The next morning.
Jiang Qiao and Shen Boxia left Spring City and headed northwest along a winding dirt road.
Dragon Tiger Daoist's hometown was Twinforest Village, a tiny village not even found on maps, located in the mountains about forty li northwest of Spring City.
According to what they had learned in Spring City,
Twinwood Village was extremely remote, hidden in the narrow gap between two mountains.
There was only one road into the village.
No carts or horses could pass through; it could only be reached on foot.
Moreover, the villagers were quite hostile toward outsiders. Unless necessary, few people ever went there.
Setting out from Spring City,
the two walked for most of the day.
After crossing a low hill, they finally caught sight of Twinforest Village.
The village was small,
with roughly forty or fifty households.
Built against the mountain, its houses were mostly old-style structures of gray brick and black tiles, scattered in an orderly fashion across the gentle slope.
There was a big tree at the village entrance.
Its trunk was so thick that it would take three or four people linking arms to encircle it.
Its canopy blocked out the sky like a massive umbrella, covering the road into the village.
Jiang Qiao noticed
several faded strips of cloth hanging from the big tree's branches.
The cloth strips came in various colors—red, yellow, and white—but the wind and rain had worn them down until their original colors were nearly unrecognizable. Only dull gray remnants remained, fluttering gently in the breeze.
There seemed to be writing on the strips, but it had blurred beyond all recognition.
At a glance, they resembled prayer ribbons from a temple.
Yet they gave off none of the sense of good fortune such things should have. Instead, they carried an