A WESTERNER'S ROUTES INTO THE MARTIAL UNIVERSE

Chapter 16. The New Garden

Hong Junjie was Wen Zhi Ji's best friend in the Three Planes Sect. Thankfully, despite their youthful looks, the two men were no longer teenagers prone to hanging around with each other all day long. Kathryn would have had a hard time trying to be on constant alert against possible faux pas in the presence of a person who knew her host well.

Being already something of a co-leader, Brother Hong helped Sect Leader Mu with the everyday running of his large organization. Between his administrative work and cultivation training, the most senior disciple of the Three Planes Sect had little time to spend with his best friend.

It bothered Kathryn that she could not entirely relax and have fun. She had devised a rigorous routine concerning all communication within the sect. She had become adept at identifying tricky topics, avoiding inconvenient questions or answering them in the vaguest way possible, and backtracking in the case of an error. As for Hong Junjie, Kathryn regarded him almost like a friend of her own and knew how to talk to him without causing any problems for herself.

Shulong was a small town below the Heavenly Curtains Waterfall. It must have once been a fishing village, and the areas close to the river bank were still filled with fishermen's huts and sheds. The fishing business continued to flourish, but the presence of the Three Planes Sect had led to rapid urban development, creating this local center of commerce and entertainment.

The place was much smaller than Liujiang, the only other town visited by Kathryn, but it had a long central street lined with shops, and a market larger than she could have expected. Shulong also proudly offered to its visitors two inns and three taverns. Wen Zhi Ji's Sect had its stables and carriage court in the town, as well as a small mansion not far from them.

Kathryn had already visited the town before. The first time she went to Shulong with Wang Xiaobo: she wanted to familiarize herself with its layout and at the same time get a good amount of information from her talkative disciple. The pretext for going was to visit the market since they had missed the chance to enjoy Liujiang's shopping opportunities after the demon hunt.

Thanks to Xiaobo, Kathryn learned a lot about almost every building there. She also had made a follow-up visit alone to explore the place at leisure, without worrying about making any possible suspicious moves or comments. Now she knew the surroundings well enough to take a trip to Shulong with Hong Junjie without too much worry. She had also learned from Xiaobo that one tavern was a favourite with the Sect crowd.

The establishment was called the New Garden, even though it had no garden attached. To Kathryn, it seemed like a hotel and a restaurant combined, but everyone around called it an inn. It was the only two-story building in Shulong, with the first floor used for serving food and drinks. The interior was much simpler than what Kathryn had seen in Liujiang but it still defied her general concept of medieval inns, as it was spacious and not filled with smoke. A fantasy inn is a fantasy inn; you cannot make it into a dump.

The place was crowded, but someone like Wen Zhi Ji and Hong Junjie had no problem finding a vacant table for themselves. The owners of the inn always reserved at least one table for the members of the Three Planes Sect, seeing them as important patrons. After all, would they want to lose such valuable customers to one of the other four drinking houses in the town?

Sitting at the table and listening to Hong Junjie doing the order, Kathryn wondered if the food would be more interesting than dishes served at the Sect. Her real-world impression of Chinese cuisine was associated with rice and noodles, but it seemed that they were not as abundant in the area as one might have presumed. In any case, she never got anything as fancy as the soup she had enjoyed in the Sect's mansion in Liujiang.

What surprised Kathryn the most was the rare occurrence of fish dishes served, no more than once in ten days, which she found hard to explain given that the Sect was located above a fishing town. Even now, Hong Junjue did not order any fish, while Kathryn could see it served on other tables.