351 Should I Come In?

After listening to the sad tale of the carefree fairy, the students were not particularly happy; this was something Baiyi found difficult to keep watching. "Hey, now! The reason I told all of you this story was not so that you all could frown! I just wanted all of you to learn to be as optimistic as that fairy, because you are all in a better position than she ever was. So remember to smile all the time, even when I am handing out homework..."

Contrary to Baiyi's expectations, his attempt at consolation made the mood of his students worsen, and they could not help but think, 'Don't tell me this dictator of a teacher is seriously planning on giving out homework during vacation!'

When Baiyi saw their mood worsen, he hurried waved his arm. "Alright, alright. I've told you a sob-story, so let us move on to a heartwarming and uplifting story, alright? Hmm… There was once a girl around your age group. She had pink hair and a pair of snow-white pointy ears, which resembled a mystical beast's..."

This story was not as long as the Fairy Walker's story. This story had caught the interest of the students, so they listened intently. When the story was almost at its end, the students had regained their happy moods again.

"That was how it ended. They defeated the Diabolical One and returned the crest to the mountain in Chaldea; after that, they watched the snow, which never melts, on the peak, waiting for their next great challenge," Baiyi finished.

Applause rang out in the coach. Zakum the fox was clapping with its paws, and the Potter the owl was flapping its wings hard.

"Godfather, did you tell us this story because you wanted us to remember that as long as our conviction is strong, we'll always be able to protect what's most important to us?" Vidomina asked, trying to decipher the reason for which Baiyi had told them the story.

"What? No! When the hell is conviction alone ever enough? The moral of the story was to keep your gears ready at all times, as well as getting yourself good teammates. Look at the female protagonist! If she didn't have that mystical beast, which sacrificed itself, she wouldn't have succeeded!" Baiyi said as he rapped his knuckles on Vidomina's head.

By the end of the second story, the sky had begun to darken. The coach reached a remote town, and the group decided to stay there for the night.

After a long, bumpy ride in the coach, the students were exhausted. The group located an inn that was up in a treehouse and went in, where they had a very vegan dinner. After that, everyone went to their respective rooms. After lights out, Baiyi received some visitors. He opened the door and saw two large pairs of green eyes outside his room; it was Zakum the fox and Sunny the sunflower.

"What's the matter?"

A speech bubble appeared over the fox's head, and the word "Hungry" appeared in it.

"But you all just had dinner!"

"Yes; grass"

"Well, it can't be helped. Fairies are vegetarians, after all. I know the two of you need meat, but there isn't any place here that serves that! So, maybe we should go out hunting." Baiyi replied and sighed.

"There's no need for Mentor to go with us. We are capable hunters," Zakum replied.

"Alright, then. Get it done as soon as possible, and don't come back with the smell of blood on you. Remember, we are in foreign territory; we should not draw too much attention to ourselves."

After obtaining his permission, both non-human students assumed their real forms. Zakum transformed into an enormous fox-like creature the size of an adult steed, and Sunny transformed into a strange plant with multiple tendrils. 

After the transformations, they both jumped out of Baiyi's window and disappeared into the night.

Baiyi had no idea where they had gone or what ultimately became their midnight snack, but the pair returned soon. They did not look messy, neither did they reek of blood, possibly because they had used magic to clean up.

After they returned, they both transformed back to their tame forms, greeted Baiyi, and returned to their rooms.

The next morning, in the process of paying the innkeeper for the night, the man advised Baiyi with a tone of caution. "Mister, if your group plans to venture deeper into the dark woods, please be careful. It's not very safe out there."

"What do you mean?" Baiyi asked calmly as he handed the innkeeper two gold coins.

"Something I heard from the local farmers. Last night, some terrifying monsters were on the loose, and they ate a lot of animals living in the woods outside of town. Some families who are focused on farming lost all their goats! Blasted creatures! Those farmers depend on the milk from their goats to make a living; how are they supposed to recover their losses now?" The innkeeper angrily replied. "We've already informed the town's guards so that they can find whatever blasted creature did it. Heck, you should probably stay a little while longer, at least until the monsters are caught."

"That is very kind of you," Baiyi said. "Oh, please allow me to go upstairs to retrieve something important. I think I forgot it there."

"Go ahead. I'm honored to help a generous customer coming from the distant realm of Isythre!" The innkeeper flashed him an understanding smile and pocketed the gold coins. 

Baiyi had secretly grabbed the fox and the sunflower, and raced up the stairs.

A short while later, whimpers that sounded like it was coming from an animal on the verge of death could be heard from up the stairs. It was not loud, but it sounded hysterical.

A very short while later, Baiyi led a very dispirited fox and sunflower downstairs, and he seemed to be carrying the pieces of five broken feather dusters with him. He poured the rubbish into a nearby trashcan and led the dispirited duo out the front door. Before he left, however, he turned around and asked the innkeeper, "Excuse me. Where can I buy a feather duster in this town?"

When the fox and sunflower heard that, they began to tremble.

The group entered their coach and continued on their journey. When the coach was passing by the farms on the outskirt of town, where the animals were massacred, it suddenly stopped. The local people saw a fox with a storage pouch in its mouth jump down from the coach and dash into an empty farm. Soon afterward, it was seen returning to the coach with nothing in its mouth. When the locals went into the farm to take a look, they spotted the storage pouch on the grass with a note underneath it, which stated: "please use this to buy new goats."

It was only after Zakum did this that Baiyi's attitude towards it and the sunflower softened.

However, when the two remembered that their meals, from that point onward, would only consist of vegetables, their moods quickly soured.

It did not take long before the coach stopped again, and at this time, Baiyi was in the middle of a heartwarming romance story, which contained a beautiful maiden with long, pale blue hair and a teenager — who was actually a hundred years old — humming to the melody of the popular "Scarborough Fair". The handsome fairy driving the coach interrupted Baiyi's story and informed the latter that he could not move any further ahead.

When Baiyi stepped out of the coach, he saw that they were still in the woods. The road they had been traveling on was in the only sign of civilization in these part of the woods. In other words, they were still very far away from their destination.

"There's a sign here, sir," the coachman said, pointing at a piece of parchment pinned to a tree. On the parchment was a note which stated: 'Strictly no visitors to Eom Village, effective from the time of writing this, until further notice.'

The notice was written in the language of the fairies, and although it contained much more than just that, Baiyi had translated a summarized version for his students.

"What happened?" Baiyi asked curiously.

The coachman shrugged; he was also not in the know as to recent developments. Despite that, he proceeded to give his two cents on the matter. "Maybe there were too many visitors to Eom Village, and their daily life was disturbed? The locals there are very different from us, you know. They are conservatives; even more conservative than what could be considered normal."

"Oh, so you mean there are a lot more people who know this village..." Baiyi muttered, finding the coachman's theory rather strange. Although the heiress of the Caudillo Butterfly bow is only selected from the girls in this village, no outsider could possibly know that such a custom existed. Even the Fairy Walker had undergone a series of sacred rites and taken stygian oaths to never leak the secret of this village. Baiyi had only come to know of its existence after exchanging memories with her.

As though the coachman had read his mind, he suddenly said, "No one, not even us secular families, had known that within this village lies an ancient weapon the earliest fairies called the Caudillo Butterfly. When that news broke, everyone rushed into the village to see it, and it wasn't just fairies who were interested.

"Caudillo Butterfly? The same one in legends?" Baiyi asked, feigning ignorance. "Wherever did you hear that from? How could something that miraculous exists in a place like this?"

"I heard it while drinking. At that time, the news had spread everywhere, and everyone seemed to be talking about it. No one could tell if it was true or not, though. For the past two months, most of the customers I have had also wished to visit Eon Village, but back then, the village was not stopping visitors from coming. However, those visitors returned in disappointment, so I began to believe that the rumor was fake news. The problem is, people would believe all kinds of things, even rumors," the coachman finished.

"Um, okay. Alright then, we'll disembark here and walk the rest of the way on foot," Baiyi replied and tossed a gold coin toward him.

The coachman caught it and studied it with an expression of pleasant surprise; it was a gold coin from Isythre! The coins from that realm were minted with more gold, so they had a very profound luster, making them more valuable than the coins the fairy kingdom.

"It is just as they say; only the visitors from Isythre are this generous!" He exclaimed. "A piece of advice to you, though, my generous friend. There are very few fairies still living in Eom Village, but they have preserved a lot of our ancient techniques, including unstoppable bow techniques. If you must go there, then please be vigilant."

With that, the coachman leaped back onto the driver seat of the coach and began to head back in the direction they had come from. After the advice, he had wished Baiyi good luck in the fairy language.

Even when the coach was only a speck in the horizon, Baiyi remained standing at the same spot, lost in his thoughts.

It was true that the secret of the Caudillo Butterfly was leaked, but who did it? It could not possibly have been Baiyi or the Fairy Walker, who was currently sleeping in the Void. It had to be someone else from the village, most likely...

That was not the point, however. The bigger issue on hand was the fact that many people had visited the village in the past few months, but they had returned empty-handed. This could only mean that the Caudillo Butterfly bow was no longer in the village; it had been taken somewhere else...

Hence, would he have to be crude and breach on someone else's property, only to end up ripping open their old scar?

Baiyi was starting to hesitate. He originally intended just to pay a visit to his cheap wife's hometown. Did he really have to commit uncivilized acts on his first visit? After all, this trip was almost no different from that of a son-in-law paying his first visit.