After Lin Fan left the manor, he quickly headed off to one of the warehouses in the town.
He needed supplies before heading out and there was no better place to get them than a place that he owned.
So he came to this warehouse that had supplies for the entire town.
There was always an excess stored there, so it didn't matter if he were to take some for himself.
After all, it all belonged to him as he was the mayor.
It was much easier than going out and buying everything.
After taking what he needed, he headed to the gate of the town. He didn't summon out Hi and the carriage since they attracted too much attention and he wanted to leave the town without being noticed.
It was just too bad that when he arrived at the street leading out of the town, there was already a crowd that had gathered.
The moment that he arrived, all eyes turned on him and many people started coming over.
They didn't come all the way over to him and just gathered around him before…
They started a parade!
There were girls dancing, there were large festive lion dances, there were drums and marching bands, it had everything that a normal parade would need.
When Lin Fan saw all of this, he couldn't stop three black lines from appearing on his forehead.
But before he could say anything, there was someone that came up from behind him.
When he saw this person, he immediately recognized her based on her black cloak.
This was Zi Qiu, the leader of the secret team under Yue Lan.
She had made this team to take care of things that couldn't be taken care of with normal means, so they would always be working in the shadows. But this team was also made of the people that were trusted the most by Yue Lan, so there was no need to doubt their loyalty.
When Zi Qiu arrived, without saying a thing, she offered a piece of paper to Lin Fan.
Lin Fan was surprised to see this, but he took the piece of paper from her.
After handing this piece of paper over, Zi Qiu disappeared from his line of sight.
Lin Fan opened the paper and when he saw what was written on it, he couldn't help revealing a faint smile.
This was handwriting that he recognized…
"Good luck and stay safe."
When he read this, there was a stream of warmth that flowed into his heart.
As for who wrote it, who else would it be if not…
Yue Lan?
That was why she had called for Zi Qiu and had sent her off. She even had Zi Qiu prepare this parade just to send him off.
So while Lin Fan still felt awkward about the parade, he accepted it in the end and played along more enthusiastically than normal.
In a sense, this was Yue Lan's way of showing that she cared about him, so he had to respond in kind.
When Yue Lan later received the report from Zi Qiu about how Lin Fan had acted in the parade, she also couldn't help revealing a faint smile as a warm feeling filled her heart.
…
Three days later, Lin Fan finally arrived at the village.
This village wasn't that far away, but during his journey, he had been sidetracked.
He had run into a Foundation Realm Spirit Beast and his pets had wanted to test out their powers against it, so he had spent a day just torturing this Foundation Realm Spirit Beast.
The Foundation Realm Spirit Beast was a powerful spirit beast, but when compared to Lin Fan, it was like a child. Lin Fan was able to easily use his power to suppress this spirit beast, making it willing to act as a training partner for his pets.
As for the fear of it "accidentally" hurting his pets, it wasn't possible with Hayase here.
This spirit beast was a lizard spirit beast, so if it could evolve, it would eventually become a dragon.
Hayase was a real dragon, so there was an innate pressure that came from Hayase that suppressed the lizard spirit beast. As long as Hayase was there, it wouldn't dare do anything out of line since it was afraid of Hatyase crushing it.
So it allowed itself to be tortured over and over again by Lin Fan's pets.
Even though most of his pets were still in the Qi Gathering Realm, being hit by these small attacks again and again built up over the course of an entire day, so it was covered in bruises by the time that they were done.
Of course, they didn't go as far as killing this lizard spirit beast since they were using it to train themselves. It would be like repaying kindness with evil and Lin Fan didn't feel like it was right.
So the original plan was to let it go after sparring with it for a day.
But as it was being beaten up again and again, Lin Fan saw that its affection (fear) kept increasing until a prompt appeared.
Lin Fan thought about it before agreeing to the prompt and taming this spirit beast.
Lin Fan was surprised to find that this lizard spirit beast was actually a Flame Salamander since he had already seen a Flame Salamander before and it didn't look like this.
This Flame Salamander wasn't a giant lizard like the one that he had seen before, but rather it was a tiny lizard that was only around the size of a dog. It looked very similar to the komodo dragons that he had seen in the zoo back on Earth.
When he looked carefully at its status screen, he found that there was a (Variant) word that was written beside its species.
Variant, that was a word that immediately attracted Lin Fan's attention.
That was because it was a word that he had already seen many times in novels and mangas.
Whenever there was a spirit beast that had this description, they would always be some kind of special spirit beast that had some kind of backstory. The spirit beasts that had this kind of description would all have some special destiny that they would need to follow…
But Lin Fan didn't think that this was true in real life.
This was the real world and it wouldn't turn out like the novels that he had read.
In the real world, this variant could be a good or a bad thing. It might mean that because of the variation, this Flame Salamander might never be able to break through again since it had used up all of its potential. Or it could mean that because of this variation, this Flame Salamander had the chance to evolve into something greater.
For now, he didn't know which of these would happen, so he could only observe the Flame Salamander that he had tamed.
But he was feeling excited about the future prospects of this Flame Salamander.
And no matter what, this Flame Salamander was already in the Foundation Realm, so it was already quite strong compared to normal spirit beasts. Even if it couldn't break through in the future, there were many places that Lin Fan could leave this Flame Salamander.
After all, there were girls in his harem that weren't that good at cultivating either and needed pets to guard them.
So he could always leave this variant Flame Salamander with them.
Since he had tamed it, Lin Fan decided to give it a name as well.
After thinking for a while, Lin Fan finally said, "Igneel, that is your new name."
As he was thinking, he couldn't help thinking of a famous fire dragon from his world, so he chose to name the Flame Salamander after it. He was hoping that this variant description meant that it would one day be able to evolve into a fire dragon.
As if responding to his hopes, there were flames that suddenly appeared around Igneel and swirled around it. After swirling around for a bit, the flames suddenly disappeared and the red colour around Igneel became much brighter, as if something had fundamentally changed about it.
After looking at Igneel for a bit, Lin Fan suddenly remembered something and raised his hand before spreading it out.
With a thought, there was a bead of water that suddenly appeared in his hand.
It was naturally a drop of Clear Water that he had formed from the Clear Water Bead in his dantian.
When this drop of Clear Water appeared, all of the pets that had been resting on the side suddenly turned to look in its direction.
Igneel had also felt the specialty of the drop of Clear Water, but since Hayase was showing his interest, Igneel didn't dare do anything.
Lin Fan waved his hand at the other pets to show that it wasn't their turn and they all turned away with disappointed looks.
He brought the drop of Clear Water over to Igneel who was surprised to see that it was being offered to it. However, since this drop of Clear Water was being offered, Igneel didn't hesitate at all to lick it up from Lin Fan's palm.
That was because Igneel had already seen that Lin Fan was in charge of Hayase, so it had already put Lin Fan at a higher level than Hayase on its hierarchy.
After it licked the drop of Clear Water from Lin Fan's hands, it suddenly burst into flames that were much more intense compared to before.
Those flames lasted a few minutes before finally dying down and it happily looked at Lin Fan as if it was asking for more, but it was disappointed when Lin Fan didn't give it any more drops of Clear Water.
Lin Fan just patted it on its head with eyes that were filled with expectation.
He had seen how powerful the flames it had just released were, so he was looking forward to seeing how this variant Flame Salamander would develop.
Seeing this look, the Flame Salamander couldn't help feeling a bit of fear.
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