Chapter 11 Making their way to Fenghuang and Under Watch?

"Zhāng, come here" Flavio shouted from the dining room, standing in front of a table stacked with a few books, clothes, bottles of ink, and parchment among others.

Walking into the dining room Zhāng placed a book onto the stack, of which he had read 4 of them completely, being Fantastic Beasts, Magical Thought, The Standards of Dueling, and finally Year one Chinese history, of which he only mastered the history textbook simply due to the fact of him being rigorously tested on the subject, other than that he had neither practiced nor mastered any of it; he simply understood most of the theory which was very different than actually mastering something.

"Yep".

"Alright, everything is out, place it in your ring" Flavio instructed "I trust you can do that right".

"Yep, simply create a connection via magic, bend the string annnnnnnd" Zhāng responded before every single thing on the table had shot into the ring. It was a fairly simple concept, bend the string-like connection with a thing and when the string snaps back into place, you use the already existing force slightly pulling the thing to pull it into the ring. Of course, a more skilled person could just force the thing into the ring by pulling the string but Zhāng had found his way to be easier and less consuming.

"Impressive, not many year one students could pull that many items into their ring at the same time" Liu complemented while slightly clapping "Nor could many find new ways it improve and change magic that has been around for a while"

"Alright, it's time for you to go" Flavio interrupted "your horse is in the front yard"

"Front yard? I thought It was in the backyard"

"Well honey, there are a few guests who want to make sure that he gets to school without any danger"

"And who would those guests be?" Zhāng said, earning his turn to interrupt.

"They are people from the Imperial Guard, and a few dozen people from the assault division"

"What?! Why is my son being escorted by the Imperial guards?" Liu asked

"Well it probably has something to do with your incident at Carpin Carpenders, whatever happened literally shook the entire world"

"Not only are other Wizard countries demanding information on it, other ministers and heads are also pressuring me, even as the Minister of Defense there is only so much I can do against the whole government" Flavio Laughed "and that's before the emperor got involved, stating that Zhāng's secrets are his secrets and his secrets alone, and he will simply be guarded by A few Imperial Guardsmen"

"That bastard is putting my son under watch!"

"Wait, honey all though I'm confident that they can't hear us, those are still imperial guardsmen," Flavio said quickly with his hands in a cutting neck motion "Anyway it will be fine, and we have to get you out and on your way"

"Are the Imperial guardsmen that powerful" Zhāng asked while walking to the door and just at the door they both stopped and looked at each other.

"I dueled and almost beat Flitwick, the former world champion duelist, and a very knowledgeable wizard," Flavio said in a more serious tone than usual "Yet I'm not confident in my ability to beat them while they are handicapped and wandless, so for the ones who have spent dozens of years honing Battle magic, no, they would wipe the floor with me in a minute maximum"

"Why are they so powerful though"

"Well they are chosen as children all very talented and very loyal, and for decades they are trained, instructed and practice everything they could get their hands on" He explained "it is accepted that if all 24 of them are together then they could destroy countries, now time to go"

Patting Zhāng's back he pushed him outside giving a view of 40 maybe even 50 people on horses with various runes on their bodies, like they are seared into the skin there are blue ones, red ones, purple ones, while there were only 3 golden ones like his own horse which was chewing plants on the front garden

Walking out into the grass front yard Zhāng placed his left foot on to the stirrup of the excellently crafted black saddle he lifted himself up and threw his other leg over the back of the horse "good luck kid" Flavio said before slapping the butt of the horse, which had made it bolt turning into a golden blur inturn causing all of the people on the horses, be it on the nearby houses or on the street they all turned into blurs the color of their horse's rune color.

The other horses with golden runes caught up almost instantly and surrounded Zhāng from the left, right, and front. From Zhāng's perspective, everything was perfectly clear and wind-free if not a little blue from a shield-like barrier in front of him.

After a few minutes, they got out of the city and began to move on mountainous terrain with the occasional forest that they simply dashed through. And after an hour they made their way into the heartland of china specifically over 250km north of the Chinese Metropolitan city of Xi'An near the hou'er river of which they had stopped for the horses to drink, meaning they had done a five-hour drive at 200 km per hour in a single hour.

After another 5 minutes, the horses noticeably slowed down and had started to run directly into a cliff face to which Zhāng simply thought that they would run around it when they had gotten closer like they had done previously, this time however they neither turned nor did they slow down anymore.

In less than 40 seconds they had almost reached the cliff face "ay that's a cliff" Zhāng yelled, it wasn't clear if they were simply ignoring him, or that they couldn't hear him but either way none of them were stopping so Zhāng could only keep going.