Chapter 022 - A New Skill
Six more days slipped by in a flash.
During this time, Li Yuan took two days off to venture deep into the third ridge of Little Ink Mountain. He extended his usual half-day exploration range to a day and a half. Though he moved slowly to avoid getting lost, he managed to map out a much broader area.
Yet after this latest excursion, he couldn’t help feeling a bit disillusioned. People always say you should go out and see the world. But once you actually do, you might realize there’s not much point in traveling so far.
Trudging back from the rugged depths of the wilderness, Li Yuan suddenly felt that living in seclusion wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. A place with no lights, no electricity, no phones or internet, where every meal was uncertain and you were left using leaves for toilet paper, what sort of life was that? Were you just supposed to make babies all day?
Sure, there was that romantic notion of brewing pine-blossom wine and steeping spring water for tea, but you’d still need to buy yeast for the wine and tea leaves for the brew. Besides, you still have to eat.
On top of that, the mountains teemed with wild beasts and poisonous insects. Yan Yu wouldn’t stand a chance if he left her alone. And it wasn’t like he could haul her around on every trip, treating her like some sort of accessory.
Li Yuan recalled the tale of the Peach Blossom Spring, which mentioned the ancestors of the villagers fleeing the chaos of the Qin era, leading their families and neighbors into this hidden realm, never to return, effectively cutting themselves off from the outside world.
That wasn’t just a man and his wife. It was an entire community moving into the mountains, practically an entire county relocated.
Of course that might work if you satisfied two conditions. One was that you had enough sway and authority in the county for people to follow you. The second was that the majority of folks actually wanted to hide away from society.
Li Yuan had neither. So with a deep sigh, he let go of the full-time hermit idea for now.
Still, he decided to keep scouting Little Ink Mountain. Familiarizing himself with the terrain meant having an escape route if the Red Lotus Rebels pushed into the county.
Maybe he could discover a path leading to another town or region. Then he could plan his next steps accordingly. If that other place turned out to be peaceful, he and Yan Yu could move there under the guise of refugees.