Chapter 44 - Journey (1/2)
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They ate till late in the night and everyone enjoyed the dinner quite a lot. Even in the hands of an amateur, the meat would taste delicious let alone in the hands of these seasoned soldiers with proper training.
They all had a very good impression of Hao Xuan after the incident at the village. He stood up against king even though he was much weaker and protected the villagers and even fed them with highest quality meat they had ever tasted.
The next morning they all woke up as soon as the sun came out, although because of the thick canopy of the trees the sunlight was sparse, it was enough to get them going.
They all had their own mounts which were their contracted beasts, but obviously, none even came close to Bai's level.
The journey was several hundred thousand kilometers long and would take several days even with their speed. They would only stop once a day to rest their mounts and would continue until the sunset. After darkness it was more or less suicidal to step out of the camp when nothing further than a few meters was visible.
The Mad Saints stayed away from all the main roads and only followed the much less traveled paths and even cut through some forests. It was winter and they were headed up north, so the weather kept getting colder and colder, with thick fog at night on some days and snowfall on others.
At one such an instance something strange happened. The scouts reported that there was a small town a few kilometers ahead but it was abandoned.
This caught Lt. Kuo's eye because it was supposed to have a Red Legion forwarding post there and they were supposed to check in through it.
The town's population was a little more than seven hundred and a platoon was posted there as well. It was about 1 p.m when they reached it. All the streets were empty, all the inns were closed, there was absolutely no one on the roads.
Lt. Kuo sent a party of five in to investigate and they found all the buildings empty. There were no signs of a fight or struggle in any of them, there was some food on the tables which seemed to have been cooked within the last 12 hours in some of them left untouched.
They found the Red Legion forwarding post and it was empty as well, but there was a note a letter left there.
”We have been cut off from the outside world for a few days now, no one can leave the town or enter it. People are acting strangely, no one seems to notice anything wrong with this and they all continue to go about their businesses as usual.”