On the seventh day of the Twelfth Month, the sky cleared after the snow.
The thaw came early in the morning, when the cold was sharpest. Chen Shu sat in the courtyard, thinly dressed, with a pot of hot tea before him. The plain glass pot held bright, clear red Yuanzhou Black Tea. In his hands was the Sacred Ancestor's Autobiography, which he was reading for the third time.
On his first reading, he had followed most of his fellow traveler's life, found the subtle details deliberately written for him, and completed an exchange across time and space.
On his second, he had heard the helplessness his fellow traveler spoke of.
On his third, he saw his loneliness.
This fellow traveler seemed destined to be remembered for all time, praised by generation after generation. If anyone could be called a winner at life, there had probably been no greater winner in thousands of years.
But the man himself might not have seen it that way.
He had crossed into an ancient, savage age.
He could cultivate and soar through the sky or burrow into the earth, but the novelty had worn off quickly, leaving it all dull and tedious.
And the world was full of danger.
Back then, there had been no unified dynasty. Kingdoms, peoples, and tribes warred with one another. Even if you climbed to the pinnacle of power, another group might break in and kill you one day. Though the Sacred Ancestor had fought his way across the land and founded the Xia Dynasty, reaching an unprecedented height of power and personal standing, what that power could buy him in comfort fell far short of later ages.
It had been a boring age.
There was no internet connecting the world, no cities blazing with lights. He could