The makeshift caravan hadn’t been making as much progress as the group had wanted.

  The main issue was they only had one beast to help carry their carts of belongings, Rowan’s spirit beast Bough. The bulkier items were stored in the larger cart being dragged along by the great turtle of earth and wood, but that was still only a fraction of what they had to bring.

  The rest were placed in hand carts and while those pulling them were somewhat strengthened by qi, the carts themselves were poorly constructed. Meaning the rough environment was often taking its toll, forcing them to have to stop and repair the shoddy things.

  Jieun grumbled to herself as the wheel on her cart got knocked loose from its housing yet again, cursing its maker.

  Joaquin was a decent enough carpenter when it came to house making or little carvings, but apparently his work suffered greatly when he was put under pressure and asked to make something mobile.

  Her newest spirit, Ikgang, tried to send her some feelings of comfort and peace from their internal space, but she wasn’t in the mood for peace at this time.

  “Not now.” She sent to the fish shaped river spirit, though she regretted it almost immediately as they sent back a feeling of sadness.

  She sighed. “It’s not you, little one.” Though her newest spirit wasn’t exactly small or young, they seemed to enjoy being treated like a child. “It’s this thrice-damned cart.”

  Jieun definitely wasn’t still upset over the thoughtless actions of that idiot farmer. Hiding the extent of the danger his youngest had brought upon themself.

  She smacked the wheel back into place with excessive force, the wood groaning under the abuse it was suffering. Tucking a strand of her dark hair back into place she solidified a plan to drag Joaquin over to fix his shoddy work once they stopped for the night, though this would be the third time she’s done so with only minimal improvements being made the previous two times.

  Ikgang sent more feelings of peace, and Jieun begrudgingly accepted them this time. They were right, wallowing in anger wouldn’t help anything in this situation.

  She was just so tired.

  Such little time had passed since she had felt so completely helpless. That horrid demon of rotten flowers trying to forcibly bind itself to her after killing her previous spirits. All so it could gain what small scraps of power it could from her core.

  Willow had saved her from that. Sure her plan hadn’t worked in the end and that wanderer had to rescue them, but it was her niece that had pulled her from the brink of despair.

  The child of her sworn sister, and so very like her mother.

  Yet Willow was going to leave in much the same way Lexie had. Setting off into the unknown with little thought as to how it would affect her.

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  It wasn’t fair, but life so rarely was.

  She chuckled darkly to herself as she hurried to catch up with the rest of the caravan. Lucius and Joaquin slowly trudged along with their burdens. While young Remus stayed in the larger cart due to his less developed core, and his mother stayed there with him so that she could “keep an eye on things”.

  Personally, Jieun felt she was just being lazy, but that could just be her foul mood speaking.

  The teenage boys, Yew and Romulus, would often wander between the carts, helping where they could if a cart got stuck on an exposed rock or sucked into mud. Currently they were chatting to each other as they walked alongside Bough, which explained how they missed her most recent difficulties.

  They waved to her when they noticed her staring and she gave a tired smile as she waved back.

  Willow and the wanderer woman Mu were often together on top of the great serpent. Doing what, she couldn’t say, but it just reinforced the changing of the status quo.

  Jieun shook her head to clear it of such thoughts.

  Here she was feeling sorry for herself like a petulant child when she should really let the girl know that she ultimately supported her decision. It was the smart call even if she was hesitant about Willow’s choice in mentor.

  The Wanderers Sect wasn’t like her own family, eager to mold children into weapons in the name of a clan that barely cared about their continued existence. They were a neutral peacekeeping force, strong enough to not be subsumed by any of the clans, and useful enough that the clans didn’t feel the need to stomp them out.

  After all, why waste their own manpower and resources stomping out destructive beast kings and demonic outbreaks when you could just chuck a wanderer at the problem and hope for the best. The Hao clan were an outlier and didn’t let the sect operate in their territory, but the rest of the clans tended to view them as disposable pawns.

  From their point of view it was luck, not skill, that had the wanderers come back from their missions intact.

  The Wanderer’s Sect was also one of the few places that would be able to shield Willow from the consequences of her path.

  Harmony and Change were being sought out, by the Li and Hao clans respectively, and a scion of the Li clan knew that the child had both spirits.

  Why Rowan had let him live was still a mystery to her, that soft-hearted fool. Even if he didn’t have the stomach for it he could’ve let her deal with it if she had only known, guest rights be damned.

  She drew more completely on her spirit’s calming presence. There was no use in dwelling on these thoughts, no matter how often they kept swirling in her head.

  The shadows of the past should stay there.

  Instead Jieun looked to the bright spots coming soon in her future.

  Lin, her loving husband, was waiting in the city at the end of their journey. A patient hunter that had managed to entrap her hidden heart in his snare. His words not hers, though she’d always smiled whenever he said it.

  She missed his embrace terribly.

  She missed her daughter, Bai, equally if not more than her husband. Though they drove each other completely mad with their similarities she still cared deeply for the girl.

  She hoped Lin had been able to keep her nastier tendencies in check. He was always a light touch when it came to discipline.

  Her burden felt a bit lighter now that her goal was clearer in her sights.

  As she picked up the pace due to her brighter outlook, the cart's wheel popped off again.

  And back into a foul mood she went.