The black cat slowly crawled toward the piece of meat held out by Shao. As it moved, it kept most of its weight on its back paws, ready to run if necessary. After a few tense seconds, the cat reached the meat and began to lick the offering curiously. Shao lightly placed the piece of meat on the ground, and the cat immediately began chewing on the hardened meat.
As the cat slowly tore apart and consumed the meat, Shao sidled forward on his bent legs and slowly reached a hand out for the cat’s fur. The cat watched Shao’s hand with suspicion, but it didn’t back away as he lightly brushed his fingers against the cat’s back. After about half a minute, the cat finished eating its piece of meat and immediately began purring rhythmically.
Shao wondered if the cat had been domesticated previously. No wild animal would be so comfortable around a human, even if he did offer the animal food. Shao broke off half a piece of jerky and offered it to the small black cat, which accepted the food gratefully.
“Do you have a name, little guy?” Shao asked, not expecting an answer. The cat just continued eating the piece of jerky. He took a moment to think up a name for the small creature. “I think I’ll call you ‘Zero.’ How does that sound?”
The cat gave no response beyond pressing its head into Shao’s palm and purring loudly. Shao nodded his head, realizing that the name would be sufficient.
Back on the road once more, Shao held his bag in his good hand and peered at Zero’s head, which was peeking out. Zero must have been carried in such a way in the past, because he did not resist in the slightest when Shao put him in the bag.
“If you get hungry, feel free to eat some of the jerky in there,” Shao said as he slung the bag over his shoulder and picked his iron staff up off the ground. He figured that Zero wouldn’t eat enough to seriously reduce the amount of rations he had. Most of his rations were hard bread, in fact, and Zero definitely wouldn’t want to eat that.
Giving the cat a name put Shao in a mood for naming things. As he walked down the dirt road, he wondered if he should give names to his bloodline talent and the sacred technique he took from the divine bull. If Shen Jian had never heard of Shao’s bloodline talent, then it definitely didn’t have a name of its own.
“What should I call that technique?” Shao muttered to himself. “I might as well keep it simple. I’ll go with Charging Bull. Nice and simple.” He paused. “What about my bloodline talent? I gain the power of other cultivators by eating their hearts. Hmm.” Shao squinted in thought. He would have scratched his chin, but both of his hands were unavailable. “Gourmand? No. What about Carnivore? Yeah, I like the sound of that.”
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The simplicity of the names filled Shao with a certain amount of rebellious catharsis. Most cultivator techniques had absurdly long names, and he was happy to buck the trend. Shao smiled as he imagined hundreds of cultivators learning the Charging Bull technique and being scandalized by the short name.
Eventually, the dirt beneath Shao’s feet was replaced by cobblestone that had been smoothed by travelers on foot and horse-drawn carriages. It occurred to Shao as he walked that he had never before been so far from home.
That night, Shao slept under the stars once more. He passed half a dozen small villages and isolated inns, but he decided to pass those settlements without stopping. For some reason that he couldn’t quite place, Shao wasn’t in the mood to talk to people.
Shao awoke on the fourth day of his long journey to Shigong Temple and continued walking down the cobblestone road. The density of travelers on the road had increased significantly, and Shao would pass a new group once every hour. Every group he passed would bow and keep a respectful distance from him. They could certainly tell that he was a cultivator, Shao thought. He was probably given away by the heavy iron staff he used as a walking stick.
Just as the sun reached the zenith of its arc through the sky, Shao reached his destination. Rising above the horizon ahead of Shao was Zhoushan City.
Upon seeing the city, Shao’s first feeling was one of fear. Pillars of smoke rose over Zhoushan, and he was worried that some group of cultivators lit it on fire before he arrived. As he got closer, however, he realized that the smoke plumes rose out of narrow grey chimneys that were built atop tall stone buildings.
The second emotion that roiled in Shao’s body was awe. He was awestruck by the massive size of Zhoushan. He had always viewed Bluecrest Village at its height as average-sized for a settlement. In the winter, nearly eight hundred people lived in Bluecrest. Zhoushan City was several times the size of Shao’s village, and he wondered how anyone navigated the city.
As Shao began walking down the heavily-populated roads of Zhoushan, he looked at the tall buildings that rose up in the distance. Most of the buildings were built in the typical pagoda style similar to Patriarch Guanyu’s home in Bluecrest, but a few were built in a style that Shao had never heard of or seen before. The strange buildings were round and made of stone. Though Shao was sure the stone buildings were much sturdier than the normal wooden ones, he thought they looked ugly.
Walking through Zhoushan was an assault on Shao’s ears and nose. He still hadn’t fully acclimated to his enhanced hearing, and he could hear dozens of conversations going on at any one moment. Peels of laughter and shouting cut through the ambient buzz of conversation, and Shao couldn’t parse any of it.
Even without an enhanced sense of smell, Shao’s nose was overwhelmed. The smell of unwashed bodies, delicious food, and untreated waste hit him all at the same time. In an attempt to escape from the sensory overload, Shao followed the smell of freshly-baked food into a store with bright blue banners hanging in front of the door.
He slid the door closed behind him. Mercifully, the loud sounds and disgusting smells disappeared as the door closed, and Shao found himself inside of a shop that sold some kind of food.