Chapter 82: A New Lanyu
Xu Bing rode at my left. Behind us followed four guards from the Western Reaches who had taken over our escort at the border. They kept their mouths shut the entire way. For the first week, my cracked ribs pulled with a sharp ache every morning, but Suyin’s medicine did its work. By the third day, I stopped counting the hours and simply let the horse carry me forward.
The landscape shifted as we traveled east. The rugged frontier hills smoothed out into rolling grasslands. The grasslands yielded to green fields, which eventually turned into the broad, stone-paved avenues of the Western Reaches proper. The wheat stood nearly ripe for the harvest, and the roads were kept in fine repair by whatever local official Lord Shen Yue had put in charge of civil works.
Xu Bing remained quiet the whole journey. I did not bother to question him. A soldier carrying the task of escorting a man to a place from which he might not return always bears a certain heavy silence. I saw no need to make him speak it aloud.
On the tenth day, we arrived at the guard post at the eastern edge of the Border District.
The captain of the post stepped out of the guard house before we had even dismounted. He was ten years older than Xu Bing, his uniform bearing the mark of the eastern territorial administration. Walking to the front of our line, he offered a clean bow.
"Squad Captain Pei. Your entry permits have already been processed. Please pass through."
On the twentieth day, the outer gates of Lanyu opened before us.
I had come to Lanyu once before, three winters ago. It was less developed then compared to how it was now, but it was still a sprawling bastion of marbled buildings with peasents and merchants dressed with bright silk clothing strutting about the markets.
As we moved through the crowded streets, my gaze landed on groups of cultivators cutting through the thoroughfares.