Chapter 27: Stealing the pod
When night arrived, the sun-like bulb turned off, and the world became absurdly cold. People huddled back into their homes and got comfortable under their blankets. Meanwhile, Ethan and Scarlett roamed the city in warm sweaters.
Night and darkness did impede them, but they didn't use lights in order not to stand out in the dark. By night, this underground city had become far too eery.
Darkness ominously loomed above them like a heavy burden. Cool winds blasted into the underground cavern, filling the place with a chill that seeped into the bones.
Surrounding the city, the scarecrows that numbered in the hundreds lay there ominously as the birds that circled around the sun-like bulb in the mornings crowed, standing and pecking on the scarecrows. Each bird was nearly half the size of a human.
But regardless of all of that, the silence was heavy, even amidst the bird cries; somehow, no other sound except the cries was there.
"Drink this," said Ethan as he passed her an Energy Drink.
She took it and slowly gulped it down.
Ethan and Scarlett had already been here for some hours, and Ethan had conversed with as many people as possible about the Black Lotus Pod. In the end, he had come to a realization—the Black Lotus Pods were there, but it was inside the Human Matriarch's garden. This was news that he had compiled after talking with many of the traders in the town.
"We need that, or we will remain as weak as this forever." He was now in a new black robe. He had stolen this from another house, and it was clean and smelled much better than the one he wore earlier.
Scarlett was hesitant in his plan to intrude and steal the Pods. "Maybe we could just ask her. It is not really a valuable product, she might sell it to us… right?"
That was wrong, the Matriarch seemed to keep the distribution highly limited. Those things almost never left her spire—even the knowledge of the material being around was because of the last generation Human Patriarch who had never cared about that product.
The matriarch was adamant in keeping it to herself.
"Scarr, are you still saying that?" Annoyed, he shook his head. "She could kill us if we meet her when we are weak! She might not do that, but she could, and I don't want to trust in might not. She is stronger, and my teleportation doesn't work shit around her. Your strength would also probably pale in comparison."
Scarlett bit her lips. "We could ask someone else to go ask for Black Lotus Pods on our behalf. We will pay them with things we steal or things you have in your Dimensional Pocket."
He patted her head, and she tried to push his palm aside, but it was of no use.
She could only grit her teeth as Ethan vanished.
Going together with her to steal would only make things more troublesome; he steals much better when he is alone. She looked towards the center of the city and clenched her hand slightly.
A rocky spire stood there in the middle of the city with a dimmed bulb on top of it. That was the Sunlight Spire where the Human Matriarch lived. There were many caves inside it where she and some of the core figures caring for the city lived.
But only the Human Matriarch was a true threat to Ethan. She took a deep breath and waited, nervously as it was.
***
Ethan opened his eyes inside the spire. As he had seen earlier with his Dimensional Senses, this spire was full of inner cave structures.
With a quick glance around, he noticed nothing special, other than two doorways, where he was and spread out his Dimensional Senses. Ten meters of space around him became his eyes, his ears, his senses. There was a person near his left.
He only had two more Teleportation before he would lose the trust in himself to pull out a fourth one. He ran close to the wall and, with a brisk pace, entered the right-side doorway. Entering inside, it was a room full of sacks—rice sacks, vegetable sacks, and more.
'A place where they store the resources…' He shook his head and walked past it to enter another doorway which led him to another room. His gaze focused, and he saw a small stairway leading upstairs. Without a stop, he climbed, but midway, his heart skipped a beat as another person entered the limits of his Dimensional Senses.
The person was also climbing down the stairs. Ethan vanished and reached behind her on the upper floor. If he met another obstruction, he would leave and come back again when he could use Teleportation 3 more times without worrying whether he would fall asleep due to exhaustion.
He suddenly stopped. He was in a misty room, and in his senses, he felt at least seven figures surrounding him.
All of them were in the white mist, giggling, playing with water, or even jumping into the water. He was in a bathing area—one meant for women.
'A pool? No, a pond inside the spire?'
Luckily for him, none of them noticed him as he was hidden by the stairway. He paused there and looked into the misty room. There was an amazing and beautiful scent in the air, something far more enticing than any cologne on Earth could ever have been.
With his Dimensional Senses, he also saw a huge human-sized black lotus in the middle of the bathing area. Yet, he paused.
There was a woman sleeping on top of the black lotus, naked, her hair falling behind her into the plain waters under her that seemed black due to the rocky flooring.
He couldn't see clearly through the mist and his Dimensional Senses were not especially colorful. But he could make out some of the woman's features.
She had pale skin like that of snow; her eyes were closed, and her lips were a light pink. Her hair, an absurd light purple, was so long that the other naked women in the bath were all cleaning it from different sides of the pool. It seemed to cover the entire pool!
She needed 7 women to clean her hair?!
Ethan was a bit surprised.
The woman was relaxed. She seemed to be contemplating something deeply as she slept. Yet, she had the same feeling as Hungjun. Just by being around her, even at a distance of nearly 10 meters, his Dimensional Travel Ability felt restricted.
If he was not in danger, he might have felt lust, but now, his focus was only on the task. He couldn't steal the Black Lotus Pods when she was around. She was a beautiful obstruction that was still an obstruction.
He couldn't steal stuff from her like he stole from the market.
But he was also filled with relief—cultivators were not omniscient or omnipotent; if they didn't see him, they wouldn't be able to figure out he was there with him just glancing at them or such, especially not when there were so many people here.
That would only be possible if the cultivator was alert and their Divine Sense was flaring.
Ethan had already learned that from the books he had read. He took a deep breath.
He knew how a Black Lotus Pod looked and he could see many here—strewn around the place randomly. In the wet ground, in some naked women's hair, in the Matriarch's long hair, too.
But nothing like that was outside the bathroom. She indeed cared for this resource a lot and Ethan could guess why—it was being used on her hair.
They seemed to value it even more than they seemed to.
Was it the source of the good smell?
Was it used to train in some kind of cultivation method or something?
The room was filled with mist. If he hadn't had Dimensional Senses, even he couldn't have gouged all of this from here. He slowly walked into the bathroom in silence, and his heart started to thud immediately.
Entering only a bit into the room, he was amidst multiple naked women, and Ethan was no gay, he was a straight man.
He held back the discomfort and, taking the few pods that stumbled into his palm, he got out of the bathroom just as he entered, and a second later, he exited the bathroom and… vanished.
His heart was thudding crazily inside his ribs when he appeared before Scarlett. His new black robes also smelled like a woman had hugged him for hours.
She immediately frowned at his rather flushed face.
"What was it like?" she asked.
He showed her a palm full of black little pods.
Black Lotus Pods, acquired!
They now had everything needed to refine the Pill of Comprehension that could completely fuse their Heritage into themselves and make them one with it. After that, nobody would be able to identify them apart from a normal person in this world like Hungjun had so easily done when they met.
"I Teleported three times," Ethan said, "and I am as exhausted as I can be. I probably can go for one more Teleport but it is not a surety. This is my current limit."
Scarlett could see that he was tired, so she didn't question him, and with him, they retreated to the top of a building that they had found earlier the morning. The roof there was a nice hiding place.
When Ethan was refreshed enough and felt more relaxed, they teleported away from the city and out of the underground cavern. They could now start to refine the pill they wanted.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone