Chapter 4 Library

  In the Star City, there are many ancient houses, most of which are the residences of various sects. The Sword Repair Sect is also one of the largest in the Star City surrounding the Sword City. To enter these sects, apart from those with exceptional talents, one can only pay to join. As for Ye Chen's talent, although it was not bad, it was not exceptionally outstanding either. At the age of thirteen, he went to take the test, and if he had passed, his life would have been much better than it is now.

  After all, it's not the time of great disaster anymore. Back then, everyone was a soldier, and as long as you wanted to join, you could basically enter. The more people, the stronger the self-protection. Who wouldn't want their sect to have more people? Many sects even actively recruited people. But now that there's no threat from monstrous beasts that can destroy the world, it's understandable that the threshold for entering a sect has been raised.

  Ye Chen didn't have the money, so he could only stand outside and envy those who were able to enter the sect. However, after several years of tempering, Ye Chen no longer had the same desire to enter the sect as before. As he walked along the road, looking at these bustling sects, Ye Chen arrived at a library in the city center.

  This was the library that took in Ye Chen when he had nowhere else to go, giving him a job that allowed him to barely scrape by. Ye Chen is grateful to the library's director and although he has already resigned from his position as an administrator, every month he still takes some time out to help take care of things.

  This is a somewhat dilapidated library, a two-story wooden building with a rather ancient flavor. Rows of bookshelves can be seen outside the door, and an old man sits beside the counter inside the door, looking listless and lethargic, his eyelids even drooping from time to time, with a sleep-deprived appearance.

  Ye Chen smiled slightly and headed towards the library. Due to the presence of computers, very few people now come to this old-fashioned library to slowly savor a book in their hands. Although people nowadays are not as frivolous as they were before the Great Calamity, their appreciation for time is even more extreme than it was in the past. They seize every moment to improve themselves, either by cultivating their abilities or using technological advancements to enhance their bodies.

  "Old Hu!" Ye Chen stood at the edge of the counter and called out in a low voice to the old man who was dozing off.

  "What's going on? Ah, it's you young fellow. This month is coming so early. Did you hunt down a monster?" Old Hu nodded his head and opened his eyes, asking naturally, then when he saw Ye Chen, he burst out laughing.

  "Haha, Old Hu is really insightful, luckily caught a mountain cat and sold some credit points, basically enough for next month's living." Ye Chen said with a smile.

  "Well, not bad, can easily hunt mountain cats now. It seems you made great progress last month, won't be long before you can go out twice a month." Old Hu nodded and said.

  "Maybe." Ye Chen nodded, he also wanted to go to the outskirts twice a month, but the outskirts were full of opportunities and dangers. The more times you went, the more dangers you would encounter. Although Ye Chen had made great progress recently, he could only hunt low-level demon beasts or wild animals. When encountering high-level demon beasts, he could only run for his life. As for high-level hunters, he could only be robbed. So unless absolutely necessary, Ye Chen usually only went out once a month. After all, he wasn't alone; he had a younger sister to take care of. If he died, his sister would be left with no one to rely on, which was something Ye Chen couldn't bear to think about.

  "Haha, you're here, this old rascal can finally take a good rest. From now on, you'll be in charge of things around here. There's credit points on the computer, just take your monthly salary as usual." With that, Old Hu stood up, stretched his waist and walked out of the library, heading off to who-knows-where. His tall and slender figure didn't look like an old rascal at all. Ye Chen could imagine that when he was young, Old Hu must have been a very majestic person. Who would have thought that in his old age, he'd become the director of this second-hand bookstore?

  Ye Chen thought for a moment, then shook his head again, threw away some messy thoughts, sat in the position where Hu Lao had been sitting before, and waited for borrowers or returners to come over and swipe their credit points.

  The librarian's job is simple, with not much to do, yet he can see many ancient books, and even has a little bit of cultivation. Ye Chen's inner strength technique was learned from here, although it's not an advanced technique, but at least there is one, which is better than nothing.

  As for the credit points, Ye Chen didn't move, since he was 15 years old, he hasn't taken any again. Now what Ye Chen needs to do is wait until everyone in the library has left, and it's his own time to study and cultivate.

  The books in the library are all old, and the people in the library are almost all elderly. The elderly read to recall their youthful memories and alleviate their loneliness during leisure time. Few young people come here seeking knowledge.

  The useful martial arts have been almost swept away by the higher-ups, and those books are all stored in the sect's library or some other hidden place. Even online, there are such secret skills, but to get them online, one has to pay a huge price, or reach a certain level of authority, which is something Ye Chen cannot afford right now.

  This somewhat outdated library gave Ye Chen a convenient place, and it's no wonder that Ye Chen often came here. Although Ye Chen was grateful to the librarian in his heart and sincerely wanted to help, he still wanted to find something useful for himself in this library.

  Ye Chen sat in the chair, quietly waiting for the library to close, then tidied up the disheveled books, and afterwards it was his free time. Usually this kind of free time was also Ye Chen's favorite time, but today it seemed like the heavens had played a joke on him.

  It's not that people come and go, but there are one or two people in this library who sneak around like thieves. For the administrator, a thief is a troublesome thing. Before they steal anything, you can't be sure if someone is a thief or not. If you catch them in the act, it's okay, but if you don't, you can only blame your own bad luck. This has happened before, and fortunately, Old Hu wasn't too concerned about the lost books, but it still made Ye Chen feel depressed for a long time, feeling that he had let Old Hu down.

  For these two sneaky guys, Ye Chen had to stop his cultivation state and instead fixed his gaze on the computer screen in front of him. The computer screen displayed a man and a woman rummaging through books, some of which were even placed out of their original positions.

  What surprised Ye Chen was that the man and woman didn't look like those petty thieves from before. The man was handsome, the woman was beautiful, and their clothes were fashionable. They didn't seem to be people who lacked money or jewelry. Would such people come to steal books?

  Ye Chen was a bit unsure, but still stared at the computer screen. To be precise, Ye Chen's gaze stayed on the beautiful woman for a longer time. The beautiful woman was elegant and lovely, wearing a pure white long dress, with a head of black flowing long hair draped over her shoulder, which made her look even more refined. The woman was flipping through books in disarray, as if looking for something. The man was also searching for something, but the two did not intersect.

  After a while, the woman seemed to have found what she was looking for. A smile appeared on her beautiful face as she pulled out a book from the shelf. It was a black leather-bound book that Ye Chen had never seen before in all his years at this library. By rights, Ye Chen should have known and organized every book here, but now this beautiful woman held a book he had never laid eyes on.