The pressure in her chest was too much for Lu Na.

“Nugua, help, please,” Lu Na gasped.

“Your spirit won’t help you,” Jie said. “They feel more at home here than inside your bodies, trapped in a tiny ball. Once they know what it’s like to be free, they will never go back.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Nugua slithered behind Jie and wrapped her claws around the woman’s neck. “I enjoyed living in that small, little spirit realm. It was better than being abandoned and frozen in time for hundreds of years. I even hung a picture of her mother in there that I drew myself. Now let them go or I will rip out your throat.”

It was Jie’s turn to freeze. She made another clicking sound in her mouth and the branches eased up. They still wrapped around the three, but only enough to allow them to breathe.

Lu Na and Sun Ren coughed hard. Hen Li kept reciting the heart sutra.

Lu Na wondered how he could be so calm despite facing death.

“You’re not listening. I said release them.” Nugua scraped Jie’s neck, drawing a line of red.

“I can’t do any more than that. We usually have to cut off the branches.” Jie said.

Lu Na glanced down at the branches coming out of the chair. While the chair looked like it was just made by a master craftsman, the branches looked like they were on the verge of dying. Whatever device that controlled them must be breaking down.

“You used something that’s broken on us, didn’t you?” Lu Na asked.

Jie looked away.

“These branches weren’t supposed to squeeze us to death. And if Nugua hadn’t stopped you, you would have let it do so.”

“That’s another reason we need you. Nobody here knows what’s going on and you know how to make inventions. You can help us more than you would know,” Jie said.

“Screw this.” Sun Ren turned her wrist and a small dagger shot out from her sleeve. With a quick slash, she ripped the branches right off her. That’s when she took out her larger dagger and cut the rest off. She quickly cut Hen Li and Lu Na free afterwards.

“I think it’s time for us to get some answers.” Sun Ren stalked over to Jie with two daggers in hand. “Why are you doing this? If I don’t like the answer, I’ll cut—”

“Amituofo. Wait, Sun Ren. We can’t torture her like this,” Hen Li said.

“She tried to kill me. I take that personally,” Sun Ren said.

Jie leaned back against her chair, moving away from Nugua’s claws.

“Look, if you kill me, the rest of my village will hunt you down. Those boars you saw? They will eat you all in one bite. And I understand that the way I handled this wasn’t as cordial, but you have to understand. We meet people to invite them into our village, but only through secret tunnels. We can’t allow the knowledge of where our village is to leak outside, especially not to those bandits.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Sun Ren put away one of her daggers. “We’re not with them. We came here to solve the labyrinth. And if you could tell us anything that would help, we would be on our way.”

Jie continued to sip her tea. Despite being threatened by Nugua and Sun Ren, she didn’t drop her tea.

“I could, but what’s in it for me?”

“I can help with your inventions,” Lu Na said. This was too good a chance to pass up. Not only would she be able to see their inventions up close, she would have some time to develop some of her own to help them on their journey. The wards she brought have already been depleted and she needed to fix her null metal bracelet.

“We can allow it, but you three would have to be under constant surveillance at all times,” Jie said. “We can’t allow you to roam freely, even if you claim you’re not with the bandits outside.”

“Amituofo. That would be fine with me,” Hen Li said.

“I’ll do that only if you can provide us with more supplies for when we try to solve the labyrinth,” Sun Ren said.

“Of course. I’ll even give you a map,” Jie said.

Sun Ren put away her dagger and took a step back.

“Show me everything,” Lu Na said.

To say Lu Na was disappointed was an understatement. All the technology within the labyrinth was made almost two thousand years ago and no one in all that time maintained any records of how anything was made. That some of the technology worked was already a miracle of Xia ingenuity.

However, Jie was kind enough to show Lu Na quite a few inventions and would answer with anything she could. One of the more interesting inventions was a device that created water like Uncle Chen’s technique. The difference was, it created enough water for the entire village to survive and it hadn’t broken down in two thousand years.

“How did your ancestors develop these inventions?” Lu Na asked.

Jie stood in the center of the large fountain that pushed water out from its center. Lu Na was the only one that followed the village leader as the others explored the village.

“We had the help of ancient spirits that were helpful to the cause,” Jie said.

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“The cause?” Lu Na asked.

“This labyrinth was constructed for a single purpose, to create harmony between humans and spirits. At least, that’s what our ancestors told us. None of us have dared to explore the labyrinth.”

Lu Na could understand that. If it wasn’t for the Wintersweet Sect attacking her home, she would have probably lived the rest of her life in peace. But that life will never be hers. It was a bitter feeling, but one of renewed optimism for what the future can bring now that she wasn’t shackled to that idea.

“This water fountain is the only thing that has always worked,” Jie said. She dipped her hands into the fountain and drank from it. “Try it. It’ll probably be the cleanest and tastiest water you’ve ever had.”

Lu Na tried it. The water was refreshing and delicious. Jie was right. She had never had water like this. Not even the clearest or cleanest streams had she ever tasted something like this.

Lu Na was disappointed that she couldn’t use her technique to look at the invention. Nugua was somewhere else, supposedly hanging out with the other spirits. So she had no way of accessing it.

Unless…

Lu Na closed her eyes and concentrated. She tried to pull in spirit essence into her spirit realm, as she had practiced before. Being so close to water it made it a little easier as water spirit energy surrounded them. After a few moments, she felt that there was enough spirit energy within her and so she tried to activate her technique.

Lu Na opened her eyes, and for a moment, it worked. She saw a flash of spirit energy all around the water fountain. A stream of black water spirit energy flowed into the fountain like a torrent. The rest of the room was filled with the other elements, but the black that surrounded the fountain looked solid.

Her technique stopped working. It was almost like she painted on a scroll within her mind and she held onto it for as long as she could. She closed her eyes to focus on the details of the fountain itself, but it was just like any painting she ever saw. The more you tried to focus on the details, the fuzzier they were.

“Oh, that was amazing. You’re also the first one from outside I’ve seen to use a spirit technique so easily without the aid of their spirits,” Jie said.

Lu Na opened her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“Your friends that came with you have used none of their summoner arts since coming here.”

“I’m sure they can. They haven’t had a reason to.”

“You’re a total novice, aren’t you? The summoner arts include not only the special techniques, but the ability to strengthen the body. Haven’t you noticed they seem slower or weaker since you’ve entered the labyrinth?”

“Then why haven’t I felt that way?”

“It’s because you never depended on your spirit, like most people who don’t practice summoner arts.”

That made sense to Lu Na. She never relied on her spirit for anything other than that one technique. But if what Jie said was true, then Sun Ren and Hen Li are in more danger than usual. They wouldn’t be able to heal themselves as they did before if they get injured.

“Now that you’ve seen the fountain, do you think you can help us?” Jie asked.

“I’m not sure. I could only use my technique for a second. I would need my spirit’s help to really examine the device.” Lu Na reached out and drank some more water.

“Then maybe I can help you. What summoner arts are you practicing?”

Lu Na shook her head.

“I don’t have a sifu or anything like that. None of my companions would teach me anything. The only thing close to that is this scroll.” Lu Na took out Sun Wukong’s Scroll of Immortality. It was wrapped up with a red string.

“That’s a powerful scroll. Might I look?” Jie asked.

Lu Na gave Jie the scroll.

Jie opened the scroll. The golden sheet gleamed, reflecting the sunlight from above. She turned it this way and that, looking at it from many angles.

“Nothing is showing. How do you activate it?”

“All you have to say is ‘Sun Wukong is the best.’” Lu Na said.

“That’s a very odd phrase to use. Why would anyone use the monkey king’s name?”

Lu Na shrugged.

“It came from the monkey king. We met him in a forest on our way here.”

Jie lifted the scroll in front of her and said, “Sun Wukong is the best.”

Black ink appeared on the golden scroll and a small monkey appeared on it along large mountains on the right and a forest on the left. It looked like it was far away, in the back of the scroll. It held its hand up over his eyes to block out the sun and stared at Jie.

“This is amusing. I don’t think it’s much of a training scroll, but it would be a wonderful toy for the children,” Jie said.

The monkey summoned a staff and shot forward. It thrust the staff at Jie.

Despite it being a moving painting, Jie flinched to the right.

A staff materialized from the scroll where Jie’s head would have been. It was then pulled back just as quickly.

“Are you okay?” Lu Na asked. “I’m so sorry. That has never happened before, not even when I showed it to Sun Ren and Hen Li.”

Jie rolled the scroll back up and tossed it on the floor. She laughed.

“Oh, that trickster king. That was a close one, though.”

Lu Na reached for the scroll.

“I’m not sure you want to pick that up, Lu Na,” Jie said. “It’s a powerful item, but it’s also very dangerous. It could turn on you at any moment.”

That gave Lu Na pause. What if that staff struck her while it was inside her chest pocket? Or what if the scroll did something else? But then, if it was going to do that, it would have done it already. And as she thought about it, the risk was worth it, as the techniques in that scroll would take her a lifetime to study and try to copy. If she could understand even one half of it, Lu Na could conquer the world.

Lu Na picked up the scroll and put it in a pouch on her side instead. She wanted the knowledge, but it would do her no good if she had a hole in her chest.

“It seems you’ve decided. As the old Xia saying goes, ‘You can’t interrupt a fool.’ Not that I think you’re a fool. I hope you know the risk.”

“Of course. Now, can I see an invention of yours that is not so massive?” Lu Na asked. “I’m still new to using my technique without my spirit and something as large as this fountain would be too taxing for me.”

“I have just the thing.” Jie walked further into the village. They walked along a well-trodden path that stuck close to the huts that were by the wall. The other side was wide open and bare while the ground they walked on had some vegetation growing from it and the occasional flower. The walls on the other side looked like they might have been a place that housed people, but nobody lived there.

The longer they walked, the starker the contrast between the two sides was. One was full of life, while the other was almost like a cemetery. It looked like the cemetery was winning. And that’s when it hit Lu Na.

Their little village here was dying.

Whatever invention or gadget sustained life here has broken and they’re becoming desperate. That made their visit here even more dangerous. If Lu Na couldn’t fix whatever was wrong, these people would go back to their old ways and ambush the three of them for whatever they had on them.

Jie’s smile irked Lu Na with every step they took as they approached the ultimate test of whether she and her companions would leave this place alive. She couldn’t depend on the other two as they were weak from separating from their spirits. Not even the fierce Sun Ren could take on those large boar spirits.

It was all up to Lu Na and she hoped she was up to the task. It was to fix what’s wrong or die.