Chapter 228: Back at the store

It had been a long week, but Lin Fan was finally back at his store.

During his absence, his store had been running the entire time and based on the amount of points he had with the system, he could tell that business had been doing well. It seemed like his decision to leave the store with Song Shu had been the right idea.

Song Shu had been with him for over two months now and during her time working in the store, she quickly learned how to operate it, especially since she did nothing but follow Lin Fan around.

She knew how to operate all the facilities of the store after learning from watching Lin Fan, so she could be left to handle everything.

When Lin Fan came in the door, Song Shu didn't spare him a glance at first, but then when she saw everyone else coming over to greet him, she turned to see him. However, the moment she did see that it was him, she turned her head and didn't spare him another glance.

Lin Fan revealed a bitter smile when he saw this.

When he had left, Song Shu had thrown a fit to try and come along, but Lin Fan had been adamant on not letting her go since he had a feeling that it might be dangerous. In the end, his instinct had been correct, but that didn't stop her from being angry with him.

Lin Fan came over with a bitter smile as he leaned in and picked Song Shu up by the waist.

She still refused to look at him at first, but then after a bit, she threw herself into his chest.

Lin Fan could tell from the damp feeling on his chest that she was crying, but he didn't say a thing.

Angela also came over and patted Song Shu on the head, but this time the way she looked at her was a bit strange. It was almost like how a mother looked at her child…

Eventually Song Shu stopped crying and she lifted her head. She was still a little angry, but she didn't ignore Lin Fan anymore as she said, "You have to take me next time."

Lin Fan revealed a smile, but he didn't promise anything since he didn't know what would happen in the future. If it was too dangerous, he definitely wouldn't take her since he would rather have her be angry with him than to put her in danger.

But still, Lin Fan did what he could to make her feel better.

Lin Fan called out Shiro and introduced the two.

The moment the two little girls, one human and one beast saw each other, they immediately formed a bond.

Shiro according to Jin was over a hundred years old, but when that was converted to a human's lifespan from a beast's lifespan, she would be around the same age as Song Shu.

Song Shu picked up Shiro and quickly ran out of the shop with her to go and play.

Angela took a look at Lin Fan and seeing him give a nod, she quickly followed the two little girls out.

Lin Fan looked around the store before looking at his two employees.

It was currently right after the morning rush, so they were cleaning up after it, so he just left them to their own devices.

But one thing he did notice was that Zhu Tie seemed much more comfortable without his mask and that Yu Ning seemed to be a little too close to him from time to time. Seeing this, Lin Fan just revealed a smile to himself and didn't say anything as he left them to their own devices.

Lin Fan came to the back to take stock and he realized that his current stock was indeed a problem.

Now that he had three stores, the amount of ingredients that came from the cultivation realm farm just wasn't enough. Even if he had already defeated the Zerg Queen and had moved on to his third cultivation realm farm.

For his third cultivation realm farm, he still had to face another enemy, but this time it wasn't the Bug Race. When he had sent his Hellions out to scout, he had found several beings made of complete rocks moving about on patrol.

These living creatures made completely of rocks were similar to Rocky, but they didn't have the same power that he did. Nevertheless, their defenses were quite strong and had been hard for him to deal with, so it took him quite a bit of time to conquer this realm.

Each cultivation realm farm had been enough to sustain one store, but now he was short one cultivation realm farm with the third store, not to mention that he still needed to open a fourth store to finish his task.

The only good thing was that he still had another three months to finish this task, which meant that he had to finish taking over this third cultivation realm farm by the end of next month and prepare a fourth cultivation realm farm for his fourth store.

Currently, with the ingredients that came from two and a half cultivation realm farms, he was slowly draining away at the stock of ingredients that he had stocked up on. With the rate that he was going at, he would last another month before completely running out.

He had been too busy during this time to go to the World of Elements or the Lich's Necropolis during this time to manually find ingredients, which was why his stock was still being drained.

After thinking this through, Lin Fan decided to farm ingredients over the next month just so he could support the fourth store that he would be opening. At the same time, he would have to scout out the remaining three S Rank Cities to see which one would be the best place for him.

Once he was done with taking inventory, Lin Fan headed through the Any Place Door to return to Wind Snow City to find Momonga. There were many things that he needed Momonga's knowledge for.

When he arrived at the store, Momonga was nowhere in sight, there were only the two female ghost maids that followed him that were present.

The two ghost maids were already used to seeing Lin Fan appear from the Any Place Door. When they saw Lin Fan appear, they pointed to a room in the back before heading back to work.

Lin Fan nodded to them in response before heading to the back room where he could hear various sounds coming from.

When Lin Fan opened the door, he saw Momonga sitting there in a chair with a helmet on his head which had a projection coming from it.

This helmet was the latest virtual gaming system and Momonga was playing the most popular game, Hunters Online. Hunter Online was a game all about hunting beasts, which the humans of the Blue Star Planet used to train their abilities from a young age. Since it was all in a virtual world, it was much safer than training in the wild against real beasts, but the effects were much worse than training in a life and death scenario.

The projection was actually a protection protocol installed just in case the player needed help from the outside to get them out if something happened, but most of the time this could be turned off. For some reason, Momonga was playing with the projection on and at max volume.

But the moment Lin Fan stepped into the room, Momonga immediately paused the game and came out.

He could tell by Lin Fan's expression that he had something to show him and Lin Fan could see that he knew, so he didn't waste any words as he pulled out Jin and Yin.

Momonga was surprised to see the two of them and then two of them put their guard up when they suddenly saw Momonga.

After looking over them, Momonga asked Lin Fan, "Where did you find these two?"

Lin Fan said, "In the planar crack I told you about last time."

Momonga looked over them again before saying, "You took out the death pills in them, but there's still a trace of that energy left that's hurting their foundation, do you want me to take that out?"

Lin Fan was surprised when he heard this and he asked, "Wait, didn't Angela already take out all the influence of the death pills and cure them?"

Momonga revealed a faint smile, "That little girl is sensitive to death energy and her laws are perfect for countering them, but this is something that she can't do. The death energy has already soaked into their foundations, so only someone proficient like me can take it out."

Lin Fan nodded in response to this before saying, "Alright, do it then."

Momonga also nodded before waving a single finger.

Jin and Yin both clutched their chests in pain, but then there were wisps of dark purple energy that came out of different parts of their body, condensing into a ball in front of Momonga.

This process took five minutes before there was no more dark purple energy that came out of them.

When this process was over, Jin and Yin gathered themselves and realized that their power was much greater than before.

Jin didn't break through, but Yin immediately broke through to the Primary Soul Realm. If it wasn't for the shop suppressing him and not allowing his tribulation, he would have directly broken through to the Fragmented Soul Realm.

Momonga nodded once again when he saw this before turning back to ask Lin Fan, "What are you planning on doing with the two of them?"

Lin Fan said, "They're going to be working in the store with you, but I think you know what I want you to do with them."

Momonga revealed a smile when he heard this, "I've been feeling quite bored lately. Do you care what I do to them?"

Lin Fan shook his head, "Do whatever you want, just don't kill them. Also teach them how to work in the store, that's their job from now on unless I need them for something."

Momonga's eyes lit up when he heard this. He had already seen that these two were special, one possessing the rare shadow law and the other having the Abnormal spatial law. In his hands, he could turn them into something special and he had been quite bored recently.

Jin and Yin could feel the gaze that Momonga was casting on them and they couldn't help shuddering. They could tell from the display just now that Momonga wasn't normal, he was probably a monster in hiding just like Angela.

With the way he was looking at them, he definitely didn't have kind intentions.

But before Momonga could start his training, Lin Fan also pulled out a few other things and said, "Before you start with them, help me take a look at these."