B2 Chapter 25
Orange-crest had never seen an angry mushroom before.
Or one with arms, for that matter.
The strange creature hardly seemed to care what he thought about it, no more than it cared about Wu Yingjie's sputtered protests, or Yang Wei's spear caught in its third hand. Orange-crest felt a little bad for Wu Yingjie, he really had no luck at all. If he'd waited just a few seconds longer, orange-crest would have been the one to stick his head inside the rat to inspect the details of it. He'd been too busy verifying that the cavern was otherwise empty.
But whatever he'd awoken was clearly hostile, and his master was not seeking to make peace with it, so orange-crest hefted his staff and charged.
It felt strange fighting under the influence of Li Shuwen's talisman. It was almost like how he imagined fighting in tight clothing must feel. He could use qi, even extrude it beyond his skin, but not very much of it, or very quickly. He knew that he could exert his will and snap the little paper rectangle easily, but he restrained himself, moving his qi only slowly, beneath the surface of his skin. His master said that the beasts down here hunted in every way imaginable. Their party could not do entirely without light or qi, but they could at least refrain from making their presence impossible to ignore.
Orange-crest was strong, and not currently being choked. He wouldn't break his talisman first. He leapt, aiming to take the mushroom man from behind. His staff slammed home with a muffled thump. He would almost have called the impact meaty, if not for the fact he didn't think mushroom counted as a kind of meat.
The guai staggered, almost falling to one knee, but it made no flinch or cry of pain. It slid further out of the rat, the bulk of its body emerging from flesh without displacing it as if the rat's corpse were made of water. Wu Yingjie's meaty palms slapped at its arms ineffectually, trying to break the mushroom's iron grip around his throat.
The overgrown mushroom straightened and twisted, swinging Wu Yingjie with one arm like the world's largest human bludgeon. Yang Wei abandoned his futile tug-of-war with the mushroom monster, but not quickly enough to avoid being buried beneath a fleshy missile.
It turned to fully face orange-crest, stepping free from the rat's corpse. No, not stepping. Unfolding, like a blooming flower. The mushroom man was incredibly tall now, half again the monkey's height. It hefted Yang Wei's spear high, one of its upper arms waving it around like a scorpion's stinger.
A burst of qi emanated from the guai, a silent growl of the spirit. The Great Circle of Qi Condensation. No wonder it had shrugged off the monkey's strike.
Unfortunately for the mushroom, orange-crest wasn't alone.
The monkey chittered fearlessly, staring past the mighty guai.
"Behind you."
Li Xun was not very good with a saber. Those were his words, not orange-crest's. He was very clear about his level of skill. He was at best passable with half a dozen weapons, and only his palm and fist techniques were remotely worthy of a Foundation Establishment martial cultivator. But one didn't need to be skilled, when one was as strong of arm as orange-crest's master.
The oversized cleaver descended like a shooting star. It took the guai in the shoulder, and continued without even slowing. One arm flew free, spurting watery blood as Li Xun's blade bit into the stone with a grinding crash.
"Don't make a racket", Li Xun had said. Hypocrite.
The mushroom man's back arched in a silent scream. The folds of its misshapen head twitched, flapping against each other like a dozen pairs of lips. A gaseous cloud emanated from the flapping folds, barely visible in the distant light of Li Shuwen's talisman.
"Spores." Xiao Shulan's voice was almost bored. "Step back." She commanded, doing the opposite.
Orange-crest didn't need to be told twice. He'd read about spores, mushroom poisons, and the horrific things they could do to a body. Wu Yingjie apparently did need to be told twice though, so the monkey hauled him out of the way. Well, more rolled him out of the way.
Whatever worked.
A small spark leapt from Xiao Shulan's outstretched fingers, brighter than any born from a mundane fire. The cloud of spores burst into flame, vanishing as quickly as they'd appeared. The mushroom flinched, as the short-lived burst of fire passed over it.
It was only a moment's distraction. But the strange creature did not get a chance to recover. Li Xun had pulled his saber free from the ground, and his second strike split it in twain, from cap to groin. Yang Wei was upon it in a moment, poking at the corpse with his reclaimed spear. He looked almost disappointed when it did not react to his exploratory stab.
"Someone attend to Wu Yingjie." Xiao Shulan commanded, inspecting what remained of the guai's cap. She held a small knife as she poked at it with a slipper, seemingly torn about whether it was worth dirtying her hands to cut it free.
"You are perfectly capable of doing that." Yang Wei said, advancing upon her.
Xiao Shulan shrugged.
"We have alchemists. That's almost a doctor."
Orange-crest heaved Wu Yingjie over. His face was red and his throat was already purpling, but he was gasping for air. That seemed like a good sign. He snatched a pill from Wu Yingjie's trembling fingers and stuffed it into his mouth.
Wu Yingjie's gasps slowed.
The others were already arguing.
"That was an entirely unnecessary encounter." Li Shuwen noted. "Perhaps we should not indulge our curiosity so freely."
"I need more practice fighting without relying upon my qi." Yang Wei mused, brushing at a spot on his robes where Wu Yingjie had smeared the white rat's blood. "But better it dead than behind us."
"Your dog is correct. We had no need to face the Carrion Cap." Xiao Shulan said coldly. "Best Wu Yingjie retreat now, while he can still safely do so. He'll only bring more trouble upon us."
Wu Yingjie's face reddened again as he struggled to sit up.
"You wouldn't even be here, if not for me!" He protested, wiping at his eyes.
"Retreat." Xiao Shulan commanded. "You are befouled with black blood. The stench of you will draw every hungry beast in a dozen li to our position."
"You want to repay my kindness with-"
"Enough." Li Xun's voice cut him off. "We need to move. That Carrion Cap is the very least of what we can expect to face here."
Xiao Shulan scowled.
"There is no point in stealth, if Wu Yingjie accompanies us further. He should retreat now while he is able."
Orange-crest was already stripping naked. He'd been looking for an excuse.
"Rub down with the inner robe, wear the outer." He instructed the stunned disciple. "Leave yours behind."
It wouldn't fit him very well, but it was Li Xun's robe, it was pretty large on orange-crest. It would close around his belly. Probably.
Li Xun sighed. Orange-crest noted that his saber was back in his storage bag. And the Carrion Cap's split head had mysteriously disappeared while the two nobles were arguing. Good work, master.
"I had almost two dozens spare sets robes last year, you know. Now I have ten." Li Xun said, stepping deeper into the darkness.
"That is entirely too many robes for one person." Orange-crest said, falling into step at his side.
Yang Wei was the first to follow them. With the three of them in motion, the others had no choice but to fall into place. Wu Yingjie's face grew redder still as he changed, hopping along as he shrugged his clothing off. The other humans all looked away from him while he changed.
Orange-crest didn't. He was still rather curious about what exactly humans looked like beneath the voluminous robes. How much like monkeys they were. His master wore his underclothing everywhere, so orange-crest only had anatomical diagrams to go on for the concealed parts. And those were so much more concerned with what was inside, than what was outside. To think, hardly a year ago he'd thought robes were part of their fur. Unfortunately, he was doomed to remain curious about the exact proportions and fur of men. Wu Yingjie wore clothing beneath his clothing beneath his clothing. Even his inner robe was stained with blood, but Wu Yingjie was practically fully clothed beneath it. He had on a short sleeveless jacket, and a pair of trousers.
He didn't even need orange-crest's robes!
Wu Yingjie met the staring monkey's eyes. His usual rage rose up on his face, only to immediately be drowned in a wave of what was clearly mortification.
Apparently even Wu Yingjie couldn't get angry when he was even partially unclothed. Even after a year, orange-crest still found humans so very strange. They were on an adventure. There were new places to discover, treasures to acquire, and mushroom monsters to defeat as a pack! How could he be so worried about clothing.
"You can take the monkey out of the wilds..." Li Xun mused, a slight smile on his face.
This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.
"We are literally in the wilds." Orange-crest noted. Literally. One of his master's favorite words. "The sect says they own this place, but they clearly do not."
"Pedantic beast."
"I learned from the best. The best at correcting people."
"If only you had learned your elemental cycles half as well."
"I know them now! Mostly."
As Wu Yingjie shrugged orange-crest's outer robe on, Li Shuwen surreptitiously attached a second, then a third, Flavor-Restraining Talisman to his back. Orange-crest nodded approvingly, and Wu Yingjie flushed and looked down, thinking the monkey was nodding at him.
What a great beginning to their adventure. Fighting alongside his master, if only for a moment. Now this was a side of cultivation he could really get behind. Orange-crest wondered what they'd make with that mushroom man's head when they got back. Maybe a really nasty spore poison that did not immediately burst into flames the moment Xiao Shulan sneezed on it? Did they have a water plant that would do that?
Li Xun led them deeper and deeper into the earth. Several times the path split, but his master would bid them to absolute stillness before shutting his eyes and listening carefully. Then he'd take a few whiffs of the air from each tunnel.
Even knowing what his master was listening and smelling for, orange-crest could hardly believe he wasn't choosing paths at random. He could smell nothing save stone, and stale blood. Wu Yingjie was indeed a little pungent.
Twice more they passed beasts Xiao Wenchuan had brutalized. One was a massive bat, which had been slammed into a wall so forcefully all of its bones had been reduced to powder. Low Foundation Establishment, according to his master. Li Xun had pronounced its core unrecoverable. Shattered, like its bones.
The second was a serpent, one as thick around as orange-crest's torso. Or, the back half of a serpent. It was not immediately apparent what had happened to the rest of it.
Li Shuwen looked especially disappointed at each spoiled kill. Apparently he'd really been hoping to pick up some of Xiao Wenchuan's leavings. Orange-crest had his sights set higher. He still couldn't believe 'Inheritance Grounds' were a real thing that humans did. They seemed far too altruistic an idea for humans. At least it made sense that when demons made them, they were usually a trap to try to possess some unwary weaker cultivator and try to claw their way back to life. Orange-crest was surprised more righteous cultivators didn't try that. Most of them didn't exactly seem hung up about the lives of lesser cultivators who weren't related to them.
The monkey was leaving any ingredients they stumbled across to his master. His cultivation was likely too great to enter the inheritance grounds, he deserved any ancillary benefits they stumbled across.
Plus he would share, if orange-crest ever really needed a mushroom man's head.
A distant noise pricked orange-crest's ears. He looked round, seeing if the others heard it.
Yang Wei smiled, baring his teeth like a rabid wolf.
"Elder Xun's tales were accurate. That's the underground river. Now we just need to follow it to where descends to the next layer."
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"Down!" Yang Wei barked.
Orange-crest ducked, the spear passing along the edge of the space his head had recently occupied. The massive bat was deceptively quick, and had already retreated out of range, wings fluttering as it readied itself to launch yet another blade of wind. Yang Wei stepped forward, placing himself again between the bat and the monkey.
Spearlight limned Yang Wei's blade. He'd broken his suppressing talisman. They'd found only his spear qi, and Wu Yingjie's polearm, could block those attacks cleanly. Orange-crest could take the blows, but if he wasn't stone, they opened deep wounds beneath his fur. He was already down one of his healing pills.
The bat launched the blade of air, and Yang Wei met it with a slash of his spear, sending robes fluttering and water splashing.
The bat screeched, and orange-crest counted himself lucky they were fighting within spitting distance of a waterfall. The roar of the waters at least partially covered the ring of battle. An underground waterfall! And he couldn't even appreciate it, or meditate beneath its waters, because this damn bat wouldn't stop throwing blades of wind at them.
Orange-crest was starting to see why Xiao Wenchuan had pulped the bat's big brother. This one was only in the upper half of Qi Condensation, the fifth or sixth stage perhaps, and it was profoundly annoying.
His master could have brought it low in a moment. But his master was busy. Another crash echoed from the far end of the massive tunnel, where orange-crest's master was locked in combat with a Foundation Establishment spirit beast that looked like a bear with the face of a boar and the tail of a rat.
He was winning. Orange-crest knew he was. If he wasn't winning without qi, Li Xun would have started throwing around blasts of flame, stealth be damned. But he was winning too slowly, and the noise had drawn the bat.
"We need to go down!" Yang Wei repeated. "They won't chase us to the patriarch's forge! The spirit beasts give it a wide berth."
"What if they don't!" Wu Yingjie swung his polearm wildly, continually falling short of reaching the bat. His robe was stained with blood again, and this time it was mostly his own. Yang Wei was breathing heavily, but Wu Yingjie wasn't even able to fully dissipate the wind blades.
The bat has chosen the spot of its ambush well. The tunnel widened greatly around the waterfall, forming a basin. The ceiling was easily thrice orange-crest's height, and the bat had plenty of room to maneuver.
Orange-crest wracked his brain, but his ranged options were not great even when he was wielding the full measure of his qi. If he threw his staff, he'd do little damage, and need to break his talisman to call it back.
Could he distract the bat in any useful way with illusions? Probably not. They'd only be good if he needed to flee.
He kept back with the others, letting Wu Yingjie and Yang Wei take the brunt of the assault. Xiao Shulan and Li Shuwen were not very useful with their qi restricted. Perhaps it was time to give up on stealth, their pack was clearly not very good at it. But a Core Formation spirit beast taking an interest in them would also be very bad. Master Li Xun had been quite clear he could only hope to fight off the very weakest of those.
"Start climbing! We'll hold it off!" Yang Wei repeated. Nobody leapt to obey him.
Orange-crest looked down at the smooth rocks of the chasm, and the water rushing over them. It was at least a hundred chi down. Maybe more, Li Shuwen's light did not reach the bottom. Could he manage that? Probably, with qi. Turn to stone if he fell, or immobilize his staff while he held it. He'd tested that, it worked, so long as he did it before he began falling too quickly. He wasn't sure the other disciples could do the same. They didn't look like very good climbers.
"And how am I supposed to climb down!" Wu Yingjie protested. "The bat will cut us into mincemeat!"
"I can bring it low with lightning." Xiao Shulan raised her voice to be heard, but there was still little emotion in it. "But such arts are less than discriminating when used in enclosed spaces filled with water."
"No!" Li Shuwen and Wu Yingjie shouted in unison.
An almighty crash echoed out from the way they'd come. A porcine squeal of pain followed. Anything nearby would have definitely heard that over the roar of the waterfall. If it hadn't already heard their shouting. They truly were awful at stealth. Other than orange-crest. He was pretty okay at it.
Orange-crest looked from the shadowed space where his master somehow fought in near total darkness, to the bat, hunting at the edges of the light.
Moving ahead alone was risky, but so was staying behind. As much as his heart pounded with joy, as much as he relished no longer needing to restrain himself to fit in on the mountain, this place was dangerous. Only his master was even moderately safe here. Elder Xun's drunken ramblings to Yang Shui had been correct thus far. If that held, orange-crest could relieve the pressure on the rest of his party and get to safety in one move. He wore the jade band. His master could track him across the world if he needed to.
He eyed the bat. It might have a lot of qi, and a wingspan wider than he was tall, but those bones did not look very thick.
Orange-crest waited for the bat to begin passing back toward Yang Wei, toward the mouth of the waterfall.
"Wu Yingjie!" He said directly into the big disciple's ear. "Throw me!"
"What?"
"Shut up and do! Throw me at the bat!"
Wu Yingjie opened his mouth to protest, but then his eyes sharpened. He dropped his polearm, and grabbed Li Hou. Wu Yingjie was not Daoist Enduring Oath. He was smaller. He was weaker. Orange-crest was heavier than he'd been last time he'd attempted this.
But the monkey wasn't asking to be thrown across clear across a mountainside. And Wu Yingjie might be weaker, but he was far from weak. The physical raw force in his blows was greater than even Yang Wei could muster, rivaling orange-crest's Stone Monkey's Body.
Orange-crest felt his fur pinch as one of Wu Yingjie's hands grabbed the scruff at the base of his neck. The other grabbed around one of his thighs. He flared his qi, burning away the suppressing talisman.
Wu Yingjie stepped forward, and spun. Once, then twice. Orange-crest watched the world twist, felt himself building speed. His stomach was in his throat. Xiao Shulan and Li Shuwen's faces were slack, too confused to even be shocked. He felt so alive, the world was so sharp and clear that could swear he could count every hair on the bat's stupid face.
Wu Yingjie heaved, and the monkey soared through the air.
The bat stared at him as if it could not believe what it was seeing. Then it flapped its wings and rose higher by a monkey's height.
Stupid bat, thinking it was so smart. Orange-crest threw his staff forward.
"Stop!" Orange-crest intoned. It felt so good to exert his qi, to take back control over the situation.
He still almost missed his moment. He was moving so quickly, even with his staff in front of him, that he only had a moment of contact before he flew past it. The spell shattered from the force of his leap, sending the weapon careening down into the abyss below.
But orange-crest's arc changed as he kicked off the immobilized staff, and he rose just that little bit higher. The monkey felt his paw close around the bat's stupid foot, and he pulled for all he was worth. The two of them spun together as the bat struggled to adapt to the unexpected anchor. Orange-crest climbed, heedless of the way they spun through the air, of sharp talons that gouged at his belly. He only had a single moment. He hugged the bat as tightly as he could, trying to ensure that no matter how they fell, one of its limbs would be the first thing to contact the ground.
And then he turned to stone.
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Xiao Shulan watched calmly as the monkey wrapped itself tightly around the Windtooth Bat. She already knew what was coming. Daoist Scouring Medicine's bestial disciple was creative, but predictable. It had tricks, but only a limited number of them.
Still, being unimpressed did not mean it was not satisfying to watch as the monkey hardened into a statue and dragged the other spirit beast down into the abyss with it. The daoist was not incorrect that calling forth lightning this deep beneath the earth would be almost as bad as Wu Yingjie's blood-soaked robes had been. She'd been on the edge of doing it anyway, before the monkey took action. This slow progress was doing them no favors either.
That fool Wu Yingjie thought that she was risking nothing by accompanying their party. That Grand Uncle Wenchuan would be accommodating if she broke the Leviathan's Scale imbued with his divine sense she kept in her storage ring.
He was wrong. She would allow the others to die before she called for aid. Even risk her own life, within reason. If the Fathomless Lord had to rescue her, she would be withdrawn from the sect.
Caged, until her wedding day.
"I see why you like the monkey so much." She told Disciple Yang Wei. "It reminds me a little of you as a child."
"I was not half so bereft of dignity."
"I suppose not. But that made your antics worse, not better."
Yang Wei winced, and said nothing. It was to his credit that he now understood his shame. The foolish young man was lucky that the 'Valiant Yang' were not half so demanding of their heirs as the Capital Xiao.
Xiao Shulan channeled qi into her slippers, feeling water part beneath her feet. She skipped weightlessly down the waterfall. Disciple Li Shuwen was not half so graceful, or half so quick, so she withdrew a light of her own from storage ring as she descended beyond his talisman's range.
She still needed Li Hou's master, so the monkey was not allowed to die yet. No matter what cliffs he threw himself off. She'd help him finish off the Windtooth Bat if she had to. Yang Wei was not the only one whose seniors let slip secrets they ought not. Grand Elder Shen. The daoist who had travelled further than any other. The Fathomless Lord had told her of his Horizon-Treading Steps and his Ten Thousand Skies Scripture, the techniques that would be at the core of his inheritance ground.
Techniques that would belong to her, and no other. Xiao Shulan would sooner marry Wu Yingjie than she would Wu Shoushan. At least the weaker sibling could be bent to her will as his Core Formation brother could not. If Xiao Shulan could not break her engagement, she would step off the edge of the map. One could not marry a woman who could not be found, after all.
And Xiao Shulan was not a bird destined for a cage.