Chương 124: Chapter 123: Buzz Buzz

He picked a direction randomly and started walking. The first thing he noticed was the qi itself. He had felt it from the air even before landing, but walking deeper into the peak was a different experience from standing at the ridge. In the rest of the inner sect the qi was denser and richer than the outer sect. Here it was both of those things and more. Here the qi felt alive. That was the only word he could find for it. It breathed.

It rose from the soil and the roots of trees, filtered through leaves, settled into the flowers, and returned again in a cycle that had presumably been running for centuries if not millennia. It pressed against his spiritual sense not as ambient qi to be absorbed but as something different. He lacked the words to describe it properly. The closest he could get was to say it felt active, as opposed to the passive qi he was used to everywhere else. He walked further in.

Ancient trees with trunks wider than his arm span stood at intervals, their canopies enormous. Smaller plants grew along the path, some he recognised from his months with Senior Brother Xu Wei's garden, his library visits, and Senior Brother Lin Yi's manuals. Most he did not. Flowering vines ran up the large trunks, their blooms in various shades, the growth layering on itself until it was difficult to see where one plant ended and another began. Some of the plants were moving.

He noticed it first at the edge of his vision and assumed wind. There was no wind. He stopped and looked directly at a cluster of long-leafed plants whose fronds were swaying in a slow pattern, the same motion repeating. Then a vine on a tree to his left shifted, not falling or wind-moved but turning, orienting itself toward the light similar to how a snake moves its body. Conscious movement. Some of these plants could move intentionally. He watched the vine for a few minutes.

Then it curled itself up onto a branch and Yang stared at it because the motion had been unmistakably. The vine was behaving as if shy. What a vine had to be shy about he could not say. He turned his face away anyway, not uneasy with making anyone uncomfortable, even a sentient vine. He had gone perhaps another twenty minutes in when a sound reached him. Music.

Faint at first, then clearer as he followed the path toward it, a soft continuous chiming like running a wet finger around the rim of crystal glasses each at a slightly different pitch. He turned a corner around a large root formation and found them. Bell-shaped flowers, dozens of them, hung from arching stems in every colour he could think of. Deep red, pale yellow, bright blue. Each one was hollow, and as the air moved between them they rang against each other, the sound clear and unhurried.

He stood and listened for longer than he intended, enjoying the music created by the plants. An insect flew close to him, and at the buzzing of the insect, he jolted out of his immersion. He was a bit wary of the plant now. The music had distracted him so thoroughly that he found that he was unaware of how close he had gotten to the plant. He quickly took a few steps back and looked around. The clearing was full of them, small ones and not-so-small ones, moving between the flowers in purposeful patterns.

A large iridescent blue dragonfly was paused on a nearby leaf, watching him with an attention insects were not supposed to have. Then something bumped his hair. He reached up automatically and found nothing. Then it happened again, a soft pressure just behind his left ear, something warm and rounded nudging against the side of his head. He turned. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. The bee was roughly the size of his fist.

It was round like the cartoon bees from his first life, improbably fluffy, with enormous eyes that took up most of its face. Eyes more suitable on a puppy than an insect. It hovered at exactly his eye level and regarded him. Then it bumped him again. Deliberately, using the side of its body against the top of his head. Yang stood very still. He had no technique for communicating with spirit insects and no training in beast cultivation. But the impression he was getting was entirely clear. It was playing with him.

He was being bullied by an insect. An adorable, enormous, improbably fuzzy insect with puppy dog eyes and absolutely no respect for personal space, but the intention was unmistakable. The bee drifted sideways, circled him once at a leisurely pace, then came back to bump the side of his head again with what could only be described as satisfaction.

"I am a cultivator," he said, to the bee. The bee bumped him a fourth time. As they walked further in Yang tried to ignore the bee constantly buzzing around his head, but it refused to stop. He would have been far more irritated if it had not been so obviously delighted with itself. One would have to have a heart of stone to be truly angry with a creature like this.

He passed through several areas of the peak that were sealed or simply invisible behind what he recognised as formation barriers and left them alone as Senior Brother Wu Nai had suggested. He came across a manicured area where particular herbs were cultivated in tended beds, none of which he recognised, and crouched near each one to look more carefully. When he stood and continued toward the right the bee intensified its bumping, nudging him persistently toward the left instead.

Yang tried to continue in his chosen direction. The bee bumped his head three times in rapid succession.

"Fine," he said.

"Let us see where you want to take me." The bee's reaction to being understood was visible even on its insect face. It turned and set off along a less-used pathway. Yang followed, squeezing through spots where the growth closed in near enough that he had to turn sideways. After almost an hour of climbing higher on the peak, the path opened into a large clear area with wide trees. Then the buzzing hit him. A swarm.

hundreds, possibly thousands of the same fluffy round bees, all roughly the same fist-sized dimensions as his guide, surrounding him from every direction. His original escort had apparently brought him home. The swarm herded him with cheerful collective purpose toward the largest tree Yang had ever seen. An enormous old thing, its trunk the width of a small building, its canopy blocking most of the sky above the clearing.

Attached to its trunk was a hive roughly a dozen times Yang's body, the surface of it a deep amber with a slight sheen. Yang held his ground, uncertain. He did not want to get closer to the hive. He did not know what the bees wanted and he did not want to damage anything or have anything done to him. The swarm continued to nudge him forward. He continued to stay where he was. A deadlock.

"They want to make a trade." Yang turned toward the voice. An elder was standing at the edge of the clearing watching him with an unpleasant expression on his face. Yang gave a slight bow.

"A trade, Elder?"

"These bees feed on qi and use it to produce spirit honey. Most of the time they feed on spirit plants. Occasionally they take a liking to a cultivator or spirit beast and want to feed on their qi instead."

"Feed on my qi?" Yang asked alarmed and looked at the swarm with new eyes.

"Don't look so horrified." The elder rolled his eyes.

"They are hardly asking for your life force. They are offering their honey in exchange. It is a trade." Yang looked at the bees warily and took a step back.

"It is a treasure, their honey," the elder added grumpily, noticing his hesitation.

"Many cultivators would consider themselves fortunate for the chance. They will not harm you even if you don't agree to the exchange." Yang considered this.

"Elder, what is the honey used for?"

"It is spirit honey. Used in spirit food, alchemy, consumed directly. Aids cultivation and is particularly precious at bottlenecks." The elder looked Yang over with poorly concealed scorn.

"Not that you need to worry about that. You are barely a cultivator." Yang was too far down the hierarchy to be offended. He let it pass. What use is face? Can you cultivate it? Back to the treasure honey.

"Elder, I do not have a container for the honey." The elder turned to look at him with an expression that suggested Yang had just confirmed every low expectation he had ever held about him. Then he turned to the bees.

"This is what you want?" he said flatly, his tone making it clear he was giving them one last chance to reconsider. The swarm buzzed with unanimous enthusiasm. The elder closed his eyes briefly.

"I feed you the finest spirit feed on this peak," he said to the bees, in the tone of a man betrayed, "and you want to feed on cultivation scraps." Yang took none of this personally. The honey was a treasure and the insult was free. The Elder was welcome to throw more at him as long as it came with an advantage. The elder produced a small crystal vial and tossed it at Yang without looking. Yang caught it.

"Elder," Yang said with a smile, "how do I feed them? Already expecting a vitriolic comeback.