Chương 20

With that settled, Lodin set out for the west gate of the city with Kang Dae Han and Akiyama Shin in tow. The crowd of cultivators parted as he approached. Some stepped aside without meeting his eyes. Others watched from a distance, arms folded, their earlier hunger for a challenge gone quiet.

"Three days from now," said Lodin, as he passed them by.

"Founders Memorial Training Ground. Tell your friends." Dae Han raised an eyebrow at him.

"You're truly going to fight everyone who shows up."

"At the same time," said Lodin. Dae Han shook his head in disbelief but he kept walking. Their route to the west wall took them through Trader's Row, a wide and busy thoroughfare lined with the stone facades of merchant houses and the banners of trading companies. Carts rolled past laden with silks and spices. Porters shouldered crates between warehouses. The smell of the city, smoke and sweat and a hundred kinds of food, thickened in the warm air.

The western gate rose at the end of the avenue, sixty feet tall with ramparts and watchtowers set at regular intervals. Guards in imperial colors flanked the arch but made no move to stop the three cultivators who passed beneath it. And beyond the wall, the world opened up. Green hills rolled toward the horizon. Orchards lined the road, their branches heavy with spring fruit. Fields of millet and wheat spread in neat rows, and farmers bent among them, small figures under the great blue sky.

Lodin walked at the front. Shin kept pace at his right shoulder, his black cloak retrieved and donned, its serpent-head clasp gleaming in the midday sun. Dae Han ambled at the left, his kasa tilted low, his one good eye on the orchards that lined the road. Their apples were ripe and heavy on the branch, close enough to touch. Dae Han reached through the wooden fence and plucked one.

"That is not your property," Shin said. Dae Han raised an eyebrow. He fished a copper tael from his pocket and flicked it over the fence and the coin landed in the dirt on the far side.

"Happy now?" Shin did not answer. He looked at the coin in the dirt, then at Dae Han, then faced forward and kept walking.

"Who is this flea-bitten vagabond," Shin said to Lodin. Lodin smirked over his shoulder at him.

"My master was a wandering cultivator for a long time," he said.

"Some say wandering cultivators turn out to be stronger than sect cultivators. Better watch who you disrespect." Shin side-eyed Dae Han.

"I see nothing worthy of respect." Dae Han grinned at Shin.

"It's the things you don't see that get you," he said, and then took a bite of the apple. They walked in silence for a stretch. The road wound between low stone walls, past farmhouses with gray tile roofs, through stands of oak and pine that broke the midday sun into pools of light and shadow. The air smelled of cut grass and manure and the sweetness of fruit ready for the harvest. Lodin watched the road roll on and felt a weight in his chest.

It had settled there last night, somewhere between the demon horde and Gutou's escape, and it had not lifted since. The corpse-smile hung in his memory. The way it sank into shadow. He had the bastard right in front of him, close enough to break, and the man slipped away like water through a cracked bowl. Lorn was somewhere in the city behind him. Or somewhere else. Somewhere worse. The word vessel turned over in his skull, and each rotation made his jaw clench tighter. How much time did he have?

He didn't know, and the absence of an answer sat in his gut like spoiled meat. And then there was his mother's letter. She was on her way. Ten years since he had seen her face, heard her voice. He did not know what he would feel when he saw her again, and he suspected he wouldn't until the moment arrived. The road climbed a gentle rise and the view opened before them. Hills gave way to more orchards, orchards to fields of wheat that swayed in the breeze and stretched all the way to the horizon.

A river glinted in the distance, a ribbon of silver that cut through the green. The mountains to the north were a dark smudge against the sky. Dae Han's gaze drifted upward, as he wiped a trickle of apple juice from his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

"Lot of crows," he said. Lodin followed his gaze. There were indeed a lot of crows, perched on fence posts, on branches, on the ridge of a barn roof. Dozens of them, more in the trees ahead. They sat still and watched the road.

"So what business does your family have in these hinterlands, barbarian." Shin said. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Lodin glanced at the road ahead. It stretched on for miles, straight and empty.

"Since we've got time to kill, I guess I could explain how I ended up walking down this road with the two of you." And he told them the story as they walked. The orchards gave way to pastureland, then a hillside with terraced rice paddies that gleamed in the climbing sun. Farmers looked up from their work as the three cultivators passed, then bent back to their tasks. A heron took flight from a drainage ditch and climbed into the pale sky.

Dae Han listened to the tale of Lorn's abduction and Lodin's journey to Dragon's Rest with his head tilted, his one good eye on the road ahead. His expression gave away nothing, but Lodin caught him nodding once or twice, as if pieces of a puzzle were falling into place. Shin listened in a different way. His stride never slowed, but his jaw clenched. His fists tightened at his sides. The moment Lodin mentioned demonic cultivation, Shin's gaze snapped toward him, sharp and hot, focused on every word.

When Lodin finished, silence held the road for a long moment. Shin's jaw tightened.

"I see…" he said.

"Then I am where I should be." To Lodin it almost seemed that the anger in him burned cold rather than hot. He wondered if he'd feel the same about someone else's brother. Most likely not. But he supposed that wasn't what Shin was mad about. His anger seemed like the kind that didn't need personal stakes to sustain it. He was angry about the mere existence of demonic cultivators around him. The road climbed past the well-tended farmland and into wilder fields and meadows.

The treeline came closer to the road, first on the north side and then on the south, and within an hour the trail itself was shaded from the noontime sun by the canopy of leaves over their heads. The fork in the road appeared as they crested a rise. The left road curved west toward distant hills, rutted deep from cart traffic, lined with stone markers. The right road ran north, narrower, overgrown at its edges. Grass had begun to reclaim the packed earth. Between the roads stood a shrine.

Four stone posts held up a peaked roof of gray tile, and beneath it stood a statue of the First Emperor Odoshinko in his aspect as the Wanderer. The stone figure rose from a square pedestal, its base blackened by centuries of exposure to the elements. Cross-legged he sat, knees spread wide, the folds of his robes carved to pool around his thighs and spill over the pedestal's edge. Travelers had rubbed the feet smooth, touched the knees until the carved ridges of the robe had worn like real cloth.

A garland of dried flowers hung around the Emperor's neck, the petals brown and brittle. Above it, the face held a serene half-smile, the expression of one who has seen all roads and found each worthy. Its stone eyes looked downward, lidded, fixed on some middle distance between heaven and earth. One hand rested palm-up on his right knee, fingers loose, receptive. The other rose before his chest, palm outward, fingers pointed toward the sky, the gesture of safe passage.

Someone had placed a small bowl of rice at the pedestal's base, and beside it a cup of water covered with a square of white cloth. Fresh incense burned in a brass holder there. Three sticks sent ribbons of smoke into the still air, gray against gray, and the smell of sandalwood reached Lodin where he stood. There were a few crows lined up on the shrine's roof, watching Lodin and his companions approach. A murmur reached his ears, low and rhythmic. The cadence of prayer.

His gaze dropped to the base of the shrine and his stomach clenched. A man knelt there in black robes, his head shaved, his hands pressed together before his chest. He had not been there a moment ago, or perhaps he had been so still and quiet, his aura so faint, that Lodin hadn't noticed him. He had looked at the offerings, the rice bowl, the cup of water. The space before the pedestal had been empty. Or had it. The monk's murmured prayers continued, the syllables too soft to parse.

He gave no sign he had noticed Lodin at all. Lodin's boots crunched on the gravel where the road split, and the murmur stopped. The monk turned his head. His face was gaunt, the skin pulled tight across the skull. Gray, that skin, the color of ash or old clay. His scalp was shaved smooth, and the stubble there was white. When he smiled, the expression reached his mouth but stopped before his eyes. It reminded Lodin very much of the visage of Elder Gutou.

"Travelers," he said. His voice was soft, ghostly.

"You have walked a long way today." Lodin nodded.

"And we've got a ways yet to go." A smile stretched across the monk's withered face.

"Indeed you do, young one. But a word of warning to you. The Emperor Odoshinko watches over all travelers. All roads are holy, sacred in his sight. But some paths are best left untrod by men. For the beast and the demon are subjects of the Emperor Odoshinko as well, and the Emperor watches over all of his beloved subjects."

"Demons have no place in the realm of men," said Shin, with steel in his voice. It was quiet for a moment. The wind rustled a few leaves overhead. Birds chatted in the branches around them. The monk sat still as a corpse, grinning at them.

"Perhaps, when certain roads are taken, one leaves the realm of men behind them." Lodin held the monk's gaze. Clearly someone wanted him to know they were aware of his approach. He turned his chin up a fraction and stepped onto the northern road. Dae Han and Shin fell in beside him. Their footsteps crunched on the overgrown path. The trees closed in overhead and the light dimmed to green and gold. Lodin did not look back. He did not need to.

He could feel the monk's gaze on his shoulders, patient and cold, until the road bent and the shrine vanished behind the treeline.

"That was a lookout," said Dae Han, once they were a good distance away. Lodin nodded.

"Yup."

"Then next we shall encounter guard dogs," said Shin. He nodded again.

"Bet on it." The trail narrowed as they walked. Brush pressed close on both sides, branches that scraped at their shoulders and caught at their sleeves. Roots broke through the packed earth and made the footing treacherous. The path had not seen regular travel in a long time. Overhead, the canopy thickened as the branches wove together into a roof that swallowed the sky. The light that reached the forest floor was sparse and diffuse, making it more difficult to tell what time of day it was.

The silence had weight here. Even their footsteps seemed muted, absorbed by the moss and the dead leaves and the damp air that smelled of rot and old earth. The fence appeared as they came around a sharp turn in the trail. Its wooden posts were weathered gray, and strung with thick rope.

A sign hung from the center post, the characters faded but still legible: – BY ORDER OF HIS EXCELLENCY JUN FANG, GOVERNOR OF HUIDAO THE AREA BEYOND THIS MARKER IS A CONTAMINATED ZONE PASSAGE BEYOND THIS MARKER IS FORBIDDEN, UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH OR EXILE – Lodin looked back at his traveling companions.

"Ready to leave the world of men?" he said, with a smirk. Shin gave him a hard look.

"Ready to strike down any demon that crosses our path."

"Ready to get the hell out of here the moment those fists can't back up your bravado," Dae Han said. Lodin chuckled and stepped over the rope.