After half a month of travel, Yu Nianzhen and Jiang Yue finally arrived at Fengying city's gate.
The city gate was two to three times bigger than that in Han city and when they arrived, there were several thousand people and hundreds of carts already waiting outside the gate.
There were five tollgates at the city gate and two guards guarded at each gate while numerous others moved among the gathered crowd to sort them into different gates.
The tollgate at the far left of the city gate was the smallest but also the most expensive and only important people were allowed to pass through that gate.
The second left gate was used by people from the city lord's residence while the widest middle gate was used by merchant caravans that had more than ten carts.
The second right was used by caravans that had less than ten carts while the toll gate at the far right was used by other people who sought entry into the city.
Yu Nianzhen and Jiang Yue only had one cart and they lined up behind several hundred carts at the second right toll gate. When it was their turn, they paid a toll fee of one gold coin and entered the city after a city guard conducted a casual inspection of their cart.
"Let's find an inn first." Yu Nianzhen suggested and Jang Yue didn't argue.
They followed the cart traffic and soon after, they discovered an inn called the Three Boars at the city's outskirts.
"We have three types of rooms." The lady at the front desk said as she looked at the two boys.
The lady was a cultivator at the sixth level of the meridian awakening realm and she could tell that the two boys were stronger than her and already at the peak of the seventh level of the meridian awakening realm.
Fengying city was several times larger than Han city and because of that, it had several times the number and quality of cultivators. Still, this was the first time that the lady had seen such young children who had already cultivated to the upper levels of the meridian awakening realm.
She took an additional look at them before she continued, "normal rooms, standard rooms, and superior rooms."
"What's the difference?" Jiang Yue asked as he looked at the woman.
"Superior rooms have a class one qi gathering array and a class one protection array. Standard rooms have a class one protection array while normal rooms do not have any arrays."
Jiang Yue and Yu Nianzhen looked at each other when they heard that, but essentially, they did not have any experience with these things and did not know the effect of a class one qi gathering array or class one protection array.
"What's the cost?" Yu Nianzhen asked.
"The normal room will cost one silver per day; the standard room is five silvers per day and the superior room is one gold per day."
Yu Nianzhen and Jiang Yue whispered to each other when they heard the cost and made their decision after several back and forths.
"We will take the superior room." Yu Nianzhen said and handed over ten gold coins.
There were still another two months before the recruitment of the Sea Cloud Sect and the two boys planned to stay in Fengying city to observe the recruitment, but Yu Nianzhen felt that it was not a good idea to pay for the entire two months.
Anything could happen in two months and they may even find that other inns offered better treatment and if they had to move, they would have wasted the prepayment to the Three Boars inn.
"It will cost another ten silvers for your bullock." The lady said and Yu Nianzhen immediately handed over the silver coins.
When the arrangements were made, the lady led the two boys to a room on the third floor and after handing them a token that would allow them to pass through the protection array, she left.
The superior room wasn't big and was only about five metres by five metres, but the heaven and earth qi within the room was significantly denser than the heaven and earth qi outside the room.
Although it couldn't be compared to the heaven and earth qi during the blue star phenomenon, there was no doubt that one would be able to cultivate faster within the room than outside.
"The effect of this qi gathering array is quite good." Jiang Yue said in admiration.
"En." Yu Nianzhen answered.
He was also impressed and couldn't help but wonder whether it was possible to set up such an array on their bullock cart.
Yu Nianzhen had also felt the protection array when they entered the room and to his surprise, the array felt less powerful than the one on their bullock cart which made him wonder whether the array on their cart was not a class one but class two array.
However, he had no way to verify his suspicions since he did not have any knowledge about arrays and his cultivation was too low to detect the differences between a class one and class two array.
Jiang Yue flopped onto the bed and sighed in comfort as his body sunk into the beddings.
This was the first time he was laying on a comfortable bed since arriving in the Cangxing world and he couldn't help but compare.
People in the Cangxing world were more focused on cultivating and enhancing their strength and because of that, things like comfort had been largely neglected.
Stone beds and stools were the most common furniture while the making of food was more geared towards nutritional value than taste.
In the more than five months that they had been in the Cangxing world, the two hadn't eaten anything that could be considered tasty by modern standards. All the foods that they had eaten were either roasted with little seasoning or boiled with a variety of herbs that didn't add much to flavour.
"I want to eat some good food." Jiang Yue said longingly and Yu Nianzhen smiled in amusement.
He wasn't as focused on comfort as Jiang Yue but if he had a choice, he also would prefer some good food as compared to the fare that they had been eating.
"We can look for a restaurant after taking a bath." Yu Nianzhen agreed.
They had been on the road for a long time and in that time, they had made do with occasional dips in rivers and lakes, but none of that could be considered as taking a proper bath.
Now that they had arrived in a big city, Yu Nianzhen wanted to take a proper and long bath.
As he thought of that, he felt a disturbance in the room's protection array and he knew that it was probably the inn's workers who had brought the bathing water and additional bathtub that they had requested.
He immediately opened the door and as expected, three men who were at the lower levels of the meridian awakening realm were standing outside the door.
One was carrying a wooden bathtub while the other two were carrying basins of hot water.
Yu Nianzhen allowed the three workers to enter the room and they set up the extra bathtub behind a paper screen where one bathtub had already been placed at one corner of the room.
When all the preparations were done, the three workers left the room and the array activated once again resulting in a low hum that could only be heard if one used their qi to enhance their hearing.
Obviously, Yu Nianzhen and Jiang Yue couldn't utilise their qi like that and because of that, they could not feel the presence of the array unless they tried to enter or exit the room.
"It will be convenient to use the stone milk now that we have a bathtub." Yu Nianzhen said as he began to remove his clothes.
They hadn't been able to use the stone milk that they had collected in Stone village because stone milk could not be ingested, but instead needed to be added to bathwater and then slowly refined.
Jiang Yue had also begun to remove his clothes and unlike Yu Nianzhen who neatly folded his clothes before placing them on a small stone table in the room, he directly threw his dirty clothes on the floor.
"Yes." He agreed.
He had long wanted to try the effect of the stone milk, but without a bathtub, it was useless to have it.
Yu Nianzhen and Jiang Yue had removed their clothes in front of each other countless times, but when they were completely naked and about to get into their respective bathtubs, the atmosphere suddenly became tense.
It suddenly occurred to them that there was a big difference between undressing in the wild and undressing in the confines of an inn room.
Jiang Yue's face turned completely red while Yu Nianzhen could feel a sudden heat at the tip of his ears which made him very restless.
In utter awkwardness, they hurriedly climbed into their wooden tubs and submerged into the water while facing away from each other to hide the redness on their faces.