Chapter 7: Chapter 7: Prying Eyes
After suppressing the fear in his heart, Shen Yuan skipped on the bath and decided to make it his priority to reach the servant hall, or he was not sure who else would come for his life.
Servant Hall was no bigger than the combination of five small cottages. It was a proper building with a wooden door and brick walls. The moment he walked in, Shen Yuan saw overseer Jiang sitting at the far end of the hall behind a table.
Shen Yuan stopped dead in his tracks. Every fiber of his being was telling him to throw the wooden axe in his hand and get away from the man, but it was too late.
The man had already noticed him.
"You are late. Pick any one of the lingering tasks and don’t forget to fill your quota." Unlike what Shen Yuan’s paranoid brain was thinking, the man did not even raise his head to look at him. He just sat there, casually flipping through the pages of a book titled ’Senior Sister Begs For Mercy When Junior Brother showed her his Exquisite "Swordplay."’
Ba-dump! Ba-dump!
"Greeting Supervisor Jiang." ignoring the thumping beat of his heart, Shen Yuan forced himself to greet the man properly even though he was just flipping through a porn novel.
Then he walked up to the papers lying on the table before the ruthless man and slowly flipped through them.
"I will take these." The task he picked was to clean every latrine used by the servants. While some might think it to be a degrading task, Shen Yuan still felt it to be better than the rest of them.
There was no way he would volunteer to be an experiment subject for the alchemist of the cult or subject his body to test the effects of aphrodisiacs or Gu insects from other departments.
"Whatever, place the tokens on the side and leave."
Shen Yuan did just that and walked out of the Servant Hall. Only then did Overseer Jiang raise his head to look in the direction he left. "Interesting. Why did I not notice someone like him before? Whatever, the only thing that matters is to see who survives by the end of the three-month deadline."
Saying this, he flipped through the next page of the book while licking his lips. "Maybe I should also visit Senior Sister Yu again."
...
"I should complete my daily quota first before doing anything else." Not wanting to smell like shit all day, Shen Yuan decided to visit the forest surrounding the servant district.
Despite the tasks they took to earn money within the cult, the servants had to submit 100 kg of wood every day. If someone missed the deadline even for a day, they would not be allowed to eat the whole week.
One could only guess what they would do to the repeated offenders.
Thwack!
On his way, Shen Yuan saw several servants like him chopping trees before cutting them into small logs.
As he was looking at these servants, they also looked at him. They were eyeing him like a stray animal who had wandered into their territory.
Ignoring their gazes, Shen Yuan went deeper into the woods and found a desolate spot before he also started chopping a tall tree.
"Ugh, this hunger is kiling me." Ever since he broke through the body tempering stages, Shen Yuan had been feeling an uncontrollable sense of hunger. No matter how hard he tried to suppress it, the feeling only grew stronger.
Not thinking much into it, he swung the axe in his hands at the tree, expecting it to chip away some wood from the tree.
Thanks!!
But that did not happen...
With just a casual swing he managed to imbed the axe ten inches into the tree. It was then, Shen Yuan finally realised the extent of his powers. His eyes widened in shock as he looked down at the deep cut on the tree.
Shen Yuan wanted to go again, this time with more force. But he stopped himself immediately. Not because he was not curious about how much stronger he had gotten but because he sensed a tail.
Even without turning he noticed a pair of eyes sticking on his back.
’Is it because of the updated stats points? I feel so sensitive to everything.’ Be it his sense of danger or being spied on, Shen Yuan felt like everything was on heightened mode. ’I should probably hide my strength. Can’t trust anyone here.’
Even though he was curious who was keeping an eye on him, Shen Yuan did not alert the perpetrator and started swinging with the same force as before.
Thwack!
’How long will this take?’ Even with his newfound powers, Shen Yuan was nowhere near chopping down the tree.
Apparently, humans were not the only things that were different from his old world. Even trees were stronger here and thicker.
The tree he was chopping was almost as thick as a king-sized bed.
"It will take me all day to chop one down." With each grunt, Shen Yuan hit the tree harder, like he was pouring his soul into the swing, but it was only a fraction of what he was capable of. "Thankfully, I won’t have to cut another one."
Time slowly passed; he kept swinging, and the cut on the tree grew wider and deeper. But one thing that did not change were the eyes watching him.
The gaze he felt would occasionally disappear only to reappear after a while. Each time, it felt a little different.
Which made him realize that it was not one person but a group who were following him. They were taking turns to watch him.
’It seems that someone is out for Shen Yuan,’ Shen Yuan thought while leaning against the stump of the tree he had recently chopped down. He was properly taking a break in between his swings to make it look real, even though he felt like he could go on all day. ’I have to wrap things up here and get out ASAP. This hunger is eating me from the inside.’
Grrr!!
Patting his empty stomach, Shen Yuan sat up and started to break the tree down in smaller logs.
The whole thing took him about three hours, even after he had slowed down on purpose.
He pushed through the hunger and finished the quota. Even then he was two hours faster than the old Shen Yuan, and the eyes on him noticed that.
A few meters away, hidden behind a tall tree, Shi Jin hummed to himself while narrowing his sly eyes. "Did he break through to the second stage, or is he venting his anger on that tree because he knows he will not make it even after three months?"
"Guess I can always find out which is which." Giving the working Shen Yuan one last look, he turned around and left the area.
