Pan Long had stayed near Ten-Thousand Rubber City for one reason above all: to find the people from Qionghua Pavilion.
The Southern Sea was vast. Even excluding the waters off Tianzhu, what remained covered more territory than Great Xia. And even if the fugitive Greater Monster appeared only in the northern Southern Sea, that still left a huge area at least tens of thousands of li long and over a thousand li wide.
Flying at full speed, Pan Long could probably cross the entire Southern Sea in a day. But searching that boundless expanse for a few ships would take far longer.
True Persons could fly, but the wind limited them. Only a thousand or more zhang up, where traces of astral energy mingled with the wind, could it carry them at breakneck speed. For Riding the Wind, that altitude was more or less the lower limit.
They could fly lower, of course, but they could not fly nearly as fast.
And observing the sea from a thousand zhang up, clearly enough to inspect every ship on its surface... never mind whether he could see that far. Clouds passing across his view posed a problem with no solution.
Pan Long had estimated that, to make certain whether the people aboard a ship belonged to Qionghua Pavilion, he could fly no higher than a hundred zhang.
At that height, without a strong natural wind to help him, he could cover at most a thousand li in a day—and exhaust himself doing it.
Frankly, running across the waves would be faster and more comfortable.
He had no confidence in finding the Qionghua Pavilion party through a method that amounted to blind luck, so he chose another approach.
He waited at the port.
The Southern Sea was hot, and food and drinking water