Strongest Family System

The morning after leaving their campsite outside Riverstone City, the group joined the western trade road at a point where it widened considerably compared to anything near Magical City.

The difference was immediately noticeable. The road near Magical City carried steady traffic, but it was the traffic of a regional hub—merchants serving a defined area, cultivators moving between familiar destinations, and caravans following routes they had followed for years.

The western trade road felt like something different entirely. Large merchant caravans moved along it in both directions, some of them carrying enough wagons that passing them from one end to the other took several minutes of walking.

Independent cultivators appeared more frequently than they had in the days immediately after departure, traveling alone or in small groups with the confidence of people accustomed to moving through unfamiliar territory. Travelers from distant regions mixed freely on the road, their clothing and equipment marking them as coming from places the group had no framework for yet.

The road itself was wider, better maintained, and more consistently populated than anything the eastern routes offered. It suggested, without requiring explanation, that the territories it connected were significantly more developed than the region Robert had spent the past year building within.

The group settled into a traveling rhythm over the following days. They covered ground steadily each morning and stopped at trading posts or small settlements in the evenings, places designed specifically to serve road traffic rather than function as permanent communities.

At each stop, Sai made use of whatever time was available to speak with merchants, innkeepers, or other travelers willing to share information. He did it efficiently and without drawing attention; the skill developed through months of managing a network back home translated naturally into this different kind of information gathering.

Most of what he learned in those early days was general. The western territories were more populated than the east. The clan structures there operated at a larger scale. The cultivation environment in certain regions was reportedly stronger, supported by natural formations that eastern territories lacked.

None of it was immediately actionable, but all of it contributed to a growing picture of a world considerably larger and more varied than anything the Regional Influence Map had fully conveyed.

Six days after leaving Riverstone City, they arrived at a major junction where several trade routes converged before continuing west together through a single corridor.

The trading station at the junction was substantial. Dozens of merchant groups had gathered there, some preparing to continue westward, and others recently arrived from beyond the mountains and resting before continuing east.

Supply vendors lined the station's outer edges. Cultivator guards for hire stood in visible clusters near the entrance, advertising availability for the road ahead.

The reason for the convergence was simple. Beyond the junction, the road entered the mountains.

Everyone called it Ashwood Pass.

Robert understood why within the first few minutes of seeing it. The mountain range ahead was not the kind of terrain that invited casual travel.

The walls of stone rising on either side of the pass entrance were massive, their upper reaches lost in cloud cover even on a clear day.

The road entering the pass narrowed sharply from the broad trading road that fed into it, compressed by the mountain walls into something that could accommodate heavy wagons but only just. Steep cliffs lined the passage at intervals, and the rock faces on either side carried the particular worn smoothness of surfaces that weather had been working on for centuries.

It was one of the most important trade routes connecting the eastern and western territories, according to a supply vendor who mentioned it while Sai was purchasing additional provisions. Thousands of merchants use it every year. The pass itself took between three and five days to traverse depending on conditions and load. There was no practical alternative route for laden caravans. Whatever moved between east and west in this region moved through Ashwood Pass.

The group took rooms at the station's inn and began settling in for at least one night before deciding how to proceed.

Sai spent the remainder of that afternoon moving through the station's common areas, and within two hours he had identified something that nobody at the trading station seemed able to stop talking about for long regardless of what other subject a conversation began with.

Three weeks prior, a large merchant caravan had entered Ashwood Pass heading west.

Not a small caravan. Not an independent trader with a few wagons. A major operation—more than a hundred people, including merchants, workers, drivers, and a contracted group of cultivator guards experienced enough to handle the kinds of threats that mountain passes occasionally produced. Dozens of wagons. A cargo manifest that reportedly represented a significant investment from several different merchant houses.

None of it had come out the other side.

No survivors had emerged from either end of the pass. No witnesses had come forward from inside the mountains who could describe what had happened. No bodies had been recovered. No cargo had been found. No wagons had been located at any point along the passage. The caravan had entered Ashwood Pass and had, as far as anyone at the trading station could determine, simply ceased to exist somewhere between one end and the other.

The explanations circulating through the station's common rooms were numerous and contradictory. Some merchants believed a powerful spirit beast or a group of them had attacked from the cliff faces, where visibility was limited enough that an ambush could theoretically succeed against even a well-guarded caravan.

Others insisted mountain bandits were responsible, arguing that a large enough organized group operating from hidden positions could overwhelm a caravan before the cultivator guards could mount an effective defense. A few people, speaking more quietly than the others, suggested there was a hidden clan operating in the mountains whose territory and methods were unknown to the trade route's regular users.

Nobody had evidence for any of these explanations. Nobody agreed. The disappearance had happened three weeks ago and remained, as of today, completely unresolved.

Sai brought the complete account to Robert that evening as the four of them gathered in the inn's quieter back room.

Robert listened through the entire report. When Sai finished, he sat with the information for a moment, turning it over.

More than a hundred people. No survivors. No bodies. No evidence of any kind explaining what had happened or where anyone had gone.