Li Chen thought for a moment, then summoned an inn attendant and asked, "What's going on here? Where's the guest who was staying in this room?"
The attendant looked rather bewildered. "Sir, you mean the guest staying here? Wasn't he with you?"
"Don't concern yourself with all that," Li Chen said gravely. "Just tell me where he went."
"I'm afraid I don't know, sir," the attendant replied. "I didn't notice."
"All right, go back to your work."
Li Chen waved him away, left the room, and said to He Ran, "This really is strange."
He Ran laughed heartily. "Most likely he's off somewhere enjoying wine and women."
"That doesn't seem likely," Li Chen said. "He was still so downcast when he heard about what happened in the east a while ago."
He Ran disagreed. "Those are two different matters."
Li Chen was slightly taken aback. For some reason, he suddenly thought of Old You. Old You had also been a carefree fellow in the past. Rogue cultivators had little time to wallow in melancholy; perhaps their companion really had gone off to amuse himself.
"Let's leave him be," Li Chen said. "We'll check out tomorrow morning and leave a message with the innkeeper. If he wants to keep traveling with us, he'll come find us. If not, we'll just have to let him go his own way."
"That makes sense," He Ran agreed.
The night passed without incident. The next morning, the two checked out of their rooms and headed for the outskirts as planned, looking for a suitable place to build huts and settle down.
Riding their Mechanism Beasts, they followed the map out of the city and into the wilderness beyond.
After traveling about ten li, they could indeed make out shimmering water ahead. Waves rolled along a