Capítulo 141: Chapter 139 - The Lapis Lantern
Deep in the Darkwood Valley, situated near the headwaters of the Green River sprawled a city that had made darkness its home. As long as one wished to travel in a path roughly parallel to the river, it was possible to walk as much as half a li without having to climb or descend any significant hills. Moving toward or away from the river, however, frequently required navigating the city's intricate network of stairways. Some of those stairs were broad, flat, of even rise and run. Others were rickety, composed of rotting timber or roughly placed paving stones and prone to ending in dead ends where no one had repaired the stairway after a mudslide had washed away a portion of the path.
For Ao Wen and her friends, who entered the city by coming over the ridgeline, they had plenty of time to appreciate both the good and bad of the public stairways as they followed Zhang Bai through a maddening warren of footpaths and stairs to descend almost all the way to the river bank. Along the way, what little daylight remained became increasingly dimmer. The city more than made up for the lack of daylight, however, as first hundreds and then thousands of lanterns were lit along the streets, stairways, and hung from countless porches and buildings around the city. Buy the time they reached their destination, Ao Wen felt like she'd walked into the fabric of the night sky itself with thousands of twinkling stars in the darkness all around her.
"Beautiful isn't it?" Zhang Bai said with a smile. "Of all the places to visit on the peninsula, Lantern City at night remains one of the most beautiful I've ever been."
"I never thought a city could be beautiful like this," Feng Xi said in wonder. In Turning Leaf town, a heavy rainy season and little trade resulted in a city that emphasized the practical over the beautiful. Places like Tang Jin's family restaurant were the exception rather than the rule. Here, while many of the buildings felt rough and rickety, some of them even constructed on long stilts over the steeply sloped ground, at night all of the surface details faded away to be replaced by a sea of twinkling lights.
"It reminds me of the Festival of Light in the Ji kingdom," Ao Wen said, taking in the sight along with the sound of rushing water from the Green river as it tumbled further down the valley. "In the summer, they make little wooden boats, some elaborate, some little more than a carved out log, and they write their wishes on the boats before the put a candle in the boat and send it out to sea. They say that if your boat makes it back to shore with the candle still burning then your wish will come true," she said, her voice wistful and her gaze distant.
"Would you like to make a few boats to release down the river while we're here?" Feng Xi asked, looking at her lover's distant gaze with concern.
"No," Ao Wen replied, refocusing her amber eyes on the people around her and blinking away the distant memories of the wish she'd released onto the sea for an end to Yin Fiends. From what Qi Yue had said in her dreams, the Yin Fiends had won in the end and it was silly to think that something like a boat with a candle on it could change the fate of a whole Mortal Realm to begin with. "I'm not going to wish for what I want," she said, her voice oddly intense. "I'll fight for it. But right now, the only thing I want to fight for is a good bed. What is this place you're bringing us to Bai?"
"This is the Lapis Lantern," he said, gesturing to a building that stood only three stories tall but ran much of the length of a city block. Several lanterns with blue gauze shades glowed along the perimeter of the building casting the whole establishment in a cool blue light. "It's not as high end as the Golden Lamp on the far side of the river, and it doesn't try to be. Instead, it offers up the best egg breakfast to chase away a hangover that you can find in all of Lantern City along with beds that are extra wide and walls that are thick enough to ensure you get a good night's sleep no matter how loud your neighbors are."
"Is dinner as good as breakfast is?" Tang Jin asked, suppressing a rumble from his stomach. It wasn't that the group lacked for food on their trip, quite the opposite in fact. Despite Ao Wen's claim that they didn't need the reward, City Lord Zhang had been true to his word and provided a small cosmos sack to each of them before they left. The cosmos sacks were the most basic of spacial treasures and could only held a volume of a single cubic meter, but that allowed the young travelers to carry plenty of provisions and every day necessities without resorting to a pack animal or wagon to make their trip. Tang Jin had been snacking most of the day while the walked but it seemed that his newly enhanced physique demanded even more from him to sustain his rapid growth in stature and strength. "I feel like I could eat a whole boar after walking so far today," he said, rubbing his stomach and salivating at the thought of a meaty boar steak or a rich stew served over a heaping mountain of rice.
"I doubt you'll find boar on the menu here," Zhang Bai said with a laugh, wrapping an arm around Tang Jin's shoulders and pulling him toward the entrance. "The mainstay here is goat, but if you're lucky there will be venison on the menu as well."
"I haven't had goat stew in ages," Ao Wen said, taking Feng Xi's hand and following after Zhang Bai. "I hope they're fond of spicy dishes here."
Stepping in to the large common area of the first floor restaurant, the first thing Ao Wen noticed was that despite the omnipresent lanterns, the lighting was actually dim by the standards of most establishments she'd visited and many of the lanterns were tinted an orange / red that was gentle on eyes that had adjusted to the darkness outside. The second thing she noticed, however, gave her second thoughts about Zhang Bai's choice of establishment.
"Look, Young Lord Zhang Bai has come to visit us again," a buxom young woman dressed in a scandalously low cut midnight blue dress said, leaving her table and approaching the young men with a rolling gait that set her breasts jiggling, her hips swaying and allowed her well sculpted legs to flash from the high slits in her dress with every step she took. "I've missed you Lord Zhang," the woman said, stepping up on the side of Zhang Bai opposite of Tang Jin and pressing herself up against his arm.
Not far behind her, a second woman dressed almost as scandalously wearing a sleeveless top that exposed the intricate tattoos on both arms approached Tang Jin, capturing his arm and pressing it between her breasts as she peered up at him through long dark lashes. "Welcome Young Lord," she said smoothly. "Any friend of Young Lord Zhang Bai is a close friend of mine. You can call me Little Lingling if you'd like to," she added with a smile.
Across the room, at least two other women gave Ao Wen and Feng Xi appraising looks before deciding that the third young lord clearly had come with a woman of his own and attempting to intrude would only spoil things for their sisters who had moved first on the available bachelors. Further back into the common room, at a table surrounded by half a dozen men and two women dressed similarly to the ones who had glued themselves to Tang Jin and Zhang Bai, a burly man with a neatly trimmed beard and short cropped hair stood with a cup of dice in his hands. "Zhang Bai you scoundrel," the burly man shouted across the room. "Get over here and give me a chance to win my money back!"
"Bai," Ao Wen said, giving Zhang Bai an intense look. "Why do I have a feeling that you picked this place for more reasons than the good food and quiet rooms?"
REFLEXIONES DE LOS CREADORES 
JustJae
JustJae Thank you everyone for all the support! If you’re enjoying this, please check out my other work ‘Unparalleled Artist Unlikely Hero’, set thousands of years earlier in the same world and following Wu Ling the disciple of one of Ao Wen’s previous incarnations!
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