Chapter 124 – Choices in Life (VI)

Chapter 124

Choices in Life (VI)

I haven’t gone hiking much back on Earth, and never into the actual wilderness. It was usually well-trodden hike trails with clear signs of human touch. One thing above all, however, that stood out to me was how… loud the forest would get at night. There’s always some howling and hollering and hooting, whether it’s cicadas, tree frogs, owls, bats, or even an occasional wolf or two.

It gets scarily loud, honestly, which was why I braced myself for the first night in the forest only to be greeted by the exact opposite: an eerie silence that felt almost oppressive. Plus, it was dark.

Holy shit, is it dark.

The canopy of the trees is just thick enough to shroud the ground from the moonlight, which meant that there was no light. And, hell, I didn’t dare light one up–it’d be like an open invite to whatever horrors may live here to come, and I don’t want them to come, no. I want them to stay the hell back.

Thus, as soon as the light of the day began to fade, I found us a nice clearing with tall trees sporting thick branches, electing to camp precisely on top of them.

According to Wan Lan, we’d probably have to walk at least a week to get to the ruin, not really because it was far, but because the forest itself is massive. No, wait, that makes no sense—not because it was far, but because it was difficult to navigate. Or something along those lines. She has an accent, so some words just fly over my head…

It started north of the Spirit Sword Sect, bordering the Eternal Range, and moved east and then south against the Heaven-Piercing Peaks, all the way to the southernmost edge of the region.

According to a local legend, there were 500,000,000 trees within the forest, but if the forest truly was as large as they claimed, that number is well off base. ‘Just’ five hundred million trees, while a staggering number, isn’t actually that massive. For instance, Amazon back on Earth had four billion of them, and if the maps are to be trusted, this place was about 3/5ths as large at least.

Regardless, the point is that the forest is massive, and trekking it was no small feat. There were no ‘roads’ or ‘paths’, just thick shrubbery and jutting roots of the trees everywhere. I stumbled and nearly fell six times today, and even the kids struggled a bit navigating it.

Wan Lan sought the landmarks to orient us, namely moss and a certain type of flower. Moss I understood, as it grows in the shade, so you can orient yourself a bit, but the flower was a local thing. According to her, it only grows in the northern area, as it rains more frequently here.

… speaking of rain.

I was woken up at some point in the night, feeling rather cold and wet. It took me but a second to realize rain was pouring quite heavily, draining from the bent canopies above us.

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“Shit,” the word escaped me quickly as I stumbled through my spatial treasures looking for anything tarp-like. There was nothing like it, of course, but pulling out a few blankets and stacking them on top of each other seemed enough to build a temporary, makeshift umbrella of sorts.

Kids started waking up one by one, too, and copied me, building an overhead, improvised ‘tarp’, angled downwards so that the water doesn’t coalesce, but it didn’t really do all that much.

I hadn’t considered the weather at all, in my stupidity and my hubris. It wasn’t just the rain, either; soon, lightning began to crackle above us. Even through the thick canopy, I could see the blinding flashes of light almost as soon as the thunderous roar came bellowing out like that of an ancient dragon.

It was loud.

So, so loud that I estimated the lightning struck maybe a mile from us.

Before I could make sense of much else, I felt someone latch onto me and cradle against my chest. Looking down, it was Light; she was wet and shivering, though it didn’t seem like it was from cold.

Despite the dark, I could just barely make out the contours of her terrified expression.

Looking back out, I saw that the other kids were… similar, strangely. Even Long Tao, though not terrified, appeared unnaturally uncertain.

“It’s just the lightning,” I spoke softly. “No need to be scared.”

“… a-are you not scared of the Heavens?” She looked up and asked.