The carriage passed through the gate and entered a main road as wide as the whole gate. With the thin trickle of exit and entrance, there was quite some space, so they were able to stop the carriage at the side of the road for a moment of planning.
"Look up there, that's the beast highway I told you about," Fin exclaimed, pointing up at floating roadways meandering above and between the high-risers of the city. It was actually called the Beast-Cart Promenade, but Beast Highway was catchier to their ears.
According to the girls, it was something like a public transport system of Doushi. Or maybe more like a taxi? One could buy a ticket for a ride to one of the various districts of the city and travel there in a comfortable and scenic manner.
The main road of the promenade followed along the city wall and not only allowed for fast travel through the city, but also offered a fantastic view of the sunset, according to the girls. It was getting late, so it was just the right time to use it and get to the hotel district.
As such, they found a less crowded place to store away their own carriage and followed the road signs to arrive and find the West Gate Station of the Beast-Cart Promenade. However, when they arrived, Seth grew doubtful whether his initial interpretation of the guards' warning was right.
It was clear this was a nice place, a couple of weeks prior. The station was a wide platform filled with carriages and carts waiting for customers. The ticket office was an elegant building that looked so clean and smooth that it seemed to be carved from jade.
At some point, silk banners had hung from it, but they were ripped off. The station showed signs of battle and broken carts. The ticket office was crowded by a group of sweaty thugs. In Seth's opinion, most cultivators could be classified as thugs, but these guys oozed the aura of thugs; they didn't try to hide it at all; they embraced it.
Attached to the ticket booth was a crude wooden board reading Twin River Triad. The ticket counter was manned by a burly guy wearing a simple vest, exposing his hairy, scarred body. Mina checked her notes before approaching the booth.
"Three tickets for the express Cloud-Stag carriage to the Jade Pavilion Hotel district," the cat girl said, keeping her voice mild, pleasant, and entirely polite.
The burly guy spat a stream of red tobacco onto the pristine white-jade floor. He eyed Mina up and down, his gaze filled with clear desire, ignoring the fact that her husband stood right behind her, entirely missing the frigid cold intent in the eyes of the Ash Walker.
"Sect's gone, babe. No more fancy stags," the thug grunted, gesturing vaguely to the pens behind the ticket booth. The beautiful, glowing Cloud-Stags they expected were missing. Instead, there was an assortment of crude beasts resembling boars and toads.
A couple of them were hitched to crude, slightly dusty wooden carriages and carts. The high-quality carriages they saw upfront were apparently not in use... Maybe this was why there were only people in this place.
"We run the promenade now. Prices adjusted for... operational transitions. 50 low-grade Spirit Stones. Each," he said crudely, his eyes wandering over Mina's body and looking at Fin in the back. "Of course, you can also pay in another way," he added with a raunchy smile.
"Oh my, how generous, I think I will..." Mina started speaking with a wide, friendly smile, then her fist struck true. While his nose made an attempt at smelling his brain, the grunt flew back, smashing against the back wall of the ticket booth. Sinking to the ground, he left a bright red smear on the jade white stone.
The surrounding thugs jumped into action, but what could they do? Their boss, who was just dispatched, was at the mid-stage of the Foundation Establishment Realm, lv. 61; these guys were only ranged in the 40s and low 50s.
"Bitch! Do you even know who we are? We are the Twin River Triad! We will find you and-" he didn't get much further with his desperate threat, as the whole crew of thugs instantly turned into piles of sand.
Mina stared at the pile of sand that had still been speaking to her a moment ago in shock. Fin gaped at the sudden sand box that had appeared in the station. Seth gasped in surprise at the overwhelming effectiveness of the spell he just cast. The girls turned to the blacksmith.
"You know that I have been practicing
The latter fell away when they sped up, and the ride became all bumpy... So when they weren't doing something else, they were practicing their magic. Seth had been testing his new and improved traits and constantly cast earth spells along the road to raise proficiency.
The skill that had reached Adept lv.9 in his attempts to master advanced petrification spells had broken through to the journeyman tier before they reached Doushi. Or a Scholar, as the tier was called for magic.
"So I managed to learn Flesh to Sand," which was the next step up from petrification. "To be fair, it wouldn't have worked if it wasn't for the level gap," the blacksmith admitted. The gap of over 60 levels left the cultivators no chance to resist.
"Well, i guess that is one way to deal with the bodies..." Mina admitted.
"You could have just turned them to ashes, like usually..." Fin said, kicking sand.
"But we are trying to keep a low profile, and Sand is way less suspicious than ashes," the bard brought up. Yes, although they were trying to keep a low profile, that didn't mean they intended to endure every bit of shit this place would try to throw at them. After all, nobody would notice if there was nobody left to notice.
"What about this guy?" Mina asked, pointing at the leader she struck down in effect.
"That pig looks hungry," Fin mentioned, pointing at a massive boar beast hitched to one of the crude carts. It had razor-sharp bristles on its back and a mean pair of tusks. Its teeth were more like those of a predator. It was clear what the fairy implied....
After feeding the animals, they faced one last problem: They had no driver.
"Do you think we can find someone?" Fin asked, looking at the desolate West Gate station, only manned by dust and sand dunes. Yeah, it was unlikely they would find a driver. Mina looked at the beasts.
"Maybe we can try communicating with those guys?" she asked. "Aren't there 'spiritually aware' beasts in this place. Maybe we can talk to them with
"Nope, we wouldn't want any of those to pull us anyway..." Seth said after attempting telepathic communication. These creatures had been completely dulled, barely able to hold even one individual thought.
"Don't worry, I have an idea," the blacksmith said after giving it some thought. He entered the ticket office for a little cover and summoned his anvil. The Spirit Blacksmith proceeded to meld together the soul fragments the thugs had left behind when they died. He had not directly extracted them; otherwise, this would have been much easier.
At this point in time, Seth had accumulated quite a bit of experience infusing and refining souls. With the refining power of Charon's Obol in addition to his skills and knowledge, it barely took five minutes to fuse and straighten out the souls into a medium-sized one with all the remaining memories of the 15 cultivators.
With the soul finished, Seth proceeded to inscribe it with the enchantment left by Forgebrand he had slightly improved upon. He had neither time nor interest to give this thing a proper body or even make it a Faer. Inscribing the enchantment on the soul took about as long as refining it.
10 Minutes after he entered the ticket office, he placed the enchanted soul on the pile of sand. The trio watched as the little dunes left of the thugs began swirling in a supernatural wind surrounding the soul as a core.
The tiny sandstorm began compacting, taking a defined humanoid shape, as if reconstituting the original body of one of the thugs. Considering these sands used to be the bodies of the souls that this soul was made of, there might have been a certain synergy that led to the final golem taking a defined human shape and facial features.
If it wasn't for the fact that the golem was a yellow sand color, it would have been hard to differentiate it from a normal person. It turned to Seth, placing a fist over where its heart would have been and kneeling before him.
"Master, I'm ready to serve."