Chapter 235: Settling In
A tired old woman greeted Han Yu at the front desk, barely glancing up as he slid two silver coins across the counter.
"Simple room. Back left. No fires after midnight," she said, her voice raspier than a dry lizard’s hiss.
Han Yu took the key and climbed the narrow stairs to find his room.
It was... adequate.
A wooden cot with a straw mattress. A chipped basin with cold water. A table, a stool, and a single paper lantern. He closed the door and locked it behind him, then immediately stripped off his outer robes.
His bandages had held up, but sweat and dust had soaked through everything.
He spent the next hour washing up. Wiping down with wet cloth carefully to not aggravate his injuries, applying fresh salve to the still-raw burn marks across his neck and side, and replacing the wrappings with cleaner ones. He cut strips from a clean inner robe to reinforce the bindings.
’I should get some more bandages here as well as a set of robes. These won’t last me long if I keep on tearing them for bandage strips.’ He thought.
By the time he was done, he looked more like a wandering herbalist than a battle-scarred infiltrator.
He let himself lie on the straw mattress for a few minutes. Not to sleep, just to breathe.
Then, the lantern flickered with the wind, and he sat up.