Chapter 95 - Destination Home (2/2)
”Strange,” he muttered before opening one of the scrolls, his eyes widening slightly more for every scroll he opened.
”How peculiar... They are all empty.”
***
Shin Sumi forced herself away from the book on her l.a.p. She had started reading, hiding behind a tree, in order to wait for the night to cover the land.
Her eyes were still bright with the flame of knowledge inside her. She had been close to getting a grasp on the first technique from Elder Zhu's bag of holding, however with her experience she knew that she needed more time.
She decided to let the words, runes and impressions the page had given her run wild in her mind while she travelled. At the same time, her Shinsoo Sea was churning lazily.
Normally, Shin Sumi wouldn't have been able to run at full speed while meditating, but the lack of strength of the muddy Shinsoo in this part of the mortal realm made it more than easy to cultivate while moving.
When the pink rays of morning sun appeared in front of her, she had covered more ground than a horse pulling a cart could hope to achieve in a day and a night.
She hadn't yet slowed down, her cloak fluttering straight behind her, but a distant noise forced her to stop her running and walk like a mortal.
”Sir messenger, how long is it until Chen Fort?” she asked the man riding his horse when he finally closed the distance between them.
On his saddle were two heavy leather bags, one on each side, and a rolled up blanket at the back. Messengers were easy to recognize, always carrying news and deliveries between cities, sometimes sleeping on their horse or the side of the road.
The sight of the strong looking man reminded Shin Sumi of the day she had left East Seaside Village. A man just like this one had scared her away from the road at night.
She smiled to herself just before the man replied, knowing how foolish she had been at the time.
”On foot? Maybe two hours,” the man scratched his beard while thinking.
”Are you coming from the Silver Sea Region?” Shin Sumi continued. The man nodded.
”Is the road to East Silver City good?”
The man nodded once again, eyeing her in a strange way. She looked no older than sixteen or seventeen and from the questions she asked she wanted to walk all the way across half a region.
If East Silver City was her destination, she was looking for at least two weeks of walking. More than what a lady's legs could usually afford.
But Shin Sumi didn't look like a lady. With her simple grey cloak she looked like any farmer's girl. Pretty but unsophisticated.
However farmer girls didn't tend to travel very far.
His mind full of confusion, the messenger shook his thoughts away, telling her roughly the distance she would face between here and her destination.
They soon parted ways, Shin Sumi walking with determination. The horse rider made a mental note to himself to inquire about a missing young girl or concubine to the lords of the next city he would stop at.
Confident there was no other person nearby on the road, Shin Sumi accelerated. She looked calm and for a second an onlooker would have thought she was simply walking when in fact each step of hers covered more distance than a grown man running at full speed would.
Chen Fort was two hours away but Shin Sumi passed the guard outpost twenty minutes after she had met the messenger.
She found a clear water fountain to refill a small gourd she carried in her bag of holding. At this time of the morning, the markets were still asleep and people were not yet out on the streets.
Hesitating for a short time, Shin Sumi allowed Nuan to come out. The Lion Bat splashed in the water for a few seconds while she filled her gourd. After motioning to the spirit creature, Nuan disappeared inside Shin Sumi's wrist again.
Shin Sumi drank a few gulps of fresh water, feeling Nuan's powers still lingering in the liquid. The dull headache that had begun in the night slowly faded away.
Shin Sumi breathed slowly.
”Immortals don't get headaches like that yet it is the second time it has happened to me in less than five days,” she muttered.
Probing her body with her divine sense, she didn't find anything out of the norm. Having no choice other than ignoring it, she shrugged and continued walking until she reached the outskirts of the city on the eastern side.
Patiently, she walked along the side of the main road, waiting for the night to come and the passing of carts and horse riders to become more sparse.
An entire day would seem like a long time but for Shin Sumi it passed like a breath of time. Focusing inward, she spent the day focusing on meditating despite the poor amount of Shinsoo as well as reviewing in her head the techniques she had been trying to comprehend the night before.
For four nights and four days, Shin Sumi alternated between walking when passersby were there and running like a shadow under the cover of darkness.
The sun was only starting to set when she spotted the sparse lights of a city in the distance.
Shin Sumi breathed a sigh of relief, a long breath of mixed emotions. Melancholy, excitation, nervousness and even a tinge of anxiousness.
”East Silver City, the Big City where Second Uncle lives” she spoke softly, just for herself.
With a strange twist of her mind, Shin Sumi chuckled despite herself.
”It took me three years to walk to the Big City from East Seaside Village. I have to be the slowest walker in all of the realms.”
Shin Sumi was standing on top of a small hill, on the side of the road, peering intently towards the city lights. In her memory East Silver City had always been the Big City, the largest city she had ever known. Now that she was older, taller and more knowledgeable about the world, she realized how foolish she had been.
From one side of the city to the other, the entire area was barely bigger than the upper valley of the Dark Sky Starry Sect. Granted, for a mortal it was large, spanning a few kilometers in every direction, but it was in no way gigantic.
As her face laced with emotions looked forward under her cloak, a crystalline sound rang in her ears. In the span of a few breaths her face turned stern as her lips became redder, her eyebrows thinner and her cheeks higher.
When the girl in the cloak finally decided to stop staring and sit down on the ground, Yan Yan's face had taken over her own.
”Come out Nuan, we're stopping for the night here, there is no use in advancing at night anymore.”
The Lion Bat flashed outside of the leaf pattern on her wrist and immediately looked at her. Nuan was not very expressive, her black eyes unreadable most of the time, but Shin Sumi still felt the question.
”I need to become Yan Yan because I don't know if my parents are still looking for me after all these years. Disappearing people are not that common and I wouldn't be surprised if a merchant walking on this road recognized me as a picture he's seen placated on the walls somewhere,” she hesitated before adding ”and I can't definitely go to the library as myself.”
Nuan expression didn't fade away, because there was no expression on her face to begin with. Shin Sumi gently petted the Lion Bat, ”It's true, I might be a bit scared to do this. I'm afraid I would be recognized... Or that I wouldn't.”
Falling into a long drawn silence, Shin Sumi's hand pet Nuan mechanically until the tiny beast flapped her wings around, flying awkwardly around at the height of a person and attempting to survey the area.
That night, Shin Sumi didn't meditate. She didn't sleep either. She simply sat there, her back against a tree, occasionally looking towards the city with reminiscence in her eyes.
No one knows what thoughts crossed her mind that night.