> —The true origins of the crystalline mineral called ‘Venerate’s Tears’ or in some ancient and contested texts the much less grandiose ‘Ignitic Arborundum’ is something of a mystery. Most of the current worth of material in circulation is from sources found already hewn from the land. As a resource, it only appears in the most ancient and relict of ruins and caverns throughout our great world. Usually it is worked in some way, either fashioned into very mundane ornaments and decorations or, on the rare occasion that ‘ingots’ of it are recovered, they are invariably twisted or in the shape of cut lengths as long as a man’s arm. Divinations carried out on scavenged artefacts and pieces of its crystalline ore by great sages have determined that it is the fossilised remnants of some kind of primordial tree, but whether root or branch none have ever been able to claim with confidence to the satisfaction of my own person.

>

> Several things stand out about it that make it notable as a material. Firstly it is impossibly durable; the only means to cut it is with a refined tool of a Venerate Cultivator or with an edge of the mineral itself. The consensus that has come to be over the aeons is that it can only be worked by someone of that lofty status. Secondly; all the artefacts known of it to this author are utterly inert to qi. Be they cups, plates, floor tiles or filigree decoration. Third however, is perhaps most mysterious; while all such artefacts are inert, refusing any input of elemental qi or soul strength, they also, and without exception as far as I am aware, project a certain field of suppression to the world around them. A mere cutlery knife, or sharpened edge of decorative lintel carved from it can easily slice apart most barriers or artefacts.

>

> Subsequently its artefacts are much sought after as a ‘status’ statement rather than a mineral of practical worth for the average cultivator. The Imperial Dynasty of our world, for example, owns one set of plates, cups and cutlery that is the exclusive property of the emperor himself. The Jade Gate Court’s signature ‘gate’ is also an artefact carved primarily from it, and the Shu Pavilion possesses a statue garden of several strange pieces which it uses to entertain important visitors. Few give much interest to the raw material, such is the aforementioned difficulty in working with it. As far as I am aware, only the Seven Sovereigns School, the Hunter Bureau and the Lu Clan possess any notable reserves of the ‘ingots’ and mainly trade it to sources beyond the confines of this world.

Excerpt from – 'Mineralogy of Eastern Azure Great World: Volume 5.'

  By Sagacious Ascendant Jiao of the Earth Blaze Refinement Sect.

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~ LIN LING – MYSTERIOUS CAVERN ~

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Lin Ling crouched with her back pressed as firmly as she could to the lifesaving mineral vein behind her. That she had teleported straight into this cavern and directly onto a vein of Ignitic Arborundum, was a piece of life saving good fortune she was going to salute her ancestors for until her dying day.

-Which hopefully won’t be today, an unwanted voice in her mind added.

More bits of the cave collapsed around her and she pushed herself closer to the rock face.

The absolute stability of the mineral was deeply reassuring in the chaos that was unfolding, she hadn’t felt so much as a tremor through it so far. That might be due to the size, as it was also easily the largest vein of the mineral she had ever seen. The extrusion spidered across the floor, travelling around in a spiral up the wall – upon which she was currently crouched – and then ran semi-vertically up to the ceiling where it vanished from view, presumably into the fault that made up the join between the roof of the cave and the wall. In any event, she was certain that the mineral’s innate suppression, given its size, was all that was keeping her alive right now.

Almost as if to tempt that conclusion, the cavern creaked around her, the great weight of rock groaning and shifting ominously. Along the ceiling on the far side, a crack slowly widened before her very eyes, even as she tried hard not to look at the several segments of that fault that had already dropped. Unfortunately, all that did was draw her eyes to the original occupant of the cavern once again.

All that remained of it was churned mush and the odd bone or piece of armour plate, liberally plastered across one third of the far wall of the cavern along with a good portion of the floor. Each explosion and aftershock her refuge endured reshuffling the remains a bit and blending them just a little more finely. It served as an ever-present reminder that that could be her – if she hadn’t landed directly where she had.

Whatever was happening on the surface several hundred metres above her was, well she didn’t know what it was, but it was definitely cataclysmic… and probably had drawn the notice of everything within ten valleys of their location above and below ground. She had been separated from Juni and Shu when the cave roof nearly collapsed on them with a huge detonation shortly after they started crossing through the ‘Labyrinth of Jaws’ as some ten-star ranked hunter with a truly atrocious sense for naming from millennia past had ‘named’ it in official records of the Central Pavilion. Since then she had seen…

-Nope… don’t think about that!

She fought not to close her eyes just at the thought of it, not that it helped. Unbidden, her mind helpfully supplied those images for the umpteenth time in as minutes, seared indelibly as they were into her psyche. That was probably the fault of the third… ’Thing’, which had led directly to her arriving in her current location.

There were no ‘names’ for the threats down here. Even Old Ling, the West Flower Picking Pavilion Special Elder, only had records that spoke in abstracts about a very small number of actual creatures, some of whom he had claimed were associated with those threats. All of them were things you had learned about when you were ranking up to nine-star or, more commonly, if Old Ling trusted you enough. None of those things were the same either.

-All of them are bizarre though, the malicious voice in her head snickered at her.

The ‘first’, above the pool, when they had first gone underground, she found that somehow, she had mercifully just blanked that out, something about it defied her limited means to explain it – or visualize it.

The ‘second’ had been a group of bipedal lizard… things. Bizarre abominations with long heads, five eyes, sideways jaws and four arms apiece. All had possessed feathered protrusions on their arms, shins and tails. Those were known to her, insofar as she had read through some accounts that talked of the things that had attacked the previous Duke’s forces 30 years ago. The Lin clan also had a record of those events: her great-great grandfather, the last Golden Immortal of her ‘family’ branch of the Lin Clan, had apparently been one of those dragged off into oblivion by those monsters as they ‘heroically’ forestalled their attack on the previous Blue Duke. It was a sacrifice that had never been acknowledged, as far as she was aware.

She had seen them moving through the ‘Labyrinth of Jaws’, as she desperately tried to avoid being drawn into the depths like Juni had been, almost invisible in the dark, climbing towards the surface.

The true abomination though... the ‘third’ dread thing she had seen, and she could only call it that, was also unknown. It was also certainly responsible for the perpetual sense of her mind being unable to focus.

-And the fact that I am thinking far too directly to myself right now…

She groaned again and tried to banish the thought of it, but unlike the first thing, it seemed to want to be ‘seen’. It had looked like some amorphous slug, with many arms and face-like aspects across its body in odd places. Its head, or at least the place where its head might have been, had been wreathed in odd tentacles and it had far too many eyes. Eyes that peered everywhere, followed everywhere…

-Maybe they are peering at me even now…

“Arrrrgh!” she grimaced, desperately grasping for something else to focus on, only to find her gaze again drawn to the horror of the destroyed former occupant of the cavern.

-Get. A. Grip! she snarled inwardly, gripping her precarious spot of safety even more concertedly.

What she did know, was that that thing had nearly killed her. The encounter was the closest she had ever been in her short life to absolute death, without a doubt.

As soon as she had laid eyes on it, she had been rendered unable to move and it had slowly started moving towards her in that ruin of the labyrinth, effortlessly travelling across the water’s surface somehow, before a particularly large detonation had collapsed that part of the cave system beneath them both.

Unbidden, those haunting images again shifted to the front of her mind’s eye, the sight of it sitting there, in mid-air, unaffected by the water dropping away.

Untouched by the collapse.

Inexplicably being avoided by all the falling rocks.

-Thank the fates I was well enough off to buy a high grade teleport talisman from Grandmaster Li…

Again, she was struck by a momentary blur of dissociation from her sense of self, before managing to get a grip on herself. It was undeniable that for the cheap price of 500 pure spirit stones her short life had been saved, that talisman activating automatically thanks to the conditions imprinted in it by Grandmaster Li.

-What would happen if it had caught me?

“…”

-But it didn’t! she thought vehemently, pressing her back against the wall even harder, trying to ignore how badly she was shaking.

-I landed here, and I am alive!

That in itself had been a stroke of fundamental good fortune. She had landed here, right on the spot she now was, on this arborundum vein… and almost as soon as she had, the conflict above had somehow managed to intensify even more.

At that point, the chaos up above had transcended mere noise, reflected into the depths to twist and distort rock. It had become a terrible, vision blurring, reality warping shockwave that never ended… which was still reverberating in the bedrock, warping it, cracking it or bending it in ways she intuitively knew were very unnatural. However, this had all been secondary to the real danger. The collapse that made her use that precious teleportation talisman had also brought the rolling waves of qi and it was those that had truly turned this place into a death-trap of unimaginable proportions.

It was widely known that the rocks in the mountain range had a density of qi somewhat at odds with the natural world – The harder you poked them with qi, the more they resisted. Now, under the surging pulses of qi from above, they were pushing back, repelling the interloper, refusing to absorb it. Subsequently, this rampant energy was now pouring through the caves tunnels, fissures and cracks like a ceaseless tsunami, hurled back and forth without end.

Yet even that paled to what had followed after.

Even now, she could see that white-gold wave, a haunting afterimage, an aurora of celestial death, forever emblazoned into her vision. It had swept through the cavern, accompanied by a strange sense of lingering sorrow. It had turned the colour of everything inside out and weirdly luminescent after it passed. The only area spared had been the place she was crouched, the half metre or so around the exposed portion of the arborundum vein.

The cavern’s other occupant… had not escaped as she had. In truth, she had barely registered its presence before that point, such was her existential panic with the abomination and the disorientation of the teleportation and the aftershocks and whatnot. If she really focused on those fleeting images of memory, she could tell that it had been some kind of large… armoured… quadruped?

-It’s all moot now, the unhelpful narrator of her own thoughts added.

Grimacing, she scrunched her eyes closed again. The memory of its demise was not fleeting: It had been exploded by the aurora, like a paste paper ball filled with flower petals.

Yet again, she fervently wished her mind would censor that memory to something so harmless. The aftershocks had further liquefied what remained.

Repeatedly.

It was now at the point where the misfortunate creature’s orphaned qi had its own qi-luminescence from the agitation of the remains.

Something rippled in the shadows, giggled.

-It’s not a voice…?

-Eyes?

Something had injured her mind in some way, she was sure. It was impossible to concentrate on anything for more than a second or two.

-Is it the qi?

-Or the abomination?

-Or the first thing?

-Or something more prolonged?

-Had Di Ji done something to us before we fled?

-Am I going to slowly go mad before he comes to—?

She ground her face against the arborundum, hard, desperately trying to stop the runaway, staccato thoughts.

-Why is it impossible to concentrate on anything for more than a second or two!

She screamed in her own head, fighting the sense of abnormality, which was both claustrophobic and… whatever the opposite of claustrophobic was.

-I am good with that kind of thing! She complained. Why won’t you…

The word was like an itch, eluding, taunting, escaping her… yet simultaneously lingering in a way that was hauntingly unpleasant.

-Focus!

The rock was still cool beneath her, reminding her in the chaos of her own thoughts that there was something she had intended to do as soon as she…

-Something?

“…”

She clawed desperately at rote teaching…

-Ah, a ‘Point Setting’ talisman.

-Assuming it even works…

She banished that thought and fighting her circumstances, materialized the talisman out of the sheaf. The ‘Point Setting’ talismans were very esoteric creations, relying as much on feng shui and harmonization with ‘natural intent’ as they did qi to work… hopefully that meant they would not conflict with the fundamental stability of the vein…

Grimacing, she pushed it against her mouth, licking blood onto it then, desperately fighting her own body to avoid dropping it or fumbling it, pushed it against the arborundum below her—

-It worked! The shock and euphoria was like a bucket of icy water as the talisman flickered and an intangible force bound her to the location she was in, allowing her to exhale slightly.

To remove the talisman she would have to focus on it for some twenty seconds at the very least and it would still work even if she was unconscious. It was certainly enough to keep her safe and anchored to her current spot for the foreseeable future—

Another tremor and accompanying qi pulse resonated through the earth.

This one was more muted, however. She could, somewhat surprisingly, sense its element, which was slightly yang, with hints of fire, thunder and occasionally wood.

-Not that that helps much, she grumbled.

If she were to move away from the arborundum, any one would smash her to pulp and scatter her soul before she could even feel their attunement, she was sure.

As if to make a mockery of her momentary hope that the intensity was lessening, the next roiling wave stepped it up somehow, the rumbles and shuddering of the rock above starting to blend and blur—

There was a colossal cry, like the ferocious call of some ancient, primeval bird or avian god.

Her vision swam and she tried to press herself even closer to the arborundum vein beneath her. This time, the arborundum did hum. The gentle warmth that flowed through it making her blood turn to ice. A strange hiccupping wail echoed through the cavern, only to be swallowed up in the reverberating ‘cry’ that had descended. Had it been possible for her to have a heart attack she was certain she would have had one… and then the stone beneath her became cold again.

Everything returned to stillness.

The wailing was her, she realised. She hadn’t even registered she was screaming. Even so, it sounded reedy and pathetic against the curtain of oppressive silence that was being drawn down after that cry.

Besides her own sobbing breaths, barely audible now, the only sound in the cave was the dripping of blood from the other occupant where its mortal remains had coated the roof.

As she knelt there, the glimmering remains of the qi pulses that had been washing through the cavern finally succumbed to the devouring strength of the rocks and faded away.

Next went the unnatural glow of the previous occupant’s organic remains.

When those final glimmers at last faded away, the oppressive silence that remained was so thick that she found herself struggling to breathe, let alone continue sobbing in terror. The darkness was so thick as to be solid, with the edges of things barely emerging as faded grey shadows…

-Have I somehow damaged my ocular meridians?

She groaned, turning her head this way and that, chasing the grey haze that lurked in the impenetrable gloom.

-Ah… no… it’s just the dark seeing pill, it hasn’t worn off.

Exhaling, she was relieved enough that it wasn’t meridian trauma that she forwent trying to banish the dissociated part of her psyche that registered it… for a few seconds at least.

She didn’t know how long she lay there in the dark, bound to the rock before she managed to muster enough concentration to cancel the talisman once it felt it safe enough to do so—

With a grunt of shock, she hit the floor.

It was only a fall of a few feet, but she succeeded in landing flat on her face, with one arm underneath her.

-I was upside down the whole time? Shaking her head, she tried to work that out. Or was it the qi waves doing strange things to the geometry of my surroundings?

For once, when she hoped those persistently informative voices in her head would have spoken up, they were uncomfortably silent.

“Now you shut up?” she scowled, checking herself over. “Fate-thrashed psychosis…”

Closing her eyes she rubbed her temples, massaging the qi flow through them a bit in an attempt to alleviate the sharp stabbing pains that were now registering rather insistently.

Opening them again, she used her fingers to forcibly create a new, temporary, link between the rest of her principle meridians and her ocular meridian in her temple. It wasn’t ideal, but for a short moment she got a much better picture of the layout of the cave… cavern.

It wasn’t as big as she had thought, truth be told. From wall to wall it was probably 75 metres at its widest point, with a ceiling averaging some 20 metres above her at best. She was about a third of the way around the outside of one wall, and the whole place was broadly shaped like a crescent moon.

The previous occupant’s remains were a varicoloured stain in her vision, blotting out everything across a third of it and melding vertices and geometry in ways that made the headache return. The rest of the cavern was obscured by several house-sized slabs of roof that had slammed down. Grimacing, she picked herself up and, as gingerly and as cautiously as she could, crawled up the nearest one to get a better vantage point. So it was, that when she got to the top, she saw for the first time, behind the remains of the unfortunate creature, the flat rectangular object outlined within the geometry of the far wall of the cavern.

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~ JUNI – ??? ~

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Given their abrupt and shocking separation, Kun Juni found herself fervently hoping that Lin Ling and Han Shu had both managed to survive the madness above.

Up until… everything went insane, they had been fleeing as safely as they could, growing increasingly nervous about the continual intensification of whatever was going on above. Clearly the two colossal idiots had stirred up something horrifying. Her instinct was that it was the ‘thing’ on the roof of the pool cave, but it could also have been the spider queen, or some mushroom-infected creature from below. Each time she had been certain that it couldn’t get any more terrible, though, it had.

What had happened, near as she could tell at least, was that a chasm had literally appeared out of nowhere, like a black gash that split the entire cavern system and disgorged its contents into the depths below it, them included.

She had been ahead of the other two, scouting the path, resulting in her being swept straight into the watery heart of what was rather melodramatically named the ‘Labyrinth of Jaws’, as the waters of the whole cave system reordered themselves to account for the sudden addition of a bottomless pit to their layout.

How she had survived that, despite having the best suitability for the waters of these caverns thanks to her family’s ‘Singing Kun’ cultivation art, was still hazy, but survived she had, even if the memory of the Yin Qi trying to freeze her bones and rupture her meridians was all too vivid.

She had suddenly found herself falling through turbid air rather than flesh flaying and bone freezing currents, before hitting a sandy beach with such force that she was sure she broke bones. Between the fall and the Yin Qi she had been unable to move for… quite a while. Her mantra had barely saved her, lying there unable to move as it healed whatever had been done. She had thought before that she owed Old Ling a huge debt for carving it into her flesh and bones with his gruelling training, far in excess of anything her family would have submitted her to. However, his methods had certainly been vindicated. They had kept her alive up top and now again down here as that sealed vitality creeping out of her bones slowly fixied the damage.

Now, however, she was certain her luck had run out.

That she wasn’t dead already was certainly because the small lizard thing hauling her across the sandy cave floor, rather like a log and wholly uncaring for the state of her immobilized body, had more nefarious plans in store for her.

It had four arms and a long head, with sideways jaws that flexed weirdly as it stalked onwards. Four eyes, which she could see at any rate. Its clawed feet were reversed, like a bird. Rounding out the slightly contradictory set of features, it had small feathery protrusions on its elbows and knees. It also seemed half-invisible to her eyes – parts of it not entirely there in the right ways. Its eyes were also somehow able to follow her, though that might have been her imagination, even though its head was facing the other direction. In any case, those eyes were deep amber-yellow with swirls darkening to black and no pupils.

Bouncing awkwardly on the ground as it dragged her over a more rocky bit of the cave, she saw piled stone boulders, shadowy in the gloom, upon which were daubed… or maybe carved…weird… markings?

They stood out unnaturally in the darkness and made her mind go…

Made her mind go…

Go…

Go…

Something hit her in the back and her head was moved on her behalf as it bounced upwards off a rock. Contact with whatever that had just been was broken and her coherence of thought returned to her like a splash of icy water.

-We stopped? Or has that bump just injured…?

She half exhaled, half sobbed rasping shriek, air leaving her lungs involuntarily as the lizard kicked her, hard, in the stomach, then for good measure in the head.

[No look!], [primate child, look, bad. Un-die, problem.]

The words arrived directly in her head somehow, making it hurt even more. She hadn’t realised that was a pain threshold which could be bottomed.

More words arrived.

[Weak?], [pity. Primate Child un-useful. Blue and red concept unchanging].

“Blue… Red?”

She thought... wondering whether her brain was just permanently crippled at this point, which might explain a lot of things.

Between the Yin Qi in the waters, the fall, the ensuing bodily trauma and… and... those symbols?

-Right, thinking about those is a bad idea, a voice in her mind suggested gently.

-In any case, her disparate thoughts concluded, maybe this was all in my head and I am just trying to rationalise my slow degenerative death from Yin Qi poisoning?

-Should I not be more concerned about that?

Belatedly she realised she should be more concerned about that…

-Why am I not more concerned with my own potentially imminent demise?

That rather pointed question to her own thoughts went, perhaps mercifully, unanswered. Instead the lizard thing communicated with her again, its words leaving headache inducing purple splotches in her mind’s eye for some reason.

[You bone, carve, concept of blue and red, you unchanging, simple, unknown?]. [Primate Luck like idiot, have word but no speak, have speak but no words, so luck, so like stupid.]

-I spoke out loud? She had no recollection of it.

At least that explanation somehow made fractionally more sense.

-Is it talking about my mantra?

-It just dissed you like you were a little bitch. A malicious voice surfaced in her mind, to go with the confused ones.

She was being hauled again as well, she belatedly realised. The creature clearly satisfied that she wasn’t going to look at any more symbols carved on rocks like a stupid person.

…

After what seemed like a small eternity, the small lizard person stopped hauling her and she was roughly propped up against a surface that felt like rock. The dark was stifling, pressing in all around her. However, finally left to her own devices and without needing to focus on healing her body due to the rough manner in which she was hauled, her vision began to recover and soon she could see enough to get a rough grasp of her surroundings… starting with the lizard thing squatting before her.

It was rifling through her stuff, not that what she had in her belt pouches or the pack was of much immediate use to man or beast. Anything valuable she still had on her person was in her storage talisman…

-Where is your storage talisman?

A worried voice tried to make itself heard, she tried to give it some thought.

-Her talisman? Talismans… she should have more than…one?

The train of focus, that was making the point between the eyes hurt for some reason, was broken as several other small figures skulked out of the dark to squat in a half circle around her.

[What is?],

[Is Primate?]

[Primate live? Rare.]

[Primate all luck. Is thing.]

[I thought suicide primate thing?]

[That also primate thing, can have luck and suicide same?]

[True.]

[True.]

A disorientating half conversation, a thing of single words and short phrases, rapidly unfolded around her, even as the pain in her head increased several fold in the process of witnessing it.

-They are going to damage our mind if this keeps up?

-At least while they are talking they aren't going to eat us.

-Don’t say that.

-At least in our death we will be useful.

-We were useful.

-No, we weren’t. Our spirit root is crap, we are only where we are because father is a good man. The clan doesn’t care about us.

-Arrrrrrgh!

She focused on the simultaneously disorientating and far more inane conversation in her own head for a second, forcing the disparate voices to slink back into the recesses of her psyche. They had one thing right at least, while the small lizards were talking, they weren’t eating her.

-They aren’t speaking with any sound.

One of the voices managed to cast its thought into the front of her mind almost in spite of her best wishes, forcing her to acknowledge that it had a point. The words she was ‘hearing’ had no sound, and truthfully, with mouths like theirs, there was no way they should be able to pronounce any kind of intelligible words for her to understand.

Between one moment and the next, she froze, or some part of her that was still trying to take notes froze.

…

Fighting to grasp that shifting sensation, she felt panic rising in her.

-Did I just pass out?

A lizard person…

-The same one?

-Are its feathers the same?

-It did something to us?

-Me… Did something to Me!

She almost screamed out loud to shut up the whispering non voices.

[We are called Sar’katush. It mean walk in deep place.]

The words that arrived this time didn’t really seem to hurt.

-Maybe the damage is just bad enough now that we can’t feel the pain.

The glum joint pronunciation this time wasn’t one she could find the heart to rebuke herself for.

It was pasting something on her skin?

She tried to look at herself.

Her head moved, like it was stuck in tar. She looked down at her legs, arms... breasts… belatedly she realised she was naked. Part of her tried to be embarrassed, but that was so far down the list of ‘this is not good’ that it was almost laughed out of her psyche. What was the point of mere embarrassment at this stage?

The lizard traced the faint scars on her legs, the one on her stomach and final a jagged scar across her shoulder with a clawed finger.

-Four claws, the ‘note taker’ pointed out. Three and an opposable smaller claw.

-And they are certainly claws, a more melodramatic voice giggled.

[~Impressed. Admire, Amusement. Good shape. Not old way. But still good shape. Primate very luck. Strong will.]

The coherent parts of her managed to all band together and permit her to croak out a few words.

“The child before said I was stupidly lucky?”

[~Concern. No speak. Injure. Bad. Big stupid luck. Very stupid. Such Luck.]

It made a gesture she could make out in the dark. Just, spreading its arms wide.

[~Derision. So luck. Nearly fate].

There was a flash above her and a strange spider web of odd shapes and symbols covered the sky.

-Cavern roof, a voice corrected,

It was so far above and so dark that it might as well have been the sky, in any case–

There was a faint tremor and something hit the cavern floor, she thought. Then another stronger tremor.

[~Annoyance. ~Fear. Tsk. Above. Intensity. Stupid. Attract Unspeakable. Big Stupid. Hope Chosen can protect]

The small lizard…muttered?

-Is it telepathy?

-Soul sense?

-Isn’t soul sense suppressed underground?

-It wasn’t touching her?

The questions stacked up in her head to fast for her to process.

She reached for her mantra and found it somehow dull… sluggish?

[~CONFUSED.~Empathic. Is words to show? To see. To know.]

The explanation settled on her like a cloak this time, as if simple words were being used in a demonstrative way. She got the distinct impression with it that this ‘Intent’ was akin to telling a small child that fire was hot. While it was informative in tone it also, rather undeniably, carried a faint sense of insult.

[~AMUSEMENT. Is like. Yes. Not fault. Primate. Different. We gift. Make see. Do. Can share. Good. Bad. Intent.]

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The longer explanation made even less sense, but seemed to imply that it was not something that came naturally… or perhaps just not naturally to whatever a primate was…

-Is that me?

Her natural curiosity towards the term resonated with enough of the chorus in her head to allow them to align for long enough to rasp out a question with actual words.

“W-what is... Primate”

Instantly, a little luminous peach blossom materialized nearby and drifted towards her in a totally unnoticeable manner. She registered its presence, certainly, but saw nothing to be at all concerned about in it—

The lizard reached out and plucked it out of the air once it got a mere pace away from her. Holding it up, it considered it in a manner that projected… annoyance?

The feeling that came from it didn’t have words, but yes, it was certainly annoyed.

-Its annoyance is on the level of an ancestral grudge, the note taking voice judged.

-Evil spirits beware, for heaven has come, and thunder is in the air, another mocked.

She shushed both voices and tried to see what it was holding.

-Is it a flower?

-Where did that come from?

The voices in her head supplied their own thoughts to hers.

-And why does it make us all want to go hide in the corner and gibber.

[~Fury! Even here the thieves have eyes.]

If its strange face could scowl, it would have been thunderous she somehow intuited. As it was, the lizard person’s jaws merely flexed a bit and the golden and black eyes narrowed as it considered the twisting bloom… then it pinched it out, as if it were doing something entirely mundane, like snuffing out a candle. There was the barest flicker of something and it shook its hand.

In her mind’s eye she fancied she could see smoke and black cracks in the air for a split second, before it—

She flinched as a clawed hand snapped out so fast she couldn’t see it move, grasping for something by her… ear?

Suddenly aware she was drenched in cold sweat, she could only watch as it withdrew its claw, holding something she could not see. It brought it up and made a displeased sound and made a pinching motion again, then glanced sideways at her, its eyes doing the same, ‘I can see you even if not looking at you’ trick from before.

[~Anger. ~Deepening. Even here. Old thieves have eyes to see. Cannot see Sar’katush. We…]

It trailed off, looking up as another flash of energy swept downwards…

Then another…

And another.

Tremor after tremor shook the cavern.

In the distance she thought she saw a rock the size of a house drop from the ceiling and a moment later two more lizards – Sar’Katush, she corrected herself– stalked out of the gloom.

There was an uneasy pressure in the air of her surroundings now. Like everything was being charged, just before lightning hit. It put her in mind of a tribulation, rather terrifyingly, like the moment just before the thunder descended.

[~Worry. Intensification], one pointed up.

[~Worry. Escalation], the other nodded.

[~Fear. Bright Sovereign? Eclipse Sovereign? Dividing Sovereign?... Night Sovereign?...], the first spoke.

The Sar’Katush beside her made an odd twitch as if annoyed at that last mention for some reason.

[~Perplexion. Such Sovereign? This much?]

[~Denigation. This weak. Not sovereign. Not those sovereign. Stolen goods, death watching. Lingering resentment.]

[Primate. Obsessed with suicide. Dares to show words to it? Not like Sar’katush]

It paused for a second and turned to Juni.

[~Questioning. In world beyond shadow, MENG strong? Principle? Morality? Devotion? Aspiration? Cloak?]

She stared at the Sar’Katush blankly, trying to work out what in the fates it was actually asking her. Something about the world outside. One of those, Meng?

-Like the Meng Heavenly Clan?

[No. ~Confusion. Empath have no word.]

‘Vast King?’

The words sank into her body like a great axe. Splitting her apart to the very core. Her dantian wavered…

Her vision was red, the world made of jelly.

She vomited blood from the pressure. It spilled across her breasts and flowed down onto the ground.

‘Scion, Path, Lotus, Body, Gift’

Her mantra thundered in her ears. Parts of her tattered psyche scattered, screaming in terror, before being dragged back by it and roundly corralled and tied back together somehow.

Just as abruptly, the pressure vanished. The agony in her body dissipated, fizzling out bizarrely as a shadow rose up behind the little Sar’Katush that had just spoken and bopped it hard on the head. The small lizard yelped and crouched down. The one nearby, the one that had dragged her she thought, fell over laughing, only to then flee with a yelp as something grasped for it.

A large, scaly claw, itself as big as her head, reached down and carefully grasped her temples–

The agonising darkness of spiritual death receded.

The sense of her body falling apart completely melted away and she was able to breathe again.

Her vision slowly became normal again and the red tint in the black of the world around her retreated, though the fuzzy warmth still lingered.

The voices in her mind sighed in relief and reformed as one.

Even the cold in her bones from the yin poisoning receded a touch.

[Forgive it. My child does not know its strength.]

The Sar’Katush who had spoken was, she saw, crouched nearby holding its head in its hands whimpering, shining tears moistening its four eyes. It was such a strangely normal action, as you might see from a child who had annoyed an elder on the street in town that she rather awkwardly found it hard to stay angry at it, despite the fact that it had nearly killed her.

[They are still learning and do not know their power. Please forgive her for her foolishness .]

She stared at the smaller Sar’Katush, who stared back at her with watering eyes.

[Remorse, apology.]

It was an effort but she managed a slight nod. Not because she was unwilling, although she was sceptical, but because she was afraid that if she moved her head too fast it might fall off. Her body felt like it was held together with frayed wool and wishful prayers.

[I am Valash, of the Sar’katush. I watch. I alone remain.]

She tried to school her thoughts… the Sar’Katush were familiar, but she was struggling to recall where she had seen a four-armed, four-eyed lizard species with feathers spoken of before.

“There are… others?”

[Others…? The chosen protect our little enclave here and observe the farce unfolding up above.]

There had been a definite hesitance in that answer.

For a moment the chorus of her psyche all returned, almost as a coda, to tell her not to draw attention to that. That that was somehow a ‘bad idea’… a ‘very bad’ idea in fact.

“What did she mean by ‘Vast… or Meng King’?” she asked instead, returning to what the ‘child’ had tried to ask.

[She asks if a great pillar of old rules the land above. Her view is lacking, I can tell that they do not. What is the name of your ruler? The strength of the one doing battle above is born of the Mortal Eclipse Sovereign, even if it is not of him.]

“Ruler? The Master of West Flower Picking Town? Or do you mean the Duke of Blue Water Province?”

Valash looked back towards the ceiling.

[Those are not the names of kings, they have the meaning of servitude, in their own way. Who rules them ‘child of the Devouring Path’?]

“Oh,” she winced, of course, it was asking about the ‘Imperial Court’, the seat of ‘Authority’ over the whole of Eastern Azure Great World.

“I don’t know… sorry. The Imperial Throne of Eastern Azure is currently held by the Second Dun Dynasty. Folk like us just know the title of the Emperor – ‘Blue Morality Emperor’.”

Valash seemed to turn her words over, considering each one in turn. The golden light in its eyes – her eyes? – she wasn’t sure on the gender but there had been implications of motherhood with the two smaller ones, passed through empathy, grew brighter and the darkness swirled more obscurely.

[~Pondering.]

[Hmmmmm…. I do not know this name. The years flow by in this place and the cycle of our generations is always so small now. Thank you for answering our questions . You may rest here until—]

There was a sense of horrific disjunction.

The symbol patterns shining in the air over the town shifted and distorted, buckling on one side as if something not quite in phase with the rest of reality had just cloven through the world firmament itself and caught it.

[~Confusion. Sadness. Annoyance.]

[Ah. The moment closes, the disruption of that foolish action arrives.]

Valash’s empathic voice seemed different for a moment, more distant, more aged… more sorrowful?

The qi within the chamber recoiled as a sheet of golden-white death poured down from above. With it came a crushing silence that flattened all noise into insignificance. The world around her faded into white, the geometry of her surroundings picked out by hazy black lines… edges bleeding myriad colours. Things reflected in the gaps between that were impossible, horrible…twisting unreal things.

Just looking into those broken spaces for the split second that the ‘change’ persisted was worse in some inexplicable way than all the previous trauma combined.

Suddenly, she was aware that she could not breathe. There was no air and the temperature… she felt the frost of the void burn her to the bone even before it condensed like a sparkling cloak, covering everything. Valash put a claw on her shoulder and she felt the ‘warmth’ return, although she still couldn’t breathe.

As quickly as it had arrived the cold, the iridescence covering everything and the golden white aurora raging above vanished. However, in that brief moment of illumination, she saw a world of unspeakable horror. Her surroundings flowed and twisted: One moment there was a cavern, villages, lizards… Then a cavern city bedecked with abomination and defilement – all ruined angles and eldritch signs.

Sar’Katush prayed to pits of horror and fed upon their own kind who would not follow them. Darkness crept from every corner, howling in fury at the light from above.

She saw a great statue robed in bloody skins, daubed a lurid yellow, wearing masks made of thousands of skulls – reaching for the light, fuelled by the hungering, whispering words and prayers, seeking the substance that the force that intruded into their domain could provide.

Shadow rose, burying everything. The absence of light was a mercy, but the horror in her mind would not fade.

As she watched, immobile, everything shifted and distorted.

The intact buildings of the little village crumbled.

All the Sar’Katush melted away into some other place.

Wards vanished…

The stones decayed before her eyes… and finally, before her vision blacked out she saw the pit in the heart of the village—

Five eyes stared out of it, all the starry sky seemed to be held within them…

Something… other… emerged.

She had seen it in her mind’s eye moments earlier. The presence and the statue from the city merging inexorably. Reaching for her, a scaly limbed claw, warped with pustules and effervescent… tentacles

A sensation of utter hopelessness touched her mind—

…

She hit loam and felt herself sliding, rolling like a doll.

The thing was before her.

Hopelessness sank into her mind like clinging briars. It coiled around her emotions, her memories, and her sense of self, found parts of her, regrets and hates and loves and fears she never even knew she had.

It wormed into her spirit root, into her dantian… into her blood, her flesh… even her bones, whispering words, she knew not, even as each syllable slowly gnawed away at her consciousness.

She tried to move and found her body wouldn’t respond. She screamed at her mantra, dragging it out of whatever enforced lethargy had gripped it and pushing word after word, like branding irons into her tortured psyche.

Scion: To Believe.

Path: To Define

Lotus: To Protect

Body: To Heal

Gift: To Bring Forth.

Desperately, she cycled the physical mantra in her mind. Once, twice…

The force locking her down mocked her feeble attempts to resist it and the mantra’s influence turned sluggish, even as the thing came onwards, slowly taking shape. It looked like a Sar’Katush, but it was vast, cloaked in a skin of flayed, yellow dyed skins, a hundred… or a thousand faces staring out from it. Human faces, lizard faces, faces of rat people? Of some green and grey skinned creatures. All of them stared at her hungrily, whispering… telling her that she was going to join them. Welcoming her to their great and glorious purpose.

The creature’s five eyes were dark wells within the hood.

The four arms became eight…

Became sixteen…

Became thirty-two – all of them reaching for her as its terrible maw opened wide and its tongue split to become…

She brokenly managed a sixth cycle, barely, as the hunger of the thing finally overwhelmed her focus—

A scaly claw grasped her shoulder.

[Help. ~Sorrow. Believe. Saved.]

Valash emerged from the darkness before her, two other small lizards beside her. Each holding one of her hands. They held up little flames in their hands that danced… she wanted to say they were merry, but the little lizards reflected inside them had faces that could only be described as resolute, in a way that was nearly heartbreaking to bear witness to.

Valash stared at her, sheltering both smaller Sar’Katush with her other arms, as if to protect them as well as her from the darkness rising behind.

-Why isn’t she speaking in whole sentences? A voice returned in her mind.

-What is that horrible shadow!

-Its robe… tattered…

-It has eyes…

-The eyes… it sees us... like suns… I…

-It… in the waters… black stars!

-Eyes, like twin suns, rise in the waters. Strange is the night where black stars rise. Where flap the tatters of the king. Die thou, unsung, unwanted, and become my—

That was not her voice.

She forced the mantra out for a seventh time, barely, as the other voices descended into inarticulate screaming.

[~Resolute! Believe! Saved!]

The children’s lights were tiny in the darkness, little threads of their strength flowing into her, sustaining the words of her mantra in some subtle way. Even so, they were unable to illuminate more than a fraction of the world in the face of the creeping shadow that was welling up behind the yellow robed Sar’Katush advancing towards her.

If the creature was terrifying, the shadow behind it was Unspeakable.

Within that darkness, five eyes, the eyes from the pit in the village, opened…

[~Desperation. ~Resolution. ~Apology. Believe]

The words of the small Sar’Katush held a heart-breaking conviction, even as their own tiny lights were snuffed out at last.

Valash’s eyes closed for a second.

[This. Not Right. Our crime, not deserving.]

Her eyes snapped open, and blazed with a dark fire. No longer were her eyes golden, but pure white, with a black flame dancing in each one.

[You. Should. Not. Fall. Like. This]

Something pressed into her mind... The words of the mantra reordered themselves slightly.

-That should be impossible, a small voice belatedly whispered.

No chorus contested it, even as the darkness receded.

She felt the gritty loam beneath her, cold and damp.

Scents of the cavern flooded into her world: fungi, still cavern air, slight decay.

Sounds of dripping water, a haunted groan of some kind and… pain.

It came from her side and got worse as she tried to move her limbs in reaction to it. An arm – her right arm? – twitched, barely. She could feel a rock on her left foot, a shooting pain there as well. Her right toes moved. Her left arm? Fingers twitched.

-So my back isn’t broken… that’s something, she reflected weakly.

Above her the ceiling was flat… still, even.

-Just like water?

The haunted groan in the surroundings was her own voice, it turned out.

Painfully, she managed to move her right arm to see what was hurting so much in her side. Her arm felt like squishy tofu as it moved. If she wasn’t at Physical Refinement this would be impossible and even as it was, her qi barely moved. Every meridian in her body felt like it was on fire, or frozen – frozen in the act of being on fire maybe – as she puppeted her arm directly.

Eventually she found the source, gingerly probing her side with clumsy fingers. The offending thing was a piece of bone, impaled through her body. Exploring it carefully, she found her blood was flowing out of the wound and running down to drip on the ground. Her hand found other bones, even as the exertion caught up with her and forced her to stop.

-Ah… I’m poisoned…yin qi. 'Dark Yin Qi' in fact.

Her mind finally processing the symptoms as she pieced back together the previous events and reasoned out that it must have happened as she was dragged down. The fact that her body felt like a living manifestation of Fire Pepper noodle soup was the defining symptom, pretty much…

-Or not?

As her hand explored the wound more, she found the same hot and cold chill on the bone.

-Death Qi?

-What kind of ‘Death Qi’ is like this?

Unbidden, the haunting memories of a shadow holding a little flame and a sense of sadness slipped into her mind.

-I don’t need to start hallucinating now! she hissed inwardly, pushing it away.

Steeling herself, she got enough purchase on the bone at last and pulled it out. As soon as it left her body, the icy cold became so strong it blistered her fingers—

It took serious effort to drop it before it broke her fingers, such was the density and the way she was puppeting her arm.

-What the fates is with that insane weight?

-Oh great, she groaned, as she lifted her hand up to look at the damage. The personal dissociation is back.

Her flesh had frozen on contact with the bone and now almost all the skin on her palm was torn away. The wound was smoking faintly in the gloom.

-Wonderful. Just fate-thrashed wonderful.

It took a supreme effort along with several deeply frustrating moments of dull fumbling and fervid cursing but she managed to push herself upright and slump properly against a convenient rock to take in her surroundings.

In front of her and partially beneath where she had fallen it seemed, were three skeletons; one large and two small. All three had elongated skulls which were oddly structured, particularly around their jaws. Long limbs and as she counted them, four arms apiece. All the bones were a deep reddish brown – like jasper.

For a few nervous breaths it defied her scrambled mind as to how she could actually see that, until she realised that the bones had an inner glow that didn’t extend outwards. Muddy feathers, untouched by age, lay around all three skeletons. The largest skeleton was holding two smaller skeletons and one of its forelimbs was sheered through.

That was what had been spiked through her side.

Looking around, she supposed she must have landed on it directly, when she fell from above. Looking closer she could, she found, just make out the stains of her own blood on a leg bone and the severed arm bone, though it was fading fast.

-Are they absorbing my blood? That thought made her heart race… and not in a good way.

Tracing the cut, she found that it extended all the way through them – a single slice that had bisected all three where they huddled. The small ones behind the large skeleton.

What little warmth that was inexplicably lingering in her body, perhaps from the mantra, or the pills she had taken to ward off the yin waters was also starting to recede, she noted, as she finally surveyed her immediate surroundings themselves.

“Thank you merciful fates for letting me land right here,” she muttered under her breath as she stared upwards again, at the distant ceiling, rippling faintly in the gloom.

It was miraculous, frankly, that she had landed where she had. Squinting she tried to see further, frustrated that she could not for some reason. Her vision faded away a matter of a dozen metres in any direction, with what was beyond just gloomy shades and guesses based on noise.

Even so, to her right she could make out that the cavern floor sloped upwards in a series of rocky slabs. To her left, it was a strewn field of slabs and boulders, with several large outcropping before it faded into the gloom. There was a hint of rippling water in that direction as well. Anywhere else and she might have died before ever regaining consciousness.

-Really though, I should be able to see further than this?

-Is the darkness messing with me or is it something unique to…

Her frustrated thoughts trailed off as she realised, finally, that it was because her darkvision pill had worn off.

-That can’t be right…

Fighting back panic again, she focused on her own condition again. The darkvision pills had effects that lasted for days and lingered long after that, but the one she had ingested had indeed worn off completely. Grimacing, she reached for her pouch, intending to get another, fighting down her frustration over it, because she didn’t have many of them… and to have to take another—

-Where was her pouch?

“Where is my pouch?” she repeated it dully, not that it helped.

It wasn’t like her bag, or her storage talisman for that matter, had some fancy enchantment that would allow them to come when she called.

Eventually, her conscious perception caught up with physical reality and she became aware of why she was so fate-thrashed cold and feeling so unclothed. It was because she was, actually, totally naked. Her clothes and her bag were nowhere in sight. Instinctively she clasped at her neck, and found that her storage talisman and her pavilion jade were both also gone.

That, unfortunately, provided an opening for her recent memories to start to settle back into place properly. Memories she really didn’t want to consider, that she had hoped were just hallucinations brought on by subconscious perception of her ambient surroundings and qi poisoning, multiplied out by a healthy dose of blunt force trauma from the fall.

She stared again at the three skeletons, at the glowing mushrooms that were growing in the soil beneath them and which thankfully were pretty harmless. Looking into the middle distance, she could see other patches of mushrooms against the gloom. That would be why her vision was working as well as it was, the ambient light was just enough for her physique to work with, and her ocular meridians were well developed for her realm.

Twisting her head, wincing at the pain in her neck, she checked more of the surroundings. More mushrooms mainly, and rock slabs. Upslope and down. The largest collection was downslope, on several mounds of tumbled rocks, adrift in a large expanse of what was probably water from the way their light shifted oddly on it. She could just make out the shape of standing rocks that seemed deliberately placed.

-This…

The undeniable proof that the nightmare had been real echoed in her mind.

‘Devoted, Path, Lotus, Body, Bestowal’

The fate-thrashed lizard had, indeed, changed her mantra in some inexplicable way. With that realisation, the adrenaline of the last few days finally failed her and she slumped down to stare blankly into the middle distance of the cavern, uncaring that tears were rolling down her cheeks.

----------------------------------------

~ HAN SHU – THE DEEP CAVERNS ~

----------------------------------------

Han Shu dragged himself onto the shoreline, his body was blistering, his clothes dissolving in the corrosive water. The last of the high quality purification pills in his system and the pain suppressing pill protecting him just enough to get him to a stalagmite he could haul himself up onto. Even so, he had had to eat one of the three ‘forbidden’ pills he carried with him for last resorts. The collapse was hazy, as such chaotic events tended to be when you tried to interrogate them in detail.

Something had managed to open up a colossal fate-thrashed chasm right through that accursed labyrinthine cavern network. The ‘Mortal Pain Severance Dan’ might cause some issues later on, but for now it was keeping him sane in this facsimile of a punishment hell that the chasm had deposited him into. He had held onto the pill for almost three years, wary of the warning of the old alchemist who had made it: ‘Severing all pains of the mortal condition will help you, but if you can’t feel pain, you have to rely on other senses to compensate in dangerous circumstances.’ Somehow circumstances had never been quite bad enough to use it, until this point. It was also fate-thrashed expensive for what it was.

A quick check told him that all the important kit he needed was still with him – just.

His field kit, including much of his outer garments, were crafted from Earth Luss fibres, which in normal circumstances was a bit of an extravagance, but here and now was a downright blessing. It was atrocious stuff to work with and the weaver who had been commissioned to do the work had thought him mad and charged him far over the odds, angry at what it did to their weaving machines and the effort they would have to go to treat it so it wasn’t mildly poisonous. He was glad of that expense now though. Its defining feature was a preposterous level of resistance to any form of elemental corrosion, be it yin or yang, though the lake was testing the limits of that Blue Water City weaver’s work.

The ‘waters’ rippled ominously and a few bits of stalactite dropped into the lake.

-Fates. He glanced up, grimacing.

His current stalagmite was sturdy at least, and had already been truncated in some earlier event. For good measure he triggered his anchor talisman anyway. Expensive, corrosion resistant cloth or no it would really suck to fall off.

The ‘battle’ if that was what it was, was still ranging above. That he could hear it and feel it all the way down here was in equal parts preposterous… and utterly terrifying.

By any reasonable calculation he was about a mile and a half below the surface, certainly in the depths of the first layer of the underworld beneath the Yin Eclipse mountains, maybe even in the top of the second.

The reason for the corrosion in the lake could be dimly made out in the distance in spite of the stifling effect the suppression was having on his darkvision. The shockwaves were helping a bit with the visibility as well, stimulating the qi within the glistening thin lines that slanted vertically down into the depths to the point where he could see them running under the water where it was shallower now he had a bit of a vantage point. Earth Origin ore. A valuable alchemical ingredient, excellent for removing impurities from Spiritual Crystals and frequently alloyed specially for mining qi stones because of those same corrosive properties. Not that he had any intention of risking life and limb to gather it now.

The size and concentration of this lake also spoke to how long it must have sat here undisturbed, just doing its own thing. The key thing, though was that it had some very unpleasant reactions if you exposed it to certain forms of qi that formed in spiritual water.

-Like say, emptying several hundred million litres of Dark Qi and Water Qi infused lake directly into its extremity? A malicious little voice in the back of his mind reminded him.

So far there were no obvious signs of instability, but it was hard not to be nervous knowing you were sitting on the edge of what was Eastern Azure Great World’s single largest ‘Earth Core Alchemical Bomb’.

His natural healing was slowly repairing the damage to his skin, aided by the ‘Iron’ mnemonic within the mantra, both to make it stronger, and to help with the detoxification. The ripples and aftershocks from above were also lessening. So long as the entire lake didn’t go boom, his current location was not a terrible place to just sit out his recovery for a while. The anchor talisman—

As if to make a mockery of that hopeful thought, the catastrophe above snapped back into focus.

—on the other hand, he calculated rapidly, it also had enough charge for him to jump-lash to the edge of this earth element hell-hole with enough for the climb out afterwards.

The ripples grew stronger. The lake starting to glow with a luminescence that was not a healthy colour for a highly unstable puddle of acid–

He felt rather than heard the series of impacts far above.

The whole cavern blurred out of focus in the gloom, his own stalactite mercifully continuing to demonstrate itself to be one of the more stable ones. The place he had been considering as an alternative though, was now crumbling into the lake below like a broken pagoda built of playing cards.

The sense of downward pressure that followed, however, made his instincts for danger scream at him to get out. The lake surface was, he grimly observed, also starting to drift upwards in places and turn into mist—

A wave of golden-orange and white qi cascaded out of the gloom on the far side of the lake.

As he watched, frozen in horror, it flared across the surface, twisting like a flood of rampaging serpents, covering the whole lake below him in mere moments. All he could do was desperately hope that the anchor talisman would hold, and that this pillar was stable—

Everything went pitch black as the Earth Core Lake absorbed all the qi in the space in a matter of moments.

The last thing to vanish were the haunting flickers of golden-white qi on the lake surface, which flared out one by one like lanterns being extinguished.

-Oh-shit-oh-fates-get-cursed-and-go-marry-a-devil!

He was triggering the ‘Fleeting Shift Talisman’ almost before his brain had caught up to the moment at hand. It wasn’t as powerful as a minor teleport or a spatial shift charm, but it had one distinct advantage for someone of his qi realm over those others; what it lacked in range, it more than made up for in destination control. The other talisman he triggered was one of Grandmaster Oudeng’s divination talismans.

He poured qi into it and counted back from ten to release the anchor talisman.

As the lake surface boiled and started to evaporate he appeared on a rock 200 metres from his original location and immediately shifted again, in accordance with the nudge from the divination talisman.

As he landed, the vapours were already eating into his skin, seeping through the gaps in his outer garments and catalysing with the icy sweat on his body. The sensation without the pain was deeply discomforting. It also made it hard to tell without looking how much stronger that gaseous acid was… Two times? Three?

The second shift took him to a larger rock platform a few hundred metres to his left. The rock there was already foaming faintly as he landed. His feet sank centimetres into the softening pillar before he could jump again.

The third shift nearly exhausted the ‘Fleeting Shifts’ talisman, depositing him on a stalagmite cluster right at the edge of the lake that he had had an eye on from the start.

Gritting his teeth behind the wrapping of cloth around his head he immediately started to climb. The combination of the corroded stone, the acid in the air and the temperature meant that even with the wraps he was wearing to try and protect his hands he still left smoking bloody hand prints on the rock as he went. Reaching the top of the stalagmite cluster he judged the distance and grimaced.

{Flickering Steps}

He expended precious qi and used his movement art to launch himself out into the void, towards the cavern wall. On landing, his feet sank into the rock as he triggered the anchor talisman before he could slip or fall and started to count down. Even twenty metres up from the lake’s surface the rock was softening like clay.

Below, the corrosive mist was glimmering eerily in the darkness. It now covered the whole lake, maybe to a depth of ten metres or more. Despite being metres above the top of it, it was already starting to corrode his flesh properly rather than blistering it. The sense of prickling discomfort, and the way his mantra was directing qi in his limbs told him all he didn’t want to see about the condition of his arms and legs. His foundation was unable to keep pace with the damage. Despite never bothering with spiritual cultivation, he had a yang water affinity spirit root. Which really was not ideal here either.

The anchor talisman ended and he started to climb, following the subtle tug of Master Oudeng’s talisman as he sought the exit. It wasn’t impossible that it was wrong, but he really hoped it wasn’t…

Behind him there was a terrifying crash and the entire cavern shook. On reflex he triggered the anchor talisman again and winced as his body sent more signs to him that he was in serious trouble regarding corrosion and his qi reserves, making him wonder if he might not have to take one of the other precious medicines – the ‘Nascent Blood Burn’ pill.

A stalactite dropped from the ceiling with a disturbing plop, spaying the entire wall to his left with corrosive water that had a very worrying shade of orange. The flames it left behind ate into the rock for a few seconds, leaving pitted sections that steamed with the imminent promise of disintegrating a hand or a foot that landed in them.

Another much larger bit of the roof fell, further out this time. The acidic mist spewing up just exacerbated the destruction of everything.

“Di Ji…I really hope the nameless fate inflicts a terrible end on you!”

It was a fairly ineffective curse, for a piece of scum that was so far living up to every evil rumour about him and then some.

-Three seconds… two... one…

The talisman ended and he threw himself along the shattered crevice he was traversing, gaining a bit more height, trying to ignore the fact that even the Luss Cloth was smoking a bit now.

-How in all that the fates proclaimed to oversee can a single Golden Immortal… well two Golden Immortals, flip the entire Thunder Crest and East Fury high valleys to this degree? he complained in his heart as he waited for the talisman to end yet again.

Grandmaster Oudeng’s talisman kept pushing him to go higher, so that was all he could do.

The lake of boiling acid was almost 60 metres below him when the talisman finally told him he was ‘auspiciously aligned for survival’. Above him was a vertical fissure that seemed to be some kind of erosion feature.

He pulled his way into it and started to climb once more. The effect of the mist lessened a bit with every metre he climbed but it wasn’t-

The entire wall folded outwards.

Everything slid back towards the lake in a terrible, silent… -oh, his eardrums were gone, so not silent… collapse towards the lake...

He had no breath to even scream as he threw himself upwards, from rock to rock. Now there was no point in conserving qi. He was already pushing the limits of his Qi Condensation movement art in any event. Rupturing a meridian in his legs meant nothing if he survived this. The talisman was doing the best it could as well, but there was no end to the avalanche. He was barely able to keep pace–

A huge piece of rock rose from the depths of the avalanche, turning over as it was dragged down. He threw himself over it, darting left and finding purchase on a slab to launch himself up–

That also started to slip. The rock was bigger than it seemed. It was dragging the whole centre of the rock slip, avalanche, whatever the fates this now was down. Short of another teleport talisman, which he didn’t have, he had no way to gain enough height on it.

A terrifying roar crashed over him, rendering him limp.

-Ah… Shit, he thought, as he tumbled down the scree.

50… 40…20...10….

That the mist was also pushed away just meant that his end was delayed by a few sorry moments—

The tortoise dragon emerged from the lake, its skin smoking, mysterious symbols flickering across its shell, its snake-like tail spitting fire.

Even someone as untutored in these matters as him could tell it was utterly enraged.

“WAS IT YOU MORTAL? WHO DID THIS TO MY CAVE?”

A sorry voice in the back of his mind shot back; -Are you senile old turtle? Has the acid addled your brain? Do you think some Physical Foundation realm cultivator with a few Qi Condensation arts is going to be able to do all this? Here?

Crashing down onto a slab, which slipped swiftly towards the water, he stared dully at the water as it approached.

As far as deaths went, it was a really stupid one, that was for sure.

The talisman on his chest exploded in a flash of purple fire and vanished into dust—

The tortoise dragon shifted, turning into a robust, middle aged man with a ragged beard and somewhat blistered skin. The clothes willed into being disintegrated almost as fast as he summoned them though, such was his proximity to the water. In the blink of an eye, the dragon arrived beside him, grasping him by the neck and strolling up the still collapsing slope like the whole thing was no more taxing than a walk in the park.

The cavern they arrived in, however, turned out to be little better than the last, he observed dully, as the dragon stepped from platform to platform in a dizzying manner. Here too, mist was rapidly condensing and this close to the waters he could see the ‘Earth Origin ore’ destabilizing under the malignant influence of that other qi and the huge influx of yin water that was infiltrating through it.

Surveying the scene, the turtle dragon hissed at length in a language he didn’t understand – the intention of the invective was pretty clear though, as they both watched sparks of green, orange and pink start to drift up from the lake around them.

In truth, a part of him was somewhat mesmerised by the sight of the waters themselves starting to rise upwards, strange flares and auroras passing through voids in it. Most of him though, was still complaining about dying to the world’s largest alchemical bomb, while another fairly insistent part was swearing it would haunt Di Ji’s nine generations. The bastard probably had kids with some poor girl, such was the breadth of ill rumour about him and his doings—

There was a momentary sensation of lightness. The world spun around him—

Falling, darkness, emptiness.

…

He awoke with a scream, delayed from that final moment, to find the dragon sat on a rock nearby, his eyes closed in meditation.

He chose to ignore in his mind that it was naked, dragons were...

Dragons were…

“…”

Mythological.

That was all he could get. It was a lame conclusion really, but it had been a stressful day. Other parts of his mind pointed out they were also proud and meant to be difficult to deal with.

“You are lucky boy.”

The volume made him wince, but he found to his surprise he suffered no soul shock.

“You compare me unconsciously to those little mortals who cannot control their auric strength? Well it is to be expected for one so young. With Growth comes Wisdom.”

“Oh, Honoured Sir, thank you for the instruction!”

He saluted in apology, replying as carefully as he could. Dragons were not unknown, great ones were peerless existences but even lesser… err... No.

-Bad thought.

-Very. Bad. Thought.

-Any dragon was a formidable existence.

It always paid to be as polite as possible. “I am very grateful for the rescue, you…”

“No, little boy, it is I who should thank you…” the dragon trailed off as if considering something. “If not for you and your little talisman I might have gone another way, and it would have been…”

The dragon trailed off again and coughed a bit awkwardly. “No dragon would die such a mediocre death. Certainly not one of MY noble kind. So you, benefactor, were presented to me to guide the way.”

He managed to avoid sitting there slack jawed. That… he had been delivered to the dragon so it wouldn’t die in that giant alchemical bomb? That kind of self-rationalisation on your place in the world and how others found you was truly worthy of such a rarefied existence.

-Yes, that was a good way to think of it, he thought quickly.

“So tell me young benefactor—” The dragon put it in on one hand and stared at him with narrow eyes.“—What has dragged the qi of that little chick all the way over to this backwater land to disturb my secluded meditation? That chick was ever a pain, and she delights in bringing simple misfortune upon my kind in the most vexing ways. I had thought she learned the error of her ways when she was tricked by that august ‘lesser’ cousin of mine, but it seems she forgets hard earned lessons.”

Han Shu found himself wondering what this ‘little chick’ was in reality, not to mention the ‘lesser cousin’… if that terrifying wave of fire qi had belonged to ‘her’?

He thought of a possibility… and then tried to un-think it as quickly.

-Could that Di Ji have such a backer as some kind of phoenix or luan? Were they stuck in a battle between two mythological creatures? Was that why Di Ji was here, to draw out this dragon?

After a few moments of panic, however, more sane thoughts intruded based on everything he ‘knew’ about Di Ji, which was mostly whispered tavern tales and now their encounter with him. He found it unlikely that someone like that could have the backing of a phoenix… a creature associated with righteous pride, eternal transformation, rebirth and purifying fury…

-It could be an evil phoenix? a less than helpful voice in the back of his mind added.

“What concerns you so, boy, that you do not answer my question and instead look so terrified and confused with equal measure?”

“…”

-How can I explain? Staring back at the dragon, trying hard not to think of the cold sweat running down his neck, he tried to sort out his jumbled thoughts…

“More to the point,” the dragon rumbled, drumming his fingers on the side of his face. “What kind of insanity is going on up there to bring someone as small in years as yourself all the way down here? This far into the depths of the second layer beneath Thunder Watch Spire?”

“…”

At a loss to explain simply, Han Shu found himself explaining their trip into the mountain range, the arrival of the two groups, of Di Ji and his attack, of their flight and eventual refuge in the depths to try to navigate back past Thunder Crest and escape their pursuer. He even talked about the reason why they were in the mountains in the first place, and about the issues the town was having.

Somewhat to his surprise, the dragon listened contentedly, merely nodding occasionally and did not interrupt until he had finished the whole thing.

“A remarkable tale, young benefactor. To strive so, when you are so little and achieve so much. Most remarkable.”

The dragon seemed to ponder for a few moments

“This Di Ji is unknown to me, but he is both brave and foolish in equal measure to make such a ruckus as this. There are things in the depths of these mountains that have crept in here over the aeons that are truly best left undisturbed. The suppression in this place makes it a treasured land for those who seek to hone the edge of their existence to new heights and many will not welcome a disturbance like this as generously as I. It is a place where the Immortal may feel a mortal’s joys. Where Sovereign may live as a simple man. Where even the Ascendant may feel the shadow of death once more.

“It is a place where you can strive to exceed your limitations at every level. There is always a greater height. Always a deeper abyss. Always a more violent thunder. A more mysterious fate…

“Ahem… anyway,” the dragon coughed. “In short: life and death in this place are not according to the rules as you know it, or our worldly fate perceives it, so here a Qi Condensation boy may fight beyond his limits to challenge the greatest odds again and again, perhaps to receive a remarkable boon or god-born armament cast across the aeonspan… While an old geezer like me who has seen the will of the heavens turn and turn again, seen the horrors and the marvels of those endless seas will still find his every move tested beyond what his old bones can stand…”

The dragon seemed to grow sad for a second.“—Or find something that is greater still.”

He stared blankly at the dragon as that was not what he had been expecting.

The dragon gave him an appraising look, then stared up at the ceiling again as a dull rumble ran through everything.

-The battle was still ongoing?

“It seems I misjudged that Meng chick.” The dragon coughed. “It seems hers was not the spark that lit this place on fire, although she really should know better, given her perspective on this place.

“In any case, it seems I must owe you something, young benefactor. All I can do is give you a warning, or perhaps a promise. In my time here, I have felt that the truth of this place is… surprisingly simple, yet in that simplicity there is a wisdom and complexity to confuse the wisest of sages, ensnare the most malcontent old ghosts or break the will of the most tyrannical emperors. In due course you will remember these words which we have shared and they will help you take a small step forwards, young benefactor. Consider it my gratitude for a new perspective.”

As he listened to the dragon’s words, the world shifted slightly…

The dragon was already gone, swirling upwards in a hidden twist of motion as the last syllables faded away. All the remained was a sense of unsettling dislocation as the present and past moments he had just experienced flowed through each other.

In one, he was seated in a distant cavern listening to the wise words of an old sage, who had saved him, and in the same, yet distinctly different instant, he was leaping sideways, avoiding the giant slab that came crashing down.

The divination talisman exploded into purple fire and he screamed in shock as the pain somehow cut through the forbidden pill—

The boulder slid past and gouged into the wall, snagging on something beneath it in the collapse.

Pandemonium subsided and he groaned. The pain in his chest was unspeakable – Like the worst ever case of heartburn.

Pushing himself to his feet, he found that the scree flow was still clattering down around the stalled slabs, however there was no immediate danger of further collapse.

-A talisman worth every spirit stone! He praised Grandmaster Oudeng’s talisman in his heart as he continued up the slope as quickly as he dared, gritting his teeth.

If he died now, because he stopped to admire his good fortune, his ancestors would see to it that he would be cursed from sun up to sundown. That said, it was hard to shake the feeling that something distinctly odd had just occurred relating to the explosion of the talisman… starting with the fact that it had, well, exploded. It wasn’t one from Grandmaster Mang after all.

Wincing he rubbed his chest. He had no way to heal the burn in his current already overdosed physical situation and while it wouldn’t necessarily scar, the pain was still somewhat unsettling.

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts and focusing on his mantra a bit more directly.

-No point in worrying about it right now anyway, he reflected. If I survive I can go ask Grandmaster Oudeng about it.

He made it to the top of the slope and was met with the sight of the next cavern complex dimly reflecting in his darkvision. Moments after he had crossed over, however, he staggered drunkenly as seven immense quakes rumbled through the caverns in very quick succession. The cry that accompanied them like some terrible avian god descending into the world. It barely even qualified as noise, it was simply a statement of being—

Fury! Righteousness! Purification!

All of these sensations were transmitted for a few disorientating seconds as he fought to stay conscious…

Fortunately, the disorientation only lasted a few seconds and compared with the disruption of the wave of golden-white qi, all it did was dislodge a few already destabilized pillars off into the roiling mists of this new cavern.

Thankfully, the exit through the new cavern led upwards and was also ‘relatively’ straight forward to get to – certainly in comparison to the previous…

He shot a final, dark look at the collapse behind him.

The aftershocks from the seven impacts had brought down the remainder of the fissure he had escaped through completely, blocking off the route from below.

-Hopefully that would seal in the worst of the damage should it actually go critical in the near future, he reflected. Though… on that note, he eyed this smaller lake warily. It was also boiling, but nowhere on the same level.

Exhaling, he picked a route and started to make his way onwards. As he did so, the commotion above finally, mercifully started to subside as well, though given how deep he was beneath Thunder Crest, it was hard to find any real peace of mind. Taking stock as he made his way across stable rock for once, he thanked the fates that he had presciently put his talismans and storage jade around his neck and tied them with luss cloth cord. If he lost that he might as well have just gone and jumped in the lake and made it a quick end.

Skimming what he did have, though, he grimaced. The bags were largely on the way out. Expensive, but they had survived.

A shuffle through his storage talisman showed that the main casualty of the acid below had been stuff like the food pills that weren’t kept in it.

His talismans had been eviscerated of the most useful ones, but that was expected really.

There was a large pot of purification pills and some healing pills. He would need to take one when the pill overuse lessened.

In the meantime...

Hopping onto the first stalagmite, he started properly on the path upwards. The first thing was to try and find Lin Ling and Juni somehow… if the fates had been merciful, they hadn’t ended up in quite the same degree of mess he had.