Chương 179: The Good Old Days

One moment Leo was flying blind through clouds so thick he couldn't see the red glow of his Sunshifter. The next he punched through into open air, and the Silvercrest Mountains spread beneath him like something out of a scroll painting. Seven peaks rose from a sea of white fog, their granite faces catching the morning light. Waterfalls threaded down from snowfields, disappearing into the clouds below. And at the center of it all, Skyhome. The mountain dominated the territory.

Fourteen thousand feet of white granite climbing toward a crown of ice. The Nesting Spires rose from its summit ridge, natural pillars of rock where the eldest cranes kept their cultivation caves. Formation barriers shimmered faintly around the highest spires, layered defenses that had protected this place for centuries. Leo slowed his approach and dropped altitude, circling wide over the outlying peaks.

Below him, terraced slopes of T2 wheat caught the morning light, the stalks just beginning their shift from summer green to harvest gold. Leo had read Vivian's email three times during the flight over. The one about the trade they were arranging with the U. S. military. For generations, the Silvercrest Cranes had sent their spiritual soil away. They'd shipped it to Beast King territory where their overlords farmed spiritual wheat in exchange for a substantial cut of the harvest.

A bad deal, but the cranes couldn't farm their own spiritual soil, so they had no choice but to take it. A year and a half ago, Leo's team had changed that. They'd recorded thousands of hours of song and dance, fed it to Cranesong AI, and produced farming arrays that cranes could actually use to farm T2 spiritual wheat. Now they would do the same thing for T3, with the U. S. military picking up the tab for compute. And since Leo was the only one with omnidirectional awareness, he was back on recording duty.

He banked toward Skyhome. The mountain was home to most of the clan, thousands of cranes nesting in caves along its slopes, and Leo had learned to expect a welcome committee before he crossed the inner peaks. The curious fledglings always spotted visitors first. Any second now, a pair of young cranes would break from formation and sweep toward him. They always did. They'd call out in their whistling language, circle him twice, and escort their featherless friend to their home. Leo waited.

The mountain grew larger before him. Still no fledglings. Instead, sharp whistles cut through the mountain air. Commands. The crane equivalent of a drill sergeant barking orders. Squads moved in tight formations above the slopes, Foundation Establishment signatures wheeling through combat maneuvers. When one crane drifted out of position, a harsh trill snapped it back into line. Leo counted at least thirty squads drilling in the airspace around Skyhome alone.

Larger battalions practiced dive attacks on the outer peaks. Wingbeats filled the valley, hundreds of birds moving in lockstep, their rhythm as steady as boots on stone. Leo's chest tightened. Vivian's email had warned him about the political situation. The war in the western provinces pushed more refugees into the Savage Mountains every month, and territorial beasts were killing them. A few skirmishes had already escalated into all-out battles It made sense. The cranes couldn't afford to be careless anymore.

Every human who entered beast territory was a potential threat. Even their old friend Leo Chen. He touched down on the Assembly Plateau. The flat expanse was empty except for a single figure waiting at its center. Lord Flockfeather stood in human form, tall and angular, his silver-white hair and golden crown catching the mountain wind. His expression was unreadable. Leo stepped off Sunshifter and bowed.

"Lord Flockfeather."

"Leo Chen." The patriarch inclined his head. His voice carried that distinctive whistling undertone that all cranes shared when speaking human tongues.

"You arrive at a delicate time." Leo glanced toward the drilling squads overhead.

"I noticed."

"The winds have shifted since your last visit. Certain matters demand..." Flockfeather paused, searching for the right phrase.

"... a guarded tongue." Leo nodded slowly. The political situation must be worse than Vivian's email had suggested.

"Follow me," Flockfeather said.

"We will speak somewhere more private." They flew deeper into the mountain. A squad of Foundation Establishment cranes fell into formation behind them. Eight birds in a wedge formation, their divine sense locked onto Leo. Escort. Or guard. Leo couldn't tell which. They descended into a narrow valley where the morning light barely reached. At its end, carved into the base of a cliff, stood a pair of massive stone doors. The Great Hall. Leo had heard of it but never seen it.

The Silvercrest Clan's most secure meeting chamber, used only for matters of the highest importance. Flockfeather landed before the doors. Leo touched down beside him. The patriarch turned to the escort squad. His voice shifted into the whistling language of the cranes, a rapid series of melodic commands that Leo couldn't follow. The Foundation Establishment squad leader responded with a low trill, something that sounded almost like protest. Flockfeather's crown flared brighter. The squad leader went silent.

All eight cranes bowed their heads, wings folding tight against their bodies, and launched back toward the valley's entrance.

"They will guard the approach," Flockfeather said.

"What transpires within these walls is not for Foundation Establishment eyes." The doors swung open. Then torchlight. Then noise, a wall of it, and over everything else, one voice Leo knew too well.

"... and the black fire filled the sky. Ten thousand arrows of iron and flame. Any lesser warrior would have turned back." Arthur. The old man had learned Common at some point. Hopefully that wouldn't be a problem. Cranes filled every surface. Perched on pillars, clustered around low tables, sprawled across cushions in postures that would have gotten a human Gold Core laughed out of any respectable sect. Several of them held jugs. One appeared to be wearing a hat made of wheat stalks.

And at the center of it all, Arthur stood on a table. He had a jug in one hand and an audience of two dozen Gold Cores arranged in a half-circle, their long necks craned forward, hanging on every word.

"But not Leo Chen." The cranes trilled. Then Arthur's eyes found the doors.

"There he is!" His arm swung around, jug and all, sloshing beer across a Superior who did not appear to mind.

"The man of the hour! The Buffalo-Slayer himself! LEO CHEN!" Three hundred cranes turned to look at Leo. Silence. Then wings rose. Hundreds of them. They beat against stone in a thunderous rhythm that shook dust from the rafters. Leo's eyes swept the hall for something that made sense. They found a crimson banner hanging from the far wall. Leo Chen stormed the Buffalo Demon fortress alone. All fell before his blade.

"What," Leo said.

"A feast in your honor." Flockfeather appeared beside him. The patriarch was smirking. Leo had never seen Flockfeather smirk.

"Word of your victory against the Buffalo Bills reached us three days ago." The chanting started. It was supposed to be his name. What came out was a shrieking, grinding screech.

"EEE-OOHH. EEE-OOHH. EEE-OOHH." Leo turned to Flockfeather for help. Flockfeather was chanting too. Two Gold Core cranes dropped from the pillars. Talons closed around Leo's shoulders and hoisted him above the crowd before he could protest. He had prepared for border hostility. Diplomatic tension. Negotiations. Being carried by drunk immortal birds while three hundred of their friends screeched his name had not been on the list. His mouth fell open in shock.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. A third crane took this as an invitation. The funnel was already in his mouth before he registered what was happening. Cold liquid hit the back of his throat. He had two options: swallow or drown. He swallowed.

"CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!" Mike's voice. Leo caught a glimpse of him plowing through the crowd with a jug in each hand, a procession of cranes waddling behind him in single file. They tried to join the chant. It came out as SKREE SKREE SKREE. Leo's throat worked. The funnel gurgled. The hall screamed. The funnel came away empty. He hung in the grip of two spiritual beasts, gasping, foam on his chin, his first beer sitting in his stomach. His first drink. He'd imagined this moment. A quiet evening, maybe.

Friends around a table. Time to actually taste the thing before swallowing. Instead he'd been funneled like a goose being fattened for slaughter, and the only flavor he'd registered was cold and wet and too much. The Great Hall detonated. Wings hammered stone. The EEE-OHH screech redoubled until the pillars seemed to vibrate. And Leo, dangling, dazed, betrayed by every adult in the room, did the only thing that made sense. He raised one fist. The cranes lost their minds.

The next hour arrived in fragments. There was a second funnel. Possibly a third. There was a stretch where Leo stood on a table teaching two dozen Gold Core cranes to do the wave, a maneuver that was infectious and spread around the room. However there was still work to do. Leo found a pillar to lean against and cycled his qi, burning the alcohol out of his blood to sober up. Outside, a thousand cranes were drilling for war. Inside, their elders were doing keg stands.

Something didn't add up, and nobody had given him a straight answer yet. He scanned the hall for someone who might actually help and spotted a familiar figure across the room. Shen Tianyi sat at a low table surrounded by Gold Core cranes. He spoke rapidly in crane language, gesturing with both hands. Leo made his way through the crowd, dodging cranes who tried to press more jugs into his hands. He reached Tianyi's table and dropped onto an empty cushion.

"Tianyi. What the hell is going on?" Tianyi's expression froze.

"Leo Chen." His voice went cold.

"I need you to explain something. Outside, every crane in the territory is drilling. Inside, everyone's drunk and celebrating. What am I missing?" Tianyi turned back to the Gold Core cranes and said something in their whistling language. They trilled responses that sounded like laughter.

"Tianyi."

"This one regrets that he cannot assist."

"What? Why not?" Tianyi's jaw tightened.

"Perhaps Leo Chen should search his memory. The events at the Western Seat. The consequences this one endured when Leo Chen followed instruction with the wisdom of a stone rolling downhill." Leo winced. The crayon incident. Right. Tianyi had handed him the crayon. Tianyi had told him to draw bottom to top. Leo had simply followed directions. He opened his mouth to say so, then caught the look on Tianyi's face. Right. Shen Zhaowen had made Tianyi pay for the crayon incident.

Months of kowtowing and lighting incense for his ancestors in a cold room without heating formations. Somewhere between the hundredth prostration and the two hundredth, Tianyi must had forgotten whose crayon it was in the first place. There was no point in arguing. Leo studied Tianyi's black hair instead, searching for threads of grey. Tianyi's eyes narrowed.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for signs of dementia." Tianyi slammed his wine cup onto the table. The Gold Core cranes around them went quiet.

"I am in my thirties, Leo. My thirties."

"Your memory says otherwise."

"This one's memory is pristine." Tianyi rose from the table, his black robes swirling.

"This one remembers exactly who disgraced the Shen family formation lineage with a child's drawing implement." He swept away before Leo could suggest he start writing things down. Leo sat alone at the table, surrounded by Gold Core cranes who were now eyeing him with renewed curiosity. One of them trilled something that sounded like a question.

"I don't speak crane," Leo said. The crane trilled again, more insistently.

"Still don't speak crane." A heavy arm dropped onto Leo's shoulder.

"LEO!" Mike's voice boomed across the table.

"You made it!" Leo turned. Mike Ross stood behind him, flushed and grinning, a ceramic jug clutched in one massive hand. His eyes had the glaze of someone who'd been celebrating for hours.

"Mike. Thank god. What is happening here?"

"Party!" Mike gestured expansively at the hall.

"For you! Arthur's been telling them about your games. The stories get better every time." He paused.

"I think in the current version you killed a dragon."

"I flew past a thousand cranes drilling combat formations. Half of them looked at me like I was a potential enemy combatant." Leo gestured at the Gold Core cranes currently toasting each other with Mike's beer.

"Now I'm watching their elders get drunk with humans. What's going on?"

"Outside is training." Mike waved dismissively.

"Inside is party. Two different things."

"That doesn't explain anything."

"Oh yeah, Flockfeather's looking for you. He's got some kind of issue with Stonehaven. Brought it up like three times this week. Asked if you had any connections with the sects, what you knew about their leadership." Leo frowned. His first thought was Arthur. If someone in Stonehaven had a grievance with the cranes, Arthur was the most likely reason. Mike didn't notice the silence.

"Anyway. I'll tell you a secret." He leaned in close. His breath smelled like beer.

"The key to understanding cranes is learning their language. And the key to learning their language is alcohol."

"What?" Mike straightened up and called out something in perfect crane language. His pronunciation was flawless, the whistling undertones hitting harmonics Leo's throat couldn't produce. Several Gold Core cranes nearby responded with approving trills.

"See?" Mike beamed.

"Easy. The spiritual alcohol loosens something in your throat. Lets you hit the high notes."

"Mike, I need to know why..."

"Here, try it." Mike thrust his jug toward Leo.

"Just take a big drink and then say this." He demonstrated another phrase in crane language. It sounded like someone teaching a songbird to yodel. Leo set down Mike's jug. There. In a shadowed alcove near the back wall. Lord Flockfeather stood with three other Nascent Soul cranes, all of them in human form, clustered around something that cast pale light onto their faces. Their expressions were focused. Leo crossed the hall.

Mike called something after him in crane language that drew appreciative whistles from the nearest table. Leo didn't look back. As Leo approached, he could see what had captured the Nascent Souls' attention. A scrying ball. The sphere showed an aerial view of the training grounds outside, where squads of cranes wheeled through combat drills. Flockfeather glanced up as Leo approached. Instead of dismissing him, the patriarch shifted slightly, making room.

"You seem troubled, Leo Chen." Leo glanced at the scrying ball. Whatever Flockfeather wanted to talk to him about Stonehaven, it could wait. First he wanted to know what was going on outside.

"I'm confused. Outside, your entire younger generation is drilling like the end times are coming. I thought human-beast relations were deteriorating." Leo gestured to the party around him.

"None of this makes sense." One of the other Nascent Souls spoke.

"Leo Chen." She sounded amused.

"You and your friends do not think like other humans. Do not walk like other humans. Do not talk like other humans." She tilted her head, a bird-like gesture that looked strange on a human face.

"We are not so blind that we cannot tell the difference." Leo opened his mouth. Closed it. Flockfeather laughed.

"If your work with the human military succeeds, my clan will possess T3 spiritual wheat in quantities we have never seen. We have already begun preparations. The Beast Kings have agreed to supply us with doses of the Summit Convergence Elixir." The Summit Convergence Elixir. The medicine that enabled Foundation Establishment cultivators to attempt to form their Gold Core.

"How many doses?" Leo asked.

"Two hundred." Leo gasped. Two hundred doses of breakthrough medicine. Up to two hundred Foundation Establishment cranes advancing to Gold Core. The Silvercrest Clan had roughly four hundred Gold Cores.

"That's centuries of advancement," Leo said slowly.

"All at once."

"Now you understand why the younger generation train so diligently." Flockfeather smirked. The pieces clicked together. The cranes outside weren't preparing just for war. They were auditioning. Every maneuver, every formation exercise was part of a selection process that would determine who rose and who stayed behind.

"And the group formation I'm supposed to design," Leo said.

"The one that lets Gold Cores fight at the Nascent Soul level. That's for them. The two hundred."

"You set things in motion, Leo Chen." Flockfeather smiled.

"You provide the opportunity for the younger generation to break through. You design the formations they will wield in battle. You have become rather central to the future of my clan." Leo stared at the training cranes. Young cultivators pushing themselves to their limits, competing for a chance that Leo's work had made possible. He hadn't fully understood what the T3 Cranesong project meant. He'd thought of it as a trade. A way to turn otherworld knowledge into resources for personal cultivation.

Instead, he was reshaping the balance of power in the Savage Mountains.

"Two years ago, I did not believe you could teach cranes to till wheat." Flockfeather's crown feathers ruffled.

"Now I have learned from you. And I am teaching my cranes to play soldier."

The celebration wound down. Mike was passed out against a pillar, his snoring harmonizing with the low trills of the cranes around him. Kevin sat cross-legged on a cushion, methodically folding talisman paper into crane shapes while three actual cranes watched with what appeared to be professional critique. Arthur was gone. Leo didn't want to know where.

"Leo Chen." Flockfeather materialized beside him.

"Walk with me." They left the Great Hall through a side passage. Flockfeather walked in silence for several minutes. Leo followed, his steps slightly uneven on the polished stone. They emerged onto a small ledge overlooking the eastern slopes. The moon hung low over the peaks, turning the wheat terraces silver.

"I wished to discuss this privately," Flockfeather said.

"Away from my council. Away from your companions." Leo leaned against the stone railing. The night air helped clear his head.

"A group of human cultivators approached my border patrols three weeks ago." Flockfeather's voice had lost its earlier warmth.

"They came from Stonehaven." Leo's fingers tightened on the railing.

"They carried trade goods. Spiritual herbs. Low-grade formation materials. The usual offerings humans bring when they want something from beasts." Flockfeather paused.

"And one item that was unusual." He reached into the sleeve of his robe and produced a storage pouch. From it, he took out a clay container roughly the size of a rice bowl, sealed with wax and stamped with a character Leo didn't recognize. Flockfeather broke the seal and tilted the container toward Leo. Inside was dirt. A fistful of rich, brown-gray soil that caught the moonlight with a faint inner luminescence. Leo's breath stopped. He knew that soil. He had dug it with his own hands. T4 spiritual soil.

From Scatterstraw's wheat field.

"Where did they get this?" Leo's voice came out flat. He already knew the answer. The last time he'd visited the profundity, he'd found dozens of fresh excavation holes. Abandoned shovels. Wheelbarrows with their identification marks filed off. The tools survived. Their owners didn't. The sects of Stonehaven were sending their disciples into the fog. Trading lives for soil. And now they were trying to sell it to the cranes.