>>5530733 >>5530811 >>5531034 >>5531162 >>5531782 >>5531829 >>5531843<span class="mu-i">Jun Rei's Travels, perhaps? Information on what lies outside of Fogtop sounds interesting.</span>
Kinzou takes your suggestion and returns home with the book. It takes a great deal of effort over the next months to actually get through it. While you're about as literate as Takigi, that is unfortunately not a very high standard. It still takes a great deal of assistance to get more than a very vague understanding of what's written.
Over this period, Kinzou settles into a cycle with the book. Reading what he can tolerate before it all fades into a word salad, recording down words that neither you nor he can understand, and then doing his best to get the meanings from others. At first Kinzou passes the list of words onto his father, but after a few days Takigi manages to find that the innkeeper is happy to help and mostly unoccupied, freeing himself of the responsibility of looking for someone to help with deciphering the text.
This process does more for Kinzou's ability to read and write than your tutelage ever could, especially given your limited resources. But beyond that, it also makes him feel a great desire to explore the outside world. He'd always expressed such a desire, but hearing what lay outside of Fogtop added oil to that flame.
Jun Rei's tale is an intriguing one. 144 years ago, the man, feeling a lack of excitement in his life, decided that something had to change. He decided to sell of what possessions he had amassed in his 130 years of life and put it towards a great, continent-spanning journey.
He was not a religious man, but in seeking a goal, had decided upon investigating a minor religion he found of much interest. The religion held that long ago, there was a god, who had created the world. Long after the creation of this world, upon which humanity flourished, a harmful force arose which nearly wiped humanity's presence away from the lands. In order to make up for this purge god taught five disciples among humanity, who contributed to the human race and aided them in moving forward once more.
The religion also held a great many other things, but these few facts were what were most relevant to Jun Rei in his expedition. He wished to cross the continent, explore the lands, and to stop at the shrines erected for each of the five 'Disciples of God', as they were so called.
The most recent disciple was said to live in the far east of the continent, on the coast. In fact, he was said to have lived in the same place Jun Rei lived - the capital of the Immortal Empire, Xiang Cheng, also known as the Immortal's City!
