"Senior Brother, is something weighing on your mind? Why won't you say it outright? Don't you consider me a brother?
"I'll be leaving again soon after this trip back to the city. If you don't tell me now, you won't have another chance."
After some idle conversation, Hou Niao keenly detected Daoist Wang's difficulty. Of course, Daoist Wang might also have deliberately let him notice it; this sort of matter was awkward to bring up directly, and he needed an opening.
Daoist Wang started, then shook his head with a bitter smile. "How shameful. The Dao heart is hard to temper. There are things I want to say but lack the courage to voice, yet if I keep silent, I can't face them alone. In truth, it's all written on my face, plain as day.
"My heart wants to ask, but my mouth keeps putting up a brave front. It's a truly wretched feeling."
He steadied himself and decided to stop putting on an act. "Ouyang Commandant assigned me a task as an assessment for my position in the Commandant Prefecture. If I succeed, I stay; if I fail, I find another path. The task is this..."
Geographically, the Shan Kingdom bordered four countries: the Anhe Kingdom, the Wei Kingdom, the Xinye Buddhist Kingdom, and the Shangqiu Kingdom.
Hou Niao had spent time along three stretches of the border. The Great Wind Plains, for instance, bordered the Anhe Kingdom; Yinling faced the Wei Kingdom; and Xionger lay where three territories met, touching both Wei and Xinye.
There was only one border he had never visited: the border between the Shan Kingdom and the Shangqiu Kingdom.
Shangqiu's state religion was the Baishen Sect, which could just about be counted as a branch of the Demonic Sect Alliance, though it was not