there were the most abundant, and even the land was the most fertile. That’s why the Demon King chose it as the location to build the imperial capital.

How could it have turned into a desert in just a thousand years?

Even if the world changed, it wouldn’t change this quickly, right? Could it be because the wars back then were too severe, turning the land into a desert?

But from this perspective, this Free City located in the desert…

In just a short while, the bearded man had finished cooking the noodles. He took out an empty bowl from the cupboard, put some unknown seasonings into it, scooped up the noodles from the broth, and put them into the bowl. Then, he used a ladle to pour a spoonful of broth into the bowl, and a steaming aroma immediately filled the air.

Yan Yunqing suddenly asked the bearded man, “Uncle, have you and your ancestors always lived in this Free City?”

The bearded man picked up the bowl of noodle soup, gave Yan Yunqing a strange look, motioned for him to move aside a little, and then walked out with the bowl of noodle soup. “Yes, where else could we live if not here? The people of other countries don’t recognize us residents of the Free City.”

The bowl filled with noodle soup was placed on the table with a muffled thud. Without turning his head to look at Yan Yunqing, he said in a slightly self-deprecating tone, “Those people always think that the people living in the Free City are criminals, inferior people, only fit to be slaves.”

“Tell me, where else can we go besides living in this barren place?”

After speaking, the bearded man didn’t wait for Yan Yunqing to echo his words. He took down the towel hanging around his neck and casually wiped his hands. “Ten copper coins. Just put them on the counter.”

He turned around, not at all worried that Yan Yunqing would eat the noodles and leave without paying, and walked back into the kitchen.

Yan Yunqing looked at the bearded man’s figure disappearing behind the curtain, and his heart stirred slightly.

So, most of the residents of this Free City should be… the descendants of those who survived the wars of the Eternal Empire.

Yan Yunqing sat down at the table, moved the bowl of noodles in front of him, and avoided the knives and forks from the box on the table, directly choosing the wooden chopsticks.

It had been a long time since he had used chopsticks. Such a nostalgic feeling.

No wonder the bearded man said that the food here was all like this. It seemed to have been passed down from their ancestors, and the source… was him, the Demon King. Who else would promote Hua Country cuisine and eating habits in this other world?

Yan Yunqing ate a bowl of noodle soup with a strong taste of home, wiped his mouth, and took out coins from his money bag, as the bearded man had said, and placed them on the counter, before leaving the noodle shop.

Hearing the sound outside, the bearded man prepared to come out and clear the bowl, and was stunned to see the neatly placed used chopsticks on the table, and then looked towards the counter, and found that the counter was not the ten copper coins he had expected, but a shiny gold coin.

The bearded man frowned, and without saying anything, walked forward and put the gold coin into the drawer, and then took out a small notebook, and recorded on it with crooked handwriting: Black and red surplus 99 silver 90 copper.

After recording all this, he began to clean up the remaining bowls and chopsticks of Yan Yunqing.

*

Yan Yunqing came out of the noodle shop, and continued to stroll around this city of yellow sand. On the way, he noticed the vague gaze again, and found a weapon shop, Yan Yunqing stood at the door with his back to the street, making a gesture of selecting weapons.

He easily picked up a scimitar, leaned closer to examine it carefully, and moved his wrist slightly. The blurry reflection on the scimitar showed the scene behind Yan Yunqing.

Yan Yunqing’s eyes swept across the crowd passing behind him and accurately captured the figures of several children.

Eh? Aren’t these the children who wanted to steal his money bag just now?

Were they… following him?

Yan Yunqing felt very novel. Before, he was the one following others, but now someone was following him.

Although they were just some children.

Then let him see what these children wanted to do!

Yan Yunqing put down the scimitar and left the weapon shop.

In fact, Yan Yunqing had always been very tolerant of children, especially obedient and well-behaved children. He didn’t have any malicious intentions towards the children who wanted to steal his money bag just now. Anyway, there were at most a few copper coins in the money bag, and his large assets were all in the backpack, which those children couldn’t steal even if they wanted to.

Now that he knew that 80% of this Free City were descendants of the Demon King’s former subjects, Yan Yunqing’s tolerance for them was even higher.

No matter why he abandoned the game, these people did experience the destruction of their homes once again because of the disappearance of the Demon King, becoming homeless refugees, and their descendants evolved into the ‘criminals’ of the Free City.

Yan Yunqing turned his footsteps and walked into a sparsely populated alley, seemingly unintentionally. After turning a corner, he quickly ran up the wall in a few steps, squatting on the wall to wait for the little tails behind him to come.

Sure enough, after waiting for a short while, several small figures appeared at the alley entrance. One of them, thin and tall, looked inside. Seeing that the alley was empty, he was shocked and said, “Nika, we seem to have been discovered. The Gold Nugget ran away!”

Yan Yunqing almost staggered and fell off the wall when he heard how these children called him.

What the hell is Gold Nugget? How could it sound so unpleasant? It would be better to call him Golden Fat Sheep!

The little girl who was called Nika also poked her head in to take a look. Seemingly noticing something, she raised her head and met Yan Yunqing’s eyes.

Yan Yunqing even gave her a friendly smile.

Nika was stunned at first, never expecting that Yan Yunqing would be squatting on the wall. She paused, then her expression changed, and she turned her head to run, not forgetting to remind her companions, “Run!”

They were all children who lived together for a long time, and they were extremely tacit. After Nika gave the order, none of them questioned her words, and turned and scattered.

Seeing this, Yan Yunqing jumped down quickly and accurately grabbed Nika’s collar. “Don’t run, weren’t you the ones looking for me?”

Nika was too thin and weak, and her body didn’t seem to be in good condition. Even though she was the first to yell “Run!”, her movements were not as agile as the other children. She fell behind a few steps and was picked up by Yan Yunqing like a little chick.

Nika secretly cursed in her heart. She once again affirmed this person’s vigilance. She shouldn’t have followed him personally. At least if another child had been sent, they would have had a chance to escape from this person’s hands, but her body would only drag herself down.

She kept regretting, but it was useless now, because she had already been caught. No matter how much she regretted or reflected now, it was useless.

So now she could only—

Yan Yunqing picked up the little girl and turned her around to face him, and discovered that the little girl’s face was pale, her round eyes were filled with tears, and after Yan Yunqing looked over, they fell down in large drops.

She opened her mouth slightly, but didn’t make any crying sounds. Instead, she was breathing weakly, seeming to have a little difficulty breathing, which scared Yan Yunqing.

Because he clearly saw a [Weak] debuff pop up on the little girl’s status bar, and at the same time, her not-so-large health bar was slowly decreasing.

Yan Yunqing: ?!

No, he just picked up a child for a moment, so how did he make her Weak? How could this Weak debuff come with slowly losing health???

Yan Yunqing quickly put the little girl down, smoothed her wrinkled collar, and said, “Hey, are you okay?”

Nika’s feet landed on the ground, and her face was still pale. She covered her heart and breathed with difficulty, tears still falling down in large drops. Her palm-sized face didn’t have a trace of blood, so pitiful.

Yan Yunqing frowned and looked at the little girl’s appearance. He had a guess in his heart.

This little girl was small and obviously underdeveloped. She was startled and had difficulty breathing, and her hand was covering the location of her heart. How did it look like congenital heart disease?

But Yan Yunqing wasn’t a doctor, and he couldn’t accurately judge whether the little girl had heart disease, and he didn’t know how to treat it after the disease broke out, or whether this other world had a way to treat heart disease.

He squatted down in front of Nika, and searched in his backpack. The only treatment-related potion he had was the Small Blue Bottle he concocted. He couldn’t concoct other potions without a recorded recipe. Yan Yunqing had originally planned to enter the Sigret Academy to get some potion recipes.

And he didn’t have any healing skills. Yan Yunqing’s skill panel was mainly violent DPS, with at most a few escape skills and status skills, but not a single healing skill.

After all, whether it was the Demon King or Yan Yunqing, they had a super-milk supporting elf by their side in the early stages, so why would he need to feed himself milk.

Faced with Nika, who was continuously losing health, Yan Yunqing also felt a sense of helplessness. He thought about it, took out the Small Blue Bottle, and planned to treat a dead horse as a living one—no, treat a living person as a dead horse… that’s not right…

In short, let’s try it first!

At least the Small Blue Bottle had the effect of restoring health. Since the performance of this suspected heart disease’s [Weak] debuff on the panel was continuous health loss, as long as he stabilized this child’s health bar and didn’t let it completely return to zero, it should be okay?

Yan Yunqing unplugged the stopper of the Small Blue Bottle and said to Nika in the gentlest tone possible, “You’re feeling very uncomfortable right now. I have a potion here that should have some effect. At least it can make you feel better. I know it’s hard to swallow when you can’t breathe, but you have to try to drink a little bit. Do you understand?”

Nika’s tears were still falling down, her eyes were wet and her vision was blurry, but she could vaguely detect that the person squatting in front of her didn’t have malicious intentions. She knew that her [Observation] had automatically started working.

The panic in her heart subsided a little. The person in front of her seemed to be a soft-hearted person. Nika nodded with tears in her eyes, indicating that she understood what Yan Yunqing said, and tried her best to take a step towards Yan Yunqing, actively showing weakness.

Seeing this, Yan Yunqing directly put his arm around Nika and brought the mouth of the Small Blue Bottle closer to her mouth, supporting her back with his other hand to prevent her from falling over due to instability.

Nika tried to breathe, feeling a sweet taste on the tip of her tongue. It was difficult to swallow when she couldn’t breathe smoothly, but Nika’s desire to survive had reached its peak at this moment. She tried to swallow, and the sweet liquid flowed down her throat, but more of it overflowed from the corners of her mouth, wetting the knee that was kneeling in front of her.

Yan Yunqing had already tried his best to control the tilting angle of the Small Blue Bottle, but still a lot of the recovery potion overflowed from the corners of Nika’s mouth. Out of a whole bottle of Small Blue Bottle, Nika only swallowed about a quarter of it.

But fortunately, when Nika was swallowing the recovery potion in small sips, her slowly decreasing health bar stagnated and began to tremble and jump from side to side, deducting a little bit and increasing a little bit, which made Yan Yunqing’s heart tremble.

After drinking a bottle, Yan Yunqing threw it away casually and took out another Small Blue Bottle, using the same method to pour it down for Nika. This bottle was much better, and Nika drank nearly half of it.

With two bottles of recovery potion poured down, Nika’s face finally softened a lot, no longer as pale as a white paper like just now. Her health bar finally began to rise, no longer deducting, but the [Weak] debuff on the status bar was still not eliminated.

This made Yan Yunqing very worried: Wouldn’t this little girl start losing health again under the influence of this debuff after the effect of the Small Blue Bottle disappeared?

Nika finally recovered, no longer breathing with difficulty, but restoring her usual weak breathing, little by little, little by little returning to normal. Only at this time did she realize what had just happened. Her feet softened and she sat directly on the ground, her whole body limp.

Yan Yunqing was startled: “Are you uncomfortable again?”

This health bar didn’t continue to drop either? How could she stand upright when she was having difficulty breathing just now, but now that the health bar has started to rise, she’s sitting down?

Wouldn’t it be a flash in the pan?!

Nika lowered her head, her hand still covering her heart, feeling her barren heart beating weakly. Nika had a feeling of being alive again.

She sniffed and met Yan Yunqing’s concerned eyes, gently shaking her head, “No… I’m not…”

Before she could finish speaking, she was interrupted by a sharp child’s voice.

“What are you doing to Nika?!”

Finally discovering that Nika hadn’t followed, the children who found their way back despite their fear discovered that Nika was sitting on the ground, and the Gold Nugget in their eyes was approaching Nika and didn’t know what he was doing!

The children briefly forgot their fear and rushed up excitedly, wanting to knock Yan Yunqing away, “Let go of Nika!!!”