My mom is waiting for treatment, and you're summoning me to be a hero?

Named Beicheng.

It is completely different from the old and simple style of the ancient wooden city.

The city walls alone are over twenty meters high.

It is constructed from huge, gray-black stone blocks.

The city gate was several times wider than that of the ancient wooden city, large enough to accommodate several horse-drawn carriages side by side.

It was midday, and the crowds of people and the convoys loaded with goods were almost overwhelming.

On the grass not far outside the city, a figure was walking slowly.

He was wearing a faded, coarse cloth outfit.

She carefully held a finely crafted wooden puppet dressed in small clothes in her hands.

The man gazed at the silhouette of the brightly lit metropolis in the distance.

A simple look of amazement crossed his face: "This is Mingbei City... It's huge!"

Just as he was about to continue walking forward.

A child, about eight or nine years old, suddenly jumped out from the nearby pile of weeds.

The child was dressed in silk clothes and had a round face.

He clearly came from a wealthy family, but his expression was arrogant.

He put his hands on his hips, raised his chin, and pointed his nostrils at Otmu.

A shrill voice: "Hey! Who are you? Sneaking around like that! Don't you even bow to me, young master?"

The man seemed startled and immediately stopped in his tracks.

He bowed deeply and said, "Greetings, young master. My name is Otem, I am a puppeteer, and also... well, an adventurer."

As he spoke, he gestured to the lifelike puppet in his arms, as if it were proof of his identity.

Seeing his respectful and timid demeanor, the child's arrogance grew even stronger.

She looked at his faded clothes with disdain: "Hmph! You must be another country bumpkin from some backwater! Someone as filthy as you isn't allowed in the city!"

As he spoke, he bent down, picked up a fist-sized stone from the ground, and threw it at Otem.

It happened without warning, and the distance was very close.

Otem seemed not to have reacted, or rather, he didn't dodge at all.

boom!

The stone hit him squarely on the forehead with a dull thud.

Instantly, a large red patch appeared on his forehead, his skin cracked, and blood flowed down his brow bone.

However, he seemed to feel no pain, and still wore that gentle smile.

He even held up a finger and said to the child in an admiring tone, "You are very strong."

As he spoke, he used his free hand to pull out a purse from his pocket that was neither too full nor too empty.

"A young master with such strength as you is sure to have a bright future."

The child's eyes widened as he looked at the money bag handed to him.

There were more than a dozen gold coins inside, and the clinking sound of the coins excited him.

His eyes darted around.

He grabbed the money bag and weighed it in his hand.

He then tucked it into his pocket and coughed in a mature manner.

"Hmm... seeing as you're so sensible, I'll let you off the hook today. Go inside!"

"Thank you, thank you."

Otmu bowed repeatedly.

He didn't care at all that the blood dripping from his forehead fell into the dust.

Maintaining that gentle, almost eerie smile, he carried the puppet and slowly walked towards the city gate checkpoint.

Even after he was out of the child's sight and the surrounding pedestrians were sparse, the smile on Otem's face remained unchanged.

His lips barely moved, and his voice was so low that only he could hear it: "Why...not teach him a lesson?"

The puppet in his arms seemed to have extremely fine threads connecting its joints to his fingers.

With a barely perceptible tremor in his fingertips, the puppet's mouth opened and closed slightly: "We are adventurers, not like when we were in the Demon King's army. We must abide by the rules and integrate here. As for that brat... someone will teach him a lesson in due time."

Otmu didn't say anything more, but just hugged the puppet and continued walking towards the city gate.

……

The child who had just extorted money from Otem was happily weighing the money bag he had just received.

His little face was full of smugness: "So this is how you make money? Those cowardly out-of-towners are so easy to fool! Am I going to get rich?"

He was already imagining how his father would praise him when he got back.

Suddenly, I saw another person walking towards me in the distance.

The man was wearing a black cloak covered in dust and some dark stains, looking travel-worn.

He was carrying a long, unremarkable, jet-black sword.

He walked slowly, but his steps were extremely steady.

With a sense of exhaustion, as if returning from a long and perilous journey.

It exudes a chilling aura that keeps strangers at bay.

The child's eyes lit up; the prey had come again!

He jogged up to the man in black.

With his hands on his hips, he once again adopted that arrogant demeanor, blocking the middle of the road and raising his voice.

"Hey! You! Who are you? Why don't you bow to me?!"

The man in black did not stop walking, as if he had not seen him or heard him at all.

Walk straight ahead of him.

The hood of the cloak covered most of his face, revealing only his sharply defined chin.

The child paused for a moment; this reaction was different from the one with the easy target earlier.

He was a little annoyed, feeling that his "authority" had been challenged.

He bent down, picked up another stone, and shouted, "Hey! I'm asking you a question! Are you deaf?!"

The man in black remained unresponsive, his pace unchanged.

"Hmph! You damned country bumpkin! You don't know any manners!"

The child got angry and hurled the stone in his hand at the back of the man in black's head!

The stone flew out with a whooshing sound.

Just as it was about to hit, the man in black seemed to have eyes in the back of his head.

He tilted his head slightly to the side, and the stone flew past the edge of his cloak, landing in the grass in the distance.

The child hadn't yet realized what this precise dodge meant.

As the man in black turned his head, the hand holding the sword seemed to move slightly.

A dark, icy sword light flashed, so fast it was like an illusion.

It flashed by in the air.

The child felt a cool sensation on his neck, followed by a gushing of warm liquid.

He opened his mouth wide, but no sound came out.

Looking down in disbelief, she saw that the front of her expensive silk dress was quickly stained red.

"You... you country bumpkin..."

puff-

Leaving behind his last words, the boy collapsed to the ground, ending his grand undertaking that he had yet to begin.

The man in black never stopped moving.

He didn't even turn his head to look at the corpse, as if he had just casually brushed aside a fallen leaf.

He walked past the child's still-warm body without pausing for a moment.

A gentle breeze stirred his black cloak, revealing his young yet utterly aloof profile beneath.

His eyes were calm and expressionless beneath the wisps of hair framing his forehead.

There was only a faint, barely perceptible anxiety deep within.

It was Lin Mo.

He remarked with a sigh, "Even kids dare to rob people on the street. It seems that Mingbei City is not only prosperous but also quite chaotic."

Yin Xue poked his head out from his collar: "Hehe, there's a lot of people in the forest, but you did pretty well!"

Lin Mo didn't answer her, but simply said, "When will I be able to see my original world again?"

Yin Xue shrugged: "Don't rush. Although you're already level 20, it's very troublesome to reconnect with your original world. I need to sense it first. Find a quiet place and give me some time."

Yin Xue added, "Don't forget, after you see the original world, you have to help me retrieve the soul fragments from the Mingbei City Church."

Lin Mo took a deep breath, nodded, and then walked towards Mingbei City.