Chapter 41- Dropped Straight Into It

It took two weeks to travel to the Six Turns Cavern. The last three days of the journey were spent traveling through a suspiciously convenient cloud bank. Elder Rui didn’t say anything, and the juniors, used to complete silence after two weeks of travel together, didn’t ask. The Caverns were entered through a modest sized hill inside the bend of a river. It managed to be both spiritual, elegant, and utterly horrible.

Everything was dead. It was clear that, until quite recently, there had been sizable trees here, and shrubs and grass, but they had all withered and died. Tian reckoned it was the wall of clouds covering the entirety of the sky for days in every direction. It wasn’t night dark, but it couldn’t have been kind on the plant life.

The lone guard, an ancient Martial Uncle, carried a similar feel as the surroundings. He tossed the trial takers a necklace with a talisman on it that would summon the supervising elders in the event of fatal danger. And that, apparently, was that.

Tian didn’t get much chance to look at the other three cultivators getting dropped in the cavern. Two young, handsome men and a staggeringly pretty woman. The men were slim and immaculately dressed, the woman wore scuffed looking robes but had a wide-eyed fragility to her. Tian was certain that her robes were messy because it was her nature, not because she didn’t have anyone to wash them. He was also privately certain she wasn’t the Li clan scion. The insane boy was fancy. This sister looked like she had been dragged backwards through a hedge.

“Fifty years of accumulation for one month of miraculous display. So long as the heavenly formation is active, the magic of the caverns will persist. Once the moment is lost, once the stars move out of alignment, the magic of this place will end as well. You should all know what you need to. In you get, one a time.” The Martial Uncle’s voice was raspy and his intonation felt off. He seemed uncomfortable talking.

“You first.” A boney finger stabbed out.

One of the handsome young men stepped forward. “My thanks, Senior. I, Ma Teng, will-”

“We aren’t doing all that.” The senior disappeared from where he was standing and reappeared behind the speechifying young man for just long enough to deliver a boot to the ass. The potential hope of the sect, or at least a faction, was sent flying into the pit. A moment later, there was a soft flash of red light and a rumbling noise.

“Right. Next up. You.” He pointed at Tian. Tian bowed quickly and jumped in the hole. Which, when his brain caught up with his feet, was not the brightest idea he ever had.

Tian fell for a short distance, then hit water. Or did he? He wasn’t really sure. It felt for a moment like he had fallen into a pond. He had the barest flicker of terror, a memory of the mind destroying sensation of drowning, then his feet touched lightly on the cavern floor. He could breathe well enough. The air was dense with qi, wet and cold, but not terribly so. It was quite refreshing.

“Water Qi. My second strongest elemental alignment after wood, if I remember correctly. And water nurtures wood. I got lucky.”

The cavern was big enough to drop the barracks into without touching either side. “Huge” seemed like a fair description. It was also pitch dark. Tian had switched over to Counter-Jumper immediately and was relying on echoes and vibrations to get a sense of the space. The elder had said that the caverns’ guardians couldn’t be defeated with ‘mere’ violence at the earthly realm, but that didn’t mean they were peaceful.

Tian sent his awareness into his storage ring, then hesitated. He had a few sources of light, but he wanted to test a theory. He pulled out a bit of char cloth, some flint, and a steel striker. It was a bit fiddly in the dark, but he reckoned that he would see immediately if his theory was right. He struck the flint and steel. There were bright sparks, but even when they landed on the char cloth, there was no fire. Not even the start of an ember. The sparks went cold almost instantly too.

“Interesting.”

Tian pulled out a little crystal. There were light talismans available for purchase from the crafters or even the quartermasters, but those cost money and stopped working once the power in them was exhausted. A bit of a broken hospital lighting array saved from a trip to the trash heap, however, was free. Better still, it would work so long as he ran his vital energy through it. A little tiring, perhaps, but once he switched from Counter Jumper to the Advent of Spring, it was manageable.

When properly mounted in the appropriate spell array and activated with a spirit crystal, the little light crystal would emit a blinding, harsh white radiance that had to be shielded and focused down on the operating table. With Tian’s vital energy, it just about managed a soft warm glow. Enough to see what was around him and to cast the rest of the chamber into deep shadow.

Tian immediately discovered that having the crystal held in his hand was extremely annoying. The light was constantly swinging around. If the crystal moved around in his hand even slightly, new shadows would shift and spread. Not having both hands free meant that he couldn’t effectively use his rope dart. If he did need to fight, he would have to drop the crystal and would be instantly blinded by the dark.

He gutted it out. It was still better than fumbling in the dark, hoping that Counter Jumper would be enough to guide him.

The cavern was dim, and grey, and undulated deeper under the hill. The air felt thick and heavy, the cool, watery qi weighed down every movement. Every breath. Tian explored for what felt like hours, but never found the slightest sign of a guardian. He couldn’t find the entrance to the ‘void’ room either. The shadows were messing with his sense of space. The longer he was in the cavern, the less of a grasp he had on its exact dimensions.

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Tian shook his head in frustration. He had been on the back of a giant bird for weeks, no privacy, no conversation worth mentioning, then a corpse-like senior threw him in a hole. It was all too much. He was going to have a sleep and figure it out in the morning. Besides, the way the shadows were flickering was frankly scary. He’d just… see how it all went. It would be fine. It’s not like he really wanted to come to the attention of the Monastery anyway. They were pretty blatantly cruel with their pawns. Lying safe in the dark was definitely the better choice.

Snap out of it! TIAN! SNAP OUT OF IT!

“Eh? Grandpa?”

Think! What is the nature of water? What are the attributes of the element?

“Um… extreme yin. Associated with winter and renewal. The gathering of energy before the burst of spring. Water blocks the flow of qi, or it can anyway. Traps it. Ah… wisdom. Depth.”

All the good things. And what else?

“Fear, indecision. Passivity. When out of balance, anyway.”

Anything else?

“Not really? It’s… not bad or anything. It’s just water.”

The parable of the flowing river and the rock.

“Uh… water moves easily through its channel. If there is a rock in the way, it flows around and carries on. It doesn’t fight the rock. But over time, the rock is worn away, and the river is still flowing.”

Bring it all together now.