Chapter 88

Unearthed Tragedies

Trees parted rather sporadically, oft clustered together into units before opening up to a much larger clearing than Mei ever recalled seeing in the actual Nameless Forest. At times, it even felt as though they were going in circles, but because there didn't seem to be any distinctive landmarks, it was difficult to tell.

From the onset, they headed toward the location of the Immortal Pond or thereabout; however, per her estimates, they should have reached it by now. Though she didn't expect there to actually be another Immortal Pond, she hoped there'd be something of interest in its place. Thus far, however, there was nothing. Rather, there were even fewer 'treasures' than in the outer ring.

It didn't last forever, however, the nothingness.

All four paused abruptly as they cut their way through the shrubbery. Past it, juxtaposed seemingly perfectly against the lush background of the trees and flowerbeds, was a human-like statue posed in a rather unnatural manner. The bodice was bending unto itself like a corkscrew, arms splayed out above the featureless head; it was as though someone had stripped the person of their face, leaving only a smooth surface. The proportions, too, were off--limbs were long and thin and sickly, as were the hips that gave little way to the transition between the waist and the thighs, while the shoulders were massive.

None of them dared approach too closely, merely observing from the distance. There was little else to detect, in the end, and they moved on shortly after. But then they found another, not too far off from the first--similarly unnaturally positioned, with the figure bending backward in a full circle, head jutting out from between the knees at the back. This head, however, was not featureless--it had mouth, or a facsimile of one, at least. It gaped until it nearly consumed the entire face, arms wrapped around the outer bends of the legs, clutching at the sides of the head heaving upward.

The 'deeper' they walked, the more statues appeared--they were all cast in white marble, positioned unnaturally, oft with extra limbs jutting out of the sides.

"Hey," Lya suddenly spoke up. "Is it just me... or did any of you notice that there are... no sounds?"

Everyone fell silent and turned still, immediately noticing it as well--the forest, no, the world itself, was deathly reticent. Even though the wind did blow, and the branches and the leaves and the flowers did sway, they made no sound. Unconsciously, the four drew towards each other, forming a four-way shield, their backs to one another.

"Maybe... we should leave?" Song proposed.

"It's an array," Shen Tao spoke up after a moment's silence. "I noticed that the sounds were somewhat muffled when we were at the entrance, but I guess, at some point, we unknowingly entered an array."

"Isn't that bad?!" Song exclaimed.

"Who knows?" Shen Tao shrugged, appearing dismissive. "There's a good chance that it's an old array. Perhaps those statues used to be a defensive part of it, where their sounds would be muffled so that they could attack unnoticed."

"We should move more carefully," Mei said, though she herself had no clue what they were actually supposed to do.

She hadn't ever been the type to disobey orders from even Senior Disciples, let alone Elders. This was a first for her, straying from the assigned order. Taking a stealthy glance at the ordinary-looking youth besides her, she felt a strange stir in her heart. It seemed to come so naturally to him, disobeying.

"What?" he caught her and asked directly.

"Nothing," she replied. "Just dawning on me that, even if we make it alive and back to Sect, we will be severely punished."

"Really?" he arched his brow. "Ah, what can you do? When I was twelve and went on a hunt my Father specifically barred me from, he locked me up in a dungeon for a month and fed me ashen centipedes only for the duration. As long as it's not worse than that."

Mei's expression turned strange for a moment, but she said nothing. Ever since the two started spending days together, she'd occasionally hear something that would freeze the blood in her veins, and yet Shen Tao would utter it with such calm and nonchalance one would think he was talking about a pleasant breeze of the Spring.

It usually involved statements like 'One time I was half a second too late to a meeting, so I had to be stabbed eighty times as punishment' or 'One time I ate the last cookie and my Father dipped me in boiling oil for a couple of hours'. Perhaps a bit exaggerated, but not by much.

Just as she was about to push out a quip she had been thinking of for a few minutes, they speared out into a clearing--but a rather different one. There were no statues, no trees, and there even was a body of water, though it was immediately evident it wasn't an Immortal Pond. Rather, it was a pleasant, still lake, its shade deep azure, and sitting on one side of its shore was a figure. All four paused with stopped hearts, eyes veering toward the unknown.

The figure was fishing, from the looks of it. Cloaked in tattered clothes from head to toe and sporting a straw hat, the figure held a rather large rod and seemed to be meditating in silence. Just then, the rod flinched, and so did the figure; pulling suddenly, Mei watched as the waters roused from their slumber and soon exploded in a forty-foot wave as a behemoth the size of a smaller mountain heaved out.

It was a fish-like creature with hundreds of eyes and twice as many fins, with a massive scar running across its gray scales.

The waters swelled and began to flood the shore and even race toward them; panicking, they all pushed Qi out as a form of a shield, though for seemingly no reason. As though by a hand divine, defying all laws of nature, the water receded as rapidly as it flooded. No, rather than receding, it was more akin to time itself abruptly flowing backwards, all to the point before the figure fished out the monstrosity.

Gasping for breath, Mei turned toward the figure on the shore; the person was facing them, the straw hat arched ever so slightly backward as to reveal one of the eyes. It was starkly red, almost like an ominous star, while the shaded lips below were stretched out into a smile.

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"Oh my," a voice pushed through, low and haunting. "What mischievous children we have here."

**

Yue stepped backwards for a moment before stabbing out. The figure that suddenly attacked her from the shadows keeled over in a spray of blood and died almost instantly as she pierced their heart. Pulling the sword back, her eyes narrowed as she pushed even more Qi into her eyes. It was extremely dark--somebody had used a pre-set array to extinguish all their torches and to make it impossible to create motes of light from Qi.

The only reason she was able to see so keenly in such thick darkness was that the purity of her Qi was so massively improved due to her Master. She noted that Liang was the same--rather, only the two of them seemed to be moving in any active capacity, while the others were yapping and stumbling through the dark.

This was supposed to be just a simple reconnaissance mission--a small detachment squad was dispatched from the surviving forts to examine the situation in the nearby Fort Waver. Despite being heralded by a Fusion Realm figure, it seemed to have fallen that night, and no news came from it ever since.

And yet, despite only twenty-ish people in total being aware of this, they were ambushed halfway through the tunnel. It was a perfect spot, too, with just enough width to assemble the array, yet without being too large to make it too difficult to maintain. Furthermore, there were added effects to it, such as disorientation, that made it difficult to even navigate the place via memory.

She, once again, stepped back and dodged the swarming shadow, stabbing out quickly. The pairing of the Arts taught by the Master was... unprecedented, in innumerable ways even. Though both Liang and her were well aware of just how unordinary the Arts were, it wasn't until they truly began utilizing them beyond sparring with each other that they understood the gargantuan dissonance.

Nothing could block their attacks--no armor, no art, no talisman. And when dodging, unless somebody was at least two major realms above her, or intimately familiar with the Art like Liang, it was impossible to catch her. That wasn't even the scariest part--if she focused solely on escaping rather than dodging, she suspected (though never aloud) that she'd be able to escape the clutches even of someone at Soul Ascendance Realm. A pure impossibility, a wild dream of someone at Core Formation... and yet, not truly impossible.

The fight was over just about ten minutes later. Despite the two's best attempt, they still lost six out of thirteen people that've come. With the array's effects fading, they were finally able to conjure up the motes of Qi, alighting the dreary tunnel.

"We should go back," Yue said.

"Hm? Why? We deflected the ambush," one of the figures said. Yue glanced to the side and, pushing Qi into her eyes, scoured the stranger--it was easy to discern they were an impostor as she made sure to remember every individual's Qi signature before departing. Liang suddenly appeared behind the figure and grabbed them by the shoulder, pressing down until they were on their knees. "Hey, what the hell are you--"

"Shut up," Liang's voice was usually gentle and melodic despite his appearance. However, now it was as cold as the northern fjords, permeated with anger. "What should we do with him?" he turned toward Yue, ignoring the others. However, they, too, seemed to have recognized that something was off and accepted they were better off following the two of them.

"I don't know any interrogation arts," Yue shrugged. "And bringing him back to the fort is dangerous." silence fell for a moment before one of the people--the only other woman to have joined the mission--raised her arm rather slowly and fearfully. Yue took a note of her, but as she was just barely at Core Formation and was around Yue's age, she didn't think too deeply. "What?"

"I--I, I have an idea," the young woman stuttered, looking away. She had rather short, black hair and a pair of starlit golden eyes. Yue didn't necessarily think that woman was a particular beauty, but she had a certain charm to her that certain men likely craved.

"Well? Do you want a reward? Spit it out."

"Ah--why, why don't we use him... as a bait?" she quickly spat out as ordered. Yue arched her brows in interest, considering it. "I, I mean, it's clear that... that there's a traitor in the fort. If, if we can use him as bait, maybe we can learn who it is..."

"What if you're a traitor and are trying to steer us in a wrong direction?" Yue said; she mostly joked, having not even mused the possibility.

"I--I'm not, I swear an Oath of Soul and Heart!!" the woman, ever-so-fearful, fell to her knees and began crying. "I, I'm just an ordinary Disciple of the Golden Crane Sect! I, I don't even have a Master yet... that's, that's the reason I came here. I, I thought maybe I could become talented enough... to, to become someone in the Sect. I, I would never side with Others! The, the only person who ever cared for me, Senior Brother Hau... he, he was kidnapped by them! Even when the Sect paid ransom to get him back, he... he came back broken, his mind never recovering. So, I would never, ever, ever--"

"--yeah, yeah, I know. I was just making a joke," Yue sighed as Liang looked at her strangely. She shot a brief dagger in her eyes back at him, prompting him to look away. "It's not a bad idea. However, there's a distinct possibility that the traitor is General Huang. What would you do in that case?"

"Is there, now?" Yue immediately executed her footwork and appeared by Liang's side, just in time to see a bundle of thunderous energy erupt where she was. Had she stayed there, she would have been completely consumed and obliterated. "Oh?" a figure emerged from the shadows and though the appearance was that of General Huang, it was extremely... strange. Namely, General Huang was a spearman, has been his entire recorded life, and had no affinity with any of the elements. And yet, the figure just conjured thunderous energy of a rather high rank. "You managed to dodge that? As I suspected, there's something rather... wonderful about you two."

"G-G-General...?!" the woman and the others stuttered while Liang, ever-so-effortlessly, snapped the neck of the figure he was holding, tossing him to the side as though he were a sack of potatoes.

"That was one of my favorite subordinates, you know?" the General stopped and smirked. "I will have to punish you for that."

"I wouldn't worry about him," Liang replied rather coolly.

"Oh? I should worry about myself, then? Is that it?"

"No," Liang shook his head, slowly taking a step forward. "It wouldn't help."

"You're a rather brave boy. No, perhaps stupid is more apt, no?"

"No," Liang said yet again. Yue felt her heart grow cold suddenly; though she'd occasionally see glimpses of different Junior Brother within the foolish goofball that he was most of the time, this time he was truly disparate. She'd never seen the frost that seemed to be covering his skin, burrowing deep into his heart. "Just angry. I never thought I'd be this lucky again in my life. What was your nickname? Ah, right. Face Thief."

"Oh? You know of me? Ha ha, is that it? You are here for revenge? That is... rather adorable, I must say. A Spirit Creation brat longing for vengeance... it would be poetic were it not moronic."

"Liang--" Yue tried to call out, but she knew it was in vain.

"Don't worry, Yue," he glanced back at her briefly and smiled; beneath that frosted anger, there was a glimpse of a Junior Brother she knew. "Just keep others safe." that was the first time, she realized, that he'd called her by her name and her name alone. This meant something more to him, and she realized... she didn't know much about her strange Junior Brother. Not truly.

Cultivators, by nature, were makers of tragedies--of their own and others'. There was seldom a soul alive who was not besieged by haunting demons from the past. Yue was no exception... and neither was Liang. He had a life beyond what he ever allowed her to see, and now, for the first time, she caught a glimpse of it. Though she heard the name 'Face Thief', and recognized it from somewhere deep in her memory, she wasn't familiar with who that was. So, even if she wanted to, she couldn't glean a reason for his anger, not the true one, anyway. She could only wait, put her faith in him, and hope that, when the curtains were drawn on the tragedy, he'd open his heart to her and reveal the depths of his pain.