Lan Jin looks out from the exit of the mountain pass and examines both sides of the narrow dirt road stretching forward in front of him. The dirt road runs parallel to the pillar-like mountains piercing out of the ground on its right side and stretches for miles into the distance. On the path’s left, flowing green fields stretch for miles into the distance, only interrupted by numerous buildings far enough away from Lan Jin that they look smaller than a six-sided die. Even when Lan Jin looks further and further to the left, it seems as though the line of buildings never ends.
Curious about the sheer quantity of buildings, Lan Jin speaks up.
“Is that the Southern Border City?” He asks while pointing to the buildings in the distance.
Hu Qiuping shakes his head and replies, “No. That’s just a tributary village located outside of the Southern Border City’s Western Gatehouse. This road,” he says while pointing at the dirt road in front of them, “will turn into it in a few miles, and after that, you will be able to see the city walls.”
“All of those buildings are just a village? Not part of the city?” Lan Jin asks, feeling baffled. There have to be thousands of buildings along the line that he can see, and who knows how many are behind them.
“Mm.” Hu Qiuping replies. “Why? Have you not seen a city before?”
“I used to live in a city.” Lan Jin explains while examining the length of the village as best he can from so far away. “But, the city I lived in… I guess it depends on how many buildings I can’t see from here, but I think there might be more buildings in that village than in my city…”
Hu Shentian snorts. “The Northwest Tributary Village is only fifty miles long and five miles wide. The Southern Border City is two hundred fifty miles long and more than one hundred miles wide. If you think your ‘city’ is smaller than that village, then you are just a frog in the well!”
Lan Jin looks at Hu Shentian and retorts. “I’m calling bullshit. That ‘village’, if it is really that big, then that’s a city and a major one at that. The Southern Border ‘city’, if you’re telling the truth, isn’t a city, it’s a state or even a country.
Hu Shentian scoffs, but before he can say anything, Hu Gongniu speaks up. “You should be careful with what you say. If you call the Southern Border City a state, there will be many people who take offense. The entire Southern Earth Spine Kingdom is considered to be a single state within the Shi Empire. Calling the Southern Border City a state is the same as insulting the prestige of the royal family of the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom and undermining the authority of the entire Shi Empire.”
Hu Qiuping cuts in and says, “Gongniu is right. None of us would care about something like that because it has nothing to do with us. But the Southern Border City’s Feng clan had direct ties to the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom’s royal family. If they or any of their lackeys heard you say something like that, they would make a point of plotting against you.”
“Seriously?” Lan Jin asks. “For something that dumb?”
Hu Qiuping shrugs. “To them, it’s not dumb.”
Lan Jin rolls his eyes and then says, “Alright. Thanks for the advice, I guess.”
Lan Jin finds the idea of people plotting against him to be inconceivable in general, but for it to happen because of something as stupid as calling a state-sized city a state? He suddenly felt a little apprehensive about whether he would be able to get along well in the Southern Border City. While he wouldn’t go so far as to say he was needlessly offensive, he did think that he spoke his mind when he had something to say, and if just speaking his mind might get him in trouble, then he didn’t know if it was worth staying in the Southern Border City for long— or even the entire Southern Earth Spine Kingdom for that matter.
The only issue was that the first place that Lan Jin found happened to be a city that covered tens of thousands of miles in area. And if this place couldn’t even be considered a state, then he didn’t know how large the entire Southern Earth Spine Kingdom was.
“Do you guys know how long the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom is?” He asks the three brothers.
“I do not.” Hu Gongniu answers.
Similarly, Hu Shentian shrugs his shoulders. “Never cared. It has nothing to do with me.”
“I know.” Hu Qiuping replies. “It’s said that it would take more than a month for someone to travel from the Southern Border City to the capital of the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom by the Emperor’s Road. And since that is measured with the speed of the Third-Tier Gale Horse’s speed, then there should be thirty thousand miles of road between the Southern Border City and the capital. Granted, the Emperor’s Road would take you to the far East before turning West and then heading North, so it should be that there are between ten and twenty thousand miles between here and the capital.”
Lan Jin’s eyes widen and he shakes his head. If he remembers correctly, the Earth was less than 25,000 miles in circumference. But here, Hu Qiuping was talking about traveling between one city and the capital of a kingdom— a kingdom that was itself a part of a larger Empire.
Though Lan Jin didn’t know what the exact dimensions of the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom were, he could only imagine that it was something like a supercontinent with the Southern Border City in the far South and the capital somewhere up North. It terrified him to think that any one power could have so much territory to themselves. He could only liken it to the combined power of Colonial Europe and the Americas because nothing else he could think of even came close.
“That’s insane.” Lan Jin says. “And all of that space belongs to the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom?”
“Yes.” Hu Qiuping nods. “And that is exactly why you need to be careful about what you say— the capital is only a month away and their eyes and ears are everywhere. Do you really want negative attention from them? Or even the Empire?”
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Lan Jin shakes his head without saying a word. He already knew how unreasonable powerful people could be after having met Moxian and Qingshui. The fact that he couldn’t escape from this place as simply as he could the River of Fate meant that he would have to be more careful.
After having widened his view of this new world, Lan Jin and the other men set off down the dirt road. Lan Jin takes in the sights as much as he can, but other than the mountains that are so near at hand, everything else is too far away to see clearly. All he can really tell is that, beyond the grassy plains, there also seems to be some farmland. Though, he can’t tell what is being grown because of how far away they are.
Half an hour passes and Lan Jin learns a little bit about the city. Namely, he learns about the various districts within the city as well as their purposes.
“The Southern Border City is divided into seven districts.” Hu Qiuping starts. “From most important to least, the most important is the Inner City District in the Central-North position of the city where the most powerful noble families, various government offices, and the wealthiest businesses in the city have their base of operations. In the Northeast, there are the lesser noble families who officially have their own lands to oversee outside of the Southern Border City, but they maintain homes in the city for various reasons. Then there is the Central region which holds the various upper-class families and businesses in the city— what the Central region lacks in prestige and wealth, they make up for in quantity and value. To the South, there is the Southern Garrison District which hosts the Immovable Legion as well as the city’s prison. In the Northwest, there is another military Garrison, but it is specifically for the city guard and their families so there are all kinds of people there. Then, finally, there are the Eastern and Western districts which house pretty much everyone else. The Western District is where our families live and work. As for the Eastern District, it should be the same as the Western District but none of us have any reason to go there.”
“In the outer regions of the city, basically anything that is not the Inner City, there is no law to stop you from going anywhere you want so long as you are allowed in the city in the first place, but the exception to that is the Southern District. No one other than the Immovable Legion and their families is allowed there— even the other noble families are strictly forbidden from entering the Southern District. As for the other districts, it isn’t technically illegal to go to them, but people will find fault with you if they think you don’t belong. And since you look like an outsider and are weak, nobody will think you belong, so don’t bother trying to go to the Northern districts. As for the Central District, you can go there if you want but don’t make a scene of yourself and don’t stay longer than you have to. The people that live there like to think highly of themselves because they have money, but really, they are no different from the people who live in the Eastern and Western districts.”
Lan Jin feels his mind reeling from the information dump, but he takes it in good measure because he feels Hu Qiuping is sincerely trying to help him. The city being officially and unofficially segregated bothered him a little bit, especially since it was clearly segregated based on wealth, political, and personal power, but he couldn’t do anything about it at this point.
Another fifteen minutes pass before the four men come to a sudden halt after cresting a small hill and witnessing what lay on the other side. In front of them, laid out in orderly rows and columns, are hundreds of large black tents and, in front of those tents, men wearing black armor stand at attention while waiting patiently for something.
With the tents and men being arranged so meticulously, Lan Jin can’t help but casually count them both. In the end, he notices that there are ten columns and fifty rows of tents, and in front of each tent were twenty men in black armor standing at attention and another person wearing black armor facing the men in front of him.
While Lan Jin counts the tents and the men, Hu Qiuping, Hu Shentian, and Hu Gongniu have a quick exchange of words before all three of them let out defeated sighs. Lan Jin misses it because he is distracted, but as the four men begin walking forward again, only one of them is walking with his head held high.
Minutes pass by quickly, and before the four men can approach the tents, they are met by a cavalryman wearing black armor and wielding a hooked-and-bladed polearm. Lan Jin thinks it looks impressive, but more importantly, he suddenly feels fear with the unknown man approaching them with a dark look on his face. He suddenly stops moving forward and the three men around him stop at nearly the same time before the cavalryman arrives in front of them.
The unknown man takes one look at the three brothers surnamed ‘Hu’ while also smirking at the large rucksack on Hu Gongniu’s back before he raises his eyebrows at Lan Jin.
“Well well! Look at this! Bet’cher wishing you went to the North Gate now, huh?” The rider gives the four men a wicked smile, his polearm tapping against his shoulder as he watches the dismal expressions on the man below him. “And who’s this guy? And what did he do to his hair?”
Sighing, Hu Qiuping steps forward. Then, his voice loud and clears, says, “Sir, this is Lan Jin. He is a wandering cultivator we found lost in the bamboo forest beyond the Northern Earth Vein Mountain pass!”
“A wandering cultivator, huh?” The rider looks at Lan Jin and measures him up slowly. “Doesn’t look like much, but what do I know? All of you Qi cultivators look the same to me.”
The contempt in the man’s voice is clear, but Lan Jin doesn’t say anything as he feels the situation is not normal right now and he doesn’t want to stir up any trouble.
“Sir,” Hu Qiuping continues, “my brothers and I intend to bring this wandering cultivator to register in the city! I request your permission to proceed!”
“Register huh?” The rider lifts one hand and absently strokes his bare chin. “Oh right! You wandering cultivators do have to register, don’t you?”
Then the rider begins to grin evilly before saying, “Don’t you worry about that! Let your big brother Lin help you lot get him registered! It just so happens that there’s someone in camp that can take care of this!”
Shifting his hips, the man makes his horse turn around. Looking back at the four men behind him, he grins again and sardonically says, “This way, please.”
Lan Jin looks at the three men with him and notices that they all have terrible expressions on their faces, but that doesn’t stop them from walking forward at the rider’s command and he follows along behind them.
“What’s going on?” Lan Jin asks, his voice barely a whisper. “Why are we following him? He seems like an asshole.”
The three men shake their heads as one, but the one who replies to him isn’t any of them. Instead, it’s the rider who happened to hear Lan Jin’s voice.
Scoffing, the rider says, “What’s going on is that you lot got caught trying to smuggle goods into the city. Now, you’re following me to make amends for it.”
Lan Jin notices Hu Qiuping has a sour look on his face, but Hu Shentian quickly speaks up, his voice full of venom.
“We are not smuggling. We have every intention of bringing everything we found to the Inner City to report what we found! We’re just using the Western Gatehouse because it’s closer to the pass!”
The rider spits off to the side after listening to Hu Shentian. “You think if you talk enough you can change the facts? Well let me tell you this, you ain’t smart enough to get one over on me. Better yet, what you tell me doesn’t matter because I won’t be the one handling you.”
Then, with one last evil smirk, the rider turns away and enters one of the columns between the tents and the four men follow behind him.