The carriage was the covered kind, with a layer of hay spread inside and a coarse cloth laid over it. It barely qualified as a place to sit or lie down.
Huang Fei climbed aboard, set his bundle aside, found a relatively comfortable position against the carriage wall, then closed his eyes.
"Hold on tight!"
The driver called from outside. He cracked his whip, and the carriage swayed onto the road.
The official road from the Star Dou Great Forest to Suotuo City wasn't in bad shape, but it wasn't particularly good either.
Passing carriages had churned the road into a patchwork of ruts and bumps. The driver did his best to stick to the smoother stretches, but the rough patches still jolted them around.
Huang Fei was tossed this way and that inside the carriage, but he didn't care.
He could sleep whenever he wanted, eat whenever he wanted, wake whenever he wanted. He didn't have to answer to anyone.
The carriage traveled for three days. At noon on the fourth, it crossed the border of Fasinuo Province and entered the Balak Kingdom.
The scenery on either side shifted from hills to plains, from plains to low mountains, then back to plains again.
Villages grew more numerous, and more people appeared on the official road. Now and then, a group of riders passed the carriage or a caravan approached from the other direction. The clatter of hooves and wheels mingled with voices and hawkers' cries, forming the kind of din that belonged to the human world.
Huang Fei had heard that din for a year in Nuoding City, but hearing it again now, he found it especially comforting.
Because he knew it meant he was leaving behind that primeval forest, where the only sounds were insects chirring and wolves