Entering the City
The fog at the beach dissipated in the afternoon.
Long Tian and Yu Jin traveled along the coastline for three days, passing through several villages that relied on the sea for their livelihood. At the dock of one of these villages, they boarded a small cargo ship heading west. The ship's owner, a taciturn middle-aged man, charged them a bag of dried fish as fare and took them to the river mouth at the easternmost point of the mainland. After disembarking, the road turned into a familiar dirt road and official road. The vegetation on both sides gradually changed from pittosporum and sea buckthorn to broad-leaved forests and farmland. The saltiness in the air gradually faded, replaced by the scent of soil and vegetation.
They traveled for about ten days. Passing through two towns, Long Tian noticed the schedule for the Elite Tournament posted on the bulletin boards at the town entrances; the tournament had already entered the knockout stage. Yu Jin paused in front of the bulletin board in the second town, scanned the team names on the schedule, his gaze lingering for a moment on the Shrek Academy " line, then said nothing and continued on his way.
Upon entering the outer perimeter of Spirit City, the crowd at the city gate was much larger than in previous years. Young Soul Master in various academy uniforms moved about the streets, and banners embroidered with the symbols of different academies hung from the windows of inns and taverns. There was an unusual scent in the air—a mixture of various Soul Power, sweat, and the smell of fresh wood, like a stove that was constantly being fueled with new firewood.
Long Tian didn't linger at the city gate. He walked along the main street towards the east of the city, with Dragon Shadow hovering above his shoulder, its wings folded, following him. As they passed several teahouses, he overheard snippets of conversation—
Did you watch Shrek's match against the Canghui Academy?
"I saw it! Tang San single-handedly wiped out the entire opposing team."
"... Tang San, is that the Blue Silver Grass?"
"Yes, Twin Martial Souls. His Blue Silver Grass changed color, and some people say his Second Martial Soul is the Clear Sky Hammer."
Long Tian's pace didn't slow down because of these conversations. He absorbed the information about "Blue Silver Grass changing color" and "Clear Sky Hammer" into his mind and continued walking along the main street. These things were placed on the same floor as the ancient dragon-patterned sea chart he brought back from the East Sea, like different seasonal ingredients arranged on the same cutting board. He wasn't in a hurry to process them yet; he just wanted to make sure they were all in their proper places.
They settled into the old house in the east of the city. The house, which Shen Mo had arranged in advance, was smaller than the one they had lived in four years ago. In the courtyard, there was a hand pump and a pomegranate tree that had withered halfway. Long Tian washed his face by the well and squatted down by the well platform, reviewing the nautical chart he had memorized in the sea cave in his mind again. The dotted line pointed from the middle of the continent to the East Sea, passed through the archipelago, and then turned southeast at the end of the blank sea area, drawing a gentle arc before disappearing at the edge of the nautical chart, like a fan-shaped curtain that was cut off at the end.
He squatted by the well, mentally extrapolating the trajectory of the arc along possible directions, then stood up and wiped the water droplets from his face. Yu Jin came out of the house and handed him a dry biscuit, holding half a biscuit himself. The two leaned against the stone wall of the courtyard, each eating their own. Two sparrows on the withered pomegranate tree were pecking at the dried fruit shells left over from last year, but after a few pecks, they found the shells too hard and flew away.
That afternoon, Long Tian didn't go out. He sat inside and cycled through the Origin Return Pearl and the new core once each. The eight Soul Ring lit up and then receded in his body in turn, and the whole process was completed in less than a quarter of an hour. The Dragon Shadow continued to hang above the threshold, its wings half-open, its head lowered, and its four eyes taking on a light golden-gray hue in the afternoon light, like sunlight filtered through thick clouds and solidified into a tangible form. The vertical line on its forehead, after the light from the sea cave, left a layer of finer lines covering the surface of the closed line, like the fine cracks formed when the glaze cools during the firing of porcelain. It extended along the direction of the vertical line for a while and then stopped, without spreading to the sides.
As evening fell, the commotion emanating from the central square grew even louder than during the day. The final match before the Elite Tournament finals must have just ended, and the sound of the dispersing crowd surged along the main street like a continuous tide washing over each street. Long Tian stood in the courtyard for a moment, listening to the sounds—cheers, arguments, the sound of running footsteps, and the scraping of flagpoles against the ground. All the sounds blended together to form a dense backdrop, within which he detected an extremely subtle pulse of Soul Power —a contracted, low-frequency pulse, like a bell continuously vibrating at the same pitch in the distance, emanating from the same person as the gaze he had sensed on the inn's terrace.
He memorized the location of the pulsation but didn't extend his senses to track it. Dusk was gradually falling above the courtyard, and the branches of the withered pomegranate tree drew several slender silhouettes in the air. As the wind passed over the roof, it created a very slight change in airflow. When it brushed past the edge of the Dragon Shadow's wing membrane, the cracked glaze on the scales shone slightly, like the surface of an old porcelain piece reflecting the last trace of glaze under a specific angle of light, before sinking back into its original color in the twilight.