Chapter 9

The calm mountain breeze blew against Feng Mian's face as she looked at the town below.

It was sandwiched between 4 mountains with a river running from the one she was on and a single opening from the front of the town, one opening and one exit.

From where she was, it would make sense she wouldn't be able to make out what was below, it should be a blurry mess of shapes and colors.

But, to her, it was as if she was seeing it from a camera lens, a picture on a computer or mobile phone to be zoomed in or out.

The term 20/20 vision doesn't begin to do justice to what she was seeing.

Feng Mian could see the people going about their lives, people coming in and out of the Imperial Capital, and most if not all of them were merchants doing their journey of profits.

The Imperial capital seems to be in a bubble from the outside, closed off from the rest of the country.

From her memories, she could guess that even the names of outside villages and towns weren't even mentioned, only occasionally the outside dynasties, but only in limited amounts.

Information on the outside world is few and far between, scattered across travelers as it would take weeks upon months to get from one place to another.

This was the reality before the Internet, trains, cars, fast ships, or planes.

Information was so hard to get, that it wouldn't even make sense to care, it wouldn't make sense to care about something that has little to no effect on your well-being whats so ever.

But the people of the imperial capital were different.

They had money and could buy things from the traveling merchants, they didn't need to work in the field as they had commoners for that, they wouldn't need to worry about international matters, as they had the imperial court and military for that.

In short, they had nothing to do, all they could do is follow traditions strictly with precise detail and gossip without end.

The cousin of so and so, that is the husband of so and so from the so and so family tripped and spilled tea? well, the cousin lost face for the so and so family, and everyone in the capital would know about it before the end of the day.

Feng Mian's situation was probably the most entertainment they had in their lives so far.

Every week something new would happen and that would circle around the capital forever, staining her reputation for her life as no one would forget.

Painting, calligraphy, music, and the works, competition would come out month after month and money would circle without end.

Families had competitions on who could spend more money, children grew up to be spoiled young masters with almost zero morals and the boredom to drive a person insane.

This combination was no good, as the boredom would drive them to do anything to find something to do, and thus, schemes against others took up for the main form of entertainment, with political power that is only below the emperor, and an amount of money that pay for a commoner's life 5 times over.

This combination was no good at all, this capital would be classified as a, 'Sh*t H*le' in modern times, if anyone from modern times could escape from this, it was almost an 80% chance they would leave to another dynasty or something.

But to Feng Mian who lived 4 months in this very mountain looking down on the Imperial Capital, she would often have dreams of living a life of prosperity there.

"There is no way in hell I would want to live there, but if it's to deal with the General Family, I would happily do it."