"So, what's your name?" the merchant-entertainer asked.
"It's Ning. What's yours?" Ning asked.
"I'm Reever Skulls. Nice to meet you, Mr. Ning," Reever said with a smile.
They were no longer walking on sand, but rather crusted, deserted land as they made their way to the place where Ning assumed they were going to take a carriage.
He could just fly away if he wanted to, but he found that quite boring, so he decided to just go on a carriage ride for a bit.
"So what exactly is it that you do, brother Reever?" Ning asked.
"I'm just a merchant. What about you?" Reever asked.
"Well, I…" Ning stopped didn't know what exactly he could say. "I don't have any job yet. If anything, I'm just a traveler, wandering around for no reason I guess."
"Eh? But you must do something right? Even travelers need money," Reever said.
"Well, I have a bit of medical knowledge, so you can think of me as a doctor," Ning said.
"Oh, a doctor? Those surely earn a lot. You must've been bored of your job to go roam the world huh?" Reever said.
Ning didn't say anything and just kept on walking with Reever.
Ning could see more and more trees as he went more and more south. After nearly 15 minutes of travel, Ning could see some sort of building standing ahead of them.
However, he saw no carriage waiting for them there. 'Maybe there's some behind that building?' he thought and got closer to the building, but even as they did, they couldn't see anything.
"I don't see anything there. Are you sure we can reach the city from here?' Ning asked. A whistling sound came from somewhere behind them to the west and Ning turned to look, but there was nothing there.
"What do you mean?" Reever asked.
"Well, is the carriage kept somewhere else then?" Ning asked.
"Huh?" Reever asked with a confused face. "What old age do you live in? Mr. Ning, why would we take a carriage in this current day and age. A carriage can only get you so far."
Ning got confused as well. "What do you take then?" Ning asked. Even as he did, he heard the whistle get closer and closer.
Before Reever could even answer, Ning turned around to look at what was making the noise. The moment he turned around, he could see a giant snake making its way towards him, its clear image hidden in the heatwaves in the air.
The snake whistled as it made its way towards them. Ning got scared. He was no longer as strong as he used to be, so despite having an undying body, he didn't want to go through the torture of getting eaten by a snake.
"Run!" Reever said and started running immediately towards the building.
"No, we should run that way," Ning said as he pointed towards the north, where they had come from.
"What? No! Come on, hurry up," Reever said as he ran towards the building.
Ning started getting curious. 'Is that building special? Does it stop us from the snake somehow?' he wondered.
He decided to trust Reever as it looked like he was used to doing this. He too ran behind him and soon they were at the building.
"Phew! We're safe," Reever said.
"Are we?" Ning asked. He could still hear the snake's whistle getting closer and closer. As it did, so did the vibrations from its movement.
"Of course," Reever said. "If we didn't, we would have had to wait for 3 hours for our next ride."
"Our… ride?" Ning looked confused. 'They ride on a snake?' he thought.
"Man, I'm glad we made it in time," Reever said just as the snake beast stopped moving right in front of them.
Ning looked at the beast that was fully made up of metal and had steam coming from all around it. There were also openings all around the side of the snake and he could see people through this opening.
"Ohhh!" he said as he finally realized what the 'snake' was and felt so embarrassed that he wanted to go hide somewhere else.
"Come on, brother. The train is here," Reever said and got onto the train.
Ning looked at the train in front of him, and while it looked different from the ones in his memories, it was still clearly a train. 'It's more like an older version from the 19th century,' he thought.
It had been close to 3000 years since he had last seen trains at all. And given that the people of Vilmore didn't have any advanced technology the last time he was around, for some reason, he expected them to stay that way.
"When people's lifespan is short, the changes tend to come very fast, don't they?" he thought. Just because cultivators didn't die, their tradition and values kept going on for thousands of years and since they dictated the world, the mortals couldn't bring innovation as the other worlds did.
In Vilmore, however, even the highest of the Invokers or Enchanters could only live for at most 500 years. That wasn't enough to keep the progress of a planet stagnant.
"Brother Ning, come on. The train will leave soon," Reever said as he called him out again.
"Ah, yes," Ning said as he quickly walked into the train. He could suddenly feel the heat inside the metal mass from having to move around in the blisteringly hot sun.
They walked to an empty seat and sat down opposite one another. After a minute or so, the train started moving once more as steam escaped from all around it.
Ning could feel the vibrations from inside, a unique feeling to him even though he had felt it quite a few times in his last life.
The train whistled once more and they started moving again.
"It should take us about 2 hours to reach the city of beginnings. Just get your money ready, the train conductor will come at any moment," Reever said.
"Oh, okay," Ning said. "How many Rops is it?"
Reever looked at him with a weird look and asked, "What's a Rop?"
