Even if it seemed that Meirong was out of control as she careened down the slope, they reached the bottom without incident. Jian had to focus to keep his knees from buckling as Meirong set him down on solid ground.
He brushed himself off, feeling the need to keep his hands occupied as he settled himself down. Meanwhile, Meirong drew her spirit lamp from her pocket, shedding just enough light to see by. The lamplight revealed a satisfied smile on her face.
"Your turn," she said.
"All right, all right, wait a minute," Jian said. He took a look through his jeweler's loupe at the swirling natural energies. "There aren't any wards outside, at least. This is strange, though."
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Something doesn't look right," Jian said. Something about the circulation or composition of the energies just seemed off. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was, but it bothered him. "I don't think it's a trap, but..."
"This is the Graveyard of Dreams, after all," Meirong said. "The spiritual energy has been affected by what happened here."
Jian nodded, then put his observer away. "That's true. It won't stop us, anyways."
With that, the two of them set off towards their target. The bottom of the pit was uneven with rocks and loose dirt. Jian could see footprints, evidence that the Huang family had at least tried to breach the walls instead of entering the tower from the top. No sign of their efforts remained to mark the wall itself, which was to be expected. A manmade structure could hardly survive for long in the Verdant Doom without some ability to repair itself.
The warding energy running through the wall was simple, but potent. Jian wasn't surprised that the Huang family had failed to leave a mark using brute force. Getting through the wall would require a deft touch. And some expensive tools, of course.
Jian drove several stakes into the footpath. Just as with the ward outside, the key here wasn't to disrupt the spiritual energy of the wards. Instead, he wanted to guide the energy around his targeted area, leaving a dead zone behind.
He measured the distance a second time with his eyes, and did a few mental calculations. Then he handed the next two stakes to Meirong, before crouching over and pointing to one spot in the wall, then another.
"Drive both stakes in together."
She nodded. Unusually for Meirong, she took a moment to steady herself. When she moved, both stakes speared forward at the same instant. They sank into the solid rock like a knife thrust into fresh bread.
Jian nodded, satisfied. He would have needed a hammer and a few minutes to insert the stakes so deeply. Taking too long to insert the stakes would give the ward time to react before his efforts could take hold.
He gave her the second set of stakes and showed her where to insert them, at about waist level. They went in as easily as the first pair. The third and final pair went in at about Meirong's shoulder height.
There was no visible reaction as the last of the stakes slid home and the diversion array activated. Jian was a little nervous that the array might not be able to open a gap in the ward scheme with only half the stakes-he'd seen that half of the stakes were enough to hold a gap open, but opening a new gap was a more difficult matter. On the other hand, at least nothing had exploded and no alarms were sounding.
He pulled his spiritual energy observer up to his eye to take a look. Much to his relief, a gap was forming. It only filled about half the area defined by the stakes. As Jian watched, it widened. It was a slow process. With the array at full strength, it had driven the camp site ward's energy from the array's space almost instantaneously. This was more like watching water trickle down a clogged drain.
Still, it did drain. Jian watched with bated breath, fearing that there might be a rebound or setback, but the might of the Heavenly Sword Sect shined through even when its materials were put through abuse. The gap widened slowly but steadily until the entire area inside the stakes was clear.
Jian let out a sigh of relief and put his monocle away. "The protective array has been diverted around our formation."
The two of them couldn't just walk in. While the outside of the camp had been protected by nothing but the wards and empty air, in order to get into the building they would still have to pass through a solid stone wall. Had Jian been by himself, it would have been a problem.
Meirong drew her sword, a smile on her face. She looked happy to have the chance to destroy something. She lashed out, drawing four lines in the stone in the space of a breath. She lashed out with her free hand, the extended fingers easily sinking into the stone up to her knuckles. She gave a testing tug, then smiled and pulled back the square of rock in a single smooth motion, tossing it aside so that she could peek into the tower.
Jian stepped forward to look over her shoulder. The little window that she'd opened into the tower's interior was pitch black. As they'd hoped, the Huang family hadn't made it this far underground yet.
Meirong held up her little lamp, letting it shine through the hole. The light revealed a floor tiled with hand-cut stone, and the opposite wall of the room or hallway.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
She looked up at Jian and grinned. "Ready to steal the prize?"
Jian couldn't help but smile back. Meirong had caused him more than her fair share of trouble, but something about her enthusiasm was infectious nonetheless.
She crouched down and made her way inside. Jian had to crawl in on his hands and knees. Inside he found himself in a hallway that continued as far as he could see. That wasn't saying much, considering that there was no torch or spirit lamp in sight. The only illumination came from Meirong's lamp, revealing what lay within about ten paces.
The floor beneath them wasn't quite level.
"Should we chance a stronger light?" Meirong asked. "I don't think there's anybody down here."
Jian nodded.
Meirong adjusted the spirit lamp so that it cast a brighter glow. The increased illumination let Jian see that the hallway they were in wasn't perfectly straight. It instead had a gentle curve to it, preventing him from seeing anything beyond about thirty paces.
He took a look at the wall through the lens of his spiritual energy observer. Now that they were past the outer wards, he wanted to get a better look at what the tower was doing.
It was definitely doing something. There was a lot of spiritual energy moving around. Jian couldn't tell exactly what he was doing, but he could tell where most of the energy was headed.
"The whole building is an array," Jian said. "It's feeding energy to something down below."
"I knew the good stuff would be at the bottom," Meirong said.
Jian nodded, then followed behind as she led the way down the hall. He used his monocle to check for traps ahead of them from time to time, but he had to rely on his own vision to walk. Trying to move while watching spiritual energy swirl around would have had him staggering around like a drunk.
The only sound in the tower was the whisper of their shoes against the bare stone. There were no guards to be seen, nor did they encounter any traps. It seemed that they were well ahead of the Huang family's excavation efforts. They also seemed to have slipped past the last line of defense put in place by whoever had built the tower.
Jian couldn't say precisely how far they had descended into the earth. It felt like the walk had taken forever, but in truth he thought it hadn't taken much longer than the time an incense stick takes to burn down. He could feel the weight of the building around and above them as they moved farther beneath the surface.
If something were to go wrong with the tower, to send the whole mess tumbling down on them, they would be lost deep underground with no chance of seeing the sun again. Not that such a disaster seemed likely, but considering that the tower's wards had thwarted the Huang family for so long, it wasn't impossible for there to be some sort of self-destruct device as a final line of defense. Jian tightened his grip on his walking stick and made sure not to stray more than a few paces from Meirong.
The floor beneath them leveled out as they stepped from the hallway into a small antechamber. There was only one exit other than the path they had used to come in: a massive arch had been carved into solid rock, almost too high to be illuminated by Meirong's lamp. It had to be twice Jian's height, at least. It was broad enough for a carriage to travel through, though he couldn't imagine how a carriage would get here.
Meirong peeked down the hallway, then looked back at Jian. He took a look at the spiritual energy flows, then nodded at her. She moved forward, only pausing briefly on the threshold before entering the tunnel.
The spiritual energy that had been funneled down through the inner wall was diverted to cover all sides of this final tunnel, still weaving a complex spiral as it pushed forward. It was dense enough now that Jian could feel the hair on his forearms rising. He was a little surprised that the walls weren't glowing.
Still, they continued on. Meirong was holding her lamp in one hand, while her other hand was on the hilt of her sword. Even for a disciple of the Heavenly Sword Sect, something like this had to be out of the ordinary.
Jian was amazed at the scale of the Huang family's discovery. Even setting aside any treasure contained within, simply understanding the tower's operation would be enough to propel the family to a whole new level of power and prestige.
They finally reached the end of the tunnel, coming to a stop in front of a stone wall that had been carved with a complex pattern like nothing Jian had seen in his own research on formations. Taking a peek at the spiritual energy, Jian saw that the whole spiraling whirlpool was compressed down to a point the size of his fist before feeding into the circle drawn at the center of the formation on the wall.
"This... looks familiar, somehow," he said. While this didn't look like any formation he had ever studied, he still felt like he had seen a pattern like this somewhere before. He couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, though.
"This should be a stabilizing array," Meirong said, her eyes widening in recognition as she spoke, "used to permit access to a splinter plane."
Jian almost bit his tongue in shock. "You're right!"
He had seen a simplified version of this array in a history book, depicting a team about to enter a splinter plane. The details of such a formation were a tightly held secret. Jian had never imagined that he would see such a thing in person. The few confirmed splinter planes in existence were tightly guarded by the Emperor. Limited access was granted to the most prestigious sects or as a mark of imperial favor. There were rumors that some of the oldest families in the empire controlled splinter planes of their own, but nothing concrete: nobody wanted those sorts of rumors swirling around and drawing the Emperor's gaze their way.
Jian took another look at the formation, finding it matched the painting in his memory. Even so, he had a hard time believing it. A splinter plane!
Created when reality was put under stress, a splinter plane was a miniature world. They could be incredible training grounds, rich treasure troves, or terrifying death traps. Sometimes all three at the same time. The natural rules that governed the mortal plane were often loosened or vanished entirely in splinter planes. For the well-prepared, such things could be used as loopholes to advance their cultivation by leaps and bounds. For the unwary, though, the entire plane could be a trap that would see them dead before they had any inkling of danger.
"I wonder if the Huang family knows what they're sitting on," Meirong said. "It's enough to destroy them if word got out."
Jian nodded. Finding a new splinter plane and trying to hoard access to yourself wasn't technically illegal, but it was exactly the kind of thing that could cause a whole family to be wiped out, all of their properties falling into the hands of the Emperor.
On the one hand, it wasn't the sort of collusion with demonic entities that Meirong had been charged to investigate. On the other hand, at the very least it gave them the option of seeing the Huang wiped out.
Not that Meirong seemed very inclined to exercise that option. She was looking at Jian with a challenging grin.
"Want to check it out?"
Jian grimaced. An untouched splinter plane could offer untold opportunities. The chance to exploit such a thing was just the sort of heaven defying opportunity that he needed to leap forward in his cultivation. All he had to do was survive the attempt.