Chapter 20- Fire and Water

Brother Fu’s bamboo raft looked exactly like the ones Tian remembered from the Agate River- a single layer of thick bamboo poles, bound with cross sections of bamboo at the front and rear. The tips of the raft were tilted up slightly, and that was about that.

Tian could imagine a cormorant fisherman with bare feet and short linen trousers polling the bamboo raft along, a straw rain cloak over his shoulders and a rough straw hat shading his head. There would be a basket for the catch, and stinking droppings where the trained cormorant relieved itself. Naturally, Brother Fu’s raft was a bit more refined.

With studied indifference, Brother Fu casually flicked his hand and caused faint lines of glowing green symbols to emerge on the wood. Poles rose from the sides of the raft, then met in the middle, spreading out once more to form a little shaded awning. Benches emerged under the awning, also made of fragrant bamboo.

“Have a seat, have a seat. We won’t be going far, but I can’t have you rocking the raft.” He waved Tian, Liren, Su, Wang and Lin aboard. The crane flew over and landed at the front of the raft. Tian gave her a sardonic look, which she ignored. The benches were remarkably comfortable for all that they looked like they were made by the latest in a long line of bums.

Everyone settled in, being equally studious in ignoring the transforming raft. Brother Fu planted a seemingly ordinary bamboo pole against the ground and shoved off. The raft smoothly slid out into the air, drifting along the side of the mountain. Tian had an urge to put out a fishing line. He controlled it. Heavens only knew what he would catch.

“Disciple Fu, if I might ask, do we have any knowledge about the state of the world outside the wards?” Su looked out into the sky. You should have been able to see vast swaths of the Broadsky Kingdom from so high up, but Starsieve’s array blurred it all into splotches of color and swirling mists. Some days, Tian thought, it felt like the mountain was floating in a white sea. Blue skies above, and still waters below.

“No, nothing. The diviners have done their best with astrology, but even then they report heaven’s secrets elude them. It’s all just lights in the sky to them, now.” Brother Fu chuckled. “Whatever Master did, he did it exceedingly thoroughly.”

Tian and Hong didn’t share a look, and kept their mouths shut. They hadn’t ever discussed what to reveal about Starsieve’s machinations, but they had been consistently surprised at how thoroughly their seniors had figured things out. They had even posted a notice near the Scripture Pavilion, occasionally updated as new information was discovered about their situation. Starsieve’s long silence had been noticed at the highest levels of the sect, and endlessly speculated on. Once it became clear who was, and was not, still on the mountain, many things were deduced.

“Are we any closer to understanding what the ward is?” Tian asked. Liren could usually see through an array with a glance or three, and having two young experts from the Five Elements Courtyard should more than suffice. None of them could so much as glimpse the array, Heavenly Person Mei very much included.

“We are fairly confident that it is a natural array using the art of wind and water originally laid out by the Eight Directions Palace as a mountain protecting formation. However, as you can guess from my saying ‘We are fairly confident,’ we don’t actually know. The array core is hidden, and the odds of finding it are practically zero.”

“Zero? Even though it’s a very big mountain, Heavenly People can fly and have extraordinary senses. Can it really evade everyone?” Tian asked. Brother Fu sighed and shook his head.

“It is rather hard to understandably explain how tens of thousands of years of continual human habitation changes a place, especially one the size of this mountain, particularly as qi dense as this mountain is. To say there are man-made structures everywhere, while not literally accurate, it is pretty close. There is also the internal volume of the mountain to consider, as well as the fact that it might not be visible to our senses.”

“Might not be visible, Father?”

“Storage rings.” Brother Fu smiled slightly.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow, Father.”

“You can hold a cartload, or more, of goods in a little band of metal that fits around your finger. Clearly they are either being shrunk unimaginably small, or stored in a separate place that doesn’t entirely overlap with our own space. Just a single point of connection, in fact. We are fairly sure that’s what’s happening here- the eye or key of the array exists in a hidden space somewhere, waiting to be found or for the right conditions to occur.”

The raft was sinking through the air now, seeming to slide down the slope of the mountain towards the base. You could taste the changes in the air, the feeling of the humidity on your skin. It was a little warmer too, though the qi was less dense here.

“There are also, for lack of a better term, death regions on the mountain. There are only a few, and they are quite high up. The Sect Master’s residence is at the border of the lowest of them, and as far as I’m aware, no person currently living on Ancient Crane Mountain has ever set foot on the mountain peak. It is possible that the formation eye is located in such a death region or death zone or forbidden region or whatever we are calling it this week.” He shook his head, white beard whipping about.

Brother Wang smiled slightly. “Could these sealed testing grounds evolve into one of those forbidden regions?”

Brother Fu nodded approvingly. “Good question. It could be highly fatal, but wouldn’t qualify. The key distinction is qi density. Generally, a higher density of qi is better, however, there is a limit. Think of qi like sunshine or air. You would die without it, but you would also die with too much of it. Forbidden Regions are like standing in the light of a hundred suns, at noon, on the summer solstice. And then the things that live in those places may take notice of you.”

“There are things living in the forbidden zones?” Sister Su leaned forward.

“Oh yes. They don’t leave the zones. I think it would be akin to trying to breathe underwater for them. Still, the records of the ancients tell us they are powerful beyond hope or reason. We call ourselves the masters or owners of this mountain, but as a practical matter, that is only true of the energy poor regions. Comparatively poor, anyway. Perhaps we should simply call ourselves the human lords.” Brother Fu shook his head. “None of which is relevant to your excursion. It should be passable by anyone within the Earthly Realm, and should not require exquisite arts to complete. It was intended to screen ‘mortal’ servants. Not potential future disciples, servants. So even with more than ten thousand years of accumulation, the environment should be passable for you all. Difficult, dangerous, but passable.”

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The raft drifted down to a rather dull stretch of road. There was a short, grassy mound to one side, and a path splitting off the road and running between two steep hills. They really were very low on the mountain.

“How far are we from Mountain Gate City?” Tian asked.

“By road? A few hundred miles, given all the switchbacks and horizontal travel. Vertically, however, we are only about half a mile higher. The top of the Steps of Ascension end where the wards begin. As you can imagine, it was one of the first things we checked.” Brother Fu chuckled. “You wouldn’t have seen it, but the bottom of the ten thousand steps is in the City. There aren’t literally ten thousand steps, by the way, the number is symbolic. There is a receiving platform at the end, where you get picked up by an elder and an immortal crane. The walk is around five miles, and very meaningful.”