Chapter 232: Arrival in Rock Mountain City

As opposed to when he came to Water Pearl City and Green Wood City, Lin Fan didn't book a room on a luxury airship this time. Instead he booked on a commercial airship since he wanted to hide his identity.

Before he could set his plan in motion, it was best for him to keep as low of a profile as possible.

But of course that wasn't possible when he came onto the airship with two beauties like Angela and Song Shu.

The moment they came onto the airship, they had attracted attention from many people. There were quite a few that had bad intentions in their eyes as they gazed over at them.

However, when one of these people finally took the chance to approach, they were immediately chased away by Angela's cold gaze. It was like her cold gaze had created a frozen zone around her that they couldn't approach no matter what.

Lin Fan saw this and just revealed a smile in secret.

He wasn't going to overstep where he didn't need to.

While chivalry was good, there were also times that women should be left to take care of their own problems, especially when they were more than capable of handling it.

Jiang Zhi Shu and a few followers that he had personally chosen were also on this ship, but they had hid themselves and passed off as normal passengers.

With how much attention Lin Fan's group was drawing, no one noticed their group of men who were all dressed in casual clothing. In fact, if they had been wearing full cloaks to disguise themselves, they would have attracted even more attention than just wearing normal clothes.

However, during the entire trip, Jiang Zhi Shu was very tense.

It wasn't because he was seasick, or rather airsick, he just wanted to reach Rock Mountain City as soon as possible.

There were still many questions that bothered him about this whole affair and they were close to exploding from being bottled deep down inside of him.

The airship ride was quite uneventful, other than being surrounded by people staring at them, Lin Fan's group didn't have much to do.

This wasn't a luxury airship like the one from last time, so there weren't as many amenities for them, so they spent most of their time in their room relaxing.

The trip took a total of three days and when they finally arrived, they couldn't wait to get off the ship. After all, this wasn't a luxury ship, so the room that they had was quite small, but it was better than being in the shared living space like the others.

When the airship finally set down in Rock Mountain City, Lin Fan was surprised by what he saw.

Rock Mountain City was like the name suggested, there was a giant mountain that was by the city.

Rock Mountain City had its own specialty like the other towns. Because of the large mountain that was by the town and the large amount of ores found inside that mountain, Rock Mountain City was a city that was filled with blacksmiths.

However, in this world that focused their attention on cultivation and training pets, not many people placed importance on blacksmithing since they thought that it was only an indirect method of increasing one's strength.

That was because blacksmiths didn't make artifacts directly. Artifacts were made from infusing laws into them and depending on how much law energy was infused, that determined the grade of the artifact. All blacksmiths did was create vessels to house those laws, so blacksmiths never received the same level of respect as alchemists or Monster Trainers who could directly increase one's strength.

That was why even though this town was filled with blacksmiths, it didn't have an organization for them like the Alchemy Tower or the Monster Trainer Union.

But that also meant that since there wasn't a secondary power in this city, it meant that the Jiang Family were free to rule this entire city, which naturally made Lin Fan's plans harder.

Once they were off the ship, Jiang Zhi Shu gave a nod to Lin Fan when he inadvertently looked over, but Lin Fan didn't acknowledge him at all. He just kept looking around like it was his first time in this city, which it was.

Jiang Zhi Shu immediately headed off to meet up with the members of the information net that they had set up to start his part of the plan. To be honest, there was nothing more that he wanted than to rush to the Jiang Manor for answers, but Lin Fan had firmly ordered him not to do so before they had left Water Pearl City.

Lin Fan even made a list of things for him to do that he had to follow. Of course, it wasn't Lin Fan that had made it, but rather Brainy since Brainy was smart enough to guess exactly how Jiang Zhi Shu would act.

Once Jiang Zhi Shu was gone, Lin Fan also walked around the receiving area for a bit before meeting up with someone as well.

This person was a middle aged man with a neat moustache and a pair of gold rimmed glasses, making him look like quite the scholar. This man was the manager of the branch store that Lin Fan had set up here.

The reason for setting up the branch was to prepare things in Rock Mountain City for his arrival and they had done exactly that.

The manager handed Lin Fan a map and a list before quickly disappearing into the crowd.

This map and list that the manager had given Lin Fan was of course a map of the entire Rock Mountain City, but the list was actually a list of available stores in the worst performing business streets.

Lin Fan knew that the key for his plan this time was to be as low key as possible while he gained information and slowly put his plans into action. Therefore, he was choosing to put his store in an inconspicuous street.

After receiving this map, Lin Fan headed off into Rock Mountain City with Angela and Song Shu.

Of course, he wasn't in as much of a rush as Jiang Zhi Shu was, so he took his time in exploring the city first.

If Jiang Zhi Shu could see him now, he definitely wouldn't have been able to keep his calm since Lin Fan was just walking around and having fun with Angela and Song Shu. Even if Lin Fan wanted to come up with an excuse, he really didn't have one since he was indeed just relaxing and having fun.

They had arrived in the morning, so after spending the entire morning walking around and after they had lunch, Lin Fan decided to scout the poor business streets.

There were a total of six streets on the list that the manager had given him and he slowly went from one to the next.

The first two didn't contain anything special and the foot traffic on those streets was close to nothing. Other than a few people who lived nearby who went to the shops, there was no one else that came at all.

At the third street, there were more people that shopped at that street, but it was only at a single store. It was a store that surprisingly made a living off selling scallion pancakes and fortune telling.

Lin Fan had been tempted by the scent as soon as he smelled it and he had tried to get a scallion pancake for himself, but he was told that the daily limit had already been sold. However, when he was leaving, a young man came out of the store and moved past the person who Lin Fan thought was the store owner. He came up to Lin Fan and looked right at him while counting with his fingers. After a while, he said, "It's fate that we met, as someone who shares the same name, let me share a scallion pancake with you."

Lin Fan didn't know what any of that meant, but he wasn't going to turn down this chance.

In the end, he was only able to get a single bite of the scallion pancake before it was taken away from him by Angela who surprisingly shared it evenly with Song Shu. However, that one bite that he did take was the best bite that he ever had.

He had wanted to return to that store, but the doors had been closed when he went back, so he had no choice but to head off to the fourth street.

When they arrived at the fourth street, Lin Fan had thought that it would be the same as the first two since the situation looked the same, but that wasn't the case.

When they passed by a decrepit looking blacksmith, Angela suddenly stopped moving.

She turned to look over at the only good display of the blacksmith shop and knit her brows before pulling on Lin Fan's sleeve.

Lin Fan turned to look at her in surprise as she pointed at the decrepit blacksmith and then he followed her finger to see what she was pointing at.

Normally Lin Fan never would have imagined that there was anything special about this blacksmith, but it was Angela's instincts that was telling her to go in, so Lin Fan chose to believe her. After all, the past instances of Angela's instincts had never disappointed him.

But when Lin Fan was about to walk into the blacksmith, there was a hammer that suddenly flew out at his head as a loud voice shouted from inside, "Get out of here you scum, I told you to never come back!"