After a technically long day of training for both Jianmen's and Josephine Wong's students, they were finally able to sit down in the diner and have a feast. Jianmen cooked all the dishes using food harvested from his own farm, which include fish, venison, steak, boar chops, a lot of vegetables and different mushrooms, served with tea, coffee, rice wine and plum wine.
Rash came into the diner to steal some food from the dishes, then went back out to the lounge to continue eating and watching videos on his newly acquired smart phone with Snowball on his shoulder.
In the back of the inn, the Nekomata sisters Katherine and Christina Akahoshi were still having a fight and negotiation, but they were arguing with each other in their own language - to anyone else, it sounded just like they were angrily meowing at each other.
"There haven't been a lot of guests recently, tough days for business Boss?" Caroline asked as she was sipping on her tea: "You know, not that I think you need to worry about the money."
"No, I am just limiting how much civilian business we are handling right now." Jianmen smiled as he took the cake out from the oven: "As you know, we ARE preparing for war."
The entire diner went silent, then Thomas raised his hand as if he was a student during a lesson: "So, Mr. Yu, I have this question about this upcoming WAR ..."
"Yes, what about it?" Jianmen sliced the green and light brown matcha cake into several thin pieces with a normal knife, without using any Xuanli or special tricks, just normal cake cutting with normal techniques and normal tools.
"Well, I've - we've asked Ms. Wong a couple of times about it, but we were not able to get the clear answers yet. We were wondering, since we recently officially made it to 'the second tier' and have been making a decent amount of progress on our mastery at magic, could you share more information with us?" Aimee exchanged looks with Thomas, took a few seconds to formulate her thoughts and said: "We already know that it will be against the defilers - but we don't know when they will come, do we. And could you let us know what kind of preparations you are doing?"
"Well, to put it simply, we're trying to gather enough forces." Jianmen sighed: "But as you already know, the world of the power wielders is not unified. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite to what one could call unified. So, what Josephine Wong was trying on her end was to utilize her position as the liaison of the Division in this area and try to rally forces as well as get support from the Security Council of the Division, and on my end, I've been spending a lot of time making this Inn battle ready, collecting materials and weapons to fight this war, and trying to make deals with various powerful entities and see if they could join us on this fight. So far, we have mixed results."
"And … we're going to be in this war, aren't we?" Jason asked while playing with the food on his plate.
"Honestly, I had hoped that you wouldn't have to fight it directly." Jianmen shook his head: "It should have been our burden. But I'd be lying if I said that you have the choice to stay out of it. Unless you have the ability to move away from this part of the universe and settle somewhere else, you can't run from it. The defilers are coming, and we have to prepare for the worst."
"Well, that does kinda make this Bleeding Daggers and vampire slash lycan business into perspective. " Aimee said with a wry smile: "It's like fighting a shoplifter while a tsunami is about to tear down the whole city."
"Yes, but fighting injustice, however small, is still important." Jianmen responded by refilling Aimee's coffee: "Also, you'd probably want to know that the business with the vampires, lycans, the cult of Bleeding Daggers and the forces under the employment of the High Brokers of the Exalted Bondsmen is going to help the Josephine Wong in her endeavor trying to gain more resources and support from the Division, thus giving us more room to prepare for the war."
"But wouldn't our time be better spent if we spent more time training? Using that time speedup array?" Thomas asked: "Jason and Caroline are already really capable fighting-wise. But Aimee and I are still - you know, in need of a lot of training."
"Normal training has diminishing returns, and the closer you are to the next milestone, the smaller the gains are, which is why both Josephine and I would like you to continue doing what you're doing and do what you are planning to do, unless, of course, you want to do nothing and wait for the world to end. " Jianmen laid back on his chair and said: "So, Aimee, that's a long answer to your question. What I would still like to say is that I am glad and proud that you are trying to do the right thing, and you are attempting to find your own way forward. Don't worry yourself about the fate of the entire universe into inaction, just do right by what you can."
"Okay, another question, Boss." Jason poured himself a bowlful of fish soup: "What happened to the 'codex'? I asked because I am still one useful artifact short from the Grant Academy."
"Oh well." Jianmen scratched his head with slight embarrassment: "Priorities got in the way. But we'll spend more time looking into it, because it's enough to attract spies into our inn."
"Woah, spies?" Aimee's eyes opened wide: "When? How?"
Jianmen was about to answer, but Josephine Wong's voice resounded in his ears, urging him to come to her side - this was a direct channel of communication they established between themselves, of which they agreed to only use when the situation called for it.
"Sorry, kids. Something urgent has come up." Jianmen stood up and nodded at the four students at the table: "Just take the afternoon off, make sure your phones are charged and call me when you need me."
"What happened?" Caroline and Aimee asked at the same time.
"I don't know yet, but I will let you know if it concerns you."