Grey Tile Lane of Heaven Dou City

Three days later, outside Heaven Dou City.

The main road was wide enough for six horses to run abreast, and passing pedestrians were like moving ants, crowded without the slightest trace of a small-town feel.

Luo Yan mingled in the stream of people, dressed in grey, with a clean face.

He had long since shed that disguise, with only half a grass stem he had plucked from the roadside still bitten between his teeth.

He raised his head to look ahead.

The city wall was a bit excessively tall, grey-brown giant stones pressing one upon another.

The city gate was wide open, with a team of armored soldiers standing on both sides, as well as several soldiers wearing the uniforms of the Heaven Dou guard checking the incoming and outgoing caravans.

"Heaven Dou City."

Luo Yan chewed the grass stem until it tasted bitter, Will this new map be even more fun?

He entered the city and did not take the main avenue.

The main street of Heaven Dou City was very wide, lined with shops on both sides, their gold-glinting signboards dazzling people's eyes dizzy.

Yet Luo Yan only glanced at it and turned into a side alley.

He specifically chose to walk in alleys that had rain shelters overhead and whose wall bases never saw the sun year-round.

Places like this, he knew well.

The old locust tree outside the door of Dorm Seven in Notting City was a tree that grew in such a neighborhood.

He finally found an old inn half-hidden in a corner on a small street called "Grey Tile Lane."

The shopfront was small, the signboard blackened by smoke, and a few clothes poles poked out from the second floor, dripping water drop by drop onto the floor below.

The boss was a one-eyed old man squatting at the door repairing a three-legged stool.

"Staying?" The old man did not even raise his head.

"Let's see the room first," Luo Yan said.

"Ten copper soul coins a day. Stay five full days, and I'll include a breakfast."

Luo Yan squatted down, watching the old man hammer nails, "Your breakfast wouldn't happen to be yesterday's leftover steamed buns, would it?"

Only then did the old man raise that one eye, looking him up and down, "What, you can't eat it?"

"I can afford to eat it," Luo Yan smiled, "I have a small appetite."

The room was at the very back of the second floor, small, dark, but clean.

The window faced an even narrower alley behind, and looking down, it was all grey tile roofs.

Luo Yan pushed open the window, and the wind poured in, carrying the scent of other people's cooking.

"Not bad... at least there's a place to live."

For the next few days, Luo Yan went nowhere.

He wandered around the nearby streets during the day, and at night he leaned against the window listening to the arguing downstairs.

The people living in Grey Tile Lane were a mixed lot, with manual laborers, second-hand goods dealers, errand runners, and two mysterious residents who didn't go out during the day and only turned on their lights at night.

Luo Yan quickly became familiar with the boss of the steamed bun shop at the entrance of the alley.

The boss's surname was Liu, and he smiled at everyone, smiling like the folds on a steamer basket.

Luo Yan bought two meat buns every morning, eating one himself and feeding the other to a dog.

That dog was a stray dog of Grey Tile Lane with yellow fur and a black mouth, squatting in front of the steamed bun shop whenever it was hungry, letting no one touch it.

"You look even less like someone coming to Heaven Dou City to make a living than it does," Boss Liu said once.

"Then what do I look like?" Luo Yan asked.

"Like you're here on vacation," Boss Liu said.

"For so long now, I've always seen you alone. You're a soul master, aren't you?"

Luo Yan nodded, "Yes."

"Here to apply to Heaven Dou Royal Academy? Or Blue Express Academy?"

"Uncle, do I look old enough?"

Boss Liu looked him up and down, "Well, you don't look it."

Boss Liu lifted the lid of the steamer basket with a heave, and white vapor surged out with a teng, obscuring his face until only a blur of folds remained.

"You're not here to test for an academy, you don't look like you're visiting relatives, and even less like you're doing business," he said.

"A half-grown kid like you running alone to Heaven Dou City, either you've got trouble, or you're sick."

Luo Yan smiled, "You really know how to read people. I'm sick."

Boss Liu let out a hey, didn't pursue the matter further, and shoved a freshly steamed meat bun into his hand, "If you're sick, don't starve yourself. This meal is on me. Seeing how you take care of that dog every day—this beast usually doesn't even show me much respect, yet it gets along well with you."

Luo Yan took the bun and uttered a word of thanks.

That yellow dog squatted right by his feet, its tail sweeping back and forth on the ground.

"Little doggy, do you think I'm sick too?"

Luo Yan squatted down, broke the bun in half, and handed one half to the dog's mouth, "Yet look, only a sick person would share a bun with you."

The dog let out a wu sound, clamped the bun in its mouth, and ran off.

Boss Liu watched and shook his head repeatedly, "So young, yet you talk like an old monster."

Luo Yan stood up and clapped his hands, "Thanks, Boss Liu. Tomorrow I'll treat you to tea, the most expensive kind—two bowls for one copper coin."

"Go on with you," Boss Liu cursed with a smile.

Luo Yan turned and walked toward the outside of the alley.

Only, just as he took two steps, the sound of horse hooves arrived.

At first it was very light, like wooden piles being knocked in some courtyard in the distance.

Yet in a flash it closed in, so fast that even that yellow dog by the roadside didn't have time to bark.

Luo Yan turned his head sideways, and in the corner of his eye, a grey horse charged straight in from the alley entrance, with a young man wearing a low-ranking Spirit Hall deacon's uniform sitting on it, his body hunched low.

The people in the alley scattered to both sides like pieces of paper scraped apart by the wind.

The mud figurines in the hands of several children dropped to the ground, crushed into a muddled mess by the horse hooves.

An old vegetable vendor was bending over to straighten his stall and was unexpectedly overturned along with his vegetable basket by that grey horse.

Radishes and greens rolled all over the ground, and the old man tumbled flat onto the flagstone road, his knees knocking with a dull thud, a large patch of his palm scraped raw.

He let out a siss of pain, but did not cry out.

He merely braced his hands on the ground, slowly reaching for that toppled old wooden crate.

The person on the horse glanced back.

Not to look at the old man, but to check whether his horse's leg had been grazed by the stall.

After confirming nothing was wrong, he nudged the horse's belly and left without looking back.

"Who told him not to look," said a cloth-selling woman nearby in a low voice.

Luo Yan stood a few steps away.

The dust kicked up by the horse hooves had yet to settle.

He watched that old man sit on the ground, slowly picking up a radish that had rolled to the edge of the gutter, wiping it with his sleeve, and putting it back into the broken crate.

The skin of that radish was grey, impossible to wipe clean.

He went to pick up another, his movements very slow, like he was picking up his entire livelihood.

The surrounding people began to disperse; someone chuckled, and some acted as if they hadn't seen.

Luo Yan chose not to step forward to help.

He merely stood in place, still pinching half a bun crust in his hand.

The wind blew over from the alley entrance, blowing the bun crust down to his feet.

He lowered his head and glanced at it.

"I remember horses aren't allowed in the alley, right?" he suddenly said.

A burly fellow carrying a carrying pole nearby was stunned, "What's the use of not allowing it? That was a Spirit Hall horse just now; who can manage that?"

"Oh."

Luo Yan nodded, "Spirit Hall's horses can trample people."

The fellow's expression changed slightly, looking left and right, and lowered his voice, "Little brother, don't talk nonsense. In a place like this, dodge it if you can."

Luo Yan said no more.

He walked to the roadside, fished several copper coins out from his bosom, and dropped them into the vegetable-selling old man's broken wooden crate.

The old man raised his head, his face covered in dust, his lips trembling a few times as if wanting to say thank you, yet unsure whether he should accept.

"Buying radishes," Luo Yan said.

Then he truly picked out the most inconspicuous carrot from the ground, wiped it on his sleeve, and took a bite.

"Not bad. Quite sweet," he said.

The old man was dazed, and several peddlers nearby also looked over.

He bit into the carrot, walking slowly toward the depths of the alley, his pace still just like that, unhurried and steady.

When he reached the alley entrance, he suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky.

"The wind will always come," he said, his voice as low as if he were speaking to the flagstones beneath his feet, "Perhaps, I can make it arrive a little earlier."