Hailey looks around, then pats herself down and checks what she's carrying: robes, wand, currency, travel supplies?

This is an awfully scenic area, the mountains are pretty.

Everything is as arranged, yes.

Cheers.

She hoists her pack and considers. Cultivator types tend to travel faster than mortals, yeah? So there's a decent chance Lu Si Na and her master are further along the trail. On the other hand, maybe mortal walking speed is casual for them. Hard to say. She's expected to be able to keep up, so presumably they walk at mortal speed or it's something she can match with just a few spells.

'Course they might be in town, but it's midday, an hour or two past noon, so they've probably headed on.

Quickest thing to do is scout high.

She glances up into the sky, then vanishes with a sharp crack, reappearing high enough that she's got a great view and plenty of airtime.

Hello, not-quite-cultivator world. What can a witch see from the air?

The skies are impressively clear - a benefit of a pre-industrial world. There's a dense forest out past the village, sweeping out about as far as the eye can see, aside the weaving path of the road, dotted with a handful of little rest stops up the mountain and down the path there's a few tiny settlements out of easy view. It must be pretty remote, here, by the looks of things. 

It's hard to feel like this, but there's a faint sense of mounting power, higher up the mountain, and increasingly foreboding cliff faces. At the peak of the mountain, there's a faint... mirage, almost? Seems like it's something that isn't too conductive to peeking from afar, at least. 

...At a second glance, those giant piles of boulders dotting some of the cliffs and scattered at a few points down the road don't look particularly natural, do they. 

Gorgeous.

Work to do, though. She's tempted to go check out those rocks, but first she needs to find her target. What is it bodyguards call them? The principal, yeah. 

Another crack, as she starts to fall, to a point above the trail a ways along.

Anything look like people?

Nothing yet. 

This is going to take a bit. She needs to optimize her apparations, avoid compression cramps and ear pain. That means slowing the apparation down so she doesn't have to compress and decompress as sharply, and so she doesn't displace the air as quickly. 

Good thing she's high enough to handle those without going splat.

Pop—

      —Pop

Bit by bit, she apparates her way along above the trail, watching for signs of wandering martial artists.

There's nothing for a few trips, then - 

It looks like the fire at one of the camps is still smoldering? Someone must have just passed through.