The guard seemed confused, at his line of questioning.
"From the meeting with the human and demihuman tribes. You were with her."
"The meeting…" realization suddenly dawned on Burak as he looked to the side to meet Hao Xuan's equally surprised gaze.
He lowered his voice until only Hao Xuan could hear him.
"That was less than half a day ago. It means we were in that world for-"
"No more than four hours I think," Hao Xuan finished his thought.
"By the ancestors! How is that possible?!"
Burak couldn't wrap his mind around the concept of relativity but it was more than understandable since he wasn't knowledgeable enough for something that complex.
Hao Xuan had already told him that time moved differently in there but to find out that the difference was 1825 to 1, suffice to say it left him quite shocked.
*Ruuumble*
A low rumble akin to a rolling stone ball on a granite floor came from behind. Hao Xuan turned around and saw the purple whirlpool in the distant sky. It was created from the excess Yin Qi and would stay that way for a while.
They had been running for close to half an hour at full speed and covered tens of miles but somehow, the whirlpool didn't get any smaller. In fact, it looked a little bigger than before.
Hao Xuan's eyes narrowed a smidgen as they focused on something around the whirlpool. There were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of shapeless shadowy objects floating around the whirlpool.
They came up from the forest in droves and started flying in circles around it as if paying homage to it. Some of the shadows were bigger than others, more definite.
Every other second a shadow would come into contact with something invisible around the whirlpool and illuminate a network of faint purple cracks that were spreading along the skyline.
And at the edge of the treeline just beyond the open planes, something caught Hao Xuan's eye. He looked towards it but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Still looking in that direction he patted Burak on the shoulder.
"Make sense later, we need to rest first."
"O-Oh," Burak woke from his dazed state and looked back at the guard.
"It's fine, go to your post. I'll take it from here."
The guard looked at Hao Xuan and Princess Helena's party, "But-"
"It's fine. Go!"
A single sentence in his usual authoritative tone of voice was enough to remind the guard who he was talking to.
"Yes, prince."
He bowed and swiftly took his leave.
Burak led the party deeper into the small settlement, stopping outside the Princess's tent.
"Give me a couple of minutes, let me talk to her for a bit," he whispered into Hao Xuan's ears and walked in.
Hao Xuan turned towards the other Barbarians who were still unwaveringly standing behind them.
"Go to your homes. Meet your families and rest while you can, it has been a long four hours…"
It was pretty obvious they all wanted to go but still held back. They looked towards Isak who was their second in command.
"Are you sure?" Isak asked Hao Xuan even though he was the most impatient of the whole lot.
Hao Xuan chuckled. He hadn't seen him like this before, always so serious, the dutiful soldier who was usually the silent and brooding type of man was now aching to sprint away from his responsibilities.
"Yeah, I'll tell Burak. Go and try to relax if you can."
Before Hao Xuan could even blink Isak was already three tents away, his voice carrying over on the cold wind.
"Thanks!"
The rest of them gave a courteous bow before going their own ways, leaving only Jarek behind with the Demihuman party.
Tasgall took a few steps and stopped, turning around to sign, "Will you still be here in the morning?"
"Maybe. Not sure," Hao Xuan replied.
"Tell me before you leave. I want you to meet my wife."
"Sure," Hao Xuan signed back smilingly.
Jarek wasn't even human anymore so returning to 'civilization' so to speak, was a completely new experience for him. Hao Xuan walked up beside him, speaking in a low voice so the demihumans couldn't hear them all the while examining his expressions.
"Do you need to eat? Rest?"
He shook his head once.
"You have his memories?"
He nodded.
"Go to his house. Act normal, how I taught you. No eating anyone, no infecting anyone. Don't kill, don't hurt anything. I'll come find you when I'm done here. Understand?"
After listening to his instructions and memorizing them by heart, Jarek also took his leave.
Princess Helena, Inara, their guards as well as Uri were watching all this unfold from the side, speechless.
In their eyes, it was not much different from an earthling that seeing aliens for the first time.
A human giving orders to the barbarians and being so friendly with them was nothing short of a miracle. Both these tribes were always at each other's throats for as long as any of them could remember so something like this was unprecedented.
And since Ma Jiang had been here for such an extended period of time, she was more than similar with each of the tribe's affiliations and enemies and was equally gobsmacked by the whole thing.
