Flatbread

"I heaved a long sigh to hide my tears, lamenting the many hardships of the people's lives."

Without warning, that line suddenly surfaced in Qing He Miao's mind.

All at once, he felt a little admiration for his ancestor.

He wondered if the great Qu Yuan had felt just like this when he wrote those lines.

By comparison, the countryside where he had lived this life, which he had thought backward and remote given what he had seen of the world,

now seemed more like the "Peach Blossom Spring" from Tao Yuanming's writings.

Impressive.

Qing He Miao couldn't help mocking himself inwardly:

In just a little while, I've already thought of two classic literary references. Looks like the [General Literature (proficient)] skill really wasn't handed out for nothing.

He had to make himself think that way to keep from focusing on the unsettling scene before him.

Yet the gazes around him followed him like shadows, making him just as uncomfortable.

From the moment Qing He Miao abruptly appeared at the edge of the area, numerous pairs of eyes had been fixed on him.

Many of those gazes held nothing at all. They simply followed him, sending chills down his spine.

It was hard to say which made him more uncomfortable: those gazes or the filthy surroundings.

He took a deep breath, then felt a wave of nausea at what he had just inhaled.

He forced himself to calm down and quickly swept his gaze over the surroundings.

Finally, his gaze stopped at a corner. An old woman was huddled there, clutching a child so thin and small that it was almost impossible to tell the child's age.

The old woman's clothes were tattered, her body was nothing but skin and bones, and her eyes were clouded and vacant.

When Qing He Miao stopped in front of her, she instinctively flinched and tried to move back, but seemed not to have even that much strength. She merely held the child in her arms tighter.

Qing He Miao hesitated, then reached into his robes and took something out.

It was a few large, thin flatbreads left over from a meal at home.

To make them easier to carry and avoid attracting attention, he had deliberately torn them into a mess.

He had also wrapped them loosely in a not particularly clean rag that had been discarded after being used to wipe tables at home.

Even though he had done his best to make the flatbreads unrecognizable,

when the rag was opened, the huddled old woman opposite him fixed her formerly vacant, clouded eyes on the rag bundle in Qing He Miao's hand.

Keeping his expression neutral, Qing He Miao did not hand the rag bundle directly to her.

Instead, he imitated the etiquette he remembered from costume dramas, raising one palm upright before his chest and bowing slightly. In as calm and polite a tone as he could manage, he asked:

"This humble Taoist is Qing Miao. From childhood, I traveled the world with my master. Recently, I wished to return to my native place, but lost my way in the mountains and wandered here by mistake. May I ask, elder... what place is this? And what... year is it now?"

Those few half-classical sentences were already the best he could manage.

That was right, Qing He Miao knew what world this was.

After drawing the "dungeon" called "The Degenerate-Drawing Jianghu" on the system panel, he had explored it a little.

He discovered that entering the "dungeon" was actually similar to using a system-produced Stand.

As long as he focused his thoughts and selected the dungeon in the system's [Dungeon] section, he could appear directly in this unfamiliar world.

For now, there seemed to be no strict limit on the number of times he could do this or how long he could stay, at least when entering for a short time.

It only consumed some of his physical and mental strength, feeling a little more taxing than maintaining a Stand.

The advantage was that each use was a one-time expenditure, well within what he could bear.

This discovery had abruptly changed the whole style of his "transmigrator career."

From a "fanfiction" story originally confined to the world of "The Outcast," it had instantly leaped into a "multiverse" story in which he could move between planes!

It was an enormous, unexpected trump card for saving his life.

The Stand [Subspace Miasma], which he had previously struggled to draw and regarded as his last means of saving his life,

had barely seen any use, and he had yet to encounter any danger, but now he already had a better "means of escape."

Encounter a danger he couldn't withstand?

With a single thought, he could vanish from this world and hide in another!

Who could do anything to him then?

At least within the setting of "The Outcast," there were probably few means of pursuing someone across worlds.

Still, the starting environment before him could hardly be called friendly.

The most pressing problem now was that he needed to know exactly where he was and what point the plot had reached.

After all, even in modern society, with GPS navigation and electronic maps,

food delivery riders could still find themselves lost and fumbling around in a city, let alone in a real ancient world without any modern markers.

When he came out of the "dungeon" entrance, he had landed straight in a remote mountain forest rarely visited by people, completely in the dark.

Never mind his exact location; he couldn't even make out a general direction.

In fact, his original purpose in coming to the "dungeon" had been to "kill monsters and level up."

In principle, he could have made use of what was at hand, killing whatever he encountered and grinding experience right there.

In a primeval forest like that, there were bound to be unclaimed jackals, wolves, tigers, and leopards, weren't there?

But on second thought, if he could find a way to locate and follow this world's "protagonist group,"

he could make the most of a transmigrator's advantage of knowing the general course of history.

Besides experience points, he might also have a chance to obtain this world's more advanced martial arts manuals, divine weapons, or unique cultivation methods.

Compared with simply killing monsters for experience drops, that was a better deal.

It was with this idea of "following along with the plot" that Qing He Miao chose not to stay where he was, instead picking a general direction and moving forward.

Chapter 28: Flatbread

With his legs strengthened by qi, Qing He Miao trudged on for several days before finally spotting this settlement in the distance.

Yet this was the scene that met his eyes.

But he naturally had none of this era's currency on him, and when he saw the scene from afar, his thoughts raced.

He found an empty corner, instantly returned home, and headed straight for the kitchen.

In those days, most rural households beyond the pass had only freezers bought through the home appliances to the countryside program, not refrigerators.

Besides, with winter beyond the pass and so many people in the household, there was no need for one.

So a lot of leftover food was simply kept in the cupboard.

He hoped to exchange it for some of the most basic information.

Seeing the food in Qing He Miao's hand and understanding what he meant, the old woman's eyes lit up with hope, though the light vanished in an instant.

Holding the child, whose breathing was faint, she struggled to put her words together:

"Taoist master... you... you came from outside those big mountains? Our... our place, if you go east, that's King Liang's land. You have to cross the Lai River. There's water and an official road, but we don't dare go! Liang's soldiers are fierce. They seize men for service, and once they're taken away, they never come back. A lot of the dead are hanged from trees by the roadside. It's frightening.

"North is Lord Liu's land. There are checkpoints in the mountains, and they'll chop a stranger's head off as a spy and hang it on a pole. To the west, the mountains go deeper, into old forests. That's Man-Eating Valley! There are wolf packs, so many wolves, and, and a band of soldiers who were defeated the year before last. I heard, I heard they all turned into mountain demons that eat anyone they catch alone. Only here, only down beneath Yellow Fort, by the foot of the fort wall, can we, can we still catch our breath."

"As for the year?"

The old woman repeated the question blankly, an almost numb confusion appearing on her face:

"People like us, how would we remember reign names or emperors? I only remember, only remember it's the second year since the great flood drowned our village. My man was taken away then, and he never came back."

What? What? What was all this?!

Qing He Miao's head ached as he listened.

He hadn't expected an impoverished old woman in her condition to give him a clear date like "the XXth year of Zhenguan" or "the XXth year of Tianyou."

But surely she could at least name a few famous places known throughout the ages, familiar names like "Chang'an," "Luoyang," "Bianliang," or "Yizhou"?

Even the name of a prefecture or commandery would do!

And what did he get?

Who was "King Liang"?

And which one was "Lord Liu"?

"Man-Eating Valley," "Yellow Fort"... what kind of place names were those?

Would he be able to find them on Baidu Maps after he went back?

And then there was the "great flood."

What the hell kind of flood-based calendar was that?

But seeing the old woman rack her brains to answer his questions, Qing He Miao knew he couldn't get anything more out of her.

He could only note down a few key terms for now and, after returning, find a way to look up more specialized information at an internet café or somewhere similar.

He would see whether he could work out an approximate location and date.

Once again, he raised one palm upright and bowed slightly, keeping his tone polite:

"Thank you, grandmother, for showing me the way."

With that, he hesitated no longer and gently placed the rag bundle containing the flatbreads on a relatively clean patch of ground before the old woman.

At the sight, the old woman's emaciated body trembled violently. Still holding the child, she immediately dropped to her knees before Qing He Miao with a thud.

She kowtowed ceaselessly, babbling incoherently:

"Thank you, living bodhisattva! Thank you, living bodhisattva, for saving our lives! Bless you, bodhisattva! Bless you..."

Qing He Miao felt helpless.

No matter how he looked at it, he was disguised as a Taoist priest, wasn't he?

Even if he became an immortal, he wouldn't become a bodhisattva. They weren't even in the same department.

But naturally, he wasn't going to take issue with it.

He couldn't accept such a great show of respect, nor could he bear to keep watching this scene.

Having obtained the information he wanted, Qing He Miao stayed no longer.

He stepped aside to avoid the old woman's bows and took one last look at the child huddled in the rag bundle.

Then he turned and walked back toward the mountain forest he had come from, his steps a little hurried.

[Metal products]