Chapter 125 – Echoes (I)

Chapter 125

Echoes (I)

The forest is rather beautiful, I must say.

But also rather daunting.

Without Wan Lan to guide us, I was beyond certain I’d have gotten us lost. Whenever she pointed out a ‘landmark’, it’d just make me go ‘…huh? Really?’ because, to me, it just looked like another damn tree–as thousands upon thousands of them.

The white-brownish bark and the long, thin branches webbing out rather violently into a thick and tall canopy, with an occasional round and red fruit that I wouldn’t bite into even if I was starving. There was no variety–even the flowers, at some point, just started looking completely the same to me.

And yet, she navigated the entire place kind of like a pro.

“Madame taught me,” she explained as we settled camp for the night. “She used to come here often, searching for special flowers or herbs to sell in one of her shops or to use in one of her concoctions. And she started bringing me with her as far back as when I was six. Taught me everything. For instance, see this patch of flowers?” she pointed at the rather round bundle of rose-like red flowers with long, thorned stems.

“Hm.” we all nodded.

“They’re called bloodied petunias,” she said. “And they grow all over the forest. Quality of soil or access to sunlight doesn’t matter much, but night temperatures do. That’s why they are in a bundle here–temperatures drop, so they grow in a patch, but down south, where the nights are warmer, they grow apart from each other. The warmer the nights, the further apart they grow as to have as much soil to themselves as possible.”

“Wow!” Dai Xiu exclaimed. “It’s amazing that you know that!”

“Ha ha, it’s not that amazing,” she chuckled. “Madame always used to say it’s just common knowledge, but I think she was just trying to make me not have a big head.”

“What about the trees?” Dai Xiu asked. “How can you see a difference in them?”

“Moisture in the bark,” she said. “Causes its shade to change slightly. There are about a hundred or so extremely old trees here; Dawnoaks, we call them. They’re each at least a thousand years old, which means they’ve retained more moisture than the younger ones, which makes for the darkest shade of any tree. Madame made me memorize their locations when I was eight. To test me, she dropped us off at a random one and then had me find a way home orienting by them.”

“Sounds like she taught you a lot of things,” I commented.

“Hm,” she nodded, dropping her head slightly. “Not a lot… everything I know. She taught me everything.”

Silence fell as we started gnawing at some dried meat and herbs in silence. They were… well, they were dry and pretty much tasteless, but it’s protein and calories.

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At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself.

Otherwise, our journey has been rather… uneventful. It’s been three days since we ran from town, and we have managed to not run into anyone–beast or bandit–so far. An occasional critter that one of the kids would hunt down so we could roast it for dinner, yes, but nothing more than that.

It also provided me a lot of time to moan to the system–despite the fact that I killed a dozen people, a number of whom were stronger than me, the system gave me… nothing.

Big zilch.

Nada.

Not even a ‘Good Job’, let alone a freakin’ reward.

Luckily, Dai Xiu was relatively close to breaking through into the Foundation Establishment–she was already at the 11th stage, while Xi Zhao was at the 10th.

Long Tao?

Yeah.