It took a couple days for Hartley to start moving freely through the district, the more complex layout of the roadways, with a constant stream of carriages and pedestrians trudging through the packed snow of the walkways and the distance to be traveled made navigating around the district a bit more complicated than the provinces they had visited before this one. After two days of walking around elbow to elbow with the always busy traffic of people and memorizing some unique land marks he was much more comfortable.
The were staying in district 6, The massive Wawrika province had a total 23 districts and all were named after numbers. District 6 was in the southern half of the province filled to the brim with snow covered stone buildings. There was no specific commercial district, everywhere was bustling with a variety commerce from houses of healing to fortune tellers and restaurants.
They had bought doubled lined robes made of thick fur for Zhi Ruo from one of the shops so that she wouldn't be affected by the low temperatures when she accompanied them to the restaurants in the cold evenings. The stagnant snow laying on the walkway complained with crunching sounds at each step as the trio made their way through the now half-empty streets towards today's chosen eating spot. On the way in, they were first greeted by the smells of the delicacies being prepared then they were greeted by the attendant in uniform and shown to a secluded corner of the one story building. The brown interior walls had six lit candles in candle holders mounted on each side wall and a black chandelier hanging down 2 meters from the high ceiling with 12 candles blazing with small yellow flames casting a shadow of the chandelier itself across the tables in the room.
Again as his habit dictates Hartley had Zhi Ruo order all the delicacies on the menu, he then turned to Qin Li "I guess we need to find a professional coach driver now, if I'm going to have a friend I might as well have a strong friend." Qin Li smiled and answered "I guess so." Zhi Ruo swiveled her head to look at both men. "What's going on?" Hartley replied to her question as he looked to where the kitchen was, his impatience for the food showing on his face. "I think its time we got another coach driver to give Qin Li more time to cultivate." She looked at Hartley with suspicion, she obvioulsy thought there was something deeper to the story.
As the food arrived dish by dish they all started eating, Hartley with chopsticks held right to his face asked "Ruo you are from the capital right, how does one become an actual noble?"
Zhi Ruo daintily finished her food and wiped her mouth with a white napkin provided on the table. "Why? do you want to be a noble now?"
Hartley brought his right hand up to cover his mouth as he finished eating a mouthful then said "Why not? everything is so much easier when people believe you are a noble."
"Well the basic way is to get conferred a title of knight or higher by a baron" said Zhi Ruo. "A glorified lackey" said Hartley..
Qin Li burst out laughing and food from his mouth flew everywhere..
"Sorry, sorry" he held up his hand as he got the death stare from Zhi Ruo.
"How else" asked Hartley.
"Well you can also get a title from the King or one of the princes for outstanding services rendered to the country."
Hartley sighed, "All basically lackeys" The waitress then came over and removed the empty bowls from the table, skillfully packing them inside each other with clanking sounds then headed off the kitchen again.
"There must be a more dignified way" Hartley said.
"Well you can just start your own country" Zhi Ruo replied sarcasm dripping from her voice.
Hartley had a narrow view of how things worked. If he had to suck up to kings princes and barons, how long would it take to dominate the country, what Hartley didn't know was that he was thinking of politics in its raw form, and it would be an essential ingredient for success. As he was thinking this Qin LI chimed in "why not just skip the noble part and go straight to being the strongest in the country. for now if people think we are nobles just don't correct them but we ourselves won't directly claim to be nobles."
"The strongest in the country" Hartley mused slowly, how long will that take. There seems to be no easy solutions. "Why not start here?" Qin Li said. "What do you mean?" Hartley asked. Qin li laid down his chopsticks into his bowl. "This is biggest and most prosperous province we've been to so far and the weather is going to be bad for the coming months, instead of travelling north in a freezing carriage why not use this province as our first base and start building our influence of power, we can start small by taking over a underground crime guild." he picked up back his chopsticks and continued eating. Zhi Ruo looked at Qin Li, she now had a tinge of new found respect, there was no way she wanted to go any further north in this weather.
They continued on as the trio ate and talked. When they left, they headed straight for the inn. A movement to the side immediately caught Hartley's attention, the slight shift of a shadow flew towards their direction.
Hartley leaped out diagonally ahead of of Zhi Ruo, his hand turned blue, waves of squiggly white steam curled off around his hand as he threw a punch at a sneaky black light , the stealthy black bolt turned to bright white sparks . crunch crunch crunch..ice crunched underfoot and the condensation of their breathing was visible looking like puffs of smoke emitted every few seconds, a high pitched laughter came from the distance ."cover Ruo" said Hartley. Zhi Ruo now had her knives drawn. They were at a T intersection of frozen roads. They were approaching the adjoining street that ran right to left so they had 2 blind corners to cover.
Hartley had to be proactive he pushed his awareness to 300 meters and detected every single movement and sound within the vicinity. They were two small stone buildings around the left corner, two men had taken up positions there. The right corner only had one single person who was not hiding. That person was standing in the middle of the street cackling. The shooter was on the same street as the trio, on the roof of a small building, Hartley didn't put the man in his eyes, he was the weakest threat. Hartley first had to figure out if it was a trap to lure him away and separate them, so he paid no attention to the man on the roof reloading his crossbow.
Qin Li's axe appeared in his hand as he shouted confidently "Take out the crossbow man, I can protect Ruo for at least 10 seconds" Hartley didn't answer he just stood there until he wriggled and began to fade away, the Hartley there was only an after image, the minute the words left Qin LI's mouth he was off in the direction of the shooter, he didn't need ten seconds.
Hartley moved towards the house with the shooter, both legs were now a solid blue, to match his already blue hands, white steam curled off his legs, squiggled and went upwards while blue lightning sparks crackled around his legs, zi zi zi. With both arms and legs transformed into steaming blue, Hartley had vapor pouring off him like an overheated radiator. The shooter had never seen someone move this fast before, all he could see was the trail left in the white snow. He was confident he would have a shot as the target had to stop for a split second to tear down the door, that was his opportunity to make a name for himself, he was instructed to be very very careful when dealing with this opponent, but the man fell into the simplest of traps.
Hartley reached the two story building in a split second and without breaking strides he ran straight up the front facing wall, he jumped upwards placing the shooter facing him five meters below himself while Hartley was five meters back from the building as he hovered for a second as if standing on stable ground.
A silver sword appeared in his right hand the blade immediately turned to a solid blue color as if it was made that way, white steam roiled and wriggled around the sword which came down onto the shooter producing a bright blue flash similar to a wind blade.
It vertically dissected the man and building like a frog in a laboratory with and explosion of snow dust and stone chips the whole building began to collapse with a rumble. The man had died hypnotized by awesomeness, while Hartley executed the moves the man was staring slack jawed at what he was witnessing and died in awe without lifting a finger to defend himself.
Four or Five people ran out of the building panicking shouting something about an earthquake. They ran in all direction leaving chaotic footprints in the snow.
Hartley regrouped with Qin Li and Zhi Ruo, that exchange if you can even call it that had only cost Hartley four seconds, the expected attacked hadn't come.
"Stay close Ruo" Hartley instructed as the inched their way onto the intersection. The people hiding to the left between the buildings were not visible. The person standing to the right was the scar face man, Hartley, Qin Li and Lou Tai had fought with in the Cosmos region.
Immediately Qin Li saw the man and as cold as the temperature was, he started sweating down his back, his eyes kept glancing in all directions looking for the dark arts user who had escaped with this man.....