Chapter 69 – Fragments of Lives Gone (I)

Chapter 69

Fragments of Lives Gone (I)

Light insisted on holding my hand (well, my finger, really) as we descended the mountain, and I obliged.

There truly was something magical about earning the trust of a child; it’s sort of like when you’re feeding a stray cat for almost a year and it finally lets you pet it.

… did I just compare a kid to a cat?

Yikes.

Anyway, the sect was rather… different before the sun emerged on the horizon. There was a serene stillness and quietness to it, dark shadows embossing the slanted frames of the rooftops, the invisible tendrils of nothing holding it all together. The sounds of our footsteps were exceptionally loud, or at least appeared to be so, and I realized I really didn’t like being out at night.

It made sense–this was wilderness, after all. While the mountain path may have been rather bereft of the greenery, it was still a mountain and not an actual road. There were critters hiding in the stray shrubberies, countless tiny lizards crawling between the rocks and hiding in the gaps, and insects galore just waking up.

I held it together, of course, for her, but… it didn’t seem like she needed it. Chances are that she genuinely didn’t care, as she hummed an unfamiliar tune with a rather jubilant expression (well, jubilant for her) as we descended.

The sect got even creepier as we left the mountain and entered the valley; the usually busy hubbub that was the market was nowhere to be found. There were no disciples anywhere, and it legitimately looked like we stumbled into some creepy, abandoned horror show and that we were a few hours away from being devoured by some demon–

–hey, she’s a demon. She’s not gonna devour me, though, right?

Khm.

Jokes aside, I adhered to Elder Qin’s instructions and met him at the bottom of his peak, where he was waiting for us. Rather than taking the same route we did the first time I went to the Antechamber, he led us… elsewhere. Deeper and deeper into the recess of the sect, the small, narrow passages between the mountain slopes, and then into a broad opening in the side of a cliff.

Great, from one dark thingamabob into an even darker one.

Luckily, with a flick of a finger, Elder Qin summoned a luminous sphere that stayed floating above our heads, illuminating the surprisingly broad passage.

“According to the Founding Master’s journal,” Elder Qin broke the silence. “This passage was already there when he and his disciples chanced upon the mountain.”

“… it’s clearly manmade.” I said, noting the beams holding it up.

“He didn’t think so,” Elder Qin said. “The beams and the poles supporting the passage are new. When he found it, it was being held open by invisible tendrils of strange Qi that he’d never experienced before. Dark and ominous, yet light and forthcoming, as though someone had taken Demonic Qi and Ordinary Qi and married the two.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Hmm? Wait… isn’t that exactly what probably happened? Long Tao did mention that the Antechamber was designed to take Demonic Qi and purify it, so it’s entirely possible that his passage was made by one or another creature that went into the Antechamber. Maybe even several times, which was why there was such a paradoxical mix of Qi.

“He supposed that, a long time before his arrival, there existed a Mythical Beast among these mountains, and that the passage was made by it in its infancy.” Well… he’s not completely wrong.

“I didn’t know about this place,” I said after scouring Lu Qi’s memories.

“Few do, actually,” Elder Qin said. “The original entrance is hidden by a rather complex array. Only the most Senior members of the Sect know about it… and now you, I suppose.”

“…” Ignoring the jab, I simply further examined the jutting, sharp rocks from the sides and wondered… how did the passage survive for so many years? As far as Lu Qi’s memories went, Spirit Sword Sect was only about eight to nine hundred years old, give or take, and Long Tao disappeared ten thousand years ago. And that was ‘disappeared’–who the hell knows how long before that he made this place.