The next morning when He Yu came downstairs he found Chen Fei already waiting for him. She was dressed in the same leathers and furs as the previous night, with the addition of a small pack slung over her shoulder and a wooden walking staff in one hand. Her hair hung down to the middle of her back in a thick plait. Seeing her standing confirmed his suspicion from the previous night that she was taller than he was, but he’d been used to that sort of thing for years now. She was also bulkier. Even with her strange clothing, she looked far more the warrior than he did. Looked more the warrior than Sha Xiang had as well, now that he thought about it. On appearances alone, He Yu would have bet on her every time against any of Dong Wei’s students.
“Ready?” He Yu asked.
Chen Fei responded with a vigorous nod. “Are you going to be able to carry all that?” she asked a moment later, motioning to He Yu’s much larger pack.
A heat rose up his neck and into his cheeks. He had to fight down his reaction at the initial implication of her words. Sure, she looked like she could break him over her knee, but he didn’t figure her the type to point that out. After their conversation last night, he thought he’d managed to take somewhat of her measure. She was far too friendly to mock him for his size.
“Climbing is a good bit harder than traveling over flat land,” she offered after a few moments of him not responding. “I grew up in the mountains, you know.”
He hadn’t known, but any questions about where exactly she grew up were washed away at the surge of relief that she truly wasn’t mocking him. “Oh, right,” he said. “I grew up in the south.” He felt stupid once he’d said it since it didn’t have any bearing on anything, but it had been something to say.
“You should tell me about it on the hike. It’ll help pass the time.”
“Sure,” he said. “Ready?” She nodded, and they headed out of the inn together.
The formation gate marking the path up the mountain lay at the west end of Xu Xiang. A pair of thick wooden pillars carved with formation characters and topped by an even larger crossbeam marked the start of the trail. The path itself was packed dirt, and quickly rose along with the terrain, soon disappearing into the shroud of mist that obscured the higher peaks. Once the gate had faded into the mist behind them, they began their climb in earnest.
“So you grew up in the southern forest?” Chen Fei asked, breaking the silence of the mists.
“I did. In a town called Shulin. Ever been?”
“Never even heard of it,” she admitted.
That took him by surprise. It shouldn’t have, once he thought about it. Shulin was all he’d ever known. While his journey to Xu Xiang had been largely uneventful, it had given him a taste of just how small his world had been before leaving.
“Where are you from?” he asked. “You said you grew up in the mountains?”
“I did,” she said, sounding hardly out of breath, unlike He Yu. “Further to the north, along the western slopes. Same general range as the Shrouded Peaks, I think, but less mist and more snow. Once I crossed, I followed the mountains south pretty much the whole trip.”
He Yu had only ever seen snow a few times. It rarely got cold enough for snowfall, and when it did, it melted within a few hours at most.
“The village I grew up in was below the snow line, at least in the summer. During the winter we could be stuck inside for weeks at a time.”
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“That sounds rough,” He Yu said. Even in the harshest weather back home, staying indoors was more a matter of comfort than necessity.
“It wasn’t too bad. It’ll be nice to spend time somewhere a bit warmer, though.”
The hike up the mountain wasn’t exactly what He Yu would consider warm. The ever-present mist made his skin clammy and his clothes damp. It would have been downright cold if it weren’t for the exertion of the climb. An exertion that was steadily wearing him down. When they’d set out in the morning, he’d planned to call for a halt around midday. Now that they were in the thick of the mist, with no glimpse of the sun or sky, keeping track of the time was nigh impossible. Regardless of whether or not the school would let them in after nightfall, it was a good thing Chen Fei had wanted to leave early. He couldn’t imagine taking the trail in the dark.
As they climbed, the mist clung to He Yu’s hair and clothes, soon making him just as wet as the moss-covered rocks along the trail. The grey shroud that hung around them and muted sound had grown thicker as they climbed as well. If it weren’t for the way Chen Fei stopped and stiffened, He Yu would have thought he’d imagined the quiet laugh that bubbled from seemingly all around them.
When the laughter came a second time, Chen Fei let out what He Yu could only describe as a squeak before she dropped to one knee and slammed her palm onto the dirt trail. The talisman at her neck flashed, and a circle of glowing formation characters appeared around her, followed by a shimmering dome big enough to cover her where she knelt.
“Oh no, no, no,” she said, her words breathless and verging on panic. “This was such a bad idea.”
Any concern he’d held for the strange laughter a moment ago fled at the sight before him.
He’d imagined that if there was any trouble on the path, Chen Fei would be the one to handle it. She certainly looked as though she were more capable than him. The staff she’d been carrying, now on the ground outside the circle, was thick enough that could easily crack more than a few skulls. Seeing her cringing in the middle of a barrier formation like a frightened child was the last thing he’d expected.
The laughter drew closer, and it took on an icy sinister edge. He Yu stooped and grabbed Chen Fei’s discarded staff. Formation characters were etched along its length, with a separate ring forming a band at each end. He wasn’t particularly good with formations, as he found the process of making the characters themselves tedious at best, but he knew an enchanted weapon when he saw one.
“What does this do?” He Yu asked, shaking the staff in Chen Fei’s direction.
She made no reply other than to keep muttering her half-panicked regrets about coming to the sect.
He Yu huffed a sigh, frustration at Chen Fei’s reaction eclipsing his fear. It looked like he was on his own. Against some unknown foe, in a shroud of mist that prevented him from seeing more than a few feet in front of him. On the side of a mountain where spirit beasts and worse were allowed to dwell so they could pose a challenge to prospective disciples of the sect at the peak. All things considered, he should be in a worse state than Chen Fei.
But he wasn’t. That same part of his mind that latched on to his cultivation had turned itself to this. Whatever this actually was, it was something that lay before him. A problem to be solved, a challenge to overcome. The world shrank down to a single point with him at the center, and everything else fell away. He was scared. He’d be an idiot not to be, but that was just another part of the problem now. Something to be accounted for, and dealt with. The Shrouded Peaks Sect lay at the end of this trail, and whatever was causing the laughter was simply in the way.
He looked over the characters inscribed on the staff in his hand. There were two—no, three—distinct formation scripts. The characters along the staff’s length made up one, but the ends seemed to be separate from one another. One end of the staff was considerably more worn and dirty than the other, indicating the bottom. He Yu didn’t have the time to try and puzzle out the staff’s function, so he just went with his gut. A moment’s focus and he pushed a trickle of his own qi into the ring of characters at the top of the staff. A soft orange glow lit up the script, and bloomed to about the intensity of a lantern—and that was it.
The warm light from the staff did seem to carry farther into the surrounding mist than He Yu thought it ought to have, and now he could make out dark, vaguely human-looking shapes drifting about just outside the light’s reach. Chen Fei was still huddled inside her barrier, not paying attention to anything other than the ground and her frantic mutterings. Her staff had bought some measure of safety—for the time being—and now was probably the only chance He Yu was going to get if he wanted her to move.