Destiny in Cinders

”See you next time, Master Jing! We’ll be waiting!”

An Jing was easily able to hire a convoy by leveraging his relationship with Fullyield. The reason he gave was that he had bought too many things and wouldn’t be able to carry them back to Dustdawn himself. You Ruhui hid next to the cargo with her Hidden Earth ability, the very same thing she had done to hitch rides during her escape from Hanhai to Xishan.

Madam Huai, on the other hand, had lost her teahouse and place to stay. That was the perfect pretext for her to accept the Dustdawner lad’s invitation to visit her hometown and see if she could find treatment for some of her old-age ailments. It was a perfectly reasonable way to leave that nobody would suspect or cherry pick.

The whole thing was arranged within half a day. Eventually, An Jing left with the merchant convoy that Fullyield hailed for him. The cityfolk waved him off, asking to work with him when he next returned.

I didn’t think this would go so smoothly. An Jing rode a horse at the front of the convoy and breathed a long sigh. After leaving Keensight and its terrestrial veins, You Ruhui’s ability will get weaker. In the meantime, Madam Huai can help her keep up her stealth ability with her arcanum. This way, we’d be able to buy enough time to transport them back to Skysource again in the event of another Heaven-Earth Sight scan. This would be a bit difficult to explain to Fullyield’s convoy, but it’s better than allowing those two to be discovered. It’s not like odd things never happen in Void Embrace. Not to mention, Fullyield is an old name and they know better than to let their curiosity get the better of them.

Once they reached the wilderness, An Jing and You Ruhui would be able to go their separate ways. She would try to meet up with her contact while he would pick a shortcut through Dustdawn to go to Hanhai as quickly as he could.

The two were able to stay in contact thanks to the imperial blood droplet. He could visualize a rainbow-colored droplet of blood in his sea of consciousness when he closed his eyes. If needed, You Ruhui could even cast some abilities on him from a distance. Thanks to Hidden Earth, he would be able to traverse through many places that were restricted to most people.

Not to mention, once You Ruhui and Madam Huai were out of danger, An Jing believed that he would be getting another huge wave of feedback from his celestial arc. The fates that he had helped change were rather significant, after all. Even if it didn’t help him enter another dao-comprehension state, it was sure to boost his progress, maybe manifest a seal or two more.

When that happens, I’ll be able to return to Hanhai even quicker. Only when he found his mother would he be able to calmly plan for the far future. Otherwise, he wouldn’t even know where in Void Embrace to set up a proper base. This reminded him about how he wanted to ask You Ruhui to assess some terrestrial veins for him to identify where he could build the base. He just hadn’t had the chance due to the spontaneous events that kept on popping up. It was no big deal, however. Yvelbane could analyze terrestrial veins and let him know what characteristics to communicate to You Ruhui through the imperial blood droplet for her to give an evaluation.

While he was still deep in thought, he heard the sound of thunder in the far distance. Huh? Thunder? The snow calamity is over and there are no more dark clouds. How can there be thunder? He felt a bad omen and looked up.

The firmament above flashed bright with streaks of lightning, illuminating everything underneath. The bolts pierced through dark clouds and zipped across the sky before arcing toward the ground where An Jing was! There was a loud boom on the ground as the flashes of lightning took the form of a person.

”Halt,” said a thunderous voice that came from the amalgamation of lightning. ”Jing Xuan of Voidsight Mountain. Hmmm, you match the portrait alright. There’s something I need to ask you.”

Shit! The most troublesome guy came knocking! An Jing wondered who the blurry figure was. It’s Overseer Cao! Did You Ruhui get discovered? Did he come to capture her? Wait, that’s impossible.

He calmed down when he realized that the overseer would attack right away without bothering to talk if that was the case. He might even kill everyone to silence them about the princess. Yet, that didn’t make him feel any better. Darn it, does that mean he came for me?!

The lightning was powerful even though the overseer had held back. Had there been no limits, the mere shockwaves it gave off were enough to kill the people there.

”Greetings, Revered Sage!” Everyone in the convoy saluted, bowed or prostrated toward the sage as he stepped out of the lightning clouds. The highest-ranking people that commoners would come across in their lifetimes were sage officials of the Void Divine Treasures Realm. They typically only got one glimpse from afar when the sages flew past. Seeing such a person before their very eyes made them pay their worshipful respects. An Jing dismounted and made a martialist’s salute.

Overseer Cao’s expression was stiff and stern. He had a square-jawed face and was clad in black robes embroidered with gold thread, complete with a seal that hung from his waist. This was the attire of a most esteemed official of Grand Chen’s imperial court.

”Rise,” he said as he waved his left hand. Everyone did as they were told while the overseer turned to An Jing. ”You, talented kid, come here. I have a question for you.”

”Yes.” The more dire the circumstance, the calmer An Jing presented. As he stepped forward, he could feel an anxious resonance from the imperial blood droplet. Haha, You Ruhui’s so terrified that she’s considering running off with her ability. An Jing consoled her telepathically, telling her that this was not the time to run.

When he got closer, he noticed some dust on Overseer Cao’s robes. That was highly atypical. While he didn’t know what abilities the overseer had, it should be trivial if he wanted to appear spotless. What reason could possibly drive the overseer to rush over without sparing even a single moment to clean up his robes? He must’ve discovered something.

Fuck! An Jing immediately realized a flaw in his cover story. He had fought the True Fiend Cult as a Dustdawner, which in itself wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Heavenly fiends were foes of all humanity, after all. However, that didn’t apply to the many tribes near the border of Dustdawn which had already been infiltrated by the heavenly fiends.

On the other hand, there were heavenly fiend collaborators in Grand Chen as well. Either way, those affiliated with Grand Chen should know that the Dustdawner tribes wouldn’t make the True Fiend Cult their enemy! An Jing’s false identity as a Dustdawner didn’t align with his actions!