Xu Long was staring out over a seemingly endless plain of golden fields with only the occasional rolling hill or tree in sight, it was beautiful but it also felt alien to him. He had spent his entire life in the valley and then when he left he transitioned straight into the sea of trees that was the Endless Forest, these plains felt so empty to him, so naked. Still transfixed on the sight before him, Xu Long was pulled out of it by Old Wu.
“There is no one around kid, you can take the blindfold off for a while, you are going to want to conserve its energy for later anyway.”
Xu Long didn’t even consider arguing, as much as he wanted to hold true to his conviction, opportunities like this would be rare in the future and it seemed ridiculously wasteful to squander this one out of stubbornness. So he turned the function of the blindfold off and plunged into darkness before he untied it and put it away in his bracelet.
“Now turn around.”
Listening to Old Wu almost instinctively after so long spent training under him, Xu Long did so. Before him stretched the sea of green that he remembered vividly from his first adventure outside the valley, but now he was so much higher up and the sea before him stretched so much further. Despite the fact that it actually did end, it was obvious where it got its name when you were standing at the top of the Plateau looking out over it, endless was a perfect word for the feeling that the colossal forest invoked.
“Take it all in kid, we will have to leave in an hour or so if we want to catch the dusk lift.”
Xu Long raised an eyebrow at Old Wu. “The dusk lift?”
“Not everybody has a Dao Seeking Realm cultivator to transport them up and down the rather substantial cliff face of the Great Plateau. Thus came to be the Heavenly Lift of Tianyun City, which is incidentally the reason that the city exists and continues to flourish, the lift rises to the top of the plateau a little after dawn and descends to the forest floor a little before dusk everyday.”
“I understand the reason that we would approach Tianyun City from the south rather than pop out of the Endless Forest with no explanation, but do you need to hide that you don’t need to use the lift?”
Old Wu grinned at him. “I don’t need to hide from anybody in this realm, kid. We are just taking the lift because it is a fun experience that you shouldn’t miss out on.”
Xu Long shook his head while chuckling. “I suppose that is as good a reason as any other.”
He then walked up to the cliff edge and sat down with his legs dangling over the edge. “You still haven’t told me what my backstory is should anyone ask where I come from or who my parents are etc.”
Old Wu came up next to him and sat down beside him with his legs also dangling. “Just tell the truth, but omit a few things. Instead of ‘I was raised by my mother, a fugitive member of the Zhao Clan and one of the foremost masters of formations in the entire realm, in a pocket dimension that she constructed’ you just say ‘I was raised by my mother in a remote valley’. Instead of ‘my father is the former arbiter from the Immortal Realm and couldn’t raise me because he doesn’t know I exist and cannot return to the realm regardless’ you just say ‘I never met my father’. You see where I am going with this, yes?”
Xu Long had to laugh, he had to admit that it had never occurred to him just how easy it was to explain his history without the details and have it sound completely reasonable. In fact he was getting the impression that if he tried to tell someone the entire truth they would probably think he was lying. “Ok, your point is made, what about you though?”
“That part of the story is similarly easy. I saved your life when you were 6 years old and had mischievously left the safety of the valley. I saw something in you and taught you a few things. Then when you started cultivating I organized for you to enter the Azure Dragon Academy. The only thing you really have to lie to anyone about is the location of the valley, which you should answer with something along the lines of, ‘I don’t know where it is located, Old Wu brought me here and I have no clue where this place is in relation to my home.’
“Oh, you should also probably lie about the origins of our little girl here. Tell people that I gifted her to you if it ever comes up, spirit foxes from the Frozen North are very rarely seen outside of their homeland, but no one would think twice about someone like me being able to gift a rare spirit beast without blinking.”
Old Wu then looked down at Xu Xing, who was still in her usual spot in the front of Xu Long’s robes. “Sorry little one, I know that this cover story gives the impression that you are a pet, but it is important for your safety as well as the kid's until the both of you are far stronger, humans are a greedy species. You will just have to console yourself that you, me, Xu Long and Xu Li know the truth.”
The sour look that was forming on her face was wiped away when she heard what Old Wu had to say and in the end she yipped in acknowledgement. Xu Long was looking down at her during this entire exchange, he had to smile, she was growing up fast. Gone were the days of her petulance and mischievousness, well mostly for the mischievousness, more and more she was acting like an intelligent and mature companion that he could put his trust in. He took her out of his robes and sat her on his lap and started petting her. The three of them passed the rest of the hour in silence, sitting on what felt like the top of the world and staring down at an endless ocean of green that lazily swayed in the wind.
Xu Long was eventually awoken from his quiet contemplation when Old Wu got up from his seated position, he took a moment before following suit by putting Xu Xing in the front of his robes and then getting up with a sigh. He took one last look at the majestic scenery before him as he but his blindfold back on, knowing that this was probably going to be the last time in quite a while that he would be free to actually remove his blindfold without consequence and that all of his future instances of looking out over such a beautiful vista would be measured in the time that the function of his blindfold allowed.
Once he was ready to set off, Old Wu placed a hand on his shoulder and they left their resting place in the middle of nowhere in a flash of light. From what Xu Long could glean from their rapid transit they first headed south before heading west to complete the fiction for anyone who was bothering to pay attention that we had not arrived from the depths of the Endless Forest. They even stopped a few times over their short journey, Xu Long presumed because Old Wu was ascertaining the best place for them to integrate into the crowd of those traveling to Tianyun City.
And integrate they did, Xu Long noticed immediately that Old Wu had significantly reigned in the pomp and flair of his movement art that he had apparently previously been unwilling or found unnecessary to keep under control or at the least be more subtle with. When the qi around them finally stopped rushing past at unfathomable speeds Xu Long was finally able to get a grip on his bearings. What he felt was more than a little overwhelming, there were more people than he had ever seen before in his life, which admittedly was not a high bar to cross, but there were at least a couple of hundred, Xu Long was honestly finding it difficult to differentiate them enough to get an accurate count.
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He quickly decided to ignore them for the time being and focus on the more inanimate objects in their surroundings in order to calm his mind and make sense of the madness that was this seeming cacophony of people. This strategy turned out to be very effective, once he started focusing on the landscape around him he picked up many things that he had missed by being distracted by all the noise. They were standing off to the side in what appeared to be a large plaza, he assumed anyway because he couldn’t actually feel any of the buildings on the other side. It wasn’t important though, what drew his attention was the fact that he could feel the ground just drop off into nothingness over to his right, which was very obviously the edge of the Great Plateau. But even more important than that landmark was what was sticking out of the lip of the cliff face, it appeared to be a giant rectangular platform with a lot of qi running through very familiar looking channels in it.
He immediately knew that this must be the Heavenly Lift and that said lift was operated by a very sizable formation of moderate complexity. As Xu Long was focussing on the formation of the lift he felt something start to change along the outer edges, it was like a very slow cascading flow was beginning. He looked in Old Wu’s direction. “I think the lift is starting up, what is the protocol?”
Old Wu chuckled. “I see that despite your complete aversion to it your mother did manage to drill some of her obsession into you. There is no protocol by the way, we can just hop on now.”
They both started walking towards the lift, which judging by the whispers that he picked up on, caused quite a few people to take notice of them. Xu Long was still a little too overwhelmed to try to sort through all the people he could detect, so he was happy to just ignore that they existed for the moment. Xu Long followed Old Wu’s lead and they ended up right on the lip of the platform overlooking what was clearly a view of the Endless Forest but to Xu Long just seemed to be a bottomless void.
“Activate your blindfold for a moment to get a look at the city below us, but I would save most of its energy for the ride down, that should be a more thrilling sight.”
Xu Long did as instructed and looked straight down, what he beheld was remarkable, a giant city in the shape of a perfect circle was sitting amongst the trees of the forest a fair distance from the base of the cliff, it took Xu Long a moment to realize that this was to avoid having a section of the city being plunged into near perpetual shadow by the wall of the Great Plateau. After a few moments Xu Long turned his blindfold off, heeding Old Wu’s advice, it was not like he could make out much of the city from this vantage anyway.
After quite a while of the two of them being the only people standing on the lift the cascading flow of energy in the formation had reached some kind of tipping point and far less subtle signs that the lift was powering up began to manifest. When he felt all the people of the plaza start to finally move to the lift, Xu Long looked Old Wu’s way a little confused.
“I understand that most higher realm cultivators would not need to use the lift but surely there must be a few like you who are escorting young cultivators amongst so many people, why did no one but us move on to the lift when it actually started powering up?”
“You have to understand just how remote the Endless Forest is kid, we are at the very edge of human territory, most of the young scions who will be escorted here for their enrollment into the Academies will arrive via a flying spirit beast mount, The Heavenly Lift of Tianyun City facilitates an influx of lower realm cultivators who come to the forest to try their luck at striking it rich and the plethora of trade caravans that depart from here laden with goods that will spread out to all corners of the human lands.
“I know you have been avoiding trying to decipher the crowd in the plaza but if you concentrate you will notice quite a few spirit beasts of burden, they belong to the traveling merchants, everyone else here is a lower realm cultivator who has traveled a great distance in order to risk their lives for wealth. Between them they are the lifeblood of this city.”
Enlightened by Old Wu’s explanation, Xu Long took a deep breath and focused on what he had been consciously ignoring, the mass of people behind him that were slowly boarding the lift. It did help that they were a bit more spread out now as opposed to when they were just a mass of people standing around the plaza, and he slowly came to terms with picking out smaller bits of information from amongst the chaos.
He found that when he concentrated he indeed could easily pick out the large spirit beasts, they felt of earth and rock, their qi flows were meandering and steady. The people, however, were multitude, he felt almost every basic qi that he recognized in varying states of power and purity. Eventually he had to cut himself off, the chaos was still overwhelming, this was clearly something he would have to work on.
“Don’t worry about it kid, you will get the hang of it over the next few weeks, don’t forget that this is your first time ever being around so many people, it would likely be overwhelming even if you weren’t handicapping yourself with that blindfold.”
Strangely enough that did somewhat comfort him, though it didn’t stop him from continuing to plunge his attention back into the seething mass of qi behind him, trying to come to terms with it before he had to withdraw. This state of affairs continued until finally the lift started to show signs that it was about to start moving. The mass of people had all been crowded onto the lift for a couple of minutes already, all except for the small semi-circle of room they afforded Xu Long and Old Wu. Clearly the two of them having been able to tell that the lift was powering up before anyone else was a sign to these people that they were cultivators that should be given a wide berth.
Xu Long didn’t mind their assumption, it was certainly a boon to his sanity that he wasn’t in the middle of that chaos at the moment and the small space around them coupled with the ‘void’ in front of him helped him to center himself and detach from the mass of people behind him.
Just as Xu Long was taking a break from focusing his attention on the crowd behind him by focusing instead on the energy flowing through the formation below his feet he noticed that the entire formation was lit up and flowing evenly. As he was wondering if that was an indication that the lift was about to move, he heard a series of small clicks and the lift did indeed start to move. Xu Long watched the portion of the cliff face that was above the lift steadily increase and tried to judge the time that the lift would take to complete its transit, he quickly discovered that it was moving at a reasonable pace and decided to to activate his blindfold and watch the entire journey down.
He was glad that he did, the journey down was nothing if not a spectacle, as they descended the great distance to the forest floor Xu Long just stared out at the wonder that was the Endless Forest bathed in the golden light of the setting sun. About half way down he started noticing more details in the seeming island in the sea of green that was Tianyun City, it was very obviously a prosperous trade city as Xu Long could feel the wealth radiating out from it. The walls that encircled the city seemed ornate even from this great height and he could make out many palatial looking manors, the city itself was split into four quadrants by two ostentatious looking boulevards, one that ran north-south, the other east-west.
Xu Long had to stop himself from exclaiming to Old Wu that he was right about the worth of taking the lift lest he give away that he could see through his blindfold during his very first encounter with anyone outside of those that already knew.
The entire journey down the cliff wall took only about ten minutes, by the time they had made it below the tree line Xu Long turned the function of his blindfold off to try and preserve what little energy he had left in it. After Xu Long could sense the ground approaching he waited until he was sure he could make the landing and then turned his head in Old Wu’s direction.
“Shall we?”
Old Wu chuckled. “Sure kid.”
They both jumped off the lift, Old Wu landing like he had just descended a single stair, Xu Long, not so much, but he still landed safely. They both then started walking towards the city at a brisk pace, Xu Long eager to not be sleeping in a tree tonight, Old Wu eager to visit his favorite inn and sample their wares.