FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

XInrui’s Talismans were nestled underneath Jun’s seat.

He had left 3, one with each of his concubines, back at home just in case, but had opted to bring the rest with him. Not because he thought he needed them, but because if everything went absolutely wrong….he would need something to bribe one of his siblings with.

Oh, and just in case something came up he supposed.

The road towards the Royal Road was itself well-maintained and relatively free of potholes, but it wasn’t what he had grown to be familiar with. Peerless Pearl City was to the West, and even Auspicious Fields, despite being to the north, used a lot of the same roads. Going East had the advantage that Jun could watch the fields that Lynguin was almost done seeding as he passed. But aside from that?

He had once known this way very well. In another life, this had been a lifeline to what he knew of the world. Technically, it was his lifeline in this one too, but the last time he had ridden or walked through it had been so long ago that…

This might as well have been the first time he went through it for all that he remembered it.

The six bodyguards that went with him traveled with a degree of ease and familiarity that they hadn’t had traveling anywhere else. The three-day trip to the Royal Road was shortened to two days and a half, as the men forced themselves to arrive at the best resting spots. The ones set aside for Curiers and Yan men on official business which, for all intents and purposes, included conveying Jun to his ancestral home.

The trees didn’t change, the hills flattened and the wind became a tad stronger. The number of towns and villages slightly increased as they got away from Jun’s little corner of nowhere. Had he been of a mind, there were other major roads that intersected this one along the way. Ones that eventually led to major towns and very vast fields. The sort of thing you’d see near Peerless Pearl City if you weren’t coming from its East, like Jun had to.

But then, just as fast, they started to vanish the closer they got to the Royal Road.

Because, for all that these were the highways that connected the Empire together, they were no place for a peasant to set foot on.

At first glance, they didn’t look like much, these Royal Roads.

Oh, the ones on this side of the Yan lands were made of red clay bricks, whereas the normal roads were paved with rocks, gravel, and substrate. A close look at them revealed faded marks and flowing designs on the bricks but for the most part the most striking difference between this and a normal road was the inch-high borders at the extremities of the road. These “borders” had holes to allow water to drain, but they also had a very simple function:

If you didn’t have something the road recognized as a permit like, say, the letter from Jun’s father, then no matter how much you tried you would not be able to set foot on the road.

It repelled all attempts at crossing it, like gravity set to an opposite polarity. As innocent as this simple measure seemed it had, all on its own, helped corral bandits and invading armies more efficiently and cruelly than any wall ever had.

Such roads cut whichever lands they went through in two and effectively separated them to such a degree that even trees were starting to slowly diverge from each other. And all of that within sight of each other. Care had been taken to place “crossing points” along its length every so often, but communities could not exist with a road they could neither transverse nor cross.

So the Royal Roads usually stood alone, their sheer existence making their surroundings not matter.

…it sort of felt lonely.

Was it weird that Jun was starting to miss his girls? He was a very self-sufficient person, but he had accepted the interruptions in his life that they represented. Except, he was now missing it. He had felt it a little bit when he went to get Lynguin, but he felt as though he hadn’t stayed long enough in his home to recover from it.

Then again, he was never much of a traveler and yet that appeared to be what he was becoming.

Sigh.

The Royal Road Jun’s entourage arrived at was a good-sized strip that could have sustained three chariots side-by-side. The horses of Jun’s carriage stopped just before getting to the border of the road, and Jun wordlessly extended his father’s letter through the carriage window.

The temporary captain of his guards took it and waved it above the road.

And, just like that, a certain “pressure” that Jun hadn’t known was there left his ears as if the air itself felt lighter. The guard with the letter gingerly stepped on the road…and found that it wasn’t rejecting him.

They all rush into as if it would change its mind.

Being on the Royal Road didn’t feel any different than being on a normal road. For the most part. Air still blew down into it for example and, obviously, whatever mechanism that stopped people from getting on it didn’t stop light.

But once you picked up speed, once you started to walk…the world outside of the road started to blur.

The distance between the summer mansion that was now Jun’s and the hold that his family had been living for ages was about a thousand miles from each other. A monstrous distance in its own right, yet one he was now traveling within a week.

And they would cover most of it in one single day.

That is how long it would take them to travel the whole road before they got off. And it would cover over 90 percent of the distance there before they were in ancestral Yan lands.

The Brick road that they traveled on widened to have 5 chariots traveling side by side at points, big enough for a whole army to travel on. At some points, it slimmed down to being barely big enough to have two. As fast as they might be traveling to outside observers, the speed they experienced inside of it was the simple canter of a horse. Consequently, there was no need to stick to any particular lane as there was little danger of crashing into someone else, despite how fast they were, in truth, going.

If they needed to rest, however, they would have been required to step off the road as being too still MIGHT have ended up in a crash. Not that it mattered as they didn’t meet anyone on the road that day.

Being that they only got on the road late in the afternoon, they had to step off for the night before too long. But despite spending a whole night next to it, they were not bothered by the hum of travelers on the road…mostly because there weren’t any.

Not an uncommon occurrence for the Royal Road at night, given that it wasn’t many people that could travel through it, to begin with. But the next morning, when they set out in it, they still did not meet anyone on the road.

Not when they got on, and not a few hours later when they kept traveling through it.

It got to the point that Jun started to feel as though something was wrong; private road or not, there should have been couriers and messengers passing occasionally passing by. Otherwise, very rich merchants sometimes managed to negotiate temporary passage through, and noble armies needed to constantly rotate their men. Was it just a bad time of the year? Jun could not say as he had never concerned himself with the peculiarities of his family land in his second life. Something that, yet again, was biting him in the ass in this third one.

A few hours later, nearing the time to stop and eat lunch, they found the reason why:

There was a junction of the road that was being repaired.

In a stretch of the road where an army could have walked through, the five-lane kind, there sat tents full of men as guards faced both directions of the road around them.

The world stopped blurring around Jun and his guards as they got close and it occurred to him that the road had been deactivated in this part of it.

“What is going on here?” Jun’s temporary captain called out when they got close enough.

“Hold there,” a man in robes lacily waved at them and nonchalantly got up from the floor. He dusted himself and yawned while the guards around neither reacted nor said anything. He was not in the Yan’s colors, nor did he have their emblems. He didn’t wear their armor, or had any of their badges of office, but the designs on his robes perfectly explained the deference the men there, and now the men in Jun;s retinue, immediately gave him.

He was a Cultivator.

“As you can see, the road is under maintenance,” the man drawled, “If you like, you can get off here and travel a few days down the road where it’s still working like the rest but, honestly?”

“The artisans are almost done fixing it up. Why don’t you put your things down and rest for a bit?”

“As in, right here, i-in the middle of the road?” the temporary captain dared to ask.

“Why not?” the Cultivator shrugged, “It’s not like you are getting in anyone’s way.”

“What do you say, Young Master?” Jun’s guard called out.

“...why is a Cultivator, of all things, guarding the repair artisans of the Royal Road?” Jun, instead of answering, asked.

“Because it pleases this Cultivator to do so,” the Cultivator shrugged a non-answer.

“Your Young Master is a Yan son,” your temporary captain called out, but he sounded unsure of himself.

It wasn’t that Cultivators outranked nobility so much as that they weren’t even part of the ranking system; There existed men who were as individually strong as a whole Noble house. There were rumors and legends of monsters that were as strong, all on their own, as the whole Empire.

But when it came to individuals who weren’t at that height, where did they rank compared to Nobility?

Where did this man rank compared to Jun?

Who deferred to whom?

Entire tales of tragedy and triumph involved answering this question.

Jun resisted the urge to groan and drage his hand through his face, “This important Young Master is Jun Yan.”

By introducing himself, he might put himself below the Cultivator. But by being pompous about it, he was taking A lead. A net neutral, in short.

“Oh, that’s nice,” the Cultivator smiled.

…that is, if the Cultivator responded in kind.

Jun looked at his temporary guard captain.

“Ah, right,” he coughed into his hand, “The Young Master need not know the name of everyone he meets, yet would know what yours is, Cultivator.”

“You can call me Ye,” the man waved at them.

“...just Ye?” the guard captain asked.

“Yeah,” he shrugged.

This time, Jun DID groan, “This Young Master would know your Sect, Cultivator,”

“Well, as to that, is it not obvious?” he smirked as he spread his arms, letting Jun see the dark diamond within a white circle, “You speak to Deciple of the Opaque Diamond Sect.”

“Opaque Diamond?” the guard captain tilted his head.

There were, of course, the really famous Sects that everyone knew of. But, to the world of mortals, the going ons of the Sects outside of those were as opaque as the crystal in the man’s robes.

“A Sect from the Daggers,” he sneered at Jun’s captain, “Holders of the passes.”

The Daggers were a group of mountains in the eastern parts of the Yan lands. They were also thousands of miles away from Jun’s home or the Yan compound.

It was no wonder they hadn’t heard about it.

However-

“Indeed, who hasn’t heard about the greatness of the valley lords?” Jun gave a single slight nod as if he had known from the beginning.

“The Young Master might even say that he can see Mount Tai,” the Cultivator said with approval, which just made Jun want to sigh.

“Yet this Young Master can’t help but notice that you are a long way from your home, Disciple Ye,” Jun said.

“So?” he asked.

“Y-you dare?” Jun’s guard sputtered.

“The Opaque Diamond’s business is their own,” the man laughed, “What’s it to you, peasant?”

“Master Ye!” one of the artisans interrupted them from where he was working, “How many people are on that side?”

The man clicked his tongue before he turned his head, “About half a dozen.”

The Artisans frowned and looked for his fellow artisans for approval.

Evidently, he got it, “The other side is starting to build a line. Tell the travelers to get their things ready.”

“We’ll temporarily activate the road on this part to get them out of here.”

“Well, well, well,” Ye huffed, “It seems the Heavens favor the Young Master, after all.”

“You heard the Artisans!” he talked loudly to them, “Be ready to get going the second the road activates.”

“The sheer disrespect…” the guard muttered, his hands gripping his sword tight.

But the sight of the guards along with the Cultivator shaking their heads at him stopped him from doing anything more.

They might be in Yan lands.

But the Royal Road was Imperial.

“Guard Captain?” Jun smoothly said.

“Yes, Young Master,” his temporary guard said.

“Maintain your dignity and Ignore the Opaque Diamond disciple.” Jun ordered, “We have better things to do.”

“You heard your master, puppy,” Ye shooed the guard captain, “Do as you are told.”

The fact that Jun had to tell his guard this proved, all on its own, why he was in his retinue; such displays were part and parcel of the Noble world. A servant that could not control their emotions in the face of opposition was simply one nobody could count on.

Though, honestly, Jun wasn’t particularly bothered that this made him look bad.

He just didn’t want his guard murdered.

At any rate, why did the artisans need to ask how many were at Jun’s party? They were right there; all they had to do was cast their glance and see them! Altough, now that he looked past them, the road on the other side was empty? What line was artisan talking about?

All the bricks around them glowed for one brief second and, almost as if they were being produced out of the ether, a line of Curiers, messengers and soldiers appeared on the other side of the artisans.

“Mind the masters in the middle!” Ye shouted and gestured towards the guards he was apparently managing to step out of the way

As they passed them by, the Cultivator shouted, “Don’t stop unless you want to be thrown off the road!”

“What a pompous bastard,” Jun’s man growled.

“What a boor,” Jun agreed.

He wasn’t terribly worse than the average Noble, though.

All the people on the other side, passed by one side and Jun the other.

But they all weaved around a collection of Artisans in the middle of the road. Out of curiosity, Jun glanced at them as he did. He could see them heating up cauldrons as they congregated around the leftovers of an impact on the road.

It looked as though a meteor had fallen into it, by the size of the hole in and the wave of deformations of the bricks around it.

Or, perhaps, like a fist backed by Chi had slammed against it.

Jun got to see, before they picked up speed again, as an Artisan picked a single drop of a green glowing viscous liquid from his cauldron and dropped it on a brick. It was thimble, really, but a glass rod with a bulb at its end spread it out and a bone needle etched it into forms along the way. The thimble soon spread enough to feel a whole cup instead of a drop and the faint marks that the bricks along the road took form.

A pile of such bricks surrounded the zone of impact until, suddenly-

It all blurred out of existence.

---

They managed to get to their exit point a few hours after that, and they merged into the sort of road that dotted all of the Yan lands.

The trees around here were not the sort of broad leaves that dotted Jun’s home, and the bamboo trees that it possessed were much thinner.

There were more villages around here and more towns. At no point did they have to camp along the way, and they slept the next three nights inside inns.

The rural wilds of Jun’s mansion had their charm, but there was vivid beauty here, where humanity had truly taken hold.

The beds were comfy, and the service was acceptable. It was a change of pace and it sort of made Jun want to take his girls here.

Maybe, someday, if he could do it without having to deal with his family politics.

The seal on his carriage made people part for them but, even then, their pace had to noticeably slow down at times as the traffic on the road got heavy.

People talked and chatted all around them.. The smell of horses and their feces got strong enough for Jun to pull out his fan. The ground started to churn with the mud that steeds brought into the road, and Jun was brought back to a point in his second life that seemed like a dream now.

They passed through the gates of a wall at some point, but the defensive position no longer marked the constraints of this city and hadn’t for ages.

In the middle of this “inner city”, however, was a huge moat. It was a dirt moat, though it could supposedly filled with water at any time. It was easily a quarter of a mile wide and, in the middle, was a large town. And this, all inside a huge city.

The wooden bridge that led to it was a huge thing that could bear four carriages riding side by side and, though it hadn’t done so in years, could retract and become another wall.

The men who guarded these walls, these streets, were of a different kind.

“This is, indeed, the Yan Lord’s letter,” the guard who stopped them at the entrance of the Yan compound told them after examining it. It had taken 5 minutes as the man sought out a lamp burning with a weak flame. Its smoke, upon touching the seals, made them glow faintly, but that was not enough to let them pass.

No, the guard broke out a book to cross-reference the seals within the letter.

“Welcome home, Lord Jun,” the man gave him a martial salute and a squad of Yan guards immediately pulled out of the walls to escort them to the Yan Home.

In here, in this Hold, lived many of the servants that not only cleaned the place but also repaired and maintained things. Craftsmen and Artisans. Normal and otherwise. The Yan Guard might not be huge but they were not exactly small. They, too, lived among the servants. All so that they could be nearby if they were called to protect their masters.

A town within a city, and the city would all starve before anyone in the Hold so much as felt peckish if they were to be besieged.

Though the Yan center of power was self-sufficient in many ways, the Yan were not content to simply have their necessities met. No Noble Family did.

To truly live in Luxury, it had to pull from the corners of the Yan Lands and beyond.

Merchants with the influence to do business directly with the Yan family walked the streets, and entertainers the influential figures had commended many times over played their trades along the road. Not just because it was profitable to do so, but because they might all catch the eye of a single member of the Yan family.

Because, so everyone knew, the Nobility tended to have desires, hungers, that only people like them might be able to fulfill.

The actual Yan mansion was a Confucian building expanded to ludicrous proportions.

Looking more like the warehouse of his first life, there were vast and multiple open-air courtyards inside of it. It had fields behind it too, just in case the Yan member didn’t want walls to block their eyes when they looked at the sky.

Yan’s guard captain knocked on the door-

“Ah, Young Master Jun,” a wizened old woman that had been old when Jun had been a babe answered, “You are expected. We were just about to send someone to see if you needed help..”

“Please, come in,” she gave him a bow and Jun left his men to go with one of the head servants of his family.

“Do you know what the summons is about, Miss An?” Jun asked.

“Well, while I would never presume to speculate about the matters of the family,” the old woman began, “Rumors may or may not say that your mother had a few marriage proposals concerning the Young Master ruined by certain events.”

Marriage Proposals? Really, that’s it? There was ALWAYS a marriage proposal from someone, somewhere for a Noble son or daughter even if they were only a babe. Jun would understand if it was from someone important but there was no way, NO WAY, anyone important had even entertained tying their fates with Jun.

He was the black sheep of the family, the useless son.

A bunch of rubes out in the sticks might be impressed by the fact that he had taken up concubines, or beaten bandits, but other Nobles did not.

“Now hurry master,” the old woman hurried him along, “We don’t want to keep your father waiting.”

And, practically making him run, she brought him to a room with large doors.

A single guard sat outside of the door and simply gave them a single nod as he opened the door.

“Oh, thank heavens,” Miss An said with relief, “We are here just in time.”

“Right,” Jun nodded along because it was the polite thing.

“Well, this servant shall take her leave, Young Master,” she bowed, “Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.”

“I will.” Jun nodded.

She then closed the door.

Leaving Jun in what he knew to be his father’s waiting room.

There were fine and comfy seats here, which Jun took advantage of, as music from somewhere in the compound drifted over to the room.

2 hours later, he got to meet his father.