118: Chapter 118 Traveling Through Nations

The night you left Daliang Mountain, the moonlight was very faint.

You carried the Puppet, which was wrapped in seven or eight layers of coarse burlap, along the official road heading northwest.

Although you traveled by day and meditated by night, due to the thinness of the Spiritual Qi, your Qi was still being depleted faster than it could be replenished.

Therefore, you set a strict rule for yourself: if your total Qi fell below fifty percent, you had to stop and rest to absorb Spiritual Qi until full before continuing; better to be slow than to take risks.

Traveling and stopping in this manner, you spent five months passing through Great Qing and Great Wu.

These two countries were relatively peaceful, with stable government and quiet countryside. You spent almost all your time on the road. Occasionally, mountain bandits or roving gangs would eye your strange human-shaped bundle, but they eventually retreated with sense; in the dead of night, a woman traveling alone carrying something a head taller than herself—anyone would know something was wrong at a glance, and if they weren't scared away, they were considered bold.

But when you reached the third country, Great Yue, everything was completely different.

It had just experienced a succession struggle; princes were fighting, warlords were carving up territory, and there was war everywhere.

Walking on the official road of Great Yue, the scenes you saw were even more cruel than the chaotic times of Great Qing in your third simulation.

There were corpses of those who starved to death by the roadside, and villages burned to charcoal. There were women sitting on field ridges holding their dead children in a daze, their eyes as empty as two dry wells.

You did not meddle in other people's affairs.

You only felt some emotion in your heart, but continued on your way as usual.

After walking for another month, you had crossed half of Great Yue.

Near dusk on this day, your Qi was approaching fifty percent. Passing through several villages, you asked if you could stay for the night. People either looked at you in fear and nodded reluctantly, or waved their hands to refuse.

To both, you only said, "Excuse the disturbance," and turned to leave.

For you, having a roof to sleep under was naturally best, but if there really wasn't one, sleeping in the wilderness was fine. After all, you were an Earthly Immortal, and mere wind and frost could not touch you.

Another half an hour passed, and a small village appeared ahead.

There were only a few dozen households, mostly the elderly, weak, women, and children. You walked up and asked for a place to shelter from the wind and rain, offering to pay.

Several villagers looked at each other, saying they couldn't make the decision, and went to call the village chief.

You didn't expect that the village chief of this village would be a woman.

She was around forty, dressed in coarse cloth, her hands covered in calluses, and wind and frost embedded in the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. The moment she saw the huge human-shaped bundle behind you, her face turned pale in a flash, and she subconsciously stepped back half a step.

You thought to yourself, I'm going to be refused again.

But she stared at the bundle for a moment, and her expression suddenly changed. That bit of fear faded, turning into an indescribable softness.

"Stay," she said, her voice a bit hoarse. "There's no need for money. There happens to be a vacant room behind my house; I'll go tidy it up for you."

You were stunned for a moment.

"...Thank you."

The woman waved her hand and turned to busy herself.

Inside the house, her husband asked her in confusion: "Mother of our child, why did you agree? And you didn't even want money? In these times, even a mouthful of food is precious."

The village chief, while spreading dry grass, whispered: "Look at that thing on her back... wrapped so tightly, and it's human-shaped."

"What is that?"

"What else could it be?" The village chief sighed. "I'm afraid it's her husband, or perhaps her brother. In these times, it's hard enough to stay alive oneself, yet she still wants to carry her relative's corpse back to let them return to their roots... This heart is rare."

She paused and patted the last handful of dry grass flat.

"If we can help, let's help."

You stayed in the small village and began to absorb the thin Spiritual Qi between heaven and earth to restore your Qi.

The village chief often brought you some food, coarse grain cakes, wild vegetable porridge; it was very simple, but you could tell this was the best they could offer.

You also got to know the village chief's seven or eight-year-old daughter, named A-He.

The little girl wore two crooked pigtails, her face flushed red through her dark skin, and her eyes were very bright. Every time she delivered food, she would hold the bowl, stand on tiptoes, and carefully push open your door.

"Auntie, time to eat." She placed the bowl on the table but didn't leave, staring straight at your face.

"What are you looking at?" you asked.

"Auntie is pretty," she said crisply. "Prettier than the Bodhisattva in the temple."

You smiled, took a piece of candy from your pocket, peeled off the paper, and stuffed it into her mouth.

A-He's eyes widened instantly. With her cheeks bulging from the candy, she mumbled: "Sweet!"

"Come often if you like it."

From then on, A-He stuck to you, running to your room seven or eight times a day. Sometimes to deliver food, sometimes just to ask for candy, and sometimes for no reason at all, just lying on the threshold watching you meditate.

"Auntie, what are you doing?"

"Nurturing the spirit."

"What is nurturing the spirit?"

"It means closing your eyes and letting the strength inside your body grow."

The little girl nodded as if she understood, then asked: "Then what is that big bundle on your back? People in the village say..."

She stopped halfway through her sentence after a glance from you, timidly falling silent.

"It is a person who cannot speak," you said indifferently. "You will know later."

But as you stayed longer, other voices gradually appeared in the village.

"This woman has stayed for three days, just eating and not working."

"Exactly, the village chief is too kind-hearted, supporting an outsider for nothing."

"Did you smell that? That thing on her back... is it starting to stink? Could it be that she really brought a corpse to our village? Bad luck!"

These words drifted into your ears, but you acted as if you didn't hear them.

You knew the village chief meant well and it wasn't worth causing trouble for her over such idle gossip.

On the third day, your Qi recovered to ninety percent.

You could clearly feel that the closer you got to the Cultivation World, the denser the Spiritual Qi in the world became. In Great Li, a full recovery of Qi took ten days, but now, it only took seven.

Just as you were circulating your visualization technique, capturing that wisp of spiritual power in the air.

A burst of rapid hoofbeats, mixed with rough shouting, suddenly tore through the village's tranquility.

You opened your eyes.

Outside the village, a group of deserters arrived.

Seven or eight men, riding stolen, skinny horses, with chipped blades hanging at their waists, their armor crooked and covered in dried bloodstains.

They drove the villagers to the threshing floor and gathered them into a pile. A burly man with a fleshy face leading them dismounted and kicked over a water vat that was blocking the way.

"Listen up!" he roared at the top of his lungs. "Make all the grain into dry rations and hand them over, at least a few hundred catties! And fix me a hot meal, there must be meat!"