I walked silently behind Yin, as she guided back to her ho. A thousand questions ran in my mind, all that I’d been wanting to ask the girl, but she’d insisted on taking to her place, and seeing her resolute expression, I’d given in to her demands.
The village swept by beyond my awareness, as my eyes remained set firmly on the back of the girl walking in front of . I nodded absently to the village head as I walked into his ho. The man squawked, looking at nervously in confusion, and then at Yin. For a while he tried to stop for tea, but I briskly refused the offer, thanking him once, as I continued to follow behind Yin.
Stepping in the girl’s chamber, I waited for her to enter. Yin shut the door behind her leaning against the fra as she looked at with beady eyes that seed to still be staring in disbelief.
“This is my chamber. Before , it used to be my grandfather’s. He gave it to in his will,” Yin said, in the Azure-Jade language, straightening her back from against the door fra.
“Were you close to him?” I asked in English, keeping my eyes on the girl.
Yin nodded, walking past . She went to a drawer set at the corner of the room. Crouching on the floor, the girl pulled out the bottom most cabinet, letting out plus of dust. From within, she picked out a single dusty book, coughing twice. Gently, she cleaned the book, before turning to face , as she took a seat on the floor, and opened its contents.
“This is my grandfather’s book,” Yin said. “He only ever showed this. The one place where he wrote of his ho, and his past.”
I took a seat in front of Yin, watching her go through the book. Her gaze was distant and nostalgic, likely going through the mories of her ti with her grandfather.
After a mont, Yin closed the book, and turned it towards . “I think my grandfather would have wanted you to read it.”
I looked up to et Yin’s eyes, as I gave her a nod. Carefully picking up the book, I inspected it. The cover was of leather, sewed in with threads on the side. Sloppy work, clearly not soone who was used to the task. There was no na or title written on the book. I flipped the page open and frowned as I saw the contents within.
“This isn’t… the Azure-jade script is it?” I asked, looking up at Yin.
The girl shook her head. “It’s the language of his holand. One similar to ours, but not the sa,” she replied.
I read the letters, finding quite a few of them familiar. It was definitely a language similar to this world. Mandarin, I suspected. Briefly I rembered Ki’s ability to understand the languages from earth, and I wondered if I could replicate any of it, having inherited the tree.
I pressed a palm against the page, letting Chi flow through it as I closed my eyes. I could sense a shift happen, as the Chi soaked into the pages. Opening my eyes, I read the words again and… of course that didn’t work. It wouldn’t be so easy.
“There is a section ahead, written in another language that you should know. My grandfather had written this book in the hopes to reach out to soone else who might be lost in this world like he had been,” Yin said, and I flipped the pages, finding the language switch to English about halfway.
“My na is Guo Wei. If you can read this, then either you are my kin, and have learned this language. Or you co from a world very far from this one.
If you are my kin, I thank you for keeping my legacy alive.
If you are from my world, then understand that though I may not be alive, I offer you the heartiest comfort I have to give, and welco you as a fellow kin in this strange land. Just the understanding that there are others from our ho in this strange world is a comfort that I so dearly wish to share with you.”
I read the words, feeling a strange warmth fill . Here this man had lived and died, having never t , yet his words remained, offering comfort of sharing a past ho. I flipped the page over, reading ahead.
“The day I reached this world was 23rd February, 1988. I was twenty-two back then, living in Arica after my family had escaped our ho around a decade ago. My mory is not very clear on how I had arrived on this world, rely that I had been working on a ship when the seas had taken , and when I opened my eyes, I was here. It had taken so ti to find settlents. My first encounters with the wildlife of this world had been difficult, given how they possessed seemingly magical abilities that I lacked the ability to deal with.
It took a week before I found civilization. They spoke a language similar to Mandarin, but distinctly different. I struggled at first, but explaining it as a dialect from a remote village seed to work with them. After I’d changed my clothes, little to no one seed to regard strangely anymore, though my mannerisms raised more than a couple of eyes.”
I chuckled, finding the train of thought oddly relatable. A brief glance showed Yin watching instantly. The girl averted her eyes when I looked up, but I didn’t pay it any attention, returning to the book.
“In just a few days, I had realised sothing strange about the place I was in. It wasn’t just the lack of industry, roads and civilisation, which had been obvious, but also the fact that Qi existed in this world. An energy that allowed feats of magic to be perford by people revered as gods by the common public.
At first, I’d believed my inability to use this power resulted from my nature as an outsider in this world, but I’d quickly found out that only one in ten n in this world possessed the strength to use this magic. They were called cultivators and ford a social hierarchy above regular people. Furthermore, they had ranks for cultivators as well, where each further rank raised you that much higher in society. But said rank was not the only thing that judged one’s position, but also the age soone reached it. These were called as realms of cultivation.
Suffice to say, all of this took so ti to adjust to. But with ti, I managed. Despite my many hopes, I was mortal and could never touch upon this mystical Qi during my lifeti.
After spending so years near the coasts, I made my way further into the vast empire of Azure-Jade. It took just a few months to figure out that this world was much vaster than I had expected before. On my travels westwards, I found information regarding different lands outside this continent. After so understanding of distances and talking to sailers about routes, I roughly estimated this world to be nearly twice the size of ours, if not larger. Further in my travels, as I crossed the empire over nearly a decade, and reached upon the west coast, I got the chance to et a stranger who took an interest in .
The man appeared to arrive from a culture similar to ancient Ro. One that gave a different na to the Qi the Azure-Jade empire used, but followed the roughly sa mystical nature of magic. After so talking with this rchant, he ntioned he had once t a man who claid to be from a distant land in a different world. A place called Arica. After talking more, I found out the man had arrived here from the year 1899, from western Arica.
From this rchant, I remained a trinket of this other stranger from earth. An old pistol carved with a na on it that read John Smith.”
I paused at the word, struggling to take in everything written. I’d always suspected lands outside the empire existed, because while it was entirely possible that this world just had a single supercontinent, it was entirely likely that that wasn’t the case as well.
But to hear of another person from earth, from all the way back from 1899… I wasn’t sure what to think of it. After a mont or two of thought, I flipped the page, and read further.
“Along my travels, I t so others. None were from my ho, but so had ntioned encounters with people who may have been. I docunted these encounters in a diary, and along my travels, I also made notes of the industry and developnt in the empire. Little ideas and comforts that I wished to introduce in my life here. I’d once t a rchant who’d been willing to gamble on my ideas, but that is a long story that had ended in tragedy by the hands of the mighty gods that ruled this land.
“After nearly a decade of travelling through most of the Azure-Jade empire, I grew weary of my life as a wanderer. As chance had it, I t a wonderful woman in a quaint little town near the seventh peak of the empire. Having been a lone wanderer for nearly a decade, I longed for the company of others, and settled down with her near a Qi-vein that was recently discovered. Sohow, I was elected as the head of this new village, and decided to na it Taizhou, after my holand that my family fled from, back ho.
It pleased imnsely, to finally have a place to call ho. But as the decades passed, I felt a strange loss about my ho, and how I had never found anyone who'd co here from Earth. I had t strangers, and obtained trinkets, but they were far and few in between. And so, when my granddaughter Yin had shown interest, I told her of the secret, sothing not even my wife knew of. I’d told her stories of my ho, and of the adventures I’d had in this land. Eventually, this led to write the book that you hold in your hands, hoping if one day, soone else is brought to this world like I was, they would know that there was soone before them, and that there might be others out there, waiting to be found.”
I sat there in silence, as I read the last portion of the entry. Further pages showed the man’s ideas on general technology, docunts of his travels and other things. A strange feeling filled , that I couldn’t quite describe.
“I never thought I would get to et soone from my grandfather’s ho. For a long ti I’d thought that he had just invented these things to tell stories. Even the languages, I’d thought of them as quirks of my grandfather. He’d always been a strange man. But… the day before he passed, he showed sothing. Asked to promise that I would not share this with anyone till soone like you ca around,” Yin said, tears pooling in her eyes, and trickling down her cheek.
Wiping the tears off her face, the girl turned, and pulled open the drawer. Putting her hand in, she reached into the back, and ran her hand around. A few monts later, I heard a click as the drawer fell out of the cabinet, and Yin pulled out a thin rectangular box that'd been hidden inside the cupboard.
Yin presented the box to , setting it on the floor. “This is my grandfather’s legacy. I’d like you to have it.”
I stared at the wooden box, looking at it hesitantly for a mont. Nodding, I grabbed the small lid at the top, and pulled it open. My heart began to race as I saw the contents of the box inside.
There was a letter, ruled with lines clearly printed from an electrical printing machine, with words inside. Pages from a book I didn’t recognise. Next to it were two electrical devices with small screens. Pagers, I think they were called. I touched the plastic coverings on them and felt sothing go through my chest at the sensation of the material.
The box was full of items like these. A tallic compass, a pen. Yet, at the bottom of everything here, I saw one particular item covered in a white handkerchief. The na John Smith was carved on it, now blurred and scraped from rust.
Gently I picked up the pistol, and felt a world from my past be far closer to than I’d ever imagined.
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