The journey went well. The group of carriages traveled along the road. They occasionally found marks and blood left by the Hu people's sudden attacks. Each time this happened, Fan Xian would get off the carriage and look around. He would then have the Second Bureau intelligence officers carefully gather information.
In this halting way, it took six days for them to reach the most distant and youngest of cities in the Qing Kingdom: Qingzhou.
Qingzhou was very different than Fan Xian had imagined. Before he had come, he had looked closely at the Council's intelligence reports. He had even visited the Great Prince to ask about the situation in the West. He had thought that Qingzhou was just a relatively desolate frontier city and more like a heavily guarded military camp. Unexpectedly, when he and his group entered the city, they found that other than the soldiers walking around, most people were merchants.
