Let's run by some facts here:
"The maps are giving us conflicting information," she answers primly. "And each new one we consult is further muddying the waters."
"It is a small village that hasn't been visited in at least a dozen traditional testing cycles, and certainly not during the Grand Examination. And ancestors above, it seems that no one can decide on what it's called!"
Consulting the most recent map from Jingyi's Summit should be all you need to end your confusion."
"I've tried that!" comes Daiyu's quick response. "You need to have a word with your record keeper, because the village is not even on your maps!"
"Regardless, the record keepers our household supports are held to the necessary standard. If they do not have records of a village, that village does not exist."
So here is information regarding the existence of the village. It is a village found on older maps, specifically from the archives that Clerk Ni pulled them from, but does not exist on recent maps held in trust by the Zhuan record keepers.
The destruction of the village in the past would explain the discrepancy. There would be no need to explain on newer maps where a destroyed village was. However, this doesn't work with the information we get following.
I follow his gaze to the grass before us, which has been broken and trampled beyond anything the native wildlife can account for. Thin lines that can only have come from wagon wheels have been cut in the grass, and the footsteps of at least a dozen men or beasts have beaten the rest flat.
We find a beaten path, broken down with the footsteps of a dozen men or beasts. Where did these men go? Why are they going this way? Nothing on the newer maps indicates a reason for a group of people to be gathered here.
Perhaps more importantly, where are they traveling from? Is the path traveled in both directions or only one? Why where they out here in the wilderness in the first place, and what made them take this path.
Wild theory here, these tracks were made by the same people/beings that warned us to flee last night, and we have caught their trail coming back to the mystery village.
The grass near the beaten path is simply shorter than it should be. As we move further along the path, patches of the ground have been denuded of green entirely, leaving dark patches of barren dirt. Eventually, we follow the curve of the cliff and turn, coming across an area the size of a small building.
We also find the culprit.
A lone ox stands placidly at the edge of the barren patch.
But it is not. It is alone and untouched in the middle of a small grove of trees. Not a single scorch mark decorates its sides. Not a hole nor an arrow mars its wood. It does not even look to have crashed into a tree. It is as if it was simply rolling along before deciding to come to a slow, gradual halt.
All four of us turn our attention back to the ox. It stares back at us placidly, never ceasing its grazing for an instant. Quishu lets out a loud braying noise, and though our mounts jerk their head in surprise, the ox doesn't react at all.
We also have a strange merchant cart. Which... is more peculiar than I initially assumed. Presuming a merchant brought it all the way out here, why? Recent maps don't have a village out here, so he wouldn't have known to go out here for to conduct trade.
Is it tradition? He has a route that his father followed before him and so this merchant does to? Maybe, but then the question is asked how come this theoretical merchant didn't discuss the village with any other city/village he goes to. Surely he would have talked to guards at the Summit or Twelve Fields about his route, where he's been, news from other towns, that sort of stuff. And to never have mentioned this place in those discussions? That seems weird. But if he had mentioned this place, why isn't it on any of the more recent maps?
Either there is a merchant who traveled here to make money, knowing that there was a place here despite recent maps saying otherwise (a merchant who has conveniently disappeared), or this cart has been left here in pristine condition for a long enough time for the village to be forgotten about by recent maps. Neither possibility bodes well.
