Chapter 514: Long waits lead to boredom, boredom lead to madness
[Hey maestro, are you sure you didn’t want to try and sneak into-I mean…join us in scouting out this city?,] Hurricroak asked, [I’m pretty sure we could’ve figured out some kind of sneaky trick using the key or masking your aether signature with one of us possessing you.]
‘It’s fine, Hurricroak. I can use this opportunity to read up on what the fuck kind of lions’ den we’re entering here,’ Zhen Liu informed the kaijin, ‘rather not get caught with my pants down because of some fucking unspoken etiquette or sensitive topic. We’re already considered trouble anyways.’
[On the one hand I want to call you paranoid, but the amount of times we’ve been blindsided by bullshit is rather high.]
‘Precisely.
[Unexpected…surprises…suck…]
[Oh speaking of unexpected surprises,] Nepherage interjected, [what happened to Parasinner? They’re still in that prison cell.]
[I think they called themselves “a” parasinner, not that their name was “Parasinner”,] Hurricroak corrected, [at least I hope that’s the case, they made it rather unclear…]
‘Oh right, her…haven’t really checked on them since that initial meeting where they called me daddy in the weirdest ways possible…and then the incident with the zako…she must’ve released control of it by now…right? Anyways, I will go check on them later today, but for now, I need you guys to be my eyes, ears and nose in this Willow Scale place. Rather not have this journey about burying the hatchet turn into a fucking revenge story.’
[Of course, milord. You can count us,] Nepherage assured Zhen Liu.
[We’ll contact you if anything weird happens during our trip.]
‘Good.’
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“Hey…how long have we been in this line?,” Zhen Hai asked his cousins.
“That depends,” Zhen Xing answered.
“On?”
“How long have you been staring at that sloth hanging in the tress?,” Zhen Tai followed up.
“…long enough to watch it slowly grab a mushroom that was just out of reach and slowly chew on it.”
“Exactly.”
“Ugh…”
In a sharp contrast to how quickly they managed to make port back at the harbor town, the Zhen Clan and their caravan friends were stuck dealing with a stupidly long queue to enter the city that their ancestors called home, Willow Scale City.
Apparently, today just so happened to be the day before the start of a big, three day festival that is done every year in celebration of the Blossoming Scales Kingdom’s founding.
This meant that aside from their modest fleet of dozen or so rafts waiting to enter, there were about…a hundred or so other rafts and boats in front of them.
From little farmer dinghies, to floating restaurants to private pleasure ships used by foreign tourists, all manner of vessels clogged up the river that lead directly into the center of Willow Scale City.
The clog up of varying vessel sizes was so bad, that they all started to push into each other to the point that one could easily walk from boat to the next without causing any disturbances to the neighboring ones. It was actually so congested that several of the floating restaurants and sellers decided to throw caution to the wind and start selling food and such to the other boats.
This then caused a chain reaction, leading to the establishment of an unofficial market exchange forming quite literally in the middle of a river.
As such, the Zhen Clan elders and the Skyscales Company master decided it would be a good idea to just clump all of their rafts into one big conglomerate and have it act like a hub spot until they finally got moving again.
While it was up for debate whether or not this was a comfortable arrangement, at the very least nobody would get lost or get separated, and they could rely on each other to prevent would-be thieves or possible con men.
Due to these unusual circumstances, the younger generation of the Zhen branch clan deemed it necessary for themselves to gather onto one of the larger boats, as to prevent the worst of all evils to befall them.
Boredom.
Unfortunately, boredom was winning.
As of this moment in time, Zhen Hai, Zhen Tai and Zhen Xing were lounging in the sun, trying to find something to do, while their other cousins were busy doing…something.
Actually, Zhen Bai had no idea where their other four cousins went and decided to make it a topic of conversation.
It was better than nothing.
“Hey…,” Zhen Hai started, “do y’all know where all of the others went? Because I know you two have been lounging here with me, and the elders are busy dealing with…something at the front of this shit show, but I have no idea about everybody else went. Any ideas?”
“Uhhh…I think I remember Zhen Guo saying he was bouncing off towards the food stall boats. Apparently he smelled someone grilling seafood and meat and went off in that direction,” Zhen Tai pointed in the distance.
“He also mentioned something about smelling corn that was being cooked funny.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t know, cooking ain’t my thing unless it’s just roasting stuff.”
“That tracks…what about Zhen Yue and Zhen Lao? I figured she’d be reading while he’d be making sure his hair was sitting right or something.”
“Oh that one I know,” Zhen Xing answered, “Zhen Yue and Zhen Lao both went off together to check out the accessory boats.”
“The accessory boats?”
“Yeah,” Zhen Xing confirmed, “apparently Zhen Yue’s hair is not used to dealing with all of the humidity we’ve been dealing with the past few days and we’re hair kind of…poofed up.”
To get his point across, Zhen Xing made a motion with his hands starting from his scalp, gesturing an explosion of hair.
“They plan to find a hairpin or something to try and pin it down. Maybe have it like a ponytail.”
“Well, that is her default hairstyle…what about Zhen Liu? He off canoodling with Jin Fang and Rianna?,” Zhen Hai speculated.
“Evidently, he is not.”
“Stampeding shit!”
“Where’d she come from?”
As soon as Zhen Hai made his speculation, one of the subject of his speculation immediately appeared behind him like a ghost.
This ghost was none other than Jin Fang, who had an unamused, flat expression on her face.
Whether this was due to having to wait for the river to start moving again or overhearing Zhen Hai’s remarks, was up for debate.
“Okay, how the fuck did you sneak up on us like that?,” Zhen Xing asked, “Zhen Hai here is an Aether Master!”
“The hiding techniques I learned from Seventh Mother are surprisingly potent. Would you like me to recommend you three for lessons from her?”
“Uh…I’m good.”
“No thank you, I am too much of a meathead for that.”
“She scares the daylights out of me.”
“Hmmm.”
A part of Jin Fang felt it was necessary to report this fear to Seventh Mother directly…another part of her knew that Seventh Mother would find it necessary to instill further fear into them.
‘As fun as that sounds…Xiao Liu has been making an active effort to bury his grudges…’
Ultimately, Jin Fang just ignored the speculation and decided to help move their conversation along.
“If you three must know, Young Master Zhen Liu has been spending this wait period reading up on the political and societal history of the Blossoming Scales Kingdom, as well as the main Zhen Clan that we’re about to meet. He thought it was necessary to, in his words, see what kind of lion’s den we’re about to enter.”
“That…makes sense,” Zhen Hai nodded in agreement.
“Wait, where’d he get a book about that?,” Zhen Tai asked.
“Over there.”
“What?”
Following the direction of Jin Fang’s finger, the three of them saw a rather simple boat stall with a signage labelling it as the “Three Fortunes Books and Scrolls”, with a little subsign marking that they sell aether formations as well.
“Huh…how did we not notice that?,” Zhen Xing asked aloud.
“Probably because we were too bored to notice,” Zhen Hai answered.
“They also have those cheap copper novels for sale if you’re into that sort of thing,” Jin Fang added, “also, scroll paintings of lewd situations.”
“Huh…”
The three young masters of the Zhen Clan stared at the book store boat for a solid two minutes before collectively deciding to get off their butts and going there themselves.
It was better than just sitting on their asses the whole time.
As Jin Fang watched the three young masters go off and probably dirty literature, her thoughts began to wander to Zhen Liu and wonder when he was going to come back from the library.
‘Normally he’d let me tag along for things I’m living the library and the kaijin…wonder what’s so different this time around that he doesn’t want me to…’
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Meanwhile…
{Oh hey daddy, come to see if I’ve been a bad girl?}
“Partially that, partially checking on that zako too…”
{Gasp! Are you cheating on me already? I’m hurt…at least let me watch.}
