As it turns out the grand project was the result of the prophecy made by the previous high dryad. She set the rule that her heir was allowed to celebrate the matrimonial ceremony only after the both sides of the world were connected.

To Leo’s ears this sounded like a complete nonsense, but the old hag insisted that the happiness of the people is directly dependent on the happiness of the high dryad thus his obligation was to take part in the project. Her blind logic was admirable, albeit silly, but in the end Leo got fed up with her and under the rain of curses, left.

The old lady wasn’t the only one anxious about the upcoming grand event. Turns out the whole city talked about it, especially men. More than once Leo overheard how they discussed what were the best bridge building techniques, which tools to use and what tree bark was the sturdiest to craft a rope. From what it looked like, everyone actually intended to take part and Leo even considered to stay back and try to find some useful information interviewing elderly.

It turned out to be unnecessary though. A couple of days after he left the old woman’s home, dozens of middle aged women appeared, dressed in the familiar bark clothing, but theirs was almost bright green. Their skin didn’t have the unhealthy greenish hue and some of them actually had blue eyes instead of the usual green, apparently indicating they lived in a less toxic environment. When Leo heard people respectfully addressing them as ‘dryads’, he realized the true big-shots had arrived and joined few of the many gatherings held around the city where they informed the common folk on their plans and the building project as a whole.

While no one provided an actual reasoning behind it, dryads told quite a bit about the lands they were about to ‘conquer’. The good news were there were no wars or actual conquests planned. The smaller tribes and villages were friendly, just like the one Leo arrived from, and the danger came from the poisonous insects, reptiles and the high ranked beasts.

What especially caught Leo’s attention was the description of a region where ‘scary and powerful’ beasts with many heads resided. To avoid them dryads even planned to make a considerable detour, in a similar way how they intended to avoid the most toxic places, but to the adventurous youth it sounded like an invitation for a party.

Since Leo hadn’t forgotten the main objective for coming to Greenland, he kind of wanted to visit the ‘most toxic’ place. Even though he continued to drink few antidotes per day, there were still many left and he was relatively certain to survive even if he dropped in a puddle of liquid poison on accident.

There was only one tiny problem though, one that Jack warned him about. While the antidotes the sect provided expelled and cured most poisons, they were products of alchemy and carried a tinge of toxicity themselves. If using one or two now and then was fine, the excessive consumption inevitably lead to poisoning as well, but this was not as easily cleansable.

The certain evidence of such poisoning were blackening of nails and skin, and gangrene at later stages, but ‘luckily’ Leo currently was only at the first stage. Obviously it was troubling enough for him to start to worry, but fortunately his best friend provided him with three large jars of a mixture that could be used to make detox baths, in a way similar to the strengthening and cleansing ones they used to make to the sect members many years ago. The only problem was – where to get a tub around here?

The few things that could be considered water containers were the water-bell plants, but they were much too small for Leo’s needs. He wrecked his brains for quite some time until his eyes landed on the pale-skinned dryads who, according to the old hag, lived on a high mountain. They did kind of look like women who took regular baths, at least that was what Leo told himself and to check out this hypothesis he went to the north side of the city where the mountain was supposedly located.

Truth to be said the youth wasn’t asking for much. Even if they didn’t have a bath tub or a nice pool, he could do with a brook or a pond. He’d just dig a small pit, fill it with water and soak there for a day or two. Yes, his actions might pollute the place a bit, but everything in Greenland was more or less poisonous anyways, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.

It actually took Leo another full day to arrive at the northern side of the city. It didn’t differ in any way from what he had seen up until now except for a cliff wall that stretched up in the sky. Of course, the mist hid it and it wasn’t even visible up until the point when he arrived to the most northern hut of the Nameless city, but upon noticing it for the first time it did give a surreal impression. For someone from a local village it could almost seem as the end of the world, but according to the legend, the high dryad resided up there.

Leo didn’t find it hard to verify it. He approached the last bridge of the city, the only one leading towards the mountain, and the few guys with clubs standing there, dressed in bright green tree bark clothing, apparently some kind of elite guards, kindly asked him to leave because until the matrimonial ceremony dryads were not accepting anyone.

Now he had a few options.

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First was to try to sneak up the mountain. Obviously it was not going to be easy since for starters he somehow had to cross the bridge. There was no way to cross the fog covered ravine of hundred and fifty yards in any other way and Leo didn’t want to risk climbing all the way down and then back up to the other side. Since the time he arrived to the first village he had never gotten to the ground again. In fact, he never even attempted it because he had no clue if it was possible to make it back up – obviously the success the last time was largely attributed to luck and the fact he had the swords of his fellow disciples.

The second option was to join one of the repair teams that worked on the bridge. Obviously the four yard wide and hundred and fifty yard long structure needed a constant maintenance and there were people providing that. But the moment a thought of doing menial jobs came to Leo’s mind, he immediately scratched it.

He had worked for over a month in the village and three days for the old hag in the Nameless city and to his understanding it was enough for several years if not for the rest of his life. At first it was a bit of fun, but the more he worked, the more he hated every single moment of the procedure. And there was a reason for it – from the day Leo could understand what his father said, he knew he was born to be a cultivator, not a worker and somehow it had seeped into his bones.

It was not like he thought of the regular workers as a lower class. Exactly the opposite – he never thought that people should be distinguished by their social standing, except for the immortals, of course. Because of that he didn’t particularly like the concept of the aristocratic families in the Golden city, but the Golden city was THE Golden city, so in the end it was fine.

Be as it may, Leo quickly decided that sneaking up the mountain was the way to go. In addition, he finally was about to do something fun.

For the first day he leisurely observed the bridge from a distance, but as it turned out – there was nothing much to see. In the early morning the elite guards marched over to the city’s side of the bridge and stood there the whole day, looking handsome and important. Few dryads came down the mountain a bit later and went to the city, probably to hold the usual meetings. Approximately at the same time a couple of groups of workers arrived and began to repair the bridge by replacing ropes and the bark covering the bridge deck. Apparently the general condition of the bridge was good, because no one worked on the important parts like beams, posts or the wooden base of the deck.

Obviously the only way to cross the bridge unnoticed was to climb under it and the only time it was doable, of course, was the night.

Leo didn’t need to make any extra preparations, thus when the mist above the city began to darken, he climbed one of the trees on the northern side down, stealthily jumped over to the one the bridge started at and waited until it was almost dark. Then he climbed up and slowly, using the ropes at the bottom of the bridge to grab on, crawled upside down over to the other side.

He was not sure if he could’ve done it before stepping into the Foundation establishment stage, but now he didn’t feel even slightly tired when he was half way. The only difficulty was to find the ropes to grab to in the darkness, but since he had the whole night, he was not in the hurry.

There was another nuance – if it wasn’t Leo with his new Lightning techniques, anyone else might’ve found crossing the ravine at night hard or rather – incredibly annoying. For a regular person it would take an immense willpower to ignore the countless mosquitoes that ascended from the fog below, but Leo took it as another form of training and electrocuted them the moment he got bitten.

Of course, when he was finally on the other side the back of his neck looked like a huge hump and fingers began to resemble sausages, but an antidote, both internally and externally, quickly reduced the swelling.

Now was the most important part and back in the day Anna paid a lot of attention to it when teaching Leo – waiting patiently.

Because of the mist, he couldn’t clearly observe this side of the bridge and couldn’t climb straight up after crossing the ravine. First had to wait for the sunrise and before the guards woke up, jump over to another tree further away or find a spot to comfortably settle on the cliff wall, but so that no one from the other side would notice him.

Fortunately Heavens were on Leo’s side and there was another tree nearby he could hop over to. He spent there the next day hiding and when the darkness fell, stealthily climbed up.

Sadly this was where his luck ended. Apart from a couple huts and a narrow mountain trail, there was nothing on the other side. The guards sat in a small circle in front of the huts and discussed something, while Leo disappeared in the dark mist, mostly trying to find his way by touch.

His idea was simple – if dryads could come down on early morning, it meant their homes were not that high up. In theory it was true, but they went down the steep trail during the time they saw where to put their feet, but Leo was basically blind. A couple of times when the trail took turns he almost slipped and fell down the cliff wall and only somehow at the last moment managed to recover footing.

Only when east began to turn brighter, Leo arrived at a wide plateau high above the city. It was not the very top of the mountain – the trail seemed to continue somewhere further, but apparently this was where the dryads lived.

He had broken few nails and his fingers were bleeding, he was dirty and surprisingly almost out of breath. At first it didn’t make any sense, but the only logical explanation seemed to be that so high up the mountain the air was somehow different. It sure felt cooler and dryer, but the mist was still there, albeit much thinner compared to the city.

Apart from the mist, the home of dryads was another world compared to the ‘regular’ people below. Their huts were built like small pavilions and bushes with colorful flowers blooming grew all over the place. There were few trees on the plateau, only three to four yards tall, but from what Leo could tell they most likely bore fruits. Unfortunately it seemed that the water source for dryads was the same as for the people in the city – the water-bell plants where the mist condensed during the night.

Leo spent the day recuperating and hiding in bushes while observing the few dryads that hadn’t gone down to the city. To his disappointment their lives were as boring as those of the regular villagers. They took care of their homes, made clothes and ate. The only interesting part was – some of them went further up the trail towards the peak of the mountain, but for now it was still hard to tell what were they doing there.