It's Vlad's first time out of the manor and everything looks.... Well... It's eastern that's for sure.
Not sure what was really expecting but it's a city. Anyway, Vlad asked around for the location of the market before he finally found it.
The market place is quite large and filled with people from all walks of life. Vlad looks around before deciding to go to a particular shop that looks a bit fancier than the rest.
As soon as he steps through the door Vlad is greeted by a pretty shop keeper lady.
"kid go out and play. don't bother big sister's business" the shop keeper lady said as she eyes Vlad's tattered clothes.
"Emmm... Big sister, does this shop sell inter-spacial ring?" Vlad asked ignoring her rude remark.
"hahaha... Little kid I don't you could ever afford one. Now run along now and play with your friends" the lady seemed mildly amused by Vlad's question.
Then Vlad took a nicely cut teardrop shape Sapphire with a deep shade of blue.
As soon a Vlad took out the Sapphire gemstone the shop lady shop keeper's face immediately frozen as she forced herself to say
"kid where did you get that?"
"My master gave it to me for being a nice disciple and finishing the task he assigned me," Vlad said proudly with both hands on his hips as if he has done something praiseworthy.
The shop keeper eventually calms down and took the gem in Vlad's hand and examines it in detail.
"hmm... such a large size.... Such a nice blue hue.... The cuts are clean and the shape is perfectly symmetrical, this could fetch a high price if sold to the right people" the lady said as she cast a side glance at Vlad and asked, "little kid be perfectly honest with a big sister here did you steal this?"
Vlad squinted at the lady and said proudly "I didn't steal it, it's my master's reward for finishing his task early"
"oh? Then who is your master?"
"I don't know but my master is surely somebody great," Vlad said proudly as deep in his heart praying for the lady to buy his story.
The lady frowns at his reply and asks "then what does your master look like?"
"my master looks like a homeless bum but is actually very powerful," Vlad said proudly as Vlad made up a story based on a movie he has watched in his past life. The movie is called "Kung Fu Hustle" in the movie there was a homeless person that gave a kid a king fu manual, the movie was quite funny.
Anyway, it's widely known in this world that experts have strange temperaments. Vlad is hoping that this lady would just buy his story already!
The lady frowns but eventually buys it.
And so he is eventually able to trade of a gem for an inter-spatial ring. Vlad then hands off the rest of his gems to the lady to be converted into gold coins.
Seeing Vlad produces a bunch more gems the lady then stares at Vlad suspiciously seemingly demanding an answer. To which Vlad answers her by saying it's all the reward he has recovered from his master since becoming his disciple.
While her suspicion did lesson somewhat but she's still fairly suspicious of him.
Well... With that done Vlad goes on to a restaurant for a meal.
Vlad had fishball noodles which are quite delicious before he resumed his shopping spree which mainly consisted of raw materials for transmutation.
A bit later the lady shop keeper would ask around what the kid has been up and would be baffled to find out that the would go to places and bought a bunch of... What is essentially random garbage.
Like he would go to the blacksmith store and instead of buy swords like normal people he instead bought coals, scrap iron and raw ores instead!? He had been like that throughout the day to point that it baffled the lady shop keeper quite a bit.
She eventually sighs as she finally accepted that the kid truly has an eccentric master. "experts and their weird temperament" the shop keeper exclaims
Anyway back to Vlad.
The next day
After finishing his morning prayer Vlad went to unveil his plans to renovate his rinky-dink shed.
Vlad is by no means an architect is he has to keep things simple just went on to draw a simple outline of a 2 story house. Although he did add in a secret basement and a super-secret secret basement below his secret basement. Vlad thinks that it would be useful for him to have such rooms as there no telling that if no day those scumbags from the manor would raid his house for anything valuable, such secret compartment would be useful for hiding his super-secret stuff.
So with all that planned out, he began excavating the ground for his secret basement.
Of course, it is by no means an easy task as it took him a few days to finally finish excavating.
He made marble tiles by simply transmuting limestone. He wanted something nice clean and fancy so he chose marble instead of the ugly looking granite.
Saying that, then came the long arduous process actually building the house as moving those inch thick marble tiles is much harder than one might think especially in the body of a child, still where is a will there is a way and the construction took him weeks to build.
And the finished product looks...
'It looks fabulous if I do say so myself' Vlad thought as he admires the culmination of months of hard work.
Shiny white tiles, huge glass windows and not to mention an actual plumbing system... well... it's more like he made a push pump at the top of his house the extracts groundwater before being pump into a large water tank, the is simply connecting the pipes together.
Sure it's primitive but it's better than nothing and it's certainly much better than the Chinese squat toilets these people are using.
One thing to note about the sewage pipe though is that it leads off to a dozen meter before leading off to nowhere... in other words, there's just a pipe sticking out in the woods that constantly spews out waste.
Yeah... it's kinda irresponsible... and Vlad doesn't care a single bit about it.
Thinking about it Vlad felt a certain guilty pleasure when he was laying down the pipes.
Anyway, Vlad signs as he it's almost time for him to attend school. You see the Feng clan in order to cultivate the younger generation they have a decree since ancient times that all Feng clan members must attend school, yes that includes Vlad too much to the dismay of everyone in the clan and Vlad too.