He pondered for a long time, various guesses—both good and bad—flitting through his mind, but in the end, he could not come to a clear conclusion.
Jiang Zhaoye was a newcomer here, and his understanding of this world was still far too limited.
Clearing his mind of all these tangled thoughts, he looked back toward the city gate. Rather than rushing forward, he spent some time observing the flow of people entering and leaving.
In addition to watching with his own eyes, Jiang Zhaoye used a touch of force to flick an information collector disguised as a small pebble into the gateway, where it rolled right under the desk of the minor clerk inspecting papers.
Xiao Ling connected to the collector, continuously gathering and integrating information on the local language, customs, and intelligence for him without a moment's pause.
Wind poured in from the northern wasteland, blowing against the worn banners on the gate tower until they fluttered noisily.
The wooden desk stood in a sheltered spot inside the city gate archway. The minor clerk behind the desk looked to be in his early thirties, with a short, neatly trimmed beard on his chin. He wore a tall, oddly shaped black cap and a black hemp gown, cinched at the waist with a leather belt. Hanging from the belt buckle was a small seal of unknown material along with several rings of copper keys.
Sitting there with thin cheeks and slightly high cheekbones, his brow clearly betrayed unabashed impatience and weariness. He flipped through the documents handed over by the prefecture guards one by one, occasionally negotiating with people in a raspy voice, completely unbothered even when the hem of his robe dragged on the ground and caught mud.
Beside the clerk stood two prefecture guards holding spears and halberds, who were equally busy without a moment's rest.
More than a hundred meters away, Jiang Zhaoye used his spirit eye to see the scene inside with utter clarity.
The line of people entering the city was split into two rows. On the left were common folk pushing carts or carrying shoulder poles, while on the right were respectable figures riding horses or driving carriages.
Half an hour was enough for Jiang Zhaoye to learn that this place was a city named "Ju," belonging to a country named Jiang, serving as one of its northern cities.
For convenience, Jiang Zhaoye temporarily referred to it as Ju City.
When entering, the peddlers and laborers on the left held neatly folded yellow hemp paper in their hands, stamped with red seals, listing their names, places of origin, and livelihoods. The guarding soldiers would take them, glance over them, match them against the person's face with a couple of gestures, and wave them through.
If a paper had curled edges, blurred writing, or if the person didn't match the record, they would be sent to the clerk for strict verification.
The line on the right was much more relaxed. Those dressed as merchants handed over copper tokens engraved with two characters on the front and what looked like shop names on the back; the guards would weigh them in their hands before letting them pass. If they were minor clerks in black or cyan gowns, or soldiers in leather armor, they didn't even need to pull out tokens—they merely flashed the ivory tallies or military passes at their waists, and the guards would step aside to make way, occasionally bowing half-courteously.
Occasionally, a carriage passed by, a corner of its curtain lifted to reveal figures inside wearing warm caps and fur coats. Seeing the small flags planted on the carriage shafts from afar—whether dark black or vermilion—the guards didn't even bother asking questions, nimbly moving aside the wooden barriers and bowing to clear the path.
As for the rest who couldn't enter, most turned out to be refugees fleeing from the north. Clad in rags and hauling their whole families, they had neither papers nor copper tokens. They could only curl up against the base of the wall on both sides of the gate, waiting until some shop in the city needed workers or some wealthy master showed mercy before they might be led inside.
Those even more destitute would simply be driven away, either forced to leave or to erect a crude hut in the shantytown beneath the wall, securing at least a place to stay.
Although Jiang Zhaoye looked respectable, he had neither papers nor a copper token. Attempting to enter through the main gate posed a considerable risk.
If discovered, he neither knew the local language nor had any methods to draw upon his Qi Refining power, leaving him with nothing but raw cultivation realm.
Without knowing the combat capability of the locals here, even though Blue Star possessed a strong martial ethos, he might not be able to break free unharmed from a dozen armored soldiers...
Indeed, Jiang Zhaoye knew martial arts, and he was actually quite skilled.
Children on Blue Star practiced martial arts starting in elementary school, continuing all the way until the high school entrance examination.
Every day included morning runs and exercises akin to group calisthenics, along with daily physical technique classes that systematically taught offensive strikes, sparring, evasion, and concealment. After all, if an external enemy invaded, the disaster would affect all humanity, and war would not distinguish whether one was a psionicist or an ordinary human. At such times, every citizen had to become a soldier... Although Blue Star was powerful today, it was not without threats from formidable enemies.
In the previous century, there had even been an extremely tragic period of history where human civilization was nearly shattered completely. It was precisely because of this that today's globally unified, united regime and its deeply martial culture came to be.
Weighing the pros and cons and calculating the risks, Jiang Zhaoye ultimately chose to find another way into the city.
Thinking that if even that little kid could get in, he certainly could too... he walked along the base of the city wall, slowly searching toward the back.
The city was large, so its walls were naturally long. After walking for at least an hour or two, he finally made his way to a relatively secluded stretch of the wall.
The wall here was noticeably far more dilapidated than the front section. Rubble and trash were piled at its base, overgrown with brambles and weeds.
Clearing away the brambles with his sword hilt, he intended to scale over from the corner of the wall.
Unexpectedly, a flash out of the corner of his eye caught a half-person-tall gap at the bottom of the wall not far away. It appeared to have collapsed from years of disrepair, obscured by rubble and withered weeds—impossible to spot unless looking closely.
Overjoyed, Jiang Zhaoye was about to approach when his ears suddenly twitched, sharply catching a rustling sound of whispering voices.
Instinctively, he flashed behind a large rock, poking half his head out to peek secretly.
A few refugees in rags arrived in a group, following a short man in the lead straight toward the gap.
Once the six or seven people stood firm before the opening, the short man alertly scanned the surroundings. Seeing no one else around, his expression relaxed slightly, and he blew a whistle into the gap.
The vegetation at the gap trembled slightly, and out popped a spirited man wearing complete, proper clothing.
The two parties exchanged glances and, without a word, guided the refugees to bow their heads and crouch down, crawling into the gap one by one.
The man walked at the rear, looking back a couple of times to confirm no one was paying attention before crawling back in after them.
Jiang Zhaoye squatted in his hiding spot and waited quietly for a good while.
Lacking a life detector on hand at the moment, he could only prick up his ears to judge for himself that those people had walked far enough away. Only then did he emerge from behind the rock, walk up to the gap, crouch down, and poke his head in to look inside.
Inside the gap was a narrow passage leading to the old back wall of a house ahead. Cluttered with junk and dimly lit, it nevertheless genuinely led inside the city.
Adjusting the mask on his face, he took a deep breath and crouched down to crawl inside.
The passage was not long. He bounded out of the hole in two or three steps and was about to stand up when he suddenly heard a sharp shout from ahead: "Halt! Where do you wild folk come from?"
Jiang Zhaoye's breath hitched, and he jerked his head up to look.
Next to the house was a messy alleyway. Standing in the shadow behind the house was a tall, thin man wearing neat, dusty short robes, a short saber tucked at his waist, sizing him up with narrowed eyes.
Even without Xiao Ling translating, Jiang Zhaoye could barely understand the man's meaning—roughly ordering him to stop and asking where the outsider was from.
This person did not look like a soldier, but rather like a local thug. Recalling how orderly those people at the gap had been in their handover, it wasn't hard to guess that local hoodlums had specifically stationed him here to guard this gap, either capturing or blocking refugees trying to sneak into the city.
Working out the situation in an instant, Jiang Zhaoye wasted no words and acted immediately.
With a sway of his body, he closed the distance. His leather-gloved right hand, already gathered with power in a fist, went straight for the man's face.
The man was clearly no expert. Unprepared for this masked, black-robed person to strike so suddenly, he instinctively tilted his head to dodge, unaware that the fist was merely a feint. Jiang Zhaoye's other hand shot out like lightning, clamping onto the hilt of the short saber at the man's waist and pulling it out.
The blade left its sheath, cold light flashing.
Shock and anger flushed the man's face as he reached out to snatch it back, but Jiang Zhaoye had already stepped back, widening the distance between them.
Turning his body slightly, he held the short saber in one hand pointing straight at the man, while his other hand drew his longsword behind his back, brandishing it across his chest—instantly adopting a stance ready for both attack and defense.
"Don't... move!" He uttered the two words stiffly, his eyes beneath the mask alertly surveying his surroundings to guard against other accomplices.
The thin man froze for a moment, seemingly intimidated by his imposing aura or perhaps caught off guard that a wild person crawling through a hole could possess such skill.
The two remained in a standoff for a good while. The man was clearly wary; after staring intently at Jiang Zhaoye for a time and glancing at the saber and sword in his hands, he finally snorted, took a step back, and gave way in the alley.
As he stepped aside, feeling unable to save face, he gruffly spat a harsh threat: "Which family's wild kid are you? Got some skill, huh?"
Jiang Zhaoye couldn't understand him and didn't bother responding. He merely gripped the blade and backed away slowly until he reached the man's blind spot, then turned and bolted away.
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