6 Seeking Answers, Finding Trouble

After being shuttled out of the house the siblings looked at each other in a small amount of confusion, "Feng'er, you had a good bit more time at home before you needed to leave right? I wonder why father sent you out as well..."

"I'm not sure either Yun'er, but he surely has his reasons. I'll be heading to the Bone Tool Sect hall now, if you ever need me you can find me there. Best of luck deciphering your puzzle."

As Fenglong walked away he waved back to his sister, who then started walking towards the center of town. "I need to find a quiet place to look into this puzzle. Maybe there will be a good place to sit along this road before I reach the market."

After walking a ways towards the central market, Yun found a quiet bench to sit on outside a small shop. As she placed her hand on the token in her pocket and focused her spirit she closed her eyes and furrowed her brow. The flood of images and concepts washed over her mind again, but this time she tried to let it flow like water and just watched the images go past. She began to notice similarities in the images that seemed to tie in with the concepts present as well.

As she began to notice these things and have some level of understanding she felt like the images began to reorganize themselves according to her knowledge. Before long she had already managed to understand enough of the puzzle that she had organized the myriad images into three sections, but she felt that there was something still missing.

Just as she was thinking this she also felt a sharp pain in her head that pulled her out of her immersion in the puzzle. As she rubbed her head she wondered if maybe she had used too much Spiritual Qi when she realized that it was already evening time, hours had gone past already and she had completely missed eating lunch! Realizing that it was hard to keep track of time when working on the puzzle she got up and began wandering the main streets of the city while munching on a piece of dried meat from her pack.

As she wandered, she didn't notice that her path was slowly guiding her to a certain area of the city, nor that the streets were becoming more and more sparse the later it got. Not even the enforcers were wandering these streets. Just as she was wondering why it seemed so eerily quiet, Yun felt the fur on the back of her neck stand up. She quickly dove forward into a roll and looked behind her to see that at some time a small group of young Canis had gathered and the leader had swung a small club at her head.

As they all sneered at her she dropped her pack on the ground and faced off against them, "Why did you attack me? I've done nothing to you."

"You're in our part of town little girl. If you're not here for trouble at this time of night then we'll find trouble for you. If you want, we could make some money together. How about we sell you to the highest bidder, and when you get old enough you can serve him however he wants!" As the leader said this with a sneer on his face his companions chuckled and they all advanced on Yun slowly, trapping her in a half circle against the wall.

Just as one of them got close enough to grab her and thought she hadn't noticed he felt a sharp pain in his side and realized he was sliding backwards. Not knowing what happened, he felt a little dizzy and confused, but his buddies had already closed the gap where he had been and were getting ready to try and subdue her.

Inside the encirclement of the thugs, Yun snarled at them after kicking the first one out of the ring. She tensed her muscles and prepared herself to do what was necessary. As the circle slowly closed in on her she kept looking for a weak point, hoping that someone would be in a poor position so she could break out. Just as they were almost close enough to get hold of her she made up her mind and lashed out with a kick to one side before using the pressure from the impact to launch herself at the other side, jumping up and planting her two paws in the faces of the two closest to the wall and shoving them backward to the ground, digging in lightly with her claws as she landed.

Swiftly, while everyone was still confused, she grabbed her pack off the ground in front of her and made a mad sprint towards the nearest corner. As she started running she heard the whole group scrambling over each other trying to chase her, and as she reached the first corner she looked over her shoulder to see that she had a pretty good lead on the nearest one. She rounded the corner at a dead sprint, going all out, and made for the next corner, hoping to turn it before they could turn the first one, but she was disappointed to see that the first pursuer had already completely made the first corner as she started the next.

Worse still, he seemed to be gaining on her a little bit at a time.

Thinking carefully about this, she made for the next corner and, after she turned it and saw that he was still coming, stopped running and prepared herself. As she heard the group come tromping down the road trying to catch up she waited for the leader of the chase to come to the corner and then launched herself into a heavy kick to his chest, laying him out flat on the ground in front of her as his momentum was completely stopped.

Quickly she charged around the corner and started laying into the next two, who were a few meters behind the fastest, and after she flattened them too she turned and bolted down the road again, making for a different corner and working her way towards the central market.

After a few more corners, Yun finally stopped running. She was fairly confident they wouldn't find her any time soon as she put her hands on her thighs and panted heavily. Thanks to the training her father put them through she had managed to escape this situation unscathed, but if she hadn't had that she would certainly have been put on a seller's ticket and sold in the black market.

She quietly thanked her father in her heart before she moved back into the patrolled areas of the city and found somewhere relatively safe to rest. After a while she felt like her mind had finally caught up with her body and she focused on what really mattered, deciphering the puzzle so she could join the sect.

Without integrating her mind with the token she began to recall the things she had seen inside it last time. The images and concepts seemed to be capable of blending together into a seamless whole, but something was missing. The three groups of images still didn't feel quite right.