“Ou, how long has the road been.

“Ou, how hard has the road been

“Ou, It’s all worth it because of you my bee

Ku Lo sat on a makeshift stool of the guard-post, listening to the beer-bellied man sing an off-tune drinking song. The man would have liked to drink too, yet Ku Lo denied such an action considering their next move.

His bandit clothing comprised little but rags, so he spent most of the time rubbing himself warm. The guard change should be here already… 

“Who’s singing such a god-awful song?!” Came a shout from the direction of the path going up the mountain. “Stop it already, it’s breaking my eardrums!”

Almost as if ordered, the change of guards arrived. 

The four of them pretended to be tipsy and hurried towards the voice, pretending to be eager to leave. 

“Saw anything?” the first man of the other group asked Ku Lo when they met on top of the ridge. 

“Nothing,” Ku Lo muttered with his head down under the pretence of trying to dodge the wind now bashing against them.

This bandit did stare at him for a second or two with a hint of suspicion.

However, the two hands drawing his hood to block his face should have done the trick of concealing it.

At least they passed their replacements without incidents, and after a two-hour setback, they were onto earning glory — information that the Yin and Yang Sec would pay and praise for.

… 

What on Terra is that? Ku Lo became awestruck, frightened even when viewing the entrance into a cave. So that’s a monster, I guess? 

Amidst the light snowfall, he saw the bones of an animal. Although the word predator or monster might be the proper term here since the creature had hundreds of teeth, each larger than an outhouse and in multiple rows.

The long, gaping jaw of said monster was being used as a passage with the throat’s entrance being blocked by a metal gate similar to the Duo Leaf Academy’s. 

Don’t get too distracted, your character should’ve seen this sight tens if not hundreds of times. He got his act together and continued to tread in the snow, which would be to his hips if not for the path created from constant usage.  

Near the gate, Ku Lo tried his best to act like a grumpy ruffian who had no time for words or looks. Without care for anyone or anything, he marched to the gate.

The gimmick worked as a smaller embedded door opened.

“Hey, how was it—”

“No in the mood,” Ku Lo marched past the guard, the winds sweeping in snow with his entrance as he continued with a certain drive to walk somewhere specific in what appeared a well-organised, booming city within the belly of a monster. 

Of course, he didn’t know where anything was, but still, this action was several times better than standing out by stopping. They would have enough time to orient themselves later. 

With this idea in mind, Ku Lo took two rights and three lefts in the streets, looking back after every turn before stopping under one of the colossal bones serving as a ceiling.  

“It’s safe to say our man wasn’t telling everything,” he whispered to the others huddling around him.

“This sure doesn’t seem like a small operation.” 

Ku Lo nodded while his hand fixed the clothes a tad too large. “Let’s not blabber here-” He glanced around them before continuing. “Try to gather information about their food supply. Meet here in an hour’s time.” 

None of his subordinates responded as they spun around and took their own directions. It wasn’t like this action mattered a lot and it was proper considering they shouldn’t talk too much, yet it still made him feel as if he were… an outcast to them?

Can’t please everyone. He considered they could also be rightfully mad at him because he took them much further than needed. Focus on the mission, for now. 

Before doing so, however, he took another peek at his surroundings. There were two large takeaways: One, this was a full-blown bandit city, and it was within the skeleton of a whale-like creature. 

The part about how it got inside a mountain… couldn’t be explained. 

If it works, it works, he thought, glancing at the skeleton holding back what could be millions of tons of ground for the last time before disappearing from the spot. 

As he had told his subordinates before, he found the most important takeaway from this place — aside from the numbers which he passively counted — to be the food situation. He based this on the fact if the front were to be blocked, everyone inside this place would starve. 

Strolling the streets and taking a peek inside a bar to look at the menu, he found the answer to his question. People were throwing leftovers into the streets and the bar had an array of dishes, even if they were all cooked from one or two ingredients. 

They must have a lot of supplies… he pondered, sitting on one of the bar’s many tables. This means they should have a large storage of it! 

He realised that the High Mountain Bandits were not stashing their food and rationing it. The current situation indicated that access to food supplies wasn’t too hard. Maybe the food-storage guards would be lax as to let anyone in if the price was right? 

“What are you thinking of?” Someone directed a question at Ku Lo. 

Ku Lo shuddered. 

“Seems important-” The person speaking took a seat opposite to him. “Would you like to share it with a fellow man interested in peoples’ thoughts?”

His gaze creaked up from the menu he held in his hands. First to the man’s blind eye and then to the other eye, although that too appeared half-dead as only the side away from the blind eye showed the coloured purple. 

Eerie. Ku Lo shuddered again. 

“Don’t worry, I get a lot of this,” the man laughed, blinking the eye still operational. “I’m Zhen. Zheng Juan.”

“Ku Lo,” he responded with his actual name as Zheng Juan had scared his fake name out of his mind. 

“Are you ordering or just watching?” Zhen Juan said, raising the menu. “This place has so much food.”

“Yeah… It sure does.” Ku Lo wiped a sweat drop off his neck.

“What do you think? Will the Yin and Yang Sect be soon knocking on our door or will the Rising Sun Sect find us first?” 

Ku Lo scratched the back of his neck, knowing full-well his actions appeared suspicious, yet he could not hold himself still. 

“Boss knows what to do,” Ku Lo said. “Anyway, we’ve been here for years and neither of those ‘righteous’ sects has come close to finding us, and never will before it’s too late, hehe.”

“Right, they can try all they want,” Zheng Juan said before changing the topic. “I’ll take the eggs with mustard, I’m not too hungry.”

“Ugh!” Ku Lo sensed the need to throw up from hearing his order of choice. 

“Bathroom.” He left Zheng Juan’s company before it blew his cover. 

In this situation, the bathroom meant an alley, a few streets away from the bar so that Zheng Juan would lose sight of him. 

The puke was very real too. 

Eggs and mustard, he thought, as another wave of the last food he ate rose in his throat and exited through his mouth a second later. 

“It isn’t that bad,” Zheng Juan said, leaning an elbow onto a wall next to him with the hand against his black hairs. “Trust me. I’ve eaten that dish here for like over ten times. You should give it a chance.” 

“Not aga— Blaargh!”