Whenever the squad was off duty, they would be back in the city. Koton was where they started and ended all their patrols, and Chidi honestly found it lacking compared to Xankeshan in most ways. The same with Yaitis as a whole. The way they managed things, both the city and the surrounding farmland, just wasn’t that good. The protective formations around the city weren’t good enough, and the formations channeling energy to their crops were too powerful, limiting the growth away from the area. While that might be good in the short term, long term growth wouldn’t be as effective.

That bothered Chidi a little bit, but what bothered him more was the limited number of places he could take Aconite. As part of the military Aconite could come and go in and out of the city and to and from the barracks, but individual establishments might not allow her. They treated her more as a pet, not a person.

The only place she was consistently able to go were the open air markets. Chidi liked those because they were full of interesting new things, though he really had no use for most of it. He was limited in what food he could consume, not because of special dietary needs but because food for cultivators had a lot of upper energy in it. Too much of that would throw off his internal balance, as he was still training with lower energy according to his parent’s instructions.

Didn’t stop him from looking though. Specifically, smelling, touching, and tasting. It seemed a bit rude to do all that to a fruit vendor, but Chidi didn’t actually touch anything, and the tasting was also done with energy senses. It wasn’t the same as actually consuming something, but he got the general idea.

Other stalls had all sorts of things. Clothes, so many clothes that Chidi didn’t need and couldn’t use. Everything he wore was optimized for practicality, and enchanted for defense. It was also higher quality than most of what he could see. Then there were the things for filling up a residence- rugs and furniture and all sorts of containers and decorations and utensils. None of which Chidi needed or could practically use. Sure, he could toss stuff in his storage bag- but even that could only hold so much. Storage bags with much larger capacity existed, but his was just sufficient to hold a practical amount of stuff. More than anyone really needed, but not like… a house full of stuff.

As they went about, Aconite sniffed everything- and as long as she didn’t stick her nose actually into the stalls, the vendors didn’t really have much to complain about. It was extremely useful to have a large wolf opening up a path in the crowd. Otherwise, Chidi would have had to push his own way through, and he preferred to avoid that.

“Find anything interesting?” he asked.

Aconite growled quietly in return- for to others listening, every bit of wolfspeak would sound aggressive. “Not really. It seems that poison is not sold so commonly.”

“For good reason,” Chidi declared. “It’s best for most people to not go anywhere near the stuff.” He had long gotten past the point of telling Aconite she shouldn’t get involved with poison. And her current understanding let her be as responsible as anyone could be with such deadly options available. The chances that she would accidentally perish were minimal enough to ignore, given her track record. Barely any higher than the standard perils of cultivation.

Later in the day, Chidi ended up in a tavern, drinking. Alcohol was of little interest to him. The taste was interesting enough, but he could have achieved the same results with other drinks. Some people liked to get drunk, though. Chidi was not interested in that, so he filtered the alcohol out of his system.

The young man was not a terribly social person, but some of that was due to habits from his upbringing. When he was a young child, his lack of sight and his parentage made him odd enough for children to stay away. As he grew older, he began cultivating early- and his status on Xankeshan remained the same. Thus, he had few friends. And he was content with that.

The tavern was noisy. Spinning it more positively, it was boisterous. Chidi got in a few conversations with people, but they were all short and pointless. Instead, he mostly listened, trying to get a sense of the people present. He especially focused on their stories- both big and small. Personal and stories of war. He tried to imagine the experiences they were relaying, understanding that his own practical experience was limited by his age. It was an interesting use of his time, but Chidi would have been lying if he did not prefer cultivation or even being back on patrol.

-----

Wrego was a hundred kilometers away from Koton, about a day’s walk directly along the road. A day’s walk for cultivators, specifically- and only during times of peace.

For the squad, getting anywhere close to halfway on patrol was an entire day’s work, and they’d have to stay up into the night to return. Those long patrols were exhausting but necessary- Chidi certainly wasn’t going to complain and suggest that they camp out.

Once more, they moved along the road. Dry dirt, unpleasant with every sense Chidi had. And apparently, not even interesting to look at with eyes. But the road led them towards where they needed to go. Specifically, their goal was to make sure that the enemy was not encroaching towards them, setting up guard towers or forts closer to Koton.

Chidi and Aconite were a good hundred meters ahead of the rest of the squad. If they wanted to maintain the greatest amount of secrecy, they should be even further. However, this was a reasonable compromise of subtlety and safety.

The two scouts walked not quite on the road, but next to it. They alternated sides as made sense to them, not quite randomly but not in a pattern they intended to be predictable. They were looking for traps and ambushes, common enough deterrents. They would not be approaching the actual midpoint. There were a few squads made up of more powerful cultivators who had that job. However, they could check a good portion of the main road and also check out some side roads for the sake of tracking enemy movements.

Most of the time, the enemy did exactly the same as them- checking out their ‘own’ territory and dipping a small way into that of the Scarlet Alliance.

Aconite sniffed, clearly trying to focus on a particular scent. Chidi mimicked her, though focusing his senses on the ground around them was somewhat more effective. He definitely smelled… people? But not much more than that. The signs on the ground, however, were frequent boot prints and disturbed ground. Over a fairly wide area too.

“There were many people here,” Aconite declared.

“You’re right,” Chidi agreed. “Not long ago, either. Within the last day.”

Some attempt had been taken to obscure the tracks, but it was impossible to hide signs of such a large group. The enemy had moved not just along the side road, but also off-road in the surrounding forest.

“What were they doing…” Chidi muttered to himself. Then, he sensed something. An odd flow of energy. “Aconite, stop!” He raised his head- as if that would somehow allow him to see. All he heard was paws scraping in the dirt, as his friend immediately complied with his warning. “Stay there! Don’t move!”

Chidi approached cautiously, feeling underneath the disturbed dirt not only signs of odd energy flow, but also bits of metal and stone. Buried formation plates. The squad behind would have noticed him stopping, and as they rounded the bend stopping them from seeing him he held out his hand, gesturing for them to not approach. Technically they could get closer, but if there were cultivators around he couldn’t guarantee he could help everyone avoid the formations.

As he approached closer, Chidi determined Aconite was half over some of the formation markings. However, it seemed she hadn’t quite come into contact with the actual meat of the formation. “Just hold still for a moment,” Chidi said as he blew away the dirt intentionally settled atop the edges of the formation. He needed physical access to do anything. The first step involved his blade carefully scratching across several runes, which snapped as the flow of energy twisted inside them. “Alright, slowly back up. It’s safe to go along those gouges you made. Then you can do as you please once you’re three meters past me.”

Aconite carefully complied, extracting herself from the dangerous area. “It didn’t feel like anything to me,” she said as she relocated herself.

“That’s by design. It’s concealed, and low-impact. Though I have the feeling whatever it does… hmm, yes.”

“Are you going to tell me or…? Oh, you’re fully in it now.”

Chidi was, indeed, ‘in it’. His steps carried him through safe parts of the formation, to grab onto a fist sized rock. He had a shape in his mind, and he began carving away with his blade. Under his mother’s instruction, he had learned much about formations. This wasn’t the work of a formation master, not by upper realm’s standards. These were pre-formed pieces thrown together. Intentionally, yes, and with care- but they were not perfectly suited for the terrain. Parts were unnatural, which allowed him to spot it.

Given days, Chidi could probably dismantle it one rune or formation plate at a time. However, there was a fundamental flaw that could be exploited, since nobody was monitoring it. The flow of energy had been set up to be exactly one way, and changing that could have significant impact. Chidi had seen enough of it to determine what needed to be done, and all he had to do was replicate something he’d seen his mother do.

Stone was cut away, as well as punctured through as Chidi carved a twisting, three dimensional rune. It was… imperfect. One thing Chidi knew it was missing were the elusive sub-runes his mother had come to understand relatively recently- in Integration. He could barely even begin to imagine how they worked, information hidden within information. But he was happy with what he had.

He hefted it a few times, feeling its weight. He tossed it in the air, feeling the flow of air around it as it spun. Then he stepped back, gathered his energy, and tossed the odd shape with all his might, aiming for more or less the center of the formation. Technically slightly off from the center, even before he had marred a few runes and shifted the balance.

At his distance, he was met with a muffled but significant explosion sound, as well as a hail of dirt and splinters of wood from nearby trees. But most of the force had been focused inward, as the formation released all of its energy at once, its limiters disrupted for just a moment. It was more or less what was supposed to happen, though Chidi presumed that his squad was supposed to be on it at that time.

He jogged back towards Captain Tiras. “I don’t think we should linger long in this area. If anyone was waiting for us to trigger it, they’re most likely inbound.” Chidi didn’t sense anyone, but that would just mean more trouble if there actually was anyone.

“Good idea. We’ll head east… see if the branch there had any tampering. And maybe draw out some pursuers on the way.”

Captain Tiras gave the order and the squad turned about, but the vice-captain stayed behind with Chidi. “What the hell was that, kid?”

“What was what?” he asked, frowning.

“That explosion.”

“A trap formation,” he said.

“And you disarmed it just like that?”

“I prompted it to blow itself up,” Chidi said, “Which is much easier, since it was supposed to do that.”

“Didn’t it have anything to make that… not happen?”

“Fallbacks? A couple, but they weren’t very good.”

“And you figured that all out in a few minutes?”

“I’ve seen… much more complex formations,” Chidi said. “This one wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“Sure,” Denitsa said, hefting her hammer on her shoulder. “Whatever you say, kid. Just keep us from stepping on anything like that in the future.”

“Obviously. That’s my job.”