Carriage and Distance

Three days later.

At the gates of [Black Stone City], which had only recently opened.

Ling Wuyuan boarded the carriage with a bundle on his back.

It was a large carriage pulled by four sturdy horses.

Not only was it loaded with a great deal of supplies, but six or seven people were seated inside as well.

Besides this carriage, the convoy contained three other carriages of varying sizes.

Like this carriage, the other three were likewise hauling large quantities of goods and passengers.

Although the road Ling Wuyuan and the others would be taking was an official highway built by the authorities, with few external dangers to speak of, this world did, after all, contain all manner of bandits, wild beasts, demonic beasts, and unorthodox cultivators.

Thus, to ensure their own safety, carriages responsible for transporting goods and passengers between different regions would often form convoys of various sizes and travel together.

This also increased everyone's safety.

If they were lucky enough to take on a capable cultivator as a passenger, it would boost the journey's actual safety enormously—equivalent to hiring a bodyguard for free.

Of course, at this moment.

After looking around, Ling Wuyuan did not see anyone who appeared particularly strong.

Including him, there were three women and five men among the passengers.

Five adults, one teenager, and two children.

As for the situation in the other three carriages, he did not know.

He could only hope that there was a cultivator passing through.

That would count as improving his own safety as well.

Before long.

The carriage driver began to speak.

He was a middle-aged man of around forty.

He looked passable enough—not handsome, not ugly, not fat, not thin, with no particularly distinctive features.

"Our destination for this trip is [Wucha Town]. The whole journey will take roughly one day and one night. During that time, we will stop to rest every three hours in the daytime. At night, we will set up campfires to sleep and recuperate before darkness fully falls..."

As he spoke.

The driver pointed at something in the carriage.

It was something similar to a clock from Ling Wuyuan's previous life.

Moreover, its units of time were basically no different from those of his previous life.

It was just that this thing was extremely expensive to make in this world.

An ordinary person would need to work hard for one or two months before they could afford one.

The driver did not speak much. In just a few minutes, he finished explaining the general procedures and arrangements for the road ahead.

As he spoke, he glanced at Ling Wuyuan a few extra times.

Even after years in this line of work, passengers as young as Ling Wuyuan traveling alone were still somewhat rare.

Most came from poor backgrounds, or were simply people prepared to burn their boats.

At that thought.

The driver gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

He understood that although little brats like this usually carried some determination in their hearts, the outcomes they got were generally not very good.

Very soon.

After giving a few more safety instructions, the driver told everyone to make their final preparations. The carriage was about to set off.

A few minutes later.

Just as the sky was beginning to brighten and sunlight had begun to spill across the earth.

The carriage set off.

At that moment, listening to the bustling sounds around the city gates, hearing the unceasing clatter of hooves, watching the metal gates gradually recede into the distance, and gazing at the towering city wall—at least forty meters high and more than ten meters thick—Ling Wuyuan felt a strange, complicated emotion rise in his heart. It was the feeling of his life entering its next stage.

After five years.

He had finally left behind Black Stone City, the city that had given him countless unlucky memories and forced him to struggle for survival for so long, heading toward a brand-new direction...

After an unknown amount of time.

Black Stone City had completely vanished from view behind the carriage.

All that could be seen around them were the other carriages, passersby, and some trees or animals.

Moreover, as the carriage traveled farther and farther from the city, the density of vegetation steadily increased. At this early-morning hour, the fog around them also became ever more obvious and dense.

It deeply proved that [White Mist Country], a nation with such a self-explanatory name, was not named without reason.

In this country, immense banks of fog could appear not only in the wilderness, but even in bustling cities with little vegetation.

Of course.

In the past, Ling Wuyuan's understanding of such matters had always remained superficial.

This was also his first time coming out into the wilderness.

After watching for a while, his attention gradually shifted from the dense fog around him to the carriage's traveling speed.

Through careful observation.

Ling Wuyuan determined that the carriage maintained a speed of roughly twenty kilometers per hour.

It was not particularly fast, but it was steady and effortless.

Throughout the entire process, the four horses pulling the carriage all seemed completely at ease.

They were barely even breathing hard.

They clearly still had plenty of strength in reserve.

They could accelerate at any time.

One had to know that this large carriage was hauling a great deal of supplies and eight people!

Even excluding the weight of the carriage itself, that was still at least several tons!

While silently marveling at how strong the horses of this world were, Ling Wuyuan began calculating the approximate distance between [Black Stone City] and [Wucha Town] based on what the driver had said earlier.

First, he needed to deduct the time the convoy would likely spend resting and stopping along the way.

Next, he needed to consider possible fluctuations in the carriage's speed...

In the end, after a simple estimate, he felt that the actual distance between [Black Stone City] and [Wucha Town] was at least around three hundred kilometers. Even in modern civilization, that could not be considered short, much less in a feudal civilization.

Yet [Wucha Town] was ultimately only one of the twelve [towns] under [Black Stone City's] jurisdiction.

[Village], [town], [city], [province], [country]—this was the world's basic division of territory.

Though it was a feudal civilization, the countries of this world, along with the populations and territories under their rule, were truly enormous.

Thinking of how a [city] with the actual area of Black Stone City still had twenty-one [provinces] above it, and how twenty-one [provinces] formed a complete [White Mist Country], Ling Wuyuan felt that in terms of land area, the [White Mist Country] he lived in during this life could likely rank among the top three countries on Earth from his previous life...

And so.

As he observed, time continued to pass.

In the end.

No accidents occurred.

After one day and one night, the convoy successfully caught sight of the town called [Wucha Town].

During this process, through idle observation, Ling Wuyuan also obtained a more accurate approximate answer regarding the actual distance of the entire journey.

Roughly three hundred and eighty to four hundred and twenty kilometers.