Chapter 176 : Chapter 176
If Yi Ning had even a shred of humanity, she wouldn’t act like she didn’t have any at all.
The destination city for Lu Zheng and Lester’s group was a remote city named Esick City.
The city didn’t have any distinctive industries, and it was just like those cities in Japanese-style Western fantasy stories.
Adventurers’ Guild, taverns, inns...
Aside from a bit of necessary farming and livestock, almost the entire city’s industry revolved around serving adventurers heading into the Hottledo Forest to hunt magical beasts or gather materials.
It could be described as an utterly unremarkable and ordinary city.
By the way, the Hottledo Forest was the same forest that Yi Ning and the others had just left.
Inside, there weren’t only a large number of magical beasts capable of using magic, but also many rare materials found exclusively in that forest.
Lester and his group made a living through tasks like subjugating magical beasts and gathering materials.
During the conversation, Lu Zheng repeatedly tried to get more information out of Lester and the others, but no matter how he asked, he couldn’t learn anything more about this planet.
Lester and the others really did seem to be just as uneducated as they claimed.
Even though only Lester was illiterate in the team, all of them were local natives, and only understood things around Esick City and the Hottledo Forest.
Forget about questions like how many continents were on this planet or how many countries were on those continents—anything that went beyond Esick City and the Hottledo Forest would leave them utterly clueless.
“What do you think?”
Lu Zheng leaned in slightly toward Yi Ning, who was lying on his back for some unknown reason and hadn’t spoken a word, and quietly asked her opinion.
In Lu Zheng’s view, he was just a bumpkin taking his first steps off his home planet, lacking experience.
He placed more hope on Yi Ning, a city girl who surfed the interstellar internet all day.
“Don’t worry about what I think just yet.”
“Look over there.”
The well-traveled city girl Yi Ning pointed at the mage girl Eunice, who was following behind Lester.
Look there for what?
Lu Zheng felt a little confused, but out of trust for Yi Ning, he instinctively followed the direction of her finger and glanced over.
What he saw was Eunice’s black-stockinged thigh occasionally peeking out from the gap in her mage robe.
Although it lasted only a split second, Lu Zheng’s superhuman eyesight still allowed him to clearly see the graceful curve of Eunice’s thigh and memorize the intricate and beautiful pattern embroidered on the black stockings.
Realizing how impolite his behavior was, Lu Zheng quickly averted his gaze from Eunice’s black-stockinged thigh and glared at Yi Ning, exasperated.
“What exactly are you making me look at?”
“The black stockings, of course.”
Yi Ning’s tone was absolutely self-assured.
Her matter-of-fact attitude made it hard for Lu Zheng to keep it together.
He admitted, maybe he did kind of, slightly, possibly, sort of like legs—but was now really the time to be looking at thighs?
And from a girl they had just met, no less.
This kind of behavior was downright off-putting!
As if seeing right through Lu Zheng’s thoughts, Yi Ning casually replied, “What nonsense are you thinking about? What I meant was, since that woman is wearing stockings on her legs, there’s a high chance the city we’re heading to has a shop that sells underwear!”
A lingerie store, huh.
Yi Ning’s attention was completely locked onto that subject.
Ever since arriving on this alien planet, she’d been suffering from having no upper body support. The pain in her chest made it hard for her to even walk.
Yi Ning had suffered through the "empty-hanging" situation for far too long, and now she finally had a chance to upgrade her gear.
Lu Zheng was a little confused by what Yi Ning was saying.
He didn’t know what kind of suffering she had been through, nor could he understand why she brought up a lingerie store.
What did that have to do with their previous topic?
He could only, like a robot that hadn’t received a proper command, helplessly repeat the previously unresolved question.
“Stop talking about stockings and underwear already. I just wanted to ask what you think about what Lester and the others said.”
“Lester?”
This time, Yi Ning didn’t go off-topic like before.
She lifted her head slightly and deduced from Lu Zheng’s earlier conversation which person the name referred to.
“You mean that guy who looks like a warrior?”
“Who else?”
Lu Zheng was a bit confused.
The guy had introduced himself right in front of them—why did Yi Ning act like she hadn’t heard a thing?
Yi Ning was always quick to guess what Lu Zheng was thinking.
She tightened her grip around Lu Zheng’s neck, stretched her head out a bit more, and gave him a look like he was a complete idiot.
“Are you stupid?”
“There are more languages in the universe than anyone could count. No matter how much of a genius I am, it’s impossible for me to learn them all.”
At this point, Yi Ning deliberately paused.
Then, under Lu Zheng’s look of sudden realization, she revealed why she hadn’t answered his earlier question.
“I didn’t eat any translation konjac, so how could I understand what they were saying?”
Lu Zheng suddenly understood.
No wonder Yi Ning hadn’t said a word when he was talking with Lester and the others—she couldn’t understand a single thing they said!
Lu Zheng’s eye twitched slightly. “Then are you going to use your translation bat?”
“Of course.”
Yi Ning adjusted her position on Lu Zheng’s back, loosened one hand, and pulled out a piece of translation konjac from her pocket—it looked similar to the one Lu Zheng had used before.
“Want me to help?”
Lu Zheng instinctively asked Yi Ning.
Then he remembered his hands were currently holding up Yi Ning’s thighs, with no free hands at all.
So he simply applied a bit more pressure with the hands holding her legs and leaned forward a little to make sure that even if Yi Ning let go of his neck, she could still stay on his back without falling off.
Then he saw it.
Yi Ning popped the konjac into her mouth, chewed it a few times, and swallowed it.
Lu Zheng: “?”
Wasn’t this thing supposed to be mashed into a stick and smacked on the head?
Why did you just eat it?
“This one’s different from the one you used. It’s the Blue Raccoon version.”
“Doesn’t matter if it’s a foreign language or an alien language, spoken or written—just eat it and you’re good to go!”
Yi Ning gave Lu Zheng a thumbs up and spoke in what sounded exactly like a commercial jingle.
And to Lu Zheng’s ears, that catchy jingle sounded like nothing but mockery.
Lu Zheng’s face turned red, then white.
You had a version you could just eat, and yet you made me eat the stick?
“Just to be sure—was the translation konjac you gave me earlier the only one you had?”
“Nope~ Actually, the one I gave you was the only stick version. It was one-of-a-kind.”
Hearing Yi Ning’s familiar, nonchalant tone—Lu Zheng, redlined.
He felt the weight of Yi Ning on his back and recalled how she had tricked him into eating the stick version earlier.
It didn’t hurt that much, to be fair…
But he did feel like his head had started turning into some kind of Perissodactyla, Equidae family, Equus genus, subgenus Asinus mammal.