Chapter 21- Stone Forest

Tian’s first move was the product of years of careful, expert training, built on top of a couple of months running through the jungle. It might, to the uneducated eye, have looked like wild flailing. Nevertheless, he was prepared to argue that it was really very tactical and sophisticated, especially since flaming monkeys jumping at your face with their enormous teeth and jagged claws and flames leaping off their white-gold fur merited the highest level of combat.

Tian slapped the beast clean out of the air, sending it flying towards a tree at speed. Light, very light. He probably hadn’t hit it hard enough-

The monkey hit the tree in a distressing spray of red and black. It seems he had, in fact, hit it hard enough. Little flickers of flame rose from the gory mess, making the whole thing smell infernal.

“I’d have sworn it was bigger. Maybe it shrank when I hit it?” Tian muttered. He could vividly remember the monkey being utterly monstrous in scale, a vision of simian hell coming screaming for his eyeballs, yet now it appeared no taller than his knee, and perhaps even shorter than that. There were grunts coming from the hole in the rock behind him. It seems the others found it a bit more of a squeeze than he did.

“Brother Tian, are you alright?” He heard Brother Wang yell, muffled by the rock. He was surprised that Wang was the first in after him.

“Fine, just surprised by a monkey.” Tian yelled back. It was the damnedest monkey he had ever seen. The long, white-gold fur and the reddish face were pretty similar to the grey-brown monkeys you saw everywhere, if maybe a bit more vivid. The fire, however, was pretty damn unique. As was the fact that there was just one of them. That wasn’t how he remembered them moving.

He quickly pulled his robes back on, and as he did, he had a look around. He was in a forest, but a forest of stone. The trees were smooth or rough, straight or twisted, just as the trees in a normal forest would be. Their leaves were smooth, or ribbed, rough edged or lobed, or long and narrow. But when the wind blew them, they clattered instead of rustling.

“Could that be jade? It couldn’t possibly be, right?” He murmured, looking at all the green.

“Eh? What’s jade? Wait, those leaves!” Brother Wang clawed his way through the gap in the rocks. He gave the deceased monkey a quick glance, before turning his whole attention to the trees.

“Jade?” Tian asked.

“No, I’m afraid not.” Brother Wang softly rubbed the leaves. “I’m not sure what it is, but I’m confident it’s not jade.” The big man took out a sharp metal stylus and gave the leaves a little scratch, then tapped them. They made a clattering noise, like pebbles thrown onto a tile roof. “Three easy ways to tell. One, hold it in your hand for a few minutes. It should heat very slowly. Jade absorbs heat much slower than, for example, glass. Next is to try to scratch it with a not-too-sharp bit of metal. It’s fairly hard, so it shouldn’t scratch easily. Though there are some jade-related stones that are softer, so it’s not a completely reliable method. Lastly, the sound. It should make a ringing noise when struck, not a clattering sound. These tests aren’t perfect, of course, but they are a good way to weed out the more common fakes.”

Wang gently tugged on one of the leaves, but it stayed attached to the tree. “The color and internal fibrous texture is right, though. That’s usually the hardest thing to fake. Kind of ironic.”

Tian cupped his hands and bowed. “I’ve learned something, thank you.”

“Oh none of that. Besides, you missed the most obvious clue of all.”

“Jade doesn’t grow on trees?”

“Correct. Oh, Sis’ Su, here, let me give you a hand up.” Brother Wang rushed over and helped Su to her feet.

Tian waited a moment longer, then reached his hand out for Hong. She gave him a puzzled look, but took it anyway. He noticed, with disapproval, that none of them had taken his advice and stripped down. Now they were all dusty.

“There was a monkey?” She asked.

“Was, yes. It was on fire, and attacked me. Not very dangerous, once I saw it coming. There is… one particular problem, however.” Tian slowly explained, reaching for the right words. “It was on fire, but clearly not hurting. On fire was normal for it. And that kind of monkey, when not on fire, usually lives in troops anywhere from twenty to two hundred.”

That quickly had everyone running their eyes over the tree tops. Tian didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean much.

“Shall we move along?” Hong asked, voice bright.

“Lets.” Su nodded firmly.

“No, hang on, where is the crane?” Tian asked.

There was an extended pause, while everyone looked up the tunnel again. There continued to be no crane.

“Sister Lin, could I trouble you?” Tian asked, cupping his hands. She sighed, and ducked back into the tunnel. A couple minutes later she was back with the oddest expression on her face.

“She can’t get in.”

“Pardon?” Hong asked.

She can’t. She just bounces off the stones. I get the impression she can’t really see the entrance either. The ward is keeping out both Heavenly People and, apparently, uninvited animals.” Lin looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “It seems they are not qualified to be servants.”

What could they do, but press on?

The trees were moving sculptures ranging in height from twenty to eighty feet tall. The soft clattering of the leaves was gently soothing, if different from the wind through wood. The fragrance was different too. Dry and mineral, but subtly fresh, without the sweetness of a living forest or the richness of the fallen leaves. The ground was mostly bare dirt, or dotted with scrappy weeds. The forest smelled like wind over bare stone, Tian decided. He squatted down and scratched at the earth, sniffing it, then giving it a taste.

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“It’s not proper dirt.”

“How can dirt not be proper?” Sister Lin asked.

“Dirt is alive. It’s made up of rotten stuff, leaves, plants, that kind of thing. This isn’t. This is closer to the sands in the wasteland.”

“So why eat the dirt?” Lin asked, head tilted slightly to the side.

“Some dirt can be used as medicine. It tastes different.” Tian had discovered that Gourmet wasn’t very useful once he shed his mortality and started cultivating, but he still practiced it. It took very little time, no effort, and you never knew when finding medicinal dirt would come in useful.

“Huh. Is there a way to tell other than taste?” Wang asked.