Chương 5: Empty Nest

After the council finished, the High Priest kept Gu Zhiwei behind. The others filed out one by one. Matt went to make preparations for the journey, and Su Ye followed a priest's attendant off to ready the offerings for the Rite. The door curtain fell.

"Child, give me your hand." The High Priest's voice was very gentle. Gu Zhiwei did as she was told. The bone staff touched down lightly on her palm. A warm force traveled up from her hand and stopped somewhere near her brow. The faint, nagging pressure that had lingered since her meditation in the Sacred Spring swelled larger; the sound of the wind outside sharpened, and even the small dry rasp of vines and leaves rubbing against the tree house came pouring into her head. She drew her mind in without thinking.

The sounds receded again. The High Priest watched her.

"I sensed it last night. Your soul is waking up." Gu Zhiwei was curious.

"And after it wakes up?"

"You will hear the voice of all things." The High Priest lifted her bone staff toward the clay bowl of water.

"Water remembers every place it has passed. Trees know which of their roots is rotting. The wind carries back news from far away. A truly powerful priest can borrow their eyes and feel the breathing of the mountains and the land." Gu Zhiwei thought of the Spirit value on her panel. Twenty-four points. A hair short of C-rank.

"Do cloud beasts count as part of all things?"

"Of course."

"For some reason, they don't want to come near me." The High Priest laughed softly, her fingertip stroking the white feather at the head of her staff.

"Hearing and speaking are two different things. This force in you is strong, and you don't know how to control it. Right now it protects you without meaning to. It wraps your soul up. The young ones can't touch you, so naturally they back away." Wonderful. So the cloud beasts braking in that last inch had been them smacking into a wall of spirit-force she'd built with her own two hands. Cranking up her own difficulty setting, legit. The High Priest went on.

"This power is rarer than the ability to speak with cloud beasts. And more precious. This Cloud Sea continent has gone many years without a priest who could speak with all things. I sent you into the Sacred Spring so that you might try to comb through this newborn force." She paused.

"There is another scent about you. I felt it once, a very long time ago. But it is too faint. I can't read it clearly." Gu Zhiwei looked at her.

"What scent?" The High Priest didn't go on. She rose and walked into the depths of the tree house, and took a bow down from an altar. The bow was shorter than an ordinary longbow, its color close to silver-white, the grip wound with dark blue sinew from some animal Gu Zhiwei couldn't name. The tips hadn't been shaved into the usual curve; instead they kept two thin forked twigs, each hung with a hollow stone bead.

"It is called Windlisten. The last High Priest of this tribe who had your gift once carried it." Gu Zhiwei took the bow. The moment her palm met the wood, the stone beads sounded with no wind to move them. Tok. Somewhere deep in her mind a string seemed to be plucked in answer. The grain of the bow clarified with each breath she took, giving off faint points of firefly light. She could even feel a thread of joy coming off the wood, as though it were delighted to be woken again.

And beneath that, a thread of confusion. The sensation lasted only an instant. Gu Zhiwei loosened her grip a little, and the connection thinned away. The High Priest watched it all happen and nodded, smiling.

"Learn to use your new power to control it," she said.

"It will turn an ordinary arrow into a weapon nothing can match."

"You really want to give me something this valuable?" Gu Zhiwei wasn't sure. That drew another soft laugh, the fine lines at the corners of her eyes easing. Then she asked a question that had nothing to do with any of it.

"Do you want to be a priest, or a warrior?"

"Become my successor, and you won't have to risk the earthcore beasts' nest. I can start you on the procedures of the Rite." She paused, and something strange slid into her tone.

"Whatever happens to Cloudperch, no priest on the Sacred Mountain will come to harm." Outside, mallets knocked against the vine bridge under repair. Farther off, a cloud beast cried out long and clear as it passed through the waterfall, the tail of the note running straight up into the clouds. Gu Zhiwei's hand tightened on Windlisten without her deciding to. Becoming a candidate priest would complete the current main quest on the spot. The road lay open in front of her. One nod, and she'd be walking home.

But could it really be that simple? Last night's fighting, the split running through the ground. All of it is still fresh behind her eyes. The tribe was clearly still facing something no one understood. Even if this really was the final quest, could she treat this place as a game world to farm and feel fine about it, clock in, clock out, and leave? Her aunt's profile as she wove the feather band flickered through her mind, and she decided to go with her gut and her conscience.

"I'd like to... hold the line for the tribe first," she said.

"Everything else can wait until I'm back." The High Priest looked at her for a long time. Then the panel unfolded in front of Gu Zhiwei's eyes. 【Player Gu Zhiwei has completed the stage event: The Choice. 】 【Shared quest progress: 20% → 40%. 】 The mechanical female voice rang in the ears of every participant at once. From the platform outside the tree house came Wang Pu's ecstatic howl.

"Sis Gu, what did you do this time?! Carry me, carry me, carry me!" The High Priest couldn't hear the system announcement. All she heard was the wailing coming across half a platform.

"Your friend seems to be injured."

"He's in excellent health." Gu Zhiwei slung Windlisten onto her back, smiling.

"He's probably just dying to come explore the earthcore beasts' nest with me." Wang Pu: "??? It wasn't me, I didn't say that!"

The next day, the party bound for the earthcore beasts' nest stood ready to move out. Matt and Gu Zhiwei led it. Since the point was reconnaissance, they'd only put together a dozen or so people. Chen Li stayed in the tribe to help seal off the gathering paths, and Su Ye had training before the Rite. She and her young cloud beast still needed to learn to read each other. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The blonde woman asked to join and was refused; Matt's reason was that she wasn't in the hunt division. He hadn't been tracking her movements especially closely, but he remembered with perfect clarity how she and her three hangers-on had scrambled madly for the upper tree houses during the night battle. One of them had hauled a child off a wooden ladder so he could climb first. He couldn't trust people like that. The mild surprise was Wang Pu. Gu Zhiwei had only been joking.

And then, when everyone lined up, there he was in the line. The nest lay on the eastern side of the Sacred Mountain, most of a day's walk downstream along the Cloud River. The first stretch was still hunting ground Cloudperch knew well. Roots of giant trees crossed and recrossed the moss-covered earth; a blue-white river spilled through the forest, palm-sized transparent fish schooling in it. In the distance, a waterfall dropped into the endless cloud sea, its roar carrying through the mist, low as rolling thunder.

Wang Pu had a spear on his shoulder and two bone knives at his hip, and he clanked with every step. Matt looked back at him for the third time.

"Quiet." Wang Pu clamped a hand over the knives.

"Hey, more gear proves I came prepared. There's a saying back in China, the worst students have the fanciest pencil cases."

"It proves the enemy can find you with their eyes shut." Gu Zhiwei didn't know what Matt did in the real world, but she had a vague sense he'd had some military training.

"They don't have eyes in the first place." A ripple of laughter went through the hunters. They seemed to automatically filter out the parts where Wang Pu mentioned the real world. Matt stopped walking. Wang Pu straightened up.

"Okay, sir. Strapping down tighter." The farther they went, the narrower the Cloud River became. A stretch of pale blue windbell flowers grew along the bank; when the wind passed, fine pollen clung to their skin with a coolness like mint. A few six-legged creatures leapt through the canopy, dragging long streaks of silver behind them. Then Gu Zhiwei began to smell rot. At first it was only a trace buried under the green scent of growing things.

Half a day on, the fallen leaves underfoot had started to blacken, and the tree bark was covered in gray patches. The birdsong was gone. Matt raised a hand. The hunting party stopped at once. The brush ahead shivered. An earthcore beast sprang out from under the dead leaves, back like an upended bowl of bone. Two forelimbs long and thin as whips, straight at Wang Pu who is last in line. Wang Pu went white and shoved the spear up across his chest. Crack!

The whip-limb wrapped the shaft and yanked him stumbling forward.

"Let go! Use a knife! Cut its flank!" Gu Zhiwei barked. Wang Pu released the spear, pulled a bone knife, and rolled aside. The beast's strength met nothing, and as it twisted, the plates along its belly spread open. He set his teeth and threw himself at it. His eyes even shut for a moment, and the bone knife sank into gray-white soft flesh. Rank slime sprayed across his face.

"Hurgh!" Gagging, he still remembered to drag the blade downward, hard. Matt's spear came right behind, punching through the beast's head. The thing convulsed and went down. Wang Pu wiped his face, smelled his own hand, and gagged again.

"I'm not going to be able to eat turnip cake for three months after I get home."

"Too slow." Matt pulled his spear free.

"If it had caught your leg just now, you'd already be gone."

"Man, that was my first solo kill. Could you lead with one compliment before the yelling?"

"It wasn't solo."

"Come on! Are all you Americans this precise?" He turned to file a complaint with Gu Zhiwei.

"Sis Gu, you're just gonna stand there and watch him treat me like this?" Gu Zhiwei laughed and blocked him with his own words.

"Young people ought to put in more work, right?" For the rest of the way, at every rest stop, Matt taught him how to handle a target at close quarters with a short knife. Wang Pu didn't learn slowly. He got thrown into the wet mud four times; on the fifth he finally used his center of gravity to dump a hunter on his back. Sprawled on the ground, he was the one most stunned by it.

"Huh? Do I actually have a knack for this?" The hunter he'd flipped rubbed his lower back.

"You stepped on my foot. You cheated." Wang Pu preened.

"Ah, don't get hung up on details. Just tell me, did I win or not?" The young hunter snorted, rolled his eyes, and went off to eat his dinner. Gu Zhiwei handed him a broad leaf to wipe his face with.

"Where's this sudden drive to improve coming from?"

"I've always been a very upward-striving guy." Wang Pu took the leaf and scrubbed the black mud off his cheek.

"It's just that which way is up tends to be flexible." Gu Zhiwei just looked at him and said nothing. He lowered his head and fiddled with the bone knife, spinning the handle half a turn in his palm. It almost went into the stream.

"My parents died a long time ago. I grew up with my grandma." He fished the knife back. His voice dropped a little.

"Old lady's past seventy. The only thing she can do with a cellphone is to call or answer it. Right before I got dragged into this hellhole, she asked me to go home for dinner after the gym." The stream ran past their feet, carrying a rank smell that thickened by the hour.

"If I can't go back, I can't imagine how she will feel." Wang Pu slid the bone knife back into his belt.

"So I have to get home. Being scared doesn't fix anything, so I might as well learn. Every bit I learn is one more chip to bet on staying alive." Up ahead, Matt blew the bone whistle to assemble. Wang Pu stood, slapped the mud off his backside, and went right back to grinning.

"Eh, what am I scared of anyway? You and Matt have got me covered, Sis Gu." Gu Zhiwei shook her head, laughing softly, and fell in with the rest. Less than a hundred meters from the nest, the party ran into three waves of earthcore beasts. Most came four or five at a time, but they moved with more frenzy than during the night raid. One had had its belly burned through by lava and still dragged the leaking ruin of itself at them, snapping.

Another was covered in interlocking bone spines; arrows struck it and didn't leave so much as a white scratch. Gu Zhiwei tried, for the first time, to pour Spirit into Windlisten. The instant her consciousness settled against the bow, both stone beads sounded at once. Wind slid through the beast's bone spines, and the small eddies coiled around her senses, sketching a narrow gap beneath the shell. She loosed along that "sound."

The bone arrow shot out trailing a faint shine, threaded the crossing spines, and vanished cleanly into the body. The earthcore beast charged two more steps, then crashed over. The hunters around her went briefly silent. Wang Pu clapped first.

"Nice. Confirmed hacker." Before Gu Zhiwei could answer, her temple gave a vicious throb. She felt a boundary lying across her mind, one she couldn't get past, and cut the connection to the bow at once. Spirit still read twenty-four. But the panel popped up a line. 【High-quality combat detected. 】 【Strength: 15 → 16. 】 One point. Better than nothing. Deeper in, the forest showed its decay outright. Grass and trees lay flattened in ash.

Ahead, the mountain wall split open in a huge slanted mouth, breathing out scorching, foul wind, the rock inside scored all over with the marks of earthcore beast limbs. They'd reached the nest. They lit torches soaked in fat, covered their mouths and noses with damp cloth, and moved slowly inward along the cave wall. Inside was wider than they'd imagined. Great swaths of black stone spurs hung down overhead. Shed shells lay scattered underfoot, some still slick with warm slime.

Torchlight swept toward the back, pit after pit. They packed close together, running on past the reach of sight. All of them empty. Matt crouched to check the dirt. Limb-tracks lay layered over limb-tracks, most of them pointing toward the mouth of the cave, the edges very fresh. An old hunter touched a secretion on the rock wall that hadn't hardened yet, and his face turned grim.

"They may have left just today." Wang Pu looked around.

"A nest this size, and they all clocked out together?" Gu Zhiwei walked carefully toward the deepest part. Several earthcore beast corpses lay on the ground. Some immense force had crushed them; shell and soft flesh were pressed into the rock. Down the center of the bodies ran a single, very wide drag mark. It crossed half the cavern and led to a collapsed fissure in the floor. The "rock monster" she'd sensed last night was larger than any passage in this place. And below the fissure there was nothing at all.

It had left. From underground. Matt got up fast.

"We go back to the tribe. Now." Nobody argued. Cloudperch was the settlement nearest the nest; the earthcore beasts that had poured out of here far outnumbered last night's, and whatever the Sacred Mountain's seal was supposed to be holding down had gone somewhere unknown. They quickened their pace, retreating the way they'd come. A hundred-odd meters from the cave mouth, the wind blowing into their faces turned suddenly scalding. A ball of fire lit up in the dark. BOOM! Flame swept down the narrow passage.

The hunter at the front couldn't get clear in time and half his vine armor caught alight. Matt lunged, pinned him down, rolled him to smother the fire; the smell of charred skin spread fast. The rock walls glowed red in the heat, and the hunter's shrieks tore through the cave. An earthcore beast nearly three men tall stood not far from the exit, dark veins moving like molten rock across its shell, firelight flaring and dimming deep in its mouthparts.

It slammed its forelimbs down and a section of the ceiling came crashing in, sealing off most of the way out. The burned hunter was in too much pain to stand. From deeper in, dense scraping rushed closer, as if countless dark shapes were crawling over the walls and the roof of the cave. Matt hauled the wounded man onto his back and glanced at the exit. It was wide enough for two abreast, but no more. The giant beast was already gathering its second breath of fire.

"Too close." Gu Zhiwei's grip tightened on Windlisten, her voice dropping low.

"I'll draw it off."