Ch4 Arrival

Two full days pass.

The farming village I grew up in as a slave is left far behind, and this flying boat travels hundreds of kilometers an hour through vast areas of open plains, heavy forests, even past cities with large stone walls around them. This whole world looks like ancient China, at least, from the little I’ve read in history books.

Gu Shan doesn’t keep us from looking over the edge. In fact, he pretty much ignores us. There is some kind of invisible force keeping the fast moving air from flowing in.

The old cultivator only stops every hour or so above small towns and villages.

The majority are peaceful encounters. He floats down into the center of each village and demands to test the spiritual roots of every child between 10 and 17.

Some families are even gifted large ingots of silver in exchange for their children.

Out of the few dozen stops, only one other is being raided by bandits. The attack is far less violent, no homes are being burned. However, Gu Shan floats down and slaughters all the attackers with ease before testing the kids of this village.

There are plenty of villages where not a single child has spiritual roots.

Only seven more are added to our group, all trembling and confused like the rest of us.

Night and day pass by twice, bread and water are provided sporadically, but no explanations are given.

It becomes clear the end of our journey is near once over 10 hours of straight flying through a mountainous region without stopping comes to a slow halt.

The distance we’ve traveled is absurd. I try to mentally keep track of it, yet if my guess is correct, we’ve already covered the distance of traveling around the entire Earth three times. It makes no sense at all.

Then again, humans flying on swords and elixirs that can heal all physical injuries in an instant do not add up to the beliefs I had in my past world either.

We descend down into a valley between two small mountain peaks.

There seems to be a very large crowd of people standing down where we’re headed, and three other massive wooden ships parked beside them.

We hit the ground with a light thud, and the square-jawed cultivator guides us all down to stand alongside the rest of the crowd.

Some kids have small backpacks, others have knives or half-eaten loaves of bread. Some even have bows and arrows on their back similar to mine.

There’s over a hundred of us, and stood up on a raised platform are a dozen men wearing grey robes with the character for ‘Steward’ on their chests.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Gu Shan hands over the green jade tablet he collected our information on to one of the Stewards, then leaves the main gathering, joining a group of other men in matching green robes far away.

The next few minutes pass by in a blur.

Grey-robed men step forward, pointing to the crowd of kids one by one, and taking them away.

A wrinkled, and sun-tanned old man with a scruffy mustache chooses me and half a dozen others.

We’re all led off down a mountain trail in silence until we reach what looks like a campsite. There are thatched huts built in areas of cleared-out forest about half a kilometer apart.

Each kid is dropped off at each hut and given a small bag.

I’m the last in line. I only overhear the conversation going on once the second to last is dropped off at his hut, a frail blond kid that can’t be more than 12 years old.

The old man hits him across the face, and the kid curls up in a ball, crying.