Chương 47: Managing Loneliness and High-Speed Disciples

The road stretches east, toward the rising sun. Ling'er walks beside me, her Foundation Establishment aura carefully concealed, her bearing that of a servant girl accompanying her master; head slightly bowed, steps deferential, eyes downcast. Anyone watching would see nothing remarkable. But I know better.

"Master? What's Celestial Jade City like?"

"I've never been." I adjust my pack, feeling the weight of Frostbite in my storage ring.

"But Elder Frostheart's journals describe it as a place where cultivators from across the Lower Realm gather. Markets selling treasures we can't imagine. Libraries with techniques from lost eras. Arenas where the strong prove themselves and the weak are weeded out."

"Sounds dangerous."

"Very. But also full of opportunity." I glance at her.

"Stay close. Stay concealed. Watch everything. Learn everything. And if anyone threatens us—""I protect you." I smile despite myself. I correct her." We protect each other." Our steps are measured. But something holds us back. A hesitation, a reluctance that neither of us voices aloud. After what happened, after the bandits, after coming so close to losing everything, every step away from the mountain feels like a betrayal. But staying feels like surrender. So we walk. We make camp in a forest, miles from any town.

The trees are old, their branches interlaced above us, blocking out the sky.

I find a dry patch of ground near a stream and set up a small fire while Ling'er gathers kindling. Route: Day 1-7: Eastern plains, minor towns Day 8-10: Mountain pass (guarded, requires toll) Day 11-14: Central Provinces border, larger cities Day 15-21: Celestial Jade City The fire crackles. Stars emerge through the gaps in the canopy. Ling'er sits across from me, her eyes closed, cycling qi through her meridians. She opens her eyes.

"Master. Can I ask you something?"

"You just did." She doesn't smile despite my joke.

"Do you ever feel lonely?" The question catches me off guard. I stir the fire with a stick, giving myself time to think.

"Sometimes," I say.

"Why?" She's quiet for a moment. Then she pulls a book from her pack. A storybook. The one with the brave rabbit. She's read it so many times the spine is cracked, the pages soft.

"I write my name sometimes. Over and over. Ling'er." She traces the characters in the air with her finger.

"I don't know why. It just... feels like something I should remember. Like if I stop writing it, I'll forget who I am." I watch her. She's twelve. She can shatter stone with her bare hands and freeze bandits solid with a thought. But she's still twelve.

"I think it's loneliness," she continues.

"The Bone shows me threads. Connections between everything. But the more I grow, the thinner my threads become. The other disciples... they're only Qi Condensation. They can't feel what I feel, see what I see. I can help them. I can protect them. But I can't... be with them. Not really." She looks at me.

"You're the only one whose thread I can hold onto. It's stronger than the others. But sometimes I wonder if you feel lonely too." I stir the fire. The wood cracks, sending sparks spiraling into the darkness.

'Loneliness.' I think about my past life. I had friends. My parents weren't abusive. I made connections, built relationships, lived a life that was small but not empty. If someone had told me I'd never see any of them again, I would have been devastated. But here, now, I don't feel a great desire to return. Some part of me does; some small, distant part that still dreams of hot showers and air conditioning and food that doesn't taste like preservation techniques. I've rationalized that part out of my system.

I'm trapped here for as long as I can see. There's nothing I can do with a mediocre body, no way to find a path back without relying on Ling'er and whatever talents I can recruit. It's a long, distant goal that may never happen. So I focus on the now. But the now is lonely in ways my past life never prepared me for. Modern comforts, it's a lie to say I don't miss them. Modern sensibilities—I miss those more. The cultivation world was something I understood as an observer. I knew why people face-slapped.

I knew why strength was paramount. I'd read a hundred novels where betrayal was expected, where bitterness festered, where the weak were devoured by the strong. But experiencing it directly is different. Feng turning his blade on me because he felt entitled to what I'd found. Bandits attacking my sect, threatening children, because they saw wealth and decided it should be theirs. Taking my first life. Hunting beasts to acquire food.

Relying on my instincts, the Gaze, and my readings of the genre to survive day by day. I've been internalizing the shock. I know that at some point, I'll have to face it. The weight of what I've become. The distance between the person I was and the person I am now. There's nobody I can speak freely to. Not even Ling'er. She's twelve. She's carrying her own burdens; the alienation of strength, the loneliness of being something the world has no category for. What right do I have to add mine to hers?

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. So I say none of this.

"We'll find more people," I say.

"People like you. Talented. Strong. People who can walk beside you instead of trailing behind. You won't be lonely forever." She looks at me, her eyes gold-brown in the firelight.

"And you, Master? Will you find people too?" I smile. It feels thin on my face.

"Maybe." She nods slowly.

"I hope so." Ling'er opens her storybook and begins to read. Her lips move silently, tracing the words. It's not cultivation. It's just a child, finding comfort in a familiar story. I watch her for a moment, then return to studying the map. The road ahead is long. We'll walk it together, even if we walk alone. The next morning, the road stretches empty through rolling hills. No travelers in sight. No villages for miles. Just grass, sky, and the distant mountains we're heading toward.

The sun is warm on my face, the breeze light, and the silence is almost peaceful. But I can't stop thinking about the bandits. About the sect, left behind. About every hour we spend walking at a mortal's pace being an hour we're not getting stronger. I stop walking. Ling'er stops beside me, tilting her head.

"Master?"

"We've been dragging our feet." I turn to face her.

"Going at a pace that would be comfortable for mortals. Slow by our standards. And every hour we're away is another hour something could go wrong back home." She waits. She's learned not to fill my silences.

"Time for training." I reach into my storage ring and withdraw the iron sand pockets. All of them. The same set she's been wearing for weeks. Now she puts them on without complaint; wrists, ankles, torso, each strap fastened with practiced efficiency. Then I climb onto her back. She staggers slightly not from the weight, but from the surprise. Her arms flail. Her eyes go wide.

"Master?!" I settle onto her shoulders like a poorly packed bag of rice, one arm hooked around her neck, the other pointing forward.

"Run. Fast as you can. We have ground to cover, and you need training." She stares at me. Then at the road. Then back at me.

"Master, this is—""An opportunity. Two birds with one stone. We make distance and you build strength. Now run." Lu Chen - Training Methodology Assessment Current Activity: Using disciple as pack animal. Practicality: High. She can carry the weight. Legality: Questionable. Verdict: This is child abuse. I ignore it. Ling'er runs. The wind whips past. The hills blur. She's carrying two hundred and forty-five pounds at a speed that would leave a horse in the dust, and she's not even breathing hard.

Her dragon bloodline processes the strain effortlessly, converting it into fuel, turning exertion into growth.

"Faster." She goes faster. The landscape becomes a streak: green and brown and blue smearing together like wet paint. I hold on, grinning despite myself. This is like riding a rollercoaster. The kind I rode once at an amusement park I don't remember the name of. The thrill of speed, of motion, of something that should be dangerous but isn't. CRACK! Then a tree branch whacks me in the face.

"Sorry, Master!" Ling'er calls over her shoulder, not slowing.

"I forgot to dodge!" I spit out a leaf.

"Keep running." Another branch. I duck. Another. I weave. By the third branch that breaks over my head, I've learned to read the path with her, anticipating obstacles, shifting my weight to match her movements. This is absurd. I'm a forty-year-old sect leader being carried by a twelve-year-old girl. But she's also a Foundation Establishment monster with a legendary foundation, and this is exactly the kind of training she needs. Forty miles pass in an hour. Fifty. Sixty.

More than twice as fast as the fastest man on Earth. Keeping the pace for hours. The sun climbs and the morning burns away. The hills give way to flatter ground, the grass to scattered trees, the emptiness to the first signs of civilization—a road marker, a distant chimney, the faint sound of livestock. Then she slows.

"Master. People." Her voice is quiet, controlled.

"Ten li ahead." I slide off, adjusting my robes, smoothing my hair.

"Good. We'll walk normally from here." I pause.

"That was good work." She tilts her head.

"You have a leaf in your hair." I pull it out.

"I'm aware." We meet them on the road; a train of wagons carrying goods to the eastern provinces. Merchants, guards, a few families, all bundled together in a loose caravan that stretches a quarter mile. I let my spiritual sense brush over them, casual and brief. No one above Qi Condensation. A handful at the peak of what a mortal can be, maybe, but nothing that registers as a threat.

The guards glance at us, see a middle-aged cultivator in plain robes and his young servant trailing behind him, and dismiss us immediately. Not worth their attention. Not worth the risk of opening a conversation. I keep my eyes forward. Ling'er walks beside me, demure and ordinary, her shoulders slightly slumped, her breathing just a little too heavy. Anyone watching would assume the walk has been hard on her: the valleys in this area are steep, the roads uneven, and she's just a child. Most children struggle here.

She's panting lightly. One of the guards falls back to walk beside us for a stretch. He's young, maybe twenty, with the sun-weathered face of someone who's spent years on the road. He glances at Ling'er, then at me. Something in his expression shifts; pity, maybe. Judgment.

"She's just a kid," he says. Not unkindly.

"Long road. Hot day." He unslings his water skin and holds it out to her.

"Here, girl. Drink." I pretend not to notice. Ling'er hesitates just long enough to seem shy, then takes the water skin with both hands and drinks with the grateful enthusiasm of someone who's been walking for hours under a hot sun.

"Thank you, sir," she murmurs. The guard nods, takes his water skin back, and falls away to rejoin his company. He doesn't look at me again. No one suspects. No one looks twice. To them, she's just a servant girl, and I'm just a minor cultivator dragging a child across the countryside inconsiderately. An hour ago, she was carrying me at sixty miles per hour. Sixty miles per hour. I do the conversion in my head, the habit from my past life surfacing without permission.

The map uses li, the merchants use li, everyone in this world uses li. But my brain still defaults to highway speeds, to distance markers I haven't seen in months, to a measurement system that doesn't exist here.

'Let's see. Sixty miles. A li is about a third of a mile, so… one hundred and eighty li? Two hundred? Roughly.' The math is fuzzy, but the scale is not. Two hundred li in an hour on foot. While carrying a grown man. Ludicrous. Even for cultivators, it's ludicrous. Most Qi Condensation disciples couldn't manage a fraction of that speed over flat ground, let alone hills and valleys. I would be winded after the first twenty minutes of keeping such a pace. She's already recovered.

The caravan moves ahead of us, wagons creaking, guards chatting, children running between the wheels. Ling'er walks beside me, her face relaxed, her breathing normal now. The water the guard gave her is gone.

"Master," she says quietly, "how far did we actually run?"

"Two hundred li. Roughly." She considers this.

"That's a lot."

"It's a lot. We have more to go." We walk in silence for a while. The caravan grows distant ahead of us, then disappears around a bend. The road empties again: just grass, sky, and the two of us, moving toward Celestial Jade City.