Zhang Cai rose from where he stood and searched for people that might come and go about here. He found none, and he did wait a little more in case one sprung from the small bushes and the few trees donning the landscape. But none did, and so he put one hand on Li Bo’s gift of a spatial pouch and searched inside.

He found what they had before: a tent and supplements to fasten it and poles to steady it, few pills of healing that could cure minor wounds(Sixth-grade in rank terms), a dozen Pill of embers to start fire when he did not have Qi—they used most of them when out of Il-Ich, thanks to Li Bo’s considerations—two pills of underwater breathing...

There were more pills of miscellaneous uses that he might use soon, for the Daoying Strait was far too wide and long to be called a strait under normal circumstances. But his master went over there, so he would do the same. He had a desire, when he and Li Bo did converse in Il-Ich to go through land his master did not, to see things more than what he intended.

Now he had none of it. In some parts of him, there was this down to earth feeling telling him to trust his master’s wisdom. There was a reason for everything about his master.

Thinking of him, he felt the cold of Curlan at his bones, and he swept his Qi over a set of four loose black robes as he liked them. At the wrist of each were the characters Zhang.

He took one out and wore it on himself, then he fastened it with a belt. Then from the pouch he also took out a dark blade, and he recognized from the small wear on its hilt that it was the one he used on the way. He smiled at it, sheathed it in the dark green scabbard laying on his side, then put his martial art books and map inside the pouch.

The pouch he tied with a string around his neck twice and let it sway as he walked away from the signpost.

The first hour he spent walking under the rising Sun and absorbed all of its corny yellow cast on the receding line of trees. In time they went and he walked over a path half cobble half dirt and on path saw many porters and slaves again, led by mounted men bearing lances and feathered helmets.

The first shock came to him when all those passed hailed him, calling him ’’Sir Immortal.’’ though all of them were older than his age. He greeted them back with a bow and received some peculiar gazes, but he did not mind them. After all, there were enough instances for him to get used to it.

That, also, made him realize what kind of a status a cultivator had. Most he passed by did not have a cultivation to speak of, except some horsemen with first-step Glassmade Qi on them. Compared to the past, he could identify faster and more accurately, and some he noticed could be cultivators with ease but were not. This kind of observatory sense was not one he cultivated, but one granted to him by his cultivation base.

In a sense, he did gain it by himself. Just not through deliberate means.

Then those processions came and went and when after two days of walking he felt himself rested enough and took up speed. He felt full inside, but he did not know the limits of his Qi pool.

He tried to gather a pull, and he felt nothing in him move. There was no absence of action, but the lack of a reaction. A pull, he learned, was too fickle to a Rocksmote. He exerted that pull of aquamarine Qi in his feet and leaped over the trees a dozen meters tall. For a moment he was face to face with the Divine Gold traversing the celestial sky, and he enjoyed the warmth of the Sun. He fell and found his balance steady enough to land without shivers.

These newfound changes took him a few hours to digest. He tried ten pulls and still did not feel fatigued nor exerted. Once more, alone at the path at the third night of his journey, he tried twenty pulls.

A lotus bloomed between the calloused dark palms of his. Colored dark blue, almost like a humming sea, with thin petals of flowing water.

The bones connecting his fingers seared and he let go. The water lotus flowed down at his feet and washed his steel-toed shoes.

’’Water...’’

Two more nights he went on and in his mind all he thought was that louts he made. More way he made and more people he passed by. Yet now they could not hail him fast enough, so he flashed past many a slave and porter and horsemen and shrewd-looking merchant-like men before any could react.

This pace took him two days more and he smelled a kind of fresh salt from his front. His steps narrowed and Zhang Cai halted to gaze at the boundless blue expanse of the World waving in his face.

From where he stood to the sandy shore was nothing more than fifty or so meters. Many small, gleaming pieces of colorful pebbles decorated the egg-like grains across a curving path to both east and west. At the tip of this beach, waves of small magnitudes rose and fell to draw a light brown life on it.

Zhang Cai took out his shoes and stepped flat on the beach. He tiptoed on it at first, as he felt warm, but it did not last long before he was used to it and stepped all over these grains and pebbles to the edge of the water. He cast his gaze to the north, right to his front.

No cloud nor mist obstructed this body of water. Strait Daoying, being one of the three straits in the Northern Sphere, was the biggest of them all. It separated the Northern Sphere from the Southern Sphere—And spheres were landmassess considered to be smaller than continents—and connected the Eastern Free Sea to the Sea of Demise to the west.

To the west of the strait, at least for a thousand kilometers, were fishing villages and pastures inside forests not far from them. But these people, as Li Bo mentioned, did not have the habit of cultivating. They still prayed to the Xian as their gods, sacrificed beasts and crops and their criminal Kin to them, and relied on their protection to survive.

To the East, there was no establishment large enough to be called a town or a city. But still there were communities that provided fresh fish and aquatic plants and timber from the woods around to the Li Noble Family and Shu Noble Family. Latter was too far East of his.

As a result, Zhang Cai had no one who would take him across the strait anywhere near. No fishermen would go up a dozen kilometers north for him alone. Even if he gave all of the fifty silver Li Bo put inside the pouch. Even if they wanted, it was another concern if they could do it.

For some time Zhang Cai stood beside the waves, bare feet inside the cool water. With each small shake he found more relief, and he thought of all that laid behind his back.

’’It is not that I overcame it all.’’ He thought.

’’There is no way to overcome everything with resolutions. Even though I found an answer to them all, I can’t just be well in a seconds, can I?’’

He took out the map from the pouch and unfurled it. A faint breeze collected his curly locks away and he saw a tiny dot on the strait across his way. A small island.

He put two fingers and made comparisons between each place he came from to the strait.

’’...It is doable.’’

He took a peek inside the pouch, hopeful, and indeed he saw a flat sword carved with exquisite runes.

’’I can fly and rest on that island, then take flight again.’’

If he went at top speed, it would take him three nights to get over Daoying.

He furled the scroll and put it back inside the spatial pouch. A wave tiniest bit higher than others of its kind rose and brushed his knee. A small chill spread in him.

Zhang Cai took another glance at the horizon and inhaled a fill of that salty sea water smell into his lungs.

’’Though I am not over it, I will be.’’

’’All I need is time...again.’’

He walked back and sat cross legged on the beach, ready to gather Qi.

In a few hours, he would fly over this celestial body of blue after his dear master.