The instant Aierlinni landed on the far side after leaping down from Moonbridge, she immediately curled up and rolled several times across the damp grass, bleeding the tremendous impact bit by bit into the ground before slowly rising. A few dead leaves clung to her face and hair, making her look all the more bedraggled.
She turned for one last look at the city-state that was nominally her homeland, yet had ultimately left her somewhat disappointed, then swiftly vanished into the dense forest.
Perhaps it truly was as humans said: in the end, they were merely outsiders, never able to truly blend in.
The first thing she did afterward was fold soft leaves and tie them beneath her shoes with grass rope, then spray an alchemical potion capable of masking her scent all over herself. Only then did she begin her journey.
This was experience countless adventurers had distilled through their lives, blood, and tears.
To the vast majority of Silvermoon Federation citizens, the Evermoors had always been synonymous with wealth and danger existing side by side.
Not only was the land fertile, it also held the richest variety of magical plants in the entire North. It was said that even the Silvermoon Dragon Mother and her husband owned a magical plant garden deep within the Evermoors, with some Retainers assigned to tend it.
The reason Li Wei had run into Silver Wing, "Tai Li," dressed as a woodcutter by the Surbrin River was that this cross-dressing master had to routinely check on that magical plant garden every so often. If it ever suffered a large-scale blight, he probably would not have dared return home to face the Silvermoon Dragon Mother.
Every dragon valued its own treasures far more highly than anything else.
And it was precisely for this reason