With the exception of our encounter with the talking immortal chicken, our trip to the Xia border has been pretty easy. With my invisibility, we were able to slip past all the checkpoints in Shu without any difficulties. Although Yue has been visibly depressed since her loss against the chicken, she still had enough composure to warn us before trying to cross into the Xia province.
From what you told us, the security in the Xia province is much higher than everywhere else. This would include both the border guards and the various checkpoints on the roads, both of which have means of detecting those who would try to sneak past them.
Based off of what she said, what we've been doing up until now won't cut it here since all the different security departments in the Xia province are required to employ at least one person who can sniff out hidden targets. When I heard this, I had called them a group of dogs and Yue even went on to say I was right since a majority of these people are canid beastfolk, dog beastfolk in particular.
Needless to say, having a strong sense of smell will result in us getting caught if we try to just walk right through. Of course, they can't monitor everywhere, so we just have to go where they aren't actively looking, relative to the checkpoints that is. We are going to have to traverse through a couple of forests and mountains to avoid the border guards and the checkpoints along the road, but even these places are subject to patrols.
According to Yue's knowledge, these patrols are irregular, meaning they don't have a set schedule and the only guarantee is that they happen several times a day all over the province. As soon as I heard about this, I wanted to just run in with guns blazing since with my poor luck we would be found sooner or later, and I may or may not have been eager to test out my robot army. But Yue and Aurelia want to at least remain hidden for as long as possible.
Yue was insisting that the goal was just to get revenge on her family's elders and leaders, and not to destabilise the entire Empire with an assault on the Capital, thus making my idea a rather poor one. But with a bit of negotiating, I got her to agree to let me use a few of my machines when we eventually fight with her family's leaders. But before that, we still need to decide on the route to take to get to the Shenzhou Capital, Long.
"We have a few options for entering Xia and getting to Long. The quickest and the one with the most risk is taking the swimming through the river that flows through Long. Honestly, we shouldn't even consider it even if we can avoid most checkpoints since it's very hard to hide taking this route. Other than that we can travel across the mountains or forest," Yue explains.
"What are the pros and cons of them?" Lia ask.
"The mountains of Xia are dangerous with many high tier and high level monsters calling them home. Even someone at my strength would have difficulty fighting the monsters there. It will also take longer for us to arrive in Long, but the upside is that there are fewer patrols due to the danger."
"And the forest?" Aurelia asks.
"It's mostly just the opposite of the mountains. The monsters aren't as strong and we would arrive sooner, but the forests are also prone to frequent patrols," Yue explains.
"Do we really have to go through all this trouble? Aren't you still a government official, can't you just walk right in with no problem?" I ask.
"Yea, I can, but the problem is the rest of you. All of you are wanted criminals here, what makes you think that you can just walk right by... wait actually your right, we can just walk right in," Yue says as she seemingly figures something out.
"What kind of idea have you thought of?" I ask.
"Simple, you plus makeup equals a free pass," Yue says.
"Makeup and Cordelia, oh, I think I understand what you're trying to do. have Cordelia hide their wings and other features while using makeup to hide their faces to obscure the image on the wanted posters. It should be something along those lines," Aurelia says.
"That's right, but I need a day before we set out for the border checkpoint. My makeup skills are a bit rusty," Yue says as she looks over towards me with a smile.
I've got a bad feeling, so I think I'll take my leave here, is what I thought I as I sit up to take a walk, but I get stopped by a hand on my shoulder.
"And where do you think you're going?" Yue asks.
"I just thought that since we're done that I'd go take a walk," I say while trying to avoid eye contact with her.
"How about... no. You're going to stay here and be my practice dummy. Your the one responsible for everyone else's public wanted status, so you need to pay the price," Yue says with a smile while tightening her grip on me.
Looking around the room, I immediately notice that both Aurelia and Wanjing ran away. I then turn my gaze to Lia and silently plead for help, but Yue intervenes, saying, "naturally, Lia can also participate in applying makeup to our friend here."
Lia eyes practically light up as she says, "with pleasure," as they turn me into their plaything for the remainder of the day.
From this, I make a mental note to pay attention and do whatever I can to reduce the collateral damage from the fights in the future so as to not be subject to such an embarrassing event again.