A few hours later, we found ourselves wandering down a worn dirt road near the base of the mountain range. According to the map that I saw, there should be a village at the base of the mountain, which is also the first fork on the road after leaving the sect. However, we have not come across it yet.

While I was lost in thought about the road ahead, Lou Xia spoke up from behind me and asked, “How long are you going to ignore me?”

That caused me to pause in my step for half a second as I tried to think up some sort of counter or excuse after being called out, only to come up empty. Eventually, I had something come to mind and hurriedly said, “I wasn’t ignoring you!”

It was only after those words had left my mouth that I realized what I had said and how lame of an excuse it was. Lou Xia also picked up on it and did not leave me any room, retorting, “Then why did you not look at me once after leaving the town?”

At this point, I wanted to curse my intelligence. Although I was able to do highly complex mathematics and design entire structures, reactors, and complex machines, I was unable to communicate with people. How does that even work? Regardless, I quickly spun around and looked at Lou Xia, only to spin back when I saw her blazing orange eyes staring directly into my crimson ones.

For some reason I could not rationally explain, the sight of Lou Xia locking eyes for only that brief moment instantly made me flustered and embarrassed. To counter this, I quickly exclaimed, “See! I'm not ignoring you!” Before charging forward while shouting even louder, “I am pretty sure that I can hear the village ahead, so I will see you guys there!” After that, I broke into a run down the road, taking any distraction that I could.

Thankfully, I was not entirely incorrect as my foxy ears managed to pick up the distant sounds of people chartering as well as the use of various tools not more than a minute later. I was not able to tell how far away we were from the village base solely of off sound at the moment. However, it was still confirmation that we were getting close.

From there, I just focused on running as fast as I could without having any wasted movements. This, of course, caused my traits to start activating and pointing out every single mistake I was making. During this period of time, I randomly thought about the existence of movement techniques that utilize the flow of Chi and how those would work, only for my traits to go haywire¹ emotionally or mentally upset or out of control. It was not necessarily a bad thing, but it was far too much information flowing into my head simultaneously.

Thankfully, the edge of the village was in sight, not that far down the road from us, so I could ignore it for the few minutes it would take to reach there. 

The exterior of said village was surrounded by a wooden wall with what appeared to be a guard stationed by a gate. It would have been impressive if the wall was something more than a glorified fence and the gate, anything else than an opening in the said fence. At least the guard was wearing something that vaguely resembled armor, as well as a very clean and properly maintained uniform.

Running for a moment longer, I soon slow down a small distance away from the entrance to the village so as not to startle the guard. He clearly saw me and what I was doing, given that he was looking in my direction, even if there was no real reaction on his face.

I then walked toward the gate calmly, with Lou Xia and May showing up behind me not long after. 

They did not say anything while we were walking toward the gate. Right as we reached there and I was about to pass through, the guard stopped me and said, “I am sorry, ma’am, but I need to at least know who you are before I let you through.”

That shocked me for a moment as I had not thought about that. It was only after thinking about it for a small moment that I understood how naive I was being by doing that. Sadly, I did not have any sort of identity papers or license like in my last life, so it would be hard to prove what I would say, but maybe Mom planned for this?

At that thought, I pulled out my backpack from my inventory while saying to the guard, “My name is Valaria Lockheart, and I am currently a disciple of the Silver Moon Sect.”

I was looking at the guard when I said my name, so I was able to see how he flinched as his eyes went wide after hearing my last name. Besides that, he did not show any other reaction until I finished speaking. It was then that he asked me, “Do you have any sort of identification that you could show me?”

That was exactly what I was looking for, and I was about to say something to him when my hand, which was in my backpack, brushed against something metal. So I grabbed it and pulled it out of my bag, revealing a small metal token with a lifelike phoenix carved on one side and an image of the three moons on the other. Thinking that this might be what I was looking for, I used my eye technique to see if there was anything else special about this token in terms of Qi. 

Soon, I saw the vast amount of energy that was stored in the token, which should not have been there. This all but confirmed what I was thinking.

Quickly handing it over to the guard, I watched as his eyes grew even wider and his hands started to tremble from just looking at both faces of the token. I then watched as he sent some spiritual energy into the token and nearly collapsed afterward. Something was clearly wrong with him. However, before I could say anything, he quickly regained his balance and bowed toward me while holding out my token and saying, “I am sorry for disturbing you, your Highness!”

His actions only served to confuse me, but I still took my token from his hands and walked through the gate without looking back.

Whatever was going on was definitely not my problem, and it was nothing that I needed to worry about.

Vulthurtoor

Sorry for the extremely late upload. I don't really have that much of an excuse besides a recent lack of attention span and some minor writer's block.

Thankfully, I solved one of those issues with both this story and, to some extent, Scarlet Qi as well. Sadly my attention span is still lacking at the moment. I will be doing my best to solve the second on, though, so I will be getting more chapters out soon.

Besides that, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and have a great Night/Day.