The Viper on the Border

"How much longer? We've been walking in a straight line for two days, just how much longer until we reach Shenzhou?" I ask.

"If you want to be technical about it, we've been in Shenzhou for a while now, we just on the frontier border with Zhongyang so there isn't much of anything," Yue says.

"You know that wasn't what I meant, when are we going to get to the next city or even village for all I care. We keep eating the same thing every meal, I want some variety!"

"Why is that the part your complaining about, Teacher. Moreover, are you already tired of my cooking?" Wanjing asks.

"Your food is fine, but all you need to do is... make something different!"

"She could make something else, but we'd run out of food before reaching the closest city. It's not like you even need to eat that much to survive, unlike the rest of us, you can supplement yourself with the elements," Aurelia says.

"But I want to eat delicious food..."

"Just suck it up until we reach the closest city, it shouldn't take too long, should only be another day or so, right, Wanjing?" Aurelia asks.

"Yeah, it won't be long too long before we arrive. Up ahead there is a river we need to cross over and we should arrive there in the early evening. If we camp out there, it will only take around half a day to reach the closest city. It should also be straightforward from there, no mountains or rivers afterwards, so long as we follow the main road," Wanjing explains.

"That's not too bad, I guess, then-- wait, *sniff* *sniff*, you smell that?"

"What's up now?" Yue asks.

"It's quite the appetising smell," Lia says.

"Quick, let's go catch it before someone else does!" Wanjing says as she jumps off my shoulder and changes to her maximum size before running off into the woodlands nearby.

As we all run after her, Yue asks, "What's going on?"

"They smell a bleeding wild boar. I'm sure you can guess why they want it," Aurelia says.

"Oh, that makes sense," Yue says just as we catch up to Wanjing.

Catching up to Wanjing, we find her confronting a few other people, likely the ones to initially injure the boar. The three men have matching clothes and they all have a similar rough feeling to them. While Wanjing and the three of them are in a standoff, the rest of us are hiding behind the bushes, watching the situation.

"Back off beast, this is our prey!" says one of the men.

"You fool! This is a Taotie, don't provoke it, we should just give up the boar. We need to let the Boss know there's a Taotie in the area." says the one acting as the leader.

Without much effort, the trio leaves the large boar for Wanjing as she picks it up and puts it in her storage before returning to us.

"So any idea who they were? And honestly, I'd rather a fight happen, this trip has been pretty boring so far," I say.

"If I'm not mistaken, those were people from the Viper Triad, a criminal group that's active over a large portion of the border with Yamato. And from what they said, even the boss is nearby, *sigh* this can't be a good thing," Yue says.

"How strong are they? Just in case we come across them again," I ask.

"The grunts like those guys should pose much of a problem, but the commanders are close in strength to me and the boss should stronger than me, but by how much isn't something I can say with certainty," Yue explains.

"So avoid them when possible, got it. So more importantly, lets get moving and head to the river or where ever we are going to camp out tonight, I want my meat!"

"If they were weaker than you, I almost certain you'd have gone out of your way just to kill them out of boredom. But why is your food more important than anything? Should we be more focused on why they're here so we can avoid them?" Aurelia asks.

"Food first, questions later. That's the universal law."

"I give up. There's no point in reasoning with her when she's hungry, let's just set up camp here and cook the damn pig," Aurelia says.

We all decide to listen to Aurelia's genius suggestion and no one opposes it since we all want a piece of the big boar. We begin cleaning up the area around us as the others begin setting up the tents while I begin making the fire pit and a few tables for Wanjing to prepare the boar.

Since I was able to finish first, I start clearing away any stray sticks and leaves from the area around the fire pit to prevent any accidental forest fires. As I finish up this task, the others have finished setting up the tents and I go to create a fence covered with barbwire around the campsite as a basic defensive measure.

As I finish with setting up the defences, Wanjing begins to prepare the boar and I start the up the fire. It doesn't take long for the sun to set as we are enjoying some roast pork around the large campfire.

"So now that we've had our food, let's move on to our approach regarding the Viper Triad. When possible we should try to find their current goal in the area, but we should also be trying to maintain distance and avoid getting into fights. Soley going off what those three from before let slip, the Boss is in the area and this probably isn't their headquarters, so something of importance is likely happening nearby," Aurelia says.

"Your likely right. While it isn't terribly uncommon to see the Viper Triad around the border, this place is a bit far from the usual places they frequent. Although it isn't certain where their exact base of operations lay," Yue explains.

"I say we do our best to ignore them and rush to the city. It's not like we're paragons of justice or anything, so we don't really need to dig deep into why they're here. As long as we don't mess with their higher-ups we should be fine. Anyway, I've had my fill, so I'm going to go take a nap."

Getting up I head over to one of the tents and lay down, feeling stuffed as I ate at least five times more than everyone else. I just hope nothing bad happens while I'm sleeping.