You're Acting For Me?

It was just past the Hour of the Dragon, and the inn was already mostly empty.

Those staying in such a common inn were all merchants and travelers. Now that the prefectural city was under martial law, anyone wishing to leave had to head for the checkpoints by the city gates and wait in advance. Otherwise, once the long queue to leave formed, they would likely be delayed in the city for an entire day.

Of the dozen or so wooden tables in the inn's hall, only seven or eight travelers dressed like scholars sat scattered about, drinking the cheapest yellow wine and eating the plainest breakfast.

As a major border city, Western Pacification Prefecture City housed only profit-seeking merchants and travelers in inns like this—or perhaps these scholars traveling poor and gathering local color.

Standing beside the second-floor railing, Xu Yuan looked down at the hall below. He truly did not understand people like them.

Great Yan was a chaotic place. Bandits and demon infestations ran rampant, yet these scholars, powerless even against a chicken, still traveled the land to study, selling calligraphy and paintings along the way, naming children and ghostwriting for others in exchange for travel funds, all to roam Great Yan's mountains and rivers.

They were in Di'an City, in the Northern Border, and here in the Western Desert as well.

Perhaps this was the romance unique to scholars in this era.

As he pondered, one middle-aged scholar with his hair bound in a silk headband seemed to notice someone on the second floor and looked over at him.

Their gazes met for an instant. The middle-aged scholar smiled heartily and raised his cup toward him in invitation.

Xu Yuan paused, glanced at his own coarse linen clothes, then smiled and shook his head at the