Arrival

Bol slowed the carriage and sat up straight.

Before the wagon had even come to a complete stop, someone behind the roadblock had already moved.

An older Church guard walked around the wooden stakes, his hand resting on the hilt of the weapon at his waist. His gaze first swept over the horses' bridles, then checked the logistics department seals on the side of the carriage, before finally settling on the two men on the driver's seat.

He must have seen the Nightwatchers emblems on the bridles and the seals from a distance, but he approached regardless.

“Where are you headed?”

“Gubo Town.” Bol reached into his coat, pulled out his badge, and flipped it over to show the guard.

The guard glanced at the patterns on the badge, removed his hand from his weapon hilt, and relaxed his shoulders.

“Fine, carry on.” He tilted his head and waved to the men behind him, signaling them to move the barricade.

Bol wasn't in a hurry to leave. He kept one hand on the reins and turned his head toward the guard.

“Since when did they start setting up checkpoints on this road? In previous years, you wouldn't see a soul on this path.”

The guard paused, looking at Bol as if weighing whether or not to answer the question.

“Orders from above,” he said, his voice not heavy, but carrying a distinct sense of fatigue. “It’s not just here; they’ve cordoned off several branch roads to the south.”

Bol raised an eyebrow and continued, “The Church is setting up checkpoints to inspect people off the imperial road? Since when was that authority granted?”

The guard took a breath, sounding somewhat frustrated.

“I don’t know about what’s been granted or not.” He glanced back at the roadblock and lowered his voice slightly. “If the higher-ups say to check, we check. As for what exactly we’re looking for, the letter listed a whole string of things, some of which I can’t even pronounce. A team was transferred from the north the day before yesterday; they just took down the posts there and sent them straight here. We’re just cycling through the same limited manpower.”

He added one last comment: “There’s nothing to be done about it.”

Bol didn't press further and simply nodded.

The roadblock was halfway moved, and the carriage passed through the gap.

Lu Yuan discreetly scanned the area as they passed. There were at least seven or eight guards—an abnormal number for a remote southern branch road.

Their equipment wasn't for a standard patrol, either. They carried weapons at their waists, their visors were lowered, and their positioning suggested they were stationed here permanently.

On the other side of the roadblock sat another wagon covered with a canvas tarp, its contents hidden. Several guards not on sentry duty were squatting by the roadside eating dry rations, the hems of their robes stained with quite a bit of mud.

Clearly, they had been here for some time.

Only after the carriage had traveled some distance did Bol speak.

“Since when did the Church start setting up checkpoints on roads like this?”

“I heard people in the city saying the Church has been frequently sending inspection teams out lately,” Lu Yuan added. “Not just to the south; people have run into them in the north as well.”

He had heard that from the bard Haimeng in the tavern.

He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but seeing it with his own eyes now, it matched the fragmented rumors.

Bol snorted. “Patrolling is one thing, but setting up roadblocks is another. This road is a branch of the imperial road. By regulation, only imperial units like the Holy Armored Army and the Imperial Iron Guard, or the Nightwatchers, have the authority to set up checkpoints. If the Church wants to inspect people, they have to go through the imperial joint enforcement process, and the Count has to sign off on it.”

He paused. “Unless the Count actually signed it.”

Lu Yuan didn't respond.

He didn't know if the Count had signed anything, but the Church's movements were indeed growing larger.

From their frequent movements in and out of the inner city to the checkpoints stationed everywhere outside, the manpower they were deploying and the area they were covering were both expanding.

This didn't look like a sudden whim; it felt more like a planned deployment being rolled out step by step.

...

Ahead was the dense forest again.

The carriage continued southward.

The sun slowly dipped behind the canopy, and the light in the forest dimmed bit by bit. The dappled patches of light on the road changed from bright gold to a dull orange, then finally to grey.

Bol glanced at the sky.

“We’ll spend the night on the road. There’s a fork ahead where travelers on this route usually rest.”

Lu Yuan nodded.

After another half hour of travel, as the sky turned completely dark, Bol steered the carriage into a slightly open clearing by the roadside.

It was surrounded by trees on three sides and faced the dirt road on the fourth. The ground was packed hard, and in the corner was a pile of leftover charcoal and a ring of stones that had been brought in to serve as seats.

Indeed, people frequently stopped here.

Bol hopped off the wagon with agile movements. He first removed the horses' bridles and hitched them to nearby stumps, then pulled a bag of dry hay from a hidden compartment under the carriage and poured it onto the ground.

Then, squatting by the old charcoal pile, he pulled a fire starter from his satchel and stacked a few dry branches over it.

As the fire rose, the darkness of the forest retreated a few steps.

The range of the light wasn't large; anything beyond four or five meters was obscured. Tree shadows swayed at the edge of the firelight, and occasionally, something in the distant forest would snap a dry branch, only for the sound to vanish instantly.

The two horses lowered their heads to eat the hay, occasionally snorting.

Bol sat on a stone and fished two dry ration cakes out of his cloth bag, handing one to Lu Yuan.

The cake was hard and cold, tasting of nothing but flour and salt as he chewed.

While gnawing on his cake, Bol pulled out his small flask and unscrewed the cap, pouring a small cup for Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan took it and had a small sip. The liquor wasn't strong, but it had a slight bite as it went down, carrying an underlying taste of fermented grain. A warmth slid from his throat to his stomach, and the chill on his body faded slightly.

“How much further?” Lu Yuan asked as he handed the cup back.

“We should arrive around noon tomorrow,” Bol said, stowing the flask and using his foot to poke at the ash beside the fire. “The second half of this road is difficult; there’s a section of uphill bends where the carriage will be slow.”

The two didn't talk much more.

Bol added two more thick branches to the fire, and the flames stabilized, crackling as they burned.

He leaned against a wagon wheel and pulled the collar of his coat up.

“This stretch of road is clean,” Bol said before closing his eyes. “Base personnel walk the line once a month. Low-level things were cleared out long ago. As long as the fire doesn't go out, we’ll be fine.”

Within moments, Bol’s breathing became steady.

Lu Yuan didn't go to sleep immediately.

He sat by the fire, watching the small patch of ground illuminated by the flames.

The chirping of insects drifted in from the surrounding darkness—thin, layered sounds.

The wind fell from the canopy, carrying the scent of rotting leaves and earth.

It was very quiet.

The Knowledge Worm remained peaceful deep in his left eye. Over the past few days, it seemed to have digested much of what it had eaten, and its size appeared to have grown a bit more.

Lu Yuan closed his eyes.

...

The next day.

When Lu Yuan opened his eyes, the sky was pale. The fog in the forest was heavy, with a thin layer of greyish-white drifting between the tree trunks.

The fire had gone out, leaving only a pile of ash and a few half-burnt pieces of charcoal. Some residual warmth remained; he could feel a bit of heat when he leaned close.

【Sanity: +12... 94/110】

His Sanity limit had recovered another ten points. Clearly, after three days of rest, his limit had begun to gradually restore. At a rate of ten points a day, his Sanity should be fully recovered by the time this mission was over.

Lu Yuan felt quite good as he thought about this. He looked beside him to see that Bol was already awake, squatting by the horses to check their hooves. Bol looked up, saw Lu Yuan was awake, and jerked his chin toward the road.

“Let’s go.”

The two ate a few bites of the remaining dry rations and drank some water from their flasks. Bol re-harnessed the horses and covered the fire with dirt before the carriage set off again.

The morning forest was entirely different from the previous afternoon.

Fog drifted low to the ground, and the road was damp, the wheels leaving two dark tracks as they rolled over it.

Dew dripped from the canopy, occasionally hitting the wooden boards of the carriage with a soft plop.

The air was cold and clean, feeling cool in his throat as he inhaled.

The condition of the road gradually worsened.

The flat dirt path turned into a road of mixed gravel and mud. There were several pits that had clearly collapsed and been crudely filled back in. The carriage jolted violently, forcing Bol to slow down.

One section of uphill bends required the horses to drag the wagon up step by step. The wooden crates in the back bumped against each other, making dull thudding sounds.

Once they passed those bends, the road improved slightly.

As the sun rose overhead, the forest began to change. The trees grew taller and denser.

The roots of some trees bulged from the ground, crossing the edge of the road. The bark was covered in thick moss that was so green it was almost black.

They had reached the edge of the ancient forest.

The afternoon sun leaked through the gaps in the canopy—less so than the day before—and the air grew heavy with a damp, rotting scent.

Then, Lu Yuan caught the scent of a charcoal fire, faint and drifting on the wind from a distance.

As the carriage rounded an uphill bend, the view ahead suddenly opened up. The trees naturally gave way to a clearing, as if a hole had been carved out of the dense forest.

Gubo Town was nestled right there.

A shallow creek flowed out from the forest, running through the entire town and separating the houses into two rows on either bank.

The water was very shallow, the cobblestones clearly visible beneath the surface. The sound of the flow was soft and thin, blending into the silence of the woods.

Two stone bridges spanned the creek. The stones were very old, their crevices filled with layers of moss.

Most of the houses were mixed structures of wood and stone.

The bottom two or three layers of ashlar were a bluish-grey, the stone surfaces wind-eroded into fine textures, with brass rivets embedded in some places.

The foundations were from the old era, while the wooden portions added on top varied in color, showing many signs of repair.

The town’s history was indeed long; the craftsmanship of those base-layer ashlars shared similarities with the walls of the old city district in the Bronze City, both reflecting the style of the early Empire.

In the center of the town stood a stone monument, not tall, only reaching waist-height.

Most of the characters on the surface had been eroded by the wind, leaving only the faint shapes of a few letters recognizable.

The base, however, was still neat, showing the craftsmanship of centuries past.

The afternoon sun slanted down from above, casting a warm greyish-white glow over the ashlar roofs.

A few houses had herbs drying in front of their doors, spread out on bamboo trays in various shades of color.

By the creek, a woman was washing clothes, the sound of her laundry bat hitting the stone slab echoing rhythmically.

There were no electric lights here, nor were there any inscriptions. It seemed that everything in the town was primitive.