Chapter 171 – Ways of the Wild (III)

Chapter 171

Ways of the Wild (III)

I can see it!

The first sign of human civilization in almost a month! There it is, just about a hundred yards up, pressed into the side of a mountain and built atop a rather wide and broad plateau.

Those beautiful, aged, cracked walls of cinder, and those towering spires jutting beyond it, and the billows of smoke from the ashen chimneys… aah, people! Civilization! It’s like finding an oasis after wandering the desert for six decades…

We hurried up, everyone far too anxious to finally have some free time from one another, and reached it in less than ten minutes despite those hundred yards upwards being actually closer to three miles of road. Yes. It’s that insane.

Anyway, there was nobody on the gates to welcome us in–no guards standing tall, probably because those insane enough to come here weren’t the type to just turn around and walk away, so the ‘fort’ never bothered.

It was a mix between a fort and a castle, as far as I could tell. Or, well, a castle that leaned a bit more into defense than normal castles do… back on Earth. I’ve got no idea what the classification of castles and forts was in this world.

Regardless, it was clearly layered; beyond the outermost facade of walls that rounded the entire clearing, there was another set much deeper within that walled off a small segment. I imagine that’s where the important folk lived, sort of like it was back in town where we picked up Wan Lan.

Defensive towers arose every thirty yards or so, though they were unmanned–and woefully unmaintained, as there were a good two feet of snow stacked across the wall walks.

There wasn’t a pattern to the way the main road cleaved the castle’s bailey up–buildings arose sporadically, and I imagine ‘paths’ naturally formed around them. The keep as well as the distant castle turret were just barely visible due to the rather thick fog that started descending. Come night, I imagine, the visibility here won’t be any better than it is in the forest.

Just as I thought this entire place was abandoned (it wasn’t; there were clearly signs of it being lived in), we saw a few people suddenly appear from one of the buildings. They were clearly about six times more shocked than we are to have seen us, and one of them broke off from the group and walked up.

“You’re… not ghosts, right? Or have I drunk so much I’m hallucinating people again?” funny guy.

He looked to be in his fifties, give or take, with rather round cheeks and belly, wholly red in the face with a rather strong stench of alcohol blasting off of him.

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“No, we’re not ghosts, and you’re not hallucinating,” I said with a chuckle. “My name is Lu, and these are my kids.”

“… welcome then, I suppose,” the man said, eyeing us strangely. “Though I know better than to ask what demons need chase a man to bring ’em here, I am indeed tempted.”

“Crossing,” I said.

“Hm. Even worse. Come,” he said. “It’ll only get colder and darker. I’ll take ya’ to the Capt’n and have ‘im sort your dwelling. We don’t got many newcomers here, as you can imagine.” To be honest, I wasn’t intending for us to come here, either. I didn’t even think we’d come upon anything like this, as the goal was simply to cross the mountain and go to the other side. “Name’s Zhu,” he said. “But you can call me Big Fatty. Everyone else does.”

“Oh. You been here long?”

“A while, aye. Twenty years comin’, I think.”