“Welcome to Jade Healing Clinic, dear customer!”

William stared blankly at the girl with the cheery smile behind a plain counter. She was pretty, exceptionally so. If she was to be described in one of his beloved novels, it would no doubt include plenty of words similar to being able to squeeze water by pinching her skin and other such nonsense.

William had a much simpler way to describe her.

A monster.

[Name: Li Xinyue | Level: 93]

William didn’t care if this girl was the most attractive he had ever seen. He wouldn’t care if she was the ugliest either. All he wanted to do was try his best not to irritate her in any way.

Too bad William had already failed at that.

“Master! There’s another bumpkin that keeps staring at me! Can I kill this one?”

“Wait!” William’s suddenly clammy hands fumbled with the jade token the guard gave him before shakily handing it to her. “I was sent here for healing!”

“Hmm?”

William blinked when he found the token in the girl’s hands. He looked at his own and saw that he was holding onto air.

“That guard gave this to you?”

William nodded quickly, hoping to get this girl’s thought as far from killing him as possible.

“… Strange, I thought he was saving this for the merchant girl.”

William’s ears perked up, happy that he could attach himself to someone the girl knew. “Wang Xiaoling is my boss!”

“Who’s Wang Xiaoling?” Li Xinyue asked with a confused look.

“The merchant girl you mentioned. Wang Xiaoling is her name.” William didn’t dare have thoughts of ridicule to the girl’s obliviousness. You don’t think badly about monsters. You also don’t wonder how a level nine guard had a token to a clinic with a monster as an attendant.

“I see,” Li Xinyue nodded and shattered the jade token with a squeeze of her fingers.

William flinched, thinking it was over as the girl sauntered toward him with a sneer. The cultivators in the novels sometimes killed mortals for seemingly random reasons. If one of the reasons were to include staring at them for too long, it wouldn’t be a stretch.

“Using Master’s token to heal a mortal’s broken ribs? What an idiot.”

[-1 HP]

William wheezed in pain when Li Xinyue’s hands blurred and poked at his broken ribs, likely making it worse if the notification was anything to go by. It looked like the girl was a sadist and would not kill him painlessly. Still, William felt far worse with the demonic woman trying to suck out his soul.

This was nothing.

[-1 HP]

William spat out a mouthful of blood. It should have splattered on Li Xinyue’s pristine clothes, but it seemed to phase through her and added a red decoration to the floor.

One hit point left until William’s second life ended prematurely.

“Hm?” Li Xinyue frowned at the deathly aura that surged from William’s body, “You can’t even handle the adjustment of your ribs without almost dying?”

William glared at her, barely able to believe that this was the result of her attempting to heal him. He should have just slept it off instead of insisting on getting professional help. There was even a thought that appeared in his mind that Li Jie was scheming to get rid of him for some strange reason.

“You!” Li Xinyue pointed a finger at William angrily, “If you didn’t have Master’s token, I would have plucked your eyes out for this disrespect!”

“Yue’er!”

Li Xinyue froze for a second before all the disdain left her expression. William had the metaphorical front-row seat to the change. He had to admire how quickly she went from an arrogant cultivator to innocent maiden.

“Master! He looked at me lustfully!”

“What! No, I didn’t!” William protested.

[Name: Huang Jingyi | Level: ?]

William’s heart skipped a beat. He knew it wasn’t the best time to be thinking about levels when there was a little bitch trying to frame him, but the question mark where the level should be made him curious.

Since Li Xinyue’s level could be seen, at what point did it become hidden? Why could he see Huang Jingyi’s name and not Daoist Chen’s? And how do cultivation levels equate to the levels he could see?

[SAFE MODE has disabled data on cultivation levels]

William wasn’t as frustrated as usual at the alert. It wasn’t necessary to have that information at the moment, and it was nice to find out that it would eventually be available.

“Enough, Yue’er!”

William flinched at the stern voice right in front of him. Was this what Daoist Chen meant when he said his master had a habit of getting distracted? If so, William knew he had to get rid of it before he got himself killed by standing still like an idiot.

“No matter who enters this clinic, they must be treated respectfully. Don’t force me to take the recipes away again!”

William shivered when Li Xinyue looked at him resentfully as if he was the cause of all her problems. As if a thirteen-year-old mortal could do anything to a monstrous girl who had to be near twenty.

“As for you,” Huang Jingyi glared at William, “Consider yourself lucky that you carried that token, or I would have flayed you alive for staring at my disciple.”

William had assumed that the old man was someone reasonable when he had started to scold the girl. Who knew that he was a hypocrite.

That wasn’t the end of the man’s warning. William’s breath choked off as the pressure of the old man’s power surrounded him.

He was tired of having his life threatened, and he hated that there was no way to turn the situation around. All of a sudden, William understood why the main characters in most cultivation novels became psychotic killers with death as the solution to most things.

It seemed ridiculous while reading it, but experiencing the needless torment gave him a different perspective.

Just when the darkness started to seep into William’s vision, the pressure suddenly disappeared, leaving him to gasp in much-needed air.

“I’ll see to the boy. Go to the back and watch the cauldron, Yue’er.”

William was vaguely aware of Li Xinyue saying something before walking away, but he was busy trying his best to stamp down the rage that filled him. Since it seemed these were the type of cultivators that were clearly unreasonable, any sign of defiance would undoubtedly result in death.

“Now, let’s get you healed.”

William hadn’t realized that he had fallen onto the floor until he was lifted to his feet. It was the second time today that a cultivator had moved him without touching him.

“Hm, Yue’er was on the right track, but she didn’t consider that you were so weak.”

William kept his mouth shut, knowing that the man was talking to himself.

“Unfortunately, you’ll need an immortal pill,” Huang Jingyi sighed, “What a waste of a pill. No matter, since that boy used the token, I’ll heal you regardless of the cost.”

William’s mouth was forced open before a pill was thrown inside. He immediately recognized it as the Vitality Restoration Pill with the rush of healing energy that filled his body.

[+9 HP]

William groaned in relief as all the damage on his body disappeared once again. He looked at the old man, making sure to look as grateful as possible.

“Thank you,” William said sincerely.

William had no intention of getting injured by the old man because of something as silly as dignity. Besides, he had decided to borrow from the psychotic main characters to vow revenge once he was strong enough.

[Side Quest added: Return to Jade Healing Clinic and make Huang Jingyi kneel with your superior cultivation]

William erased the alert and wondered what the point of these quests were. With it being automatically added, it had no penalties for failure. Still, he never got an explanation of what the reward was for success.

[SAFE MODE has disabled details for user-generated quests]

“Very interesting,” Huang Jingyi stroked his beard, “You show signs of already having used a Vitality Restoration Pill. And it was one of a higher grade considering how much your body resisted my pill.”

William’s eyes widened in surprise, not knowing it could be so easily discovered. Luckily, the man didn’t seem to hold any ill intent. It only took the briefest of moments for him to decide that revealing Daoist Chen wouldn’t be of any harm.

Especially since keeping it to himself obviously wasn’t an option with the way Huang Jingyi stared at him curiously. Besides, it may even get William some sort of benefit, though what that could be he didn’t know.