Chapter 78: Can’t Wait to Get on the Road Again
Benton woke feeling good. His efforts of the last few days had paid off with him being able to achieve all his tasks and then some. Best of all, his disciples should arrive no later than early evening, and they all could finally begin the last leg of the voyage to Prosperous Gray Forest Village.
In four weeks at the most, they would arrive, and he could finally found his sect.
He walked down the stairs intending to have a leisurely breakfast in the inn’s common room and was surprised to find the normally quiet area buzzing with voices. Not only was the place more packed than usual, but everyone was talking. And there was only one thing on their minds.
“You didn’t hear?” one man said to another who had just walked in. “The Town Manager is dead. Killed by assassins. They say that the Town Lord was taken out, too. Everyone is waiting for our new leaders to announce themselves.”
“You’re an idiot,” someone who had obviously overheard the first man yelled. “The murderer was a man whose wife was confiscated to pay tax debts, and the Town Lord in turn had that husband executed.”
“No!” another patron yelled. “It was a coup. They got the Town Manager but failed to kill the Town Lord. All the leaders were rounded up, and there’s to be a public execution.”
There seemed to be a hundred versions of what happened, but they all agreed on the point that the Town Manager had been killed. Go Fatty Ren!
The fact that the Town Lord had demonstratively followed through on at least one of the tasks Benton had set made him feel a lot better even if he still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that Fatty Ren held no blame for the conditions in the town other than those arising from simple incompetence.
Benton tended to try to not draw any more notice than necessary when he was in the common room. As it was his second morning eating there, the usual diners had already noted that, though he was a cultivator, he seemed to just want to be left alone.
Today, he decided to attract attention.
He strode purposefully up to a counter and spoke to the innkeeper in a loud voice. “Thank you, innkeeper, for your hospitality and directions your provided.”
“Of course, Esteemed Cultivator. This one was happy to be of service.”