NOVEL NEXT 67: A Hanging Sword
It seems even this was too much. The connection is thinning.
I will speak with you again when I can. Survive, grow, and pursue understanding of your Path. I would advise against starting your own sect before you reach Core Formation, but if you feel there is no other way to find the truth you are searching for, then…
The world returned, with the emblem at the center of his vision. It flared like a candle in vast darkness as the voice trailed away, and the darkness only receded as it dimmed.
Zhang Sha knelt in front of him. His eyes were bright. "What did you see?"
Fushuai shook his head. "I will tell you. But not now." His gaze traveled across the worried faces of his companions, though Lao looked more angry than concerned. As there was no longer a hand over his mouth, he took it as permission to speak.
"Hall Master Shu, forgive my outburst. But was that not the Sect Leader?"
"It was," Fushuai said. "He gave me some advice about how to proceed and assured me he was happy to have you among our number."
The young man straightened up. "Does that mean I don't have to drink poison anymore?"
Zhang Sha grunted. "You're a long way from that."
Fushuai rose and vanished the emblem into his storage ring. Then he summoned his staff. The cool metal was a reassuring presence, something solid to hold against the promise of the void.
"We go in search of sword aura," he said. "I will lead, and Zhang Sha will remain at the back. Extend your senses, all of you, and be on your guard."
They descended to the bottom of the excavation. The scent of old wood greeted them at first, but was soon overwhelmed by dust and the dry tang of ancient stone. The tunnel ahead, cut into a long stair, led further down. Those steps had been worn smooth by the passage of many feet, built long ago, before the fall of the city. The walls were reinforced with more recent additions, wooden beams and metal bars, though some of the passage had slumped with compressed dirt.
As no sunlight could reach this depth, Fushuai sent a pulse of energy through his staff. A ball of purple flame bloomed at its tip, dusky, barely lighting more than a few paces in any direction, but sufficient for his night-pleased eyes.
Bai Tu sniffed the air and sneezed. Lin scratched the ruff of his neck.
"I feel nothing but earth aura," she said. "Stone and shadow and silence."
The stairs led them to an arch and an open chamber beyond, and Fushuai felt the imprint of an old array across the archway. After a moment spent in examination, he decided it had long since been disabled. Even so, he extended a Thread of Still Night to interrupt a small piece of the formation and left it there as they passed through.
The chamber seemed to have been used as a campsite. No one had lit a fire, of course, but a few things had been left behind: an old sleeping roll, dingy cooking implements, scraps of cloth, and other debris. A cracked clay jug rested in one corner. Whatever water it once contained had long since seeped from the base.
The chamber had three exits, with nothing to distinguish between them.
"We'll stay together," he said. "And take them one by one."
Hours eked away in fruitless exploration, finding little more than dust and scratches in the stone. There were a few stains that might have been blood, but they were too old to be certain. Most of these passages led nowhere in particular. The fallen city had primarily been filled with the everyday lives of its citizens. One could not expect to find treasure in what had once been the home of a baker, or barber, or weaver.
Each passage branched into others, most of them short and abruptly ending. Whoever had dug these tunnels had been trying to find their way, whether by map or memory of a place long gone. As soon as the excavators realized they had chosen the wrong direction, the branche ceased.
Finally, after several backtracks, they found what may have once been the central road of Emerald City. This passage had been dug out ten paces wide and nearly as tall. It was either the work of a few powerful cultivators or thousands of common laborers, spending their lives for the greed of those above them.
The first real obstacle was simply a warning: an array carved into the street with an effect not unlike the formation flag Xiao Sheng had left for him. It seemed to be a genuine message rather than an active deterrent; any cultivator above body refinement could have easily pushed through. Shortly after disabling it, they came across a less genial obstacle.
A mirror hung from the ceiling of the tunnel. As soon as one stepped into the arc of its silvered surface, a blast of flame erupted from the floor, or at least, it was meant to. He broke the qi circuit, then collected the materials, mirror included, and stored them in his ring.
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"Even if the ruins are empty," Zhang Sha said, "it's good to know that the Adders of Emerald Bastion have left few treasures for us in the spirit of friendship."
"It might not have been them," Fushuai said. "For all we know, there are other cultivators waiting ahead of us."
There were a few more obstacles along the road, but whoever had left them could not have been of great power, as they were easily bypassed by the pair of formation stage cultivators.
The road ended at the face of what had once been a palace. Its doors had long since rotted away, so what remained was a shadowed mouth, beckoning them into a marble throat.
The interior of the grand hall was clear and open, robbed of any furniture or furnishing. Still, there were echoes of the grandeur it may once have contained in the high, smooth columns that upheld a vaulted ceiling. Marks of burn and battle scarred the walls and floors, and one column had nearly been severed halfway up its height.
Fushuai felt a flicker of life near the far end of the hall, and Bai Tu growled.
Something clicked in the darkness, like two blades tapping at their ends. Zhang Sha's energy stirred, and a host of varicolored lights sprang up, perfect spheres, spinning outward to illuminate the hall.
Fushuai spared him a sidelong glance. "You could've done that at any time?"
"You seem so proud of your bleak torch. But now I really do need to see."
The light confirmed what his spiritual sense had already warned him. A creature lurked in the shadows at the rear of the hall.
It was humanoid, but squat and gray-skinned, with eyes filmed over. The claws tipping its lanky arms were sharp, triangular points, much like its yellow teeth. Its spirit was small, its malice vast. When the light touched it, it hissed, swiped one hand through the air, and fled.
"Yaoguai," Zhang Sha said. "Corrupted beasts with little power."
Lin shifted uncomfortably. "It looks more human than beast."
"Ha. You give it too much credit. Even if it was a man once, it is no longer."
Following the creature took them deeper. They found what had once been the libraries of the Emerald Palace. Little remained aside from ancient shreds of parchment, scraps of broken wood, and a few bits of metal that had once anchored the great shelves, now missing. Empty halls and empty rooms, always leading downward.
They were not chasing the creature. It wasn't fast enough to escape them, had that been their aim. But Fushuai was tracking it with his spiritual sense, which told him something more: it was not alone.
They seemed to be the only residents of this fallen place. For now, they kept well clear of the floating orbs of light, but they were not truly in retreat.
"I need a weapon," Lao said. "You can't expect me to fight those things with my bare hands. They are filthy."
They ignored him, and soon came to the door of a vault. Steel had been twisted, and the protective array defaced. Now, there was nothing to prevent any would-be plunderer from entering. Fushuai wondered if they had made the wrong choice in following the main road. Everything in this palace would have been picked over a hundred times before. So far, there had been no sense of excess sword aura, no hint of great formations or beasts that would prove a challenge, let alone treasures.
"There's supposed to be riches," Lao said. "I heard inner disciples talking about this place in the Steel Ribbon Sect like it was lined with golden waterfalls."
The first level of the vault did not meet that expectation. Doors had been ripped from their hinges. Shelves were broken, walls gouged. After checking it section by section, they came to another broken door, even heavier than the one twisted open at the entrance, leading down to a second level.
These halls were wider. These rooms, deeper. But they, too, had been stripped.
It was as they reached the exit that would take them lower that Fushuai felt a brush of killing intent. He and Zhang Sha reacted in the same moment, turning with weapons at the ready, their backs to each other, Lin and Lao caught between them.
There were holes drilled into the walls, most only as wide as a hand, others large enough for a man to crawl through.
But it was not men, or even yaoguai, that came out of them.
Silence and breath were replaced by the shink and tap of ten thousand pointed legs. A host of steel centipedes disgorged themselves from every gap and door, flooding the hall in a chittering tide of segmented metal.
Fushuai summoned the flying sword and tossed it to Lin, the act accompanied by a shout of dismay and outrage from Lao.
Glossy metal mandibles snapped at their feet and legs. Most of the centipedes were only a few feet long, and Fushuai batted one aside, cracking carapace with an easy spin of his staff. Bai Tu lunged forward, one of his jaws closing around a squirming length of insect and crunching it in half. Both ends continued to writhe after that, so he took it by the head and finished it with a twist.
Zhang Sha, a look of bothered boredom playing across his gaunt face, fought with hands and feet rather than bothering to draw his bow. The hall filled with the sounds of wailing metal, clicking limbs, shrieks like warped quacks, and an undercurrent of muttered curses from Lao, who was struggling to stomp the life out of a long, lashing insect with a body of polished steel.
The centipedes were mindless, fearless. They cared nothing for their own deaths and seemed only excited by the deaths of their brethren. Many stopped to feast on the fallen, relieving much of the pressure of the initial assault.
But these were not the source of the killing intent.
Whether mother or brother to the rest, a greater beast snaked along the ceiling, rounding the bend. Its appearance sent the smaller ones into an even greater frenzy, and Fushuai leapt forward to meet it.
Its head was as broad as an ox's, its mandibles wider still, snapping like oversized blades. Its position and the shape of the hall were poorly suited to the full use of his staff, but he struck it soundly enough to dislodge its forward legs from the ceiling, causing the upper portion of its body to loll downward with a grinding screech.
Metal rang against metal. One of the lesser centipedes grasped his leg as his blows played a rhythm of violence across the elder's steel-plated skull.
It spat a stream of yellow bile, acidic and steaming, which Fushuai narrowly dodged. With a surge of energy and will, he swung the end of his gu-en up with enough force to cave in the underside of its head. The great insect dropped to the floor with a tremendous thud.
He struck it several more times to be sure, having been punished by beasts he'd thought to be finished before. Then he half-crouched to reach the creature sawing into his leg. He tore its mandibles open with one hand and smashed its segmented body against the nearest wall.
Not long after that, the hall was quiet again.