Chapter 140: 140. ELDERS
A few tens of minutes passed before Jon stopped cultivating and stood up with a light stretch. Noah also stood up, since he had sat down during that period, but felt like had wasted his time.
He hadn’t managed to learn a thing about the man’s cultivation process, since all he could see were mist like particles flowing into the area his core was.
A few platforms made of flames appeared before Jon and he didn’t hesitate to step on them exiting the charred crater.
He gestured at Noah to also walk up the stairs of flames, but Noah opted to simply tap his foot on the ground, and his body shot out of the crater.
Jon could only shrug, while the flames dispersed. The duo walked towards the village in companionable silence, both men thinking their own thoughts and coming to different conclusions on the topics they thought about.
The village eventually entered their sight, and Noah felt slightly surprised to see the villagers gathered at their point of entry, expressions that Noah didn’t fully understand showing on their faces.
Amongst the villagers were the two tier 3 cultivator’s, and on their faces were respect-filled expressions.
‘They probably have more battle experience than I do, but simply aren’t totally good at fights on this scale,’ Noah sighed softly, ‘They’ll eventually get used to it and have a better battle prowess than I do.’
“There’s nothing to worry about, you all can go continue your respective activities,” Jon announced to the villagers, who immediately began to leave silently, but not before taking a final look at Noah’s nigh breathtaking face.
The villagers completely disbanded eventually, but 7 individuals remained behind. Five of those individuals looked very old, and only radiated power in the middle stage of tier 2, and the other two were Enik and Delius.
The old men who all had grey hair, or no hair at all, kept their experienced gaze’s on Noah, who was beginning to feel uncomfortable due to the number of gaze’s he had received in the span of a few seconds.
‘Why do they stare so much,’ Noah frowned in his mind.
“Ah. Elders. I was going to introduce our guest to you after our spar,” Jon walked towards the five men.
“Spar? You call that a spar Jon?,” One of the the elders said in a surprisingly vibrant voice, seemingly not affected by age.
‘I wonder how old they are,’ Noah couldn’t help but shake his head. From the explanations and what he’d seen, Noah understood that most young looking cultivator’s were usually older than he was, so seeing five aged men who had power at the peak of the middle stage, they had to be over one hundred.
“It’s simply because our guest was far powerful than I thought, we could have gone farther towards the edge of the village of I know,” Jon smiled with a tinge of shame on his face.
The five individuals sighed in unison, which looked creepy.
“And does this your guest not have enough manners to reference his elders,” another of the five spoke, his expression turning to that of irritation.
Noah instantly felt at loss of what to do, he hadn’t actually learnt any customs or traditions the people of Cregar practiced, which further deepened his annoyance with himself.
‘What have I even been doing this past months,’ Noah felt disgusted at himself, ‘There’s almost no difference with when I got here and now,’ he thought, ‘I’ll have to make a note of important topics to read about for whenever I come across a library,’ Noah shook his head.
“Ah…Good day sir’s….,” Noah bowed, his very figure radiating an aura of uncertainty.
A few seconds of silence passed and Noah kept his face down. His feeling of uncertainty shot through the roof during those seconds, and he had to hold back the nigh irresistible urge to facepalm himself.
When suddenly a loud laughter burst out, followed by multiple others.
Noah almost lost his balance when his eyes fell on the laughing group of eight.
“Relax young man. I was joking,” The same man spoke between his laughter.
Noah honestly didn’t know how to react, he felt unsure of whether to feel glad about their lack of care for things like greetings, or to feel worried about their annoying sense of humor.
“Come, follow us. We shall escort you to wherever he has chosen as your quarters,” Another of the five spoke, while gesturing at Jon to lead the way.
“Are all of you like this,” Noah spoke next to Jon. “Yes. In normal circumstances, the village is usually bright and joyous, but the situation has changed things,” Jon sighed.
“I really desire to go back to those times. The elders are only trying to keep it up so as not to crack under the pressure of our problem,” Jon explained before going silent.
A tinge of pity spread in Noah’s consciousness after those words, the villagers situations reminded him of the mission with Augustus, and how the group tried to have fun to reduce the tension they felt.
Eventually a sense of guilt set in, Noah had managed to sight some children in the village and their eyes had lost the childish lustre it should have, they looked Incredibly fearful and mostly stayed in their homes.
‘Why do my choices have to be so catastrophic,’ Noah glanced at the sky, “It seems with great power comes great responsibility,” he shook his head, before cringing from that line, the words reminded him of his time on Earth.
Although he surprisingly still had memories of his childhood inside his soul core, Noah preferred to leave them as they were, since the memories brought him pain, and he wanted to move on.
A few minutes eventually passed, and the group of nine arrived In front of a wooden building.
The building resembled a hut, but was square shaped, its roof looked to me made of leaves piled on each other with logs of wood here and there.
The small building also featured two mid-sized windows and a door.
“This is where you will stay,” Jon gestured at Noah, who walked towards the door and opened it, before sending his consciousness to inspect it.
Finding its Inside quite decent, Noah proceeded to thank Jon before trying to enter, but a voice stopped him.
“You didn’t even tell us your name young man,” The same old man commented.
“Oh. I’m N—Will,” Noah bowed putting on a normal face, and it seemed that the experts didn’t notice his stutter.
“It’s nice to meet you Will. We are the elders of this village, and thank you for your help on the outside,” The elders bowed in unison.
“It wasn’t a problem,” Noah waved his hand, before glancing at Jon, who nodded his head ever so slightly.
Walking into the building and locking the door behind himself, Noah heaved a sigh. ‘I almost screwed up.’
Glancing at the room whicg featured only one brown table, a wooden chair, three mana bulbs, and a mat, Noah sat on the chair.
He figured since he was done with the spar, he would address the matter that had popped up a while ago.
[1 speed potion has been created]
The panel had appeared during his talk with Jon but he didn’t have a chance to simply disappear.
After making sure that no one was outside his door, and that the windows were closed, Noah’s figure silently vanished from the room, while Jon and the elders had a discussion.
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