Chương 39

Lodin sat down on a broad flat rock at the edge of the reeds, and took in the sight of Wandering Flame's sanctum. They had come to a lagoon on the southwestern coast of Huidao, the water a green so dark it was nearly black. Long-legged herons walked among the thick reeds lining the shore, and bald cypress trees rose from the shallows on gnarled roots, their branches draped in vines that trailed to the waterline. The chatter of birds and insects and frogs filled the air from every direction.

All of that was the backdrop for an immense statue in the center of the lagoon. It was larger than Tianlong Castle. Larger than the barren hill where the Shattered Summit Sect had carved out their compound. The sheer mass of it stalled Lodin's thoughts for a moment, because nothing built by human hands had a right to be that size, and the shadow it threw across the water reached almost to the shore where he sat.

The figure that broke the surface had a lion's body and head, with two long horns that curved back from its mane and broad eagle's wings folded against its flanks. Taloned feet gripped the thing beneath it, and a reptilian tail swept behind, half lost in moss and vine. Its jaws were open, frozen mid-roar, aimed down at the face of the creature pinned under its forepaws. The creature beneath was even more of a monstrosity.

A massive eel-like body lay in coils across the water, and from its hide stone eyeballs sprouted at irregular intervals, bulbous and round. Legs and arms of different sizes and shapes jutted from its body, bent at wrong angles, carved with a precision that emphasized the wrongness of it all. Three of its twelve eyes had the winged lion's claws buried in them, and the remaining nine stared out across the lagoon in every direction. Moss and vines covered the upper figure in patches.

The lower one was half-submerged in the dark water of the lagoon. Across the water, on a rock that jutted from the shallows near the far shore, a second statue sat. Odoshinko the Wanderer, cross-legged, hands on his knees, his stone face turned toward the immense monument at the center of the lagoon. This rendition of The Wanderer was the size of a normal man, and the difference in scale between the two statues made him resemble an insect contemplating a mountain.

"Anshavar's triumph over Thurakethru," said Elder Wa, as he took a seat by Lodin's side. The great frog settled his bulk against the stone and produced his pipe. He packed it, lit it, and drew a long breath before he spoke again. Behind him, their group was setting up camp; Sarin Jeida had come, and Dae Han and Akiyama Shin, along with Mayari Lakan, Jorin Shen, and a small group of inner disciples from their sects. Lodin gave Elder Wa a sidelong look.

"They look fearsome." Elder Wa laughed.

"Indeed they were." He gestured toward the statue with the stem of his pipe.

"For untold aeons, Thurakethru of the Thousand Dread Ancients swam through the lightless abyss between worlds, devouring them the way a serpent swallows eggs. Until the day he dared approach the seat of Lord Anshavar, eldest of the Great Primordials." Elder Wa's pipe glowed as he drew on it, and when he exhaled the smoke blew out over the dark water before them.

"Their battle raged across many worlds, and ended here. Lord Anshavar drove the Dread Ancient into the ground with such force that the land split and the sea rushed in to fill the wound. He pinned it with his forepaws, gouged out three of its twelve eyes, and roared into its face until the bones of this world shook beneath them." Lodin picked up a smooth, dark rock, turned it over in his hand and looked at it. Perhaps this stone was here all those aeons ago.

Perhaps it was a remnant of an ancient battle between world-destroying monsters.

"So this is a place of ancient significance," he said.

"Is that why Wandering Flame chose it for a home?" The old frog smiled shrewdly. He puffed on his pipe, and was quiet for a moment.

"Do you see that smaller statue there," said Wa. Lodin nodded.

"That's Odoshinko, right?" Elder Wa nodded.

"It is said that in his youth, Odoshinko witnessed the titanic struggles of the Great Primordials and the Thousand Dread Ancients and was inspired to create the arts of cultivation." Lodin eyed the water, wound up, and threw the rock so that it skipped off the surface endlessly, at such a speed that the rock itself could not be seen, only the ripples it left in the water.

"So Odoshinko created the arts of cultivation, figured out how to travel between worlds, traveled around and discovered them all. Then he conquered them, built the empire, ruled over it and then eventually he renounced the whole thing and retired into the life of an ascetic before ascending to divinity. Guy was busy." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Elder Wa chuckled and puffed his pipe.

"If the legends are to be believed." Lodin side-eyed him.

"Do you believe them?" Elder Wa puffed on his pipe and considered the question.

"Odoshinko certainly existed," he said.

"And he was indeed a remarkable individual. But perhaps he stood at the confluence of many great developments. Perhaps history took the works of a thousand authors and gave them a single name." Lodin nodded, and glanced around for another rock to skip, but there were none. For a few moments the two of them sat and listened to the song of the marsh. He glanced at Elder Wa, saw that the old frog's eyes were closed.

"The spirit of Wandering Flame is restless," he said. Lodin raised an eyebrow.

"It's here?"

"Of course it's here, this was his home. Can you not feel his presence?"

"My spiritual senses aren't great."

"Nonsense. You can do it, you just need instruction." Lodin felt a prickle of anger at that, as if Master Yan hadn't given him adequate training. But his training had been a bit rushed at the end there, given what happened with Lorn.

"Okay, fine. Show me how." Elder Wa smiled.

"Sit up straight, lotus posture, hands in chin mudra, touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Begin by simply breathing. Slowly. In and out through the nostrils. Let your mind empty, let the sounds of the forest fill the space." Lodin did as instructed. With his eyes closed, the feel of the humid air on his skin intensified. As did the grassy, earthy scent of the lagoon, and the sounds of living things all around them, the birds, the insects.

He became aware of the distant sound of waves hitting the shore at the far end of the lagoon, distinct from the gentler sound of the water lapping at the stone they sat upon.

"Good," Elder Wa said.

"Now, visualize your Roots. Feel their power. Imagine the shape of them, construct an image of them in your mind." The power of his Roots was not difficult to find. They stood at the center of his consciousness, nine cables coiled around each other, blackened by a steady diet of void qi from the technique of the Saxifrage Monks.

Lodin imagined it like a great tree trunk, subtly expanding and contracting as he breathed, dotted here and there by glowing lacerations, as if his Roots were a mass of muscle in a constant state of breakdown and repair.

"Yes, good…" said the old frog.

"Next, you must plant your Roots in the ground. Feel the forest around you, hear it, smell it. Place yourself on the rock, in the water, in the reeds." Lodin's mouth creased into a subtle frown. He tried to imagine himself as his Roots, but the mental image of his body kept getting in the way. He maintained the slow and steady pace of his breathing, and tried again. And again.

"Begin with your hands," Wa said.

"Forget they exist. Let them dissolve. Then your arms. Then your shoulders, your chest, your legs. Piece by piece, let the image of your earthly form fall away until all that remains is the center. The Roots." Lodin tried to let the image of his hands go. It didn't really work. He could still feel them rested on his knees, his hands in chin mudra. His perception of his hands felt especially keen in fact, since his attention was focused on them.

He could feel the calluses on his palms and knuckles, the dull, persistent ache of the innumerable fractures that had fortified the small bones of his hands over the course of his training. He tried for a long time. Elder Wa said nothing, and the silence between them stretched over the lagoon and let the sounds of the marsh fill the space between them. Lodin failed, and failed, and failed, and at some point the repeated frustration burned his will down to stubborn embers.

He stopped trying to dissolve his body, or do anything specific at all. He just sat, and breathed, and after a while his mind grew quiet. Evidently Elder Wa sensed the stillness of his mind.

"Become aware of your Roots once more," he said.

"Place them where you sit. Right here, upon this rock." At first the image resisted. His Roots were inside his mind, and the rock was outside him, and the boundary between the two was what it was. Real versus conceptual. He breathed. Let his mind stay quiet. Eventually the boundary began to feel less like a boundary. His thoughts were as real as anything around him. As were his Roots, his Gates, his Seals, his soul. The task was not to become his Roots, or to erase his body.

It was to see through the illusion of separation between them. And when he did, his Roots sank into the stone. It was cool and dense, a pressure against his mind that gave way in slow degrees. The deeper he went, the less the stone beneath him felt like a solid object and the more it like a current, a deep slow pull that drew him outward the way the flow of a river draws a leaf. He followed it. And then he felt it. It was everywhere.

So vast and so quiet that he had been inside it for some time before he recognized it as something separate from the marsh itself. A presence that saturated the stone beneath the lagoon, the water above it, the roots of every tree, the air. Old beyond reckoning, and so pervasive that the frogs and herons and insects lived inside it the way fish live inside the sea, unaware of the medium that held them. This was Wandering Flame.

The dragon was grievously wounded but it wore its wound with dignity, though its presence carried a deep sadness that pervaded the lagoon. And Elder Wa was right. It was uneasy, anxious. Lodin felt a pang of shock that mere moments ago he hadn't been able to perceive such a strong spiritual presence, such powerful emotions all around him. Maybe the presence of the elder beast by his side was helping. Whatever the cause, Lodin had no choice but to sit in awe of it for a moment. But then something else stirred.

Lodin felt it at the same moment the herons took flight from the lagoon, and the chatter of wildlife suddenly went silent. Even the sounds of water halted, hushed. And the sense of anxiety in the spirit of Wandering Flame swelled. Lodin shivered as an unnatural chill swept through the air. It lingered, and what followed were the loud, crackling, sizzling sounds of an entire lagoon becoming a frozen lake in a matter of moments. He heard commotion in the camp, the sounds of drawn weapons.

"I believe our guests have arrived," said Elder Wa.