The King walked to the garden inside the Royal Castle compound. This was one of the restricted areas of the Palace Complex. No one could come inside the garden without personal invitation from the King himself, except for his wives.
The garden was not big, but it was beautiful. There was a pond in the middle with fishes swam around. Above the pond, there was a simple bamboo house with roof from the coconut leaves stacked to form a thick layer of roof.
The house's floor was created from bamboo. When Alash walked above the floor, a rhythmic creak sounded from the floor. The sounds was strange but created a different felt to it compared to the dull sound of the stone flooring in the Castle.
There were probably no one would imagine that inside the Main Royal Castle of Rivermountain's Palace Complex there would be a simple bamboo house that look out of place. Alash came to the pond and walked on the bridge above the pond.
The bridge was built from bamboo, similar with the house. He sat on the bamboo house veranda and took some bread to feed the fishes in the pond.
Although the King's wives could come inside this garden, Alash would not allow them to enter the bamboo house or the fishpond. The pond itself was the boundary that limited both Queen and Concubine to approach the King.
This was actually the only special place that allowed the King to enjoy his solitude, free from distractions of the Kingdom's affair or political affair and also from both of his wives.
Although many high ranking officials and noble family members knew the existence of this special pond and its bamboo house of the Royal Castle, none of them knew the origin of this pond and its special rules.
Alash built this pond and the bamboo house as soon as he was crowned as the new King.
Only the Queen and Royal Concubine knew the reason behind this special pond and the bamboo house. It was built solely because of Jago's mother. Both the Queen and the Concubine were wives that came as result of political marriages with Woodforest Kingdom and Riverkeep Dukedom.
But Jago's mother was different story.
All of the citizen of the Rivermountain knew that Jago's mother was the Queen Asri's sworn sister, thus they always thought that maybe the King 'accidentally' interested in her and had Jago as the result.
Even Jago himself believed that his birth was due to some 'accidental' action done by the King. All of his siblings also believed similar stories, but in actual it was far from truth.
Jago's mother, Ayu, was the King's true love. Alash met with Ayu long before he became the King of Rivermountain. At that time, Alash was a prince forsaking his status and live as common soldiers under the Army.
Back then, he was nobody. They met when the army sent Alash's team to be stationed at border between Rivermountain and Woodforest, it was north of the Capital City.
At that time, Ayu was already sworn sister of the Woodforest's proud princess, Asri Woodforest. Alash was some unknown captain rank officer of border army. Both of them, three of them actually, met when Ayu accompanied Asri for a trip from Woodforest to Rivermountain.
The trip was designated to be a cultural exchange between both kingdoms, but in actual it was to promote Asri as candidate for political marriage with Rivermountain's crown contenders.
The Rivermountain's Capital City was located 500km south of the border and similarly the Woodforest's Capital City was located in nearly similar distance from the border on the north side. The distance between both of the capital city was slightly less than 1000km.
Woodforest was a kingdom which has lower class than Rivermountain. They were only a third class kingdom. Thus in term of development in the secular or cultivation world, Rivermountain had it better. Due to this, the Woodforest would often sent their elites to take a trip south in the name of cultural study or cultural exchange, to the Rivermountain Capital City.
Which such distance, the journey would require minimum 4 days on a single trip. For Woodforest's Royal Family, they would be given special treatment by the Rivermountain Kingdom. One of it was that, whenever the entourages reach the north border of the Rivermountain, they would be provided an elite team of guards from the Rivermountain's army.
That was young Alash's team.
Woodforest's capital and Rivermountain's capital was connected by a main road that can be traveled by horse carriage. Although at some part of the road passed through some small city or town, most of the road would be in the middle of lush forest.
There were occasional forest bandit attacks on the main road. Rivermountain's army was the one who responsible to prevent and annihilate the bandit on land; similarly Rivermountain's navy would be responsible for the Great River's pirates.
Thus for some important entourage, the army would provide additional guards.
Alash was graduated from the Advanced Academy at the age 14 years old. At that time, he was a genius known for his dual class cultivation. He managed to secure first ranked during the Advanced Academy final exam.
His performance was witnessed by the Empire's emissary and he earned the right to studied further on Royal Empire Academy on Northwood Empire's Capital City. It was a glorious moment for the kingdom at that time.
Alash finished his study on the Empire Academy at the age 17 years old and came back to the Rivermountain Kingdom. He was considered the strongest cultivator of the younger generation at that time with his cultivation at Half Step True Mage level.
Alash earned his popularity and became the strongest candidate for the King's crown.
Alash always considered himself to be a combatant that grew up in a green house. Although he possessed powerful cultivation level, he might have limited life and death battle experiences.
This was similar case with all of his classmates in the Academy. Thus Alash decided to withdraw from the crown competition and decided to explore the world to gain more experiences.