Laughing River and Sen had stayed up for hours trying to work out options that would let them get Sen into the ruins and then back out again. While they both concluded that getting him in was probably doable, it was the getting him out part that was disquietingly nebulous. Part of that stemmed from the fact that Laughing River had minimal information about what Sen could expect in the city. It might well be nothing but ruins and the temple that were simply guarded by a powerful and ancient protection. After the fox had put that idea forward, the two of them just looked at each other for a beat.
“So, I should assume that all kinds of awful things are waiting for me in there?”
“Yes,” said Laughing River, “and no.”
“Oh, that’s helpful.”
“You misunderstand. The ruins are a holy place. You won’t find devils or their ilk inside, but that doesn’t mean you won’t encounter other horrors. For some, fighting devils would be preferable to confronting the things that live in their own souls. Those are the kinds of tests and punishments that holy orders use to guard their temples.”
“So, why can’t you get inside?” asked Sen, voicing a question that had been burning inside him for a while. “You said there are protections to keep you out. What are they? It can’t be the same thing keeping the horde at bay. That has the flavor of something aimed against true evil. If the legends are to be believed, nine-tailed foxes aren’t actually evil.”
The fox gave Sen a big smile. “You’re right. We’re not evil. Just look at me. How could anything as dashing and charming as me be evil? Unthinkable. No, but those monks were clever indeed. They planted these simply terrible flowers that smell awful. One whiff of that hellacious stink and I knew, I needed to send someone else. Someone younger. Someone with a less refined olfactory acuity. Someone used to putting up with a godsawful stench. A human in other words.”
Sen glared at the fox. “You could have just said you weren’t going to tell me.”
“You could have not asked the stupid question,” retorted Laughing River. “Would you have answered that question?”
“No,” Sen admitted.
“There you have it.”
While the possibility of some divine challenge gave Sen a bit of pause, it was the time factor that truly bothered him. He might only be in there for a couple of hours, but if he fell into some kind of trap, it could be much, much longer. While his stores of food would likely let him survive for years in a situation like that, he couldn’t expect Laughing River to simply wait an indefinite amount of time for him. Yet, Sen couldn’t help but imagine himself getting stuck for a year or five or ten. It wasn’t really that long for a core cultivator, but he didn’t want to emerge from a trap just to discover he was caught in a city-sized trap surrounded by an impassable horde. That wait came with another problem.
While Laughing River talked like he was confident about subduing his granddaughter should they come face-to-face again, Sen remembered the condition in which he’d found the elder fox. Granted, the nine-tail was recuperating quickly, and Sen had seen the undeniable power still at the fox’s disposal, but he wondered if Misty Peak had some trick up her sleeve to give her an advantage over her elder. It left him with the same problem. If he went into the ruins, and she killed Laughing River while he was still inside, he could find himself trapped in the city. He’d really like to have an alternate exit ready to go if it came down to it. Something that didn’t rely on someone outside of the city to do something.
“Could we dig a tunnel?” asked Sen.
“A tunnel?” asked Laughing River.
“Yeah. Could we dig a tunnel from the forest to the city? Just bypass the horde entirely.”
“Have you ever dug tunnels before?” asked the fox with a serious expression on his face.
“No,” said Sen.
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Foxes dig burrows for things like tending the young. So, you might say we’re casual experts about tunnels. This is everything you need to know about tunnels. They’re dangerously fragile. If you try to dig one without the proper understanding, it’ll collapse on your head.”
“Don’t you have the proper understanding?”
“Sure, if you want a short, shallow tunnel appropriate for something the size of a fox. You’re talking about digging a tunnel that stretches from here to that ruin. It’ll have to be big enough for you to get through. Plus, it’ll have to be deep enough that those spirits in the horde won’t sense you. Anything that deep will need the right kind of supports in place, which I don’t know anything about. Then, there’s the problem of knowing when you’ve gone far enough. That’s not a completely insurmountable problem, but it wouldn’t be easy. I’ve also heard you can run into problems with getting enough air in deep tunnels,” said the fox before giving Sen a look. “Do you still breathe?”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“I do, although I’ve never tested whether I can do without it.”
“My point is that it’s a tremendous amount of work, even for a body cultivator like you, with a high probability of failure if you get even one thing wrong.”
“Alright, it was just an idea. I don’t want to get stuck in those ruins because your granddaughter kills you while I’m inside.”
“Have faith, Sen. I’d never let you get trapped in there with my precious bauble.”
“Rely on your overwhelming self-interest in my success, in other words?”
“Precisely! We’ll make a fox out of you, yet.”
“Something to look forward to, I guess.”
Sen excused himself to go get a few hours of sleep before he headed out to tackle the next stage of the formation. When he woke up, he had an idea that might let him ensure his own escape from the ruins if the worst happened. He kept a sharp lookout as he worked his way along the same path he’d followed the previous afternoon, setting up a parallel series of formation flags. He worked his way all the way around to the far side of the ruins, just about opposite of where the galehouse was. He’d set the flag that was closest to the cleared area around the city before he moved a little deeper into the woods to set a second flag. He pulled out a couple of beast cores that were fire attributed. It took a little work, but he finally managed to get the two cores resonating with each other. One went beneath the flag, while he kept the second one. If all else failed, he should be able to use the core he kept to trigger the second formation.
“What are you doing?” asked a familiar voice.
“Why do you ask, Misty Peak?” replied Sen, glancing over his shoulder at the fox.
He hadn’t felt her coming. Hadn’t sensed anything at all. Assuming this didn’t turn into another fight to the death, he’d have to pick Laughing River’s brain for ways to spot a fox that didn’t want to be seen. There had to be a way to feel those illusions around him. At the sound of her name, the androgynous fox girl scowled at him.
“That isn’t my name. I’m Sun Linglu.”
Sen stood and put the core into a storage ring. He’d have to pull it out later and make sure leaving it in the storage ring wouldn’t interfere with it resonating properly with the core attached to the formation. Sen gave the fox a thoughtful look.
“You shouldn’t be so quick to discard a name. Take it from someone who grew up without one.”
Sen could almost see the angry words she’d been about to throw at him die on her lips.
“What do you mean? You have a name, even if everyone calls you by that absurd title.”
Sen lifted an eyebrow. “Is it a title now? Gods, I hope not.”
“What were you talking about when you said you grew up without a name?”
“I didn’t have a family name until I was, oh, thirteen. Well, I think I was thirteen. I don’t know how old I am either.”
The fox girl’s expression started to go from confused to angry. “You didn’t babble like this yesterday.”
“I never knew my parents,” said Sen. “I grew up on the streets. No family name. No family story. No idea when I was born. I got the name Lu from a very kind old woman who watched out for me a bit. Until then, I was just Sen. I’d have given anything, anything at all, to have a true name. I don’t even know if Sen is my real name. It’s just what I grew up calling myself.”
The fox girl stared at him in silence for an uncomfortably long time. “Why did you tell me that?”
“So that you’ll know why I call you Misty Peak, instead of the fake name you toss around. You know your name, which is a luxury I’ll probably never enjoy.”
“I… I don’t care what you call me,” she said, although the words lacked anything like conviction.
“Good. So, what can I do for you, Misty Peak?”
“I’ve come to talk about the idiotic sect girl.”
“Is she alive?” asked Sen.
“She is, for now. I assume you want her back in that condition.”
Sen shrugged, which seemed to throw the fox girl off her script. He did want to get Li Yi Nuo back, but not enough to offer up any real concessions. He knew he’d have to play the situation just right. He was sure that Misty Peak didn’t care about what happened to Li Yi Nuo one way or the other.
“It would be convenient for me to get her back,” said Sen. “Convenient, but not ultimately necessary.”
“From your reputation, I’d have thought you’d be more loyal to an ally.”
“Ally? Oh, you’ve rather badly misread the situation. Before you, she was the last person who showed up to kill me.”
“She what? Why is she still alive?”
“I was going to send her home to her sect as both a peace offering and a warning to leave me alone. Like I said, convenient but ultimately not a necessity.”
“But why…” she started but Sen cut her off.
“Nope. You got a question answered. My turn now.”
Sen almost felt bad for the fox as she watched her plan collapse around her. She rallied, though, and gave him a terse little nod.
“So, what did your grandfather do that was so terrible that you’ve come this far to act out your revenge?”
“Oh, now you want to hear the story. Where was all this burning curiosity when I tried to tell you before?”
“Yesterday, there was an even chance that someone sent you to kill me specifically, and you used the fox an as excuse. Today, I know it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Now you owe me two answers.”
“But… Oh fine. You damned humans. You want to know what my grandfather did that was so terrible. He sold us all out. All of the nine-tailed foxes. Hundreds of us died because of him, including my father.”
That gave Sen pause. It was damning if it was true. That story was very short on details though.
“Go on,” said Sen.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re going to spill family blood. I’m given to understand that kind of thing comes with some pretty serious karmic consequences, even for a spirit beast, unless this is some kind of formal leadership challenge. This doesn’t feel like a challenge. This feels like straight-up murder. So, I have to assume you have more details than that.”
“Of course, I do.”
“Well, let’s hear them.”
“You’re an outsider,” said Misty Peak.
“Yeah, that might have held up before you followed me out into the forest, attacked me, and dosed me with whatever that was. I’ll have questions about that later, by the way. Once you did all that, though, I became an insider to this situation. Besides, we both know you want me to back off. That isn’t ever going to happen unless you tell me something a lot more compelling than a wild and vague accusation that he did something that got a bunch of your people killed. So, out with it.”