TBH I’m just assuming she came up with the distance thing as a later retcon when she realized she needed to really box Zeno into a corner so that he’d expose himself (hurr), like this discrepancy really reads like a retcon inconsistency, but may I submit the following Sad Headcanon to smooth over the retcon discrepancy:
We know Seiryuu Village has moved at least once, probably several times. We know they’re terrified of their dragon. And people aren’t dumb, they notice patterns of behavior in those they spend all their lives with. So wouldn’t it make sense for the village elders, if they noticed a place where the cursed one they’ve been saddled with falls ill and becomes weak, to hole up there?
No apparent effect on Shin-ah while he grew up there is an Easy Addendum to this Sad Headcanon: he’s mostly trying to avoid using his powers anyway. And the illness in Kai wasn’t a direct result of being far from Hiryuu Castle; IIRC it was explicitly stated that their superhuman immune systems weren’t as superhuman anymore as a result of the distance, so suddenly they were fairly immunocompromised and picked up that kid’s fever. In a small, isolated village, without much contact, Shin-ah would’ve survived all the local poxes by the time he reached adulthood, like any other kid, and then was protected by superhuman immune system during most of his travels.
The real question with this Easy Rider is why did Kija not faceplant with Seiryuu Village pox? Perhaps he was lucky to not have enough contact or not spend enough time there. Although, again IIRC, didn’t Kija actually faint not long after leaving the village, when he was trying to locate the next dragon, thus proving that Shin-ah could sense them too? What if that was an infection he picked up during the relatively brief time they spent in Seiryuu Village, likely during the cave-in, finally kicking in for a bit, and he didn’t even recognize it as such and just thought he’d strained himself power-wise? It’s not like he’s been accustomed to either heavy power use or illness, given the sheltered life he’s led in a very dragon-friendly location.
A More Handwavy Addendum, as an alternate explanation, would be that a buildup of dragon ghosts/dragons living there/general dragon woo allows for a localized magical effect which makes the place resonate with Hiryuu Castle and increases power access. (Dude, there’s no way Seiryuu Village isn’t haunted as heckie, everyone was just too distracted by Shin-ah and cave-ins during the first visit. Not that this doesn’t open up backstory fic possibility of Shin-ah having already met and possibly even channeled Ao’s ghost; it would give some resonance to why he was so chill with channeling a strange Seiryuu in Forest Lushing Blue, and easily fits into established canon because since when does Shin-ah talk about his past ever. Anyway, that was a digression.)
More Handwavy Addendum would mean that the first few Seiryuus who lived in that village did in fact have extra wretched lives—there might even have been a generation or two of early childhood bouncing as they fell to the usual round of childhood diseases like any other kid might—but even that didn’t shake the curse, because the dragon gods are dicks, and eventually the village elders resigned themselves to inevitability and/or the location-specific lore got lost. Seiryuu Village are not good lorekeepers, clearly, and not as migratory as Ryokuryuu Village, so they wouldn’t be frequently rediscovering that hey, this dragon asshole gets sick if we stay here.
Supplementary Sad Headcanon: Ryokuryuu Village migrates around the edge of the dragon’s easy-sustainability range because it makes it easier to keep the flighty bastards grounded, and it didn’t even occur to Jae-ha that there was a locational difference between his ass childhood and feeling much healthier and more powerful in Awa, like of course he felt healthier and more powerful, he was no longer chained to the freaking floor and getting beaten up. Amazing what that’ll do for a man’s health, innit?
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