Chương 431: Unending Peaks (V)

The third ring of the bell marked that our temporary 'imprisonment' was over. It had lasted all four days (and half of fifth), and I was kind of beginning to get sick of it, honestly. Which I found doubly strange as I was able to go weeks without leaving my room back on Earth. I never did, what with the great need to go to work and such, but I was able to.

Regardless, we were ushered out by a string of lights that formed a dotted line over the bridge of bricks that appeared out of thin air as soon as we stepped out of our abode. The door magically appeared where it wasn't before and pushed us out onto the bridge that stood about forty feet off the even steeper cliff beneath us, suspended midair just without any suspension cables or such. It didn't shake, like at all, as we began to move across it, step by step, while the view of our destination slowly opened up.

It was a round, massive clearing flanked by granular walls of white marble, some veined with an ashen hue. The walls themselves weren't flat or rigid, but rather curved in a full circle, growing taller and more shapely, culminating in the outline of a sword that cut directly across the entire clearing beneath it.

The clearing itself was dirt and stone mingling together, bereft of any life, with the highlight of the entire area being at its very center: a massive portal spinning in place, edges flaring out into sparks and embers, with a visage of a strange, ethereal land breaking through at the center. It stood just off the ground and appeared extremely tall, as I could make out the image therein even two or three miles away from it.

As we broke through the clouds, I suddenly saw literal hundreds of bridges emerge all around us, curving out and down like individual fingers towards the clearing. They all housed at least a few dozen people, making for a sight I'm unlikely to forget any time soon. At the same time, the sun broke past the mountains in the east, rising like a behemoth, its golden hue washing the entire world in warm colors. A spectacle was an understatement, yet I couldn't think of a better word. Not right now, anyway.

Past the walls curving around the clearing, I spotted a dozen or so identical, wooden pagodas shooting up at least a hundred feet or so into the air, terraced with curved and carved edges, lions and dragons and tigers and a litany of other animals appearing as statues or frames. The bridges themselves never quite connected to the clearing, ending abruptly about fifty yards or so from the destination, forcing people to jump down.

The whole thing was rather ethereal, what with the edges of the entire construction bleeding back into the clouds, offering only a glimpse of some kind of a lived-in city that remained hidden behind arrays and formations. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Even now, as we were walking, I spotted hundreds of little ants dotting the landscape of the clearing, flux of Qi drifting like a chaotic swirl of energies.

Nobody was fighting or even directly using their Qi save for when they were landing, but the sheer number of people seemed to have triggered some form of passive... discordance is the best work I can think of.

"Wow..." Xing Feng exclaimed as we reached about the halfway point to the end of our bridge, though all the kids save for Long Tao had rather incredulous expressions. I tried desperately to maintain mine, hanging by a thread. This is the kind of a sight that would have floored me even when I played games back on Earth, and now I was seeing it in person.

Though we've already been to fantastical places that defy description and majestic cities built in ways I'd never seen before, they were all rooted in a sense of reality--distorted though it was. This... this had no roots in anything I could understand.

Somehow, there was a plateaued clearing in the sky, surrounded by unending peaks, framed with a swirling, rising wall that shaped into a hanging sword that seemed more a guardian than a decoration, with hundreds of bridges floating in the sky without any rhyme or reason leading toward it, and a massive, beautiful portal spitting out jets of energy and wind and offering a glimpse into a world beyond this one. As nobody else was speeding up or tearing across the bridges, neither did we.

We took our sweet time, and it was just enough for me to just barely wrap my head around all this by the time we arrived at the edge. Long Tao was the first to leap off, doing so without any fanfare, and the rest of us followed right after, joining the locust swarm of people down below. There were really just that many of them--thousands, at the very least--though, to be fair, I imagine most would not be going into the portal. Speaking of it, its pull was rather... harsh, this up close.

Xing Feng and Rayce had to put up barriers, actually, simply not to be dragged forward. Sort of feels like a truly violent gust of wind constantly blowing in one direction, though never changing its velocity. I looked around briefly but didn't really recognize anyone; I mean, there were literal acres of land here, and it wasn't as though I could just project my Divine Sense to check everyone out.

Besides, of the thousands present, I could probably recognize a dozen or two, at the most, so the chances of them being anywhere near us are... well, low.

"It's really... big..." the newcomer, Zhou Yun, spoke up, her eyes glued to the portal. It really was. I had to crane my neck all the way to see its top, as it stood at around five hundred feet tall. Nobody came within a hundred yards of it or so, keeping distance, where the sparks of energy would occasionally fall and flare up into small, soundless explosions. Being here sort of reminded me of going to the Comeback with my dad. I was, what? Maybe five? Or six?

I didn't even like football that much at the time, but that night... I never could forget it. There were almost 80, 000 people screaming at the top of their lungs, me included. The whole thing was beyond overwhelming, and though there weren't ground-shaking roars here as there were in that stadium, I feel as small and insignificant today as I did back in that place. Just a tiny dot in the sea of shadows looming over me.

I remember my dad hoisting me onto his shoulders throughout the entire overtime, and I remember bouncing up and down, and I remember the absolute explosion of cheers when the game ended. Silence here was an inversion of it, but the scale... was appropriate. The former, however, was broken about half an hour or so after we landed, with an aged yet composed voice breaking out from the sky itself.

"Welcome, Fellow Daoists," it said.

"To the Plateau of First Fire, where once the legendary Phoenix underwent its rebirth, leaving behind a singular plume that gave birth to everything that you see."