For a moment, the two of them watched in silence— as their train returned to ground level, and they could see through their window so many lives, flickering, ephemeral… No different than either of them, in many ways. In some, they were probably better off— how many of those children, frolicking in small courtyards and between grimy buildings, had grown up with their parents? For a moment, she felt a twinge of jealousy— but, no. That was beneath her…

She, unlike them, had opportunity. The fortune to at least have a chance at joining the Bloody Saffron Sect through regular matriculation… something denied to those who lived beyond the great walls of East Saffron.

Some small luck. It was disturbing, to think of how close she’d come to having her life’s goal cut off from her, by no volition of her own, before she’d even been old enough to comprehend what she would’ve lost.

And for all of that, for silence, for the the grand unnatural array of a city spilled out for leagues in every direction, and street trees and busy roads, and children at play—

The city went by.

Slowly the buildings dwindled, from dense housing to sprawled out neighborhoods, to farmland— vast fields of winter wheat spread out for leagues in every direction, over those rolling hills and sunken dales and vast emptinesses; a wilderness of their own making. “I’ve never been this far from the city.” She stared out of the window, her face pressed up close enough to the glass that her breath misted the crystal plane. “Is everywhere like this? So…” she struggled to put it into words, the profound loneliness of knowing that for thousands of feet, for miles in every direction around them, there was nothing. Nothing more than empty farmland, and the lone rail line cutting through it. “Sparse,” she eventually settled on. “So sparse

.”

“Somewhat.” Avyr murmured, looking out the window in much the same way, if perhaps with less enraptured fascination than her; “I’ve not seen everything. If you chart my course from my home to here, it’s a relatively straight line through the various population centers— from Fenfeng to Xianghua, to here. From what I’ve seen, though… no, not everywhere is like this. I grew up in the jungles of Refuge, and in that dense growth you’d be lucky to find a clearing more than two lengths across at times. That sense, though, that the whole world was empty?” He paused for a second, then slower— “I remember that. The knowledge that there was nothing but the family and clan and then… a vast and untamed world, spreading out in every direction for untold lengths. We were taught since we were kittens that the forest was our land, but to know you hold dominion over something in name does not diminish the wonder of it, does it?”

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Lily didn’t even really know what to say to that. She didn’t even really know if there was anything she could say. So, instead, she decided to focus on something a lot more immediately important. “The phoenix line will take us all the way to Chongtian, but after that we’re going to be on our own. Chongtian is pretty deep in the mountains itself, but not…” she waved a hand, trying to adumbrate the slightly-disappointed, slightly-unsatisfied opinion she had of the area. “Nobody of any repute actually thinks the area around Chongtian is any good. Well, I mean, it's good for mortals to build a city in, but that means it's bad for the sort of qi density and aspect we want to find. So we’ll need to find someone to take us further into the mountains.”

“So we’ll have to make a choice, there.”

“Yeah, more or less. There’s thousands of tiny villages up in the Dragonspine range proper, and any one of them could have what we’re looking for.”

“Or none of them.”

Lily nodded, conceding the point. “Or none of them. But an extreme-yang flavored mountain can’t be that hard to find.”

“I just find it… unlikely that we’re going to stumble upon exactly what we need so easily. And we don’t have forever to do so, either.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, but that’s why we’re going to ask people. I’ve already done some research on the networks and narrowed down the possibilities, but Chongtian is also known as a hub for explorers and adventurers who want to find treasures in the Dragonspine. I’m sure we’ll be able to find someone who can tell us something.” The matter of payment was… well, she’d have to think something up. Maybe a lifesaving talisman or two? Those would probably be popular… hopefully, at least.

“They are rather excellent talismans, I’ll admit.”

“See? It’ll be fine.”

“Hopefully.”

Hopefully… she leaned back, flipping through her notebook and all the various designs she’d considered, formations upon formations and even her first forays into what Master Mingtian had told her to consider— why each rune was a rune. She took it all in, just for a second— then twirled her pen around her fingers, put it to paper, and started working. A qi gathering formation, not made of talismans but emplaced in truth…

By the time they reached their mountain, she’d was determined she’d be ready. There was no other possibility.

She refused.

And so she got to work—

And so the train continued on into the far fields.

Onwards.