Threads 16

For three mornings every week, Ling Qi would be devoting her time to learning scoutcraft and tactics under the tutelage of her Senior Brother and later, the core disciple in charge. She was somewhat chagrined to learn, upon asking, that Guan Zhi was actually one of Elder Zhou’s nieces. She really did need to stop assuming things.

That aside, she was already learning much. Seeing that she had some basic skill in tracking from time spent with Su Ling last year, Liao Zhu focused on teaching her the more esoteric aspects of tracking that were beyond mortal skill. The qi of a Cloud Tribesman had a different texture to that of an Imperial cultivator, and a keen scout could detect traces of a bound spirit’s partner in the traces they left behind.

She was also learning the ways to detect the disturbances in the background energies of the world left by the passage of higher realm beasts and cultivators as well. It was hard to describe, but potent auras left behind ripples and eddies that could be detected long after their passing. She had begun to dampen the signs of her own passage instinctively over the last year, the lessons of Sable Crescent Step showing dividends.

It was very educational, and Ling Qi was sure that she was on the edge of an advancement in her ability to conceal herself, but it had not come yet.

Letting her idle thoughts drift away, Ling Qi turned her attention back to the present. “This is the place, huh?” she asked. It didn’t look impressive.

They had climbed down into the depths of the new valley, now full of nascent greenery. The river, once haunted and corrupted, bubbled and flowed freely once again, clear and pure. Here, though, at the valley’s deepest point, the resurgence seemed tepid. The grass was yellow and withered, and the other plants stunted. A yawning crack in the ground, three meters long and half that across, stretched deep into the earth. The darkness within was no barrier to Ling Qi’s sight, and she saw only barren rock below. By the crack stood three squat square pillars of stone, carved with formations beyond Ling Qi’s comprehension.

Li Suyin detected her unasked question as she fiddled with one of the many pouches on the harness she wore across her chest. “The reason we can approach and find it so easily is because we have the tokens that bypass the formation. Anyone else would be compelled to avoid this place. It also seals the hole against further contamination from outside, and vice versa.”

“There’s something poisonous in there then?” Ling Qi asked with a frown, peering down at the chalky floor of the cavern visible through the crack.

“It’s more of a mutual toxicity,” Li Suyin answered before gesturing for her attention. Li Suyin handed her a small blue pill. “This should shield you from the effects of the air below for six hours. If we do not go too deep. I have more if we look to be running longer.”

Ling Qi took the pill, and after rolling it between her fingers, popped it in her mouth. It tasted like the fresh, unsullied air of an unspoiled vale, with a hint of mint. Next to her, Li Suyin was doing the same, but with two pills. Presumably, Suyin needed one more due to the difference in their realms.

“Let’s not waste any time then,” Ling Qi said brightly. She’d keep her friend safe, and they’d leave this place laden with loot. She wouldn’t let it end any other way.

She landed on the cavern floor in a puff of dust. The small chamber around her was still and silent. The withered remains of fungal growths clung to the walls and floor, and the scattered bones of vermin lay half-buried in the chalky dust that coated the floor. A faint, sickly sweet scent of rot and decay made her wrinkle her nose.

Li Suyin descended slower, crawling down the wall with no regard for hand holds or grip. Ling Qi saw eight glittering eyes and fuzzy pink legs peering at her out of the girl’s backpack. Zhenli, Li Suyin’s spirit, wasn’t much of a combatant, but she could act as another lookout.

<I guess I should start paying attention now too,> Sixiang murmured. <I’ll keep you free and clear.>

<Thanks,> Ling Qi thought.

“Why do you have that pack and all of those pouches anyway? Did something happen to your storage ring?” she asked as Li Suyin dropped the last few meters, landing with a thud that seemed thunderous to Ling Qi, even if it wasn’t truly loud.

Li Suyin peered at her, and it occurred to Ling Qi then that her friend couldn’t see in the dark as she could. Ling Qi felt a small shift in the other girl’s qi, and the stitched patterns on her eyepatch lit up, casting a dim cone of light from its surface. “I want to save the space for reagents,” she explained. “And storage rings have trouble holding large numbers of complex or volatile formations.”

Right. Something about interference with the ring’s own formations. That was why talismans took up so much more ‘space’ than mundane objects, or even beast cores and such.

“Fair enough,” she acknowledged. “What’s our plan then? This is your expedition.”

“Just a moment,” Li Suyin said. She pressed her hand to the wall, and Ling Qi cocked her head to the side curiously as a half dozen skeletal mice scurried out of her sleeve, skittering away into the cave. They formed a shifting perimeter around the two of them. Li Suyin next threw a pair of pellets to the floor, producing columns of smoke from which emerged two hulking skeletons. Ling Qi raised her eyebrows. Impressive.

The first looked to be an evolution of Suyin’s first guard prototype. It had the skeleton of a bear sculpted into humanoid shape, save for its grinning skull attached low on its broad shoulders. The bones were bound together with silk and armored in overlapping bands of iron, and it clutched a heavy mace in one hand and a thick iron shield in the other. The second looked to have been crafted from a wild boar, its tusked skull sitting so low that it seemed to almost jut from its chest, and was armed with a heavy guandao.

They were only late second realm, but they seemed like solid constructions. Ling Qi wouldn’t have much trouble with them, but they would even or tip the odds for Suyin against any enemy of her own realm.

“Ready?” Ling Qi asked.

“Ready,” Li Suyin replied and stepped toward the tunnel that led further down.

Ling Qi found as they descended the twisting tunnel leading deeper into the earth that the further they delved from the surface and the sun, the more the caverns came alive. It began small. She saw stalks of wriggling, pale white fungus growing from the floors and ceiling, and they grasped weakly at the hems of their skirts as they passed.

Towering columns of fungal flesh stretched from the floor to the ceiling of the next chamber, bloated and putrescent, their size crushing them against the ceiling and sprouting spider webbing growths of pulsing blue white mycelium across the roof. Pale lizards with blind, bulging eyes and mouths that trailed fetid spores darted in and out of the waving tendrils, chasing insectoid puffballs that moved about with jets of spore-choked air.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.