Book 2: Chapter 36: Emperor’s Bay (1)

Book 2: Chapter 36: Emperor’s Bay (1)

Sen didn’t maintain his absolute isolation stance the rest of the way to Emperor’s Bay, but he also didn’t make a point of interacting with anyone. He focused mostly on speed, only occasionally slowing or stopping if something caught his attention. He did, however, make a point to stop and intervene the one time he ran across bandits. Unlike the last time he saw bandits, he didn’t give them a choice to leave. While almost all of the caravanners made it out with minimal injury, none of the bandits survived. Sen did let the caravan people talk him into staying for a meal as a way to thank him. It was simple enough fare, but Sen was slowly learning to appreciate the joys of not having to cook every meal for himself.

When Emperor’s Bay did finally come into sight, Sen had to stop and simply stare at it for a while. Tide’s Rest had seemed big to him, dwarfing Orchard’s Reach many times over. In comparison, Emperor’s Bay was a giant among children. The main city covered miles in every direction before the outer wall formed a hard break. Yet, the city didn’t end there. Nestled in a shallow valley, Sen could see smaller towns that spread out from the main city like roots breaking the surface of the earth at a distance from a tree. Most of the outer villages and communities looked like farming concerns, probably meant to supply the city itself. Sen struggled to imagine how so many people could all live in one place or why they would want to. Out in the bay itself, there were so many boats and ships that Sen knew it would be pointless to even try to count them.

Part of Sen wanted to simply avoid the main city, but it wasn’t practical. It was the first place he had visited where Master Feng had given him some useful information about where to go. Beyond that, Grandmother Lu’s shop was located in that sprawling mess, somewhere. Sen shook off his hesitance. As vast and incomprehensible as the city looked, he knew that this wasn’t even close to the largest city on the continent. It wasn’t even the largest city in the kingdom. The capital city was supposedly much larger than Emperor’s Bay, not that Sen had any intentions of visiting the capital. He suspected that there was nothing there for him to find except a lot of trouble. Seeing his extended visual inspection of the area for the stalling that it was, Sen got moving again. Sen chided himself for not asking Wu Meng Yao about any other sects in the city. Without that information, he couldn’t be sure if anyone would be waiting around for wandering cultivators near the gates the way people had been in Tide’s Rest. With that uncertainty in mind as he approached the city, he took the precaution he hadn’t thought was necessary in Tide’s Rest. He hid himself while still several miles out from the main wall.

He supposed that anyone who had been tracking him from inside the city would notice that he’d vanished. He doubted their observations were good enough to pick him out of the crowd of people he blended into as he approached the gate. He had expected some kind of trouble when he tried to enter the city, or at least a basic attempt to get a bribe from him. Auntie Caihong and Master Feng had told him that was fairly common practice at city gates. It seemed the guards at these gates were either more honorable or less ambitious than those kinds of guards. They stopped everyone and asked what business they had in the city. For farmers, merchants, and caravans, there was generally a quick inspection of their goods.

“Purpose of your visit?” asked the guard without even really looking at Sen.

“Shopping and running errands for my uncle,” replied Sen, figuring that it was close enough to true not to matter.

The guard’s eyes wandered over Sen for a moment, perhaps judging the quality of his clothes, before he nodded and gestured him through.

Sen paused for a moment and asked, “Can you tell me where to find the Pink Orchid district?”

The guard gave Sen a longer look then, which made Sen wonder if he’d made some kind of mistake. Then, the guard gave him a wink that Sen didn’t quite know how to interpret.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’d like to speak with the manager, please,” said Sen, following Master Feng’s instructions.

The girl looked briefly concerned before her features smoothed out. “Is there a problem?”

Sen lifted an eyebrow. “Not that I’m aware of. I just have a message for them.”

A kind of invisible tension bled away from the young woman. “Of course. Wait here.”

The girl vanished for a minute or two before returning with an older woman who gave Sen a nearly identical look of curiosity as the one the young woman had given him. Sen looked back and forth between them before he realized that they were related, possibly mother and daughter. The older woman gave Sen a polite bow.

“I am the manager of this establishment. How may I assist the young master?”

Sen returned the bow and said, “I was instructed to tell you that Feng Ming sent me.”

Then, chaos erupted around Sen.