Chương 9: All Things Answer

The instant the Crimson Core settled into place, a wall of heat blasted outward. Gu Zhiwei threw her bow crosswise in front of her and was still driven back several steps. The blue-green feather band across her forehead lifted in the blast, its ends curling black in a heartbeat. The Earthfire Rock Beast reared its head and roared. Whole sheets of rock along the crater's rim began to collapse. Magma broke through the fissures and came rolling toward the sacred altar.

"Off the altar!" The High Priest seized Su Ye's arm and hauled her away from the shattered pillar.

"Everyone out through the Mountainguard Stone Gate!" The beast's foreleg came down on a priest's attendant who hadn't run fast enough. Matt threw himself in and shoved the man clear. His vine shield met the claw and flew apart in four pieces. His shoulder dropped, one knee cracked hard into the ground, and thin fractures spidered out beneath his foot.

"Head hunter!" Two hunters worked in tandem at once, whipping their snare ropes over the beast's front claws and pulling taut together, trying to drag it off line and get Matt out. The younger of the two, Gu Zhiwei remembered him. When they were ambushed at the earthcore beast's nest, Matt had carried that boy out on his back before anyone else. He worshipped Matt, trailing after him all day like a little tagalong. Across his forehead he wore the feather band that marked someone only recently come of age.

The ropes went taut again. The Earthfire Rock Beast let up off Matt. It gave the snare ropes on its claws a wild, frenzied shake. The next second the young hunter was in the air, slamming hard into what was left of a sealing pillar. He didn't move again after he landed. Most of his body was swallowed within moments by the creeping lava. It all happened too fast. Wang Pu froze for a beat. Matt went utterly blank.

He looked like a man staring at the one image he had never wanted to see, with no idea what to do with it. Gu Zhiwei's voice cut through.

"Glow powder, in its eyes!" Wang Pu snapped back, scooped up a clay jar and hurled it. The powder met the heat and burst into a violent glare. The Earthfire Rock Beast's head rocked backward. Matt came to himself at last and rolled clear of the claw. Gu Zhiwei drew Windlisten to full, her Spirit power running along the bow and into the arrow, and a streak of silver-white light shot straight at the beast's chest.

That streak carried a threat the beast recognized, and it gave ground a few steps before it could stop itself. The arrowhead sank in where the Crimson Core sat. Half an inch, and no further. Molten rock welled out of the wound and pushed the bone arrow right back out. Then the shell over its chest drew closed on its own, and bright veins of flame went circulating across its whole body. Not a mark on it. It was even laughing. The thought barged into Gu Zhiwei's head out of nowhere.

She could hear the stone around her keening. She could feel the fire veins under the Sacred Mountain being dragged awake by that Crimson Core. The entire mountain was rejecting it, but the power hoarded in its belly for centuries had been pried open at one seam, and it was pouring into the Earthfire Rock Beast with every breath the thing took.

"It's taking the Sacred Mountain's power." Gu Zhiwei wiped the sweat running into her eyes.

"We can't drag this out." Matt pulled the bone knife from his belt, eyes red, breath heavy.

"This damn thing. How do we kill it?" Good question. Out of every weapon on this mountain, only Windlisten's silver-white light arrows could pierce it, and the Crimson Core sealed the wounds faster than she could open them. Gu Zhiwei could feel that her Spirit power level wasn't there yet. Her light arrows fell far short of the ones loosed a century ago by that High Priest, Windlisten's previous owner.

The Earthfire Rock Beast had worked that out too, and it clawed at the mountain's power more brazenly by the second. If it finished, it would be harder to handle than the thing a century ago. Can't kill it. The seal's wrecked too. This dungeon was playing more than a little dirty. Gu Zhiwei pressed her lips together and nocked again.

"Anyone who can still run, run. Get off the Sacred Mountain and cut the cloud bridges!" She had no idea how long that would hold the monster, but it would buy some time, and the people of Cloudperch would still have a chance to get away.

"No!" There was blood at the corner of Su Ye's mouth. The cub in her arms had lost a tail filament on one side and was shaking all over with the pain. The other two had never made a spirit pact with her, but she had been caring for them all along, and now they pressed tight against her, their transparent broad wings baked red by the heat, refusing to leave.

"If the quest fails we're all stuck in this world anyway. We might as well go down swinging together." Gu Zhiwei looked at Matt. Matt was already putting another hunter in charge of the retreat, sending the fastest runners back to warn the tribe to evacuate. He showed no intention of leaving himself. His eyes on her were bright and steady.

"This isn't like last time. There's no way I leave my teammate at a moment like this." The High Priest lifted her head toward the center of the sacred altar. Lava had already run over the stone steps down to the wind valley. The cloud beasts were forced higher and higher by the scalding updraft, and still they would not leave the human partners they were pacted to; the firelight struck a fierce flame color off their blue-white scales. They did not flee.

Their clear, ringing cries linked one into the next, calling on the cloud sea to come down and stand against the heat. The High Priest picked up her broken bone staff.

"If it could be sealed once, it can be sealed again." The young attendant, clutching his burned arm, stared blankly at the broken pillars strewn everywhere.

"But the sealing pillars are gone."

"Pillars are dead things." The High Priest reached out, feeling for the bone staff still standing in the eye of the formation.

"As long as there are cloud spirits left who can answer, anything can be made into a seal." Su Ye closed her eyes and let her awareness spread out around her. These weeks of finding her footing with the cloud beasts had pushed her Spirit up to a startling 20. In her mind she called frantically on her Affinity for Living Things, opening her awareness wide, reaching for every cloud beast that could answer her. One after another the three cubs beside her raised their heads, tail filaments winding around her wrists.

Overhead the circling adults gave long answering calls, broad wings tilting, bodies glowing with a warm faint light. Seeing it, the priest's attendants began calling their own cloud beasts too. Blue-white light flowed back into the sacred altar. The High Priest began guiding it, drawing ancient runes across the altar. Julie had dropped into a sprawl behind a broken pillar, her face smeared with ash. She stared at those points of light. Her lips moved. In the end she didn't dare come closer.

The Earthfire Rock Beast turned its head. It clearly felt the threat too. Then the great claw swept around, straight for the eye of the formation.

"Zhiwei, put a barrier on my body, please." Matt's Strength amplification could take his power far past any normal human's, but his skin was still human skin; it couldn't touch the molten rock riding on the beast's hide. Gu Zhiwei answered at once. Matt charged straight into the Earthfire Rock Beast and actually knocked it sideways, and it even gave ground a few steps.

Matt pressed the advantage, snaring a rope around its hind legs and hauling it away from the altar with everything in him, and the remaining hunters rushed in and threw their weight on the rope beside him. Wang Pu had climbed the rock wall on one side of the crater and was flinging glow powder from his jars into the beast's face like a man with no plans to survive. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The beast couldn't stand it.

It flailed its forelegs, trying to bat the maddening powder away. Gu Zhiwei drew again. The silver-white light arrow struck it in the chest and belly and shoved it back several hard steps. The black-rock shell over its chest suddenly split open to either side. Layer scraped against layer with a grinding sound that set the teeth on edge, and the Crimson Core hidden underneath was fully exposed. A ring of long narrow vents surrounded it.

Magma swelled at their rims and clotted fast into a handful of fireballs so hot they burned blue-white. A chill went down Gu Zhiwei's back. That thing wasn't aiming at her at all. The next second the fireballs came, dragging long white tails, straight for the High Priest and Su Ye at their sealing work.

"Down!" Gu Zhiwei's bow whipped around, arrow after arrow, and her light shattered fireball after fireball in the air. But some of the bursting sparks flew right at Su Ye's face. The heat rolled over her and Su Ye could not move. Holding the resonance with the cloud beasts took every scrap of her focus; if she dodged now, the blue-white runes that had only just taken shape would collapse where they stood. Two adult cloud beasts dove and took the scalding sparks for her.

The High Priest fought to hold the runes, eyes shut, one hand rising, blue-white radiance spilling from her palm. With the little Spirit power she had left she raised a barrier over the attendants beside her, thin as a cicada's wing. BOOM! Two fireballs hit the barrier at once. It held! Three more were already in the air. The barrier shuddered violently. Heat poured in around its edges, and the attendants' white-feather robes charred black in an instant.

The last fireball came through, grazing the young attendant's arm, and the stench of cooked flesh unrolled behind it. He staggered half a step and stayed locked at the High Priest's side, holding his resonance with the cloud beasts. The Earthfire Rock Beast closed its chest plates, and deep in the rock the Crimson Core banked red light again. It had figured out who to kill first. The strike came too fast.

The young attendant slammed his shoulder and back into the High Priest and threw her clear, and the huge blaze of flame took him instead. The heat and the impact flung his body up into the sky, his white-feather robe catching fire in midair, crystalline stone beads scattering across the ground; they were still giving off their small brittle clicks as they rolled past Gu Zhiwei's feet. He fell into the lava below the altar's black platform, with no time to leave anything behind.

The High Priest sank to her knees beside it, a short thin whimper escaping her throat, her Spirit power still straining to hold the runes that were coming together so slowly. The cloud beasts screamed in fury. Dozens of streams of blue-white light dove and slammed into the Earthfire Rock Beast. It was forced back half a step, and then the Crimson Core in its chest flared bright and a searing red wave of fire surged back out. The three adults in front were swallowed by the flame at once.

Blackened bodies dropped out of the sky. Finding the High Priest's side too tough to chew, the beast turned to Su Ye on the other. Su Ye's eyes flew open. She had felt what the cloud beasts were feeling.

"Stay back!" More of them put themselves in front of her. They overlapped their broad wings and took the churning fire for her. The soft blue-white scales scorched and curled, and a burnt, bloody reek filled the air. Her pacted cub tore free of her wrist and threw itself in front of her, dragging its severed tail filament. But it was still too small. Too small to hold even one breath. The flame swept past. The cub dropped into Su Ye's arms, half of one broad wing already gone to black ash. Su Ye held it.

Her fingers shook too hard to close.

"Wake up." She couldn't hold the resonance any longer. She bent and pressed her forehead to the cub's, tears spilling over and refusing to stop.

"Wake up, baby, wake up, do you want some jerky? I still have jerky, I brought so much..." A very faint sound came from the cub's throat. Its tail filament wound once around her wrist. Then let go. Su Ye's mouth was open, and no sound came out of it. The Earthfire Rock Beast closed in again. Matt's hide armor was soaked through with blood. In that short stretch of time he had gone at the monster over and over.

He pulled out a snapped bone spear, meaning to charge it once more, and his knee gave; he nearly went down. Gu Zhiwei caught him. Her own hands weren't any better: the pads of her fingers ground raw by the bowstring, blood and sweat running together, her Spirit power close to dry from all those shots with Windlisten. Fewer than five hunters left. The High Priest was still barely holding on. A dead cub lay in Su Ye's arms, and two living ones huddled at her back.

She cried, and she kept her body between them and the beast. Anyone could see the seal was not going to come together. Gu Zhiwei raised Windlisten. She tried to pour Spirit power in again, and a needle of pain drove into the point between her brows; the edges of her vision went black in patches. A blood-red warning opened on her panel. 【Severe Spirit power overdraft. 】 【Continued use will cause irreversible damage. 】 Gu Zhiwei drew the string. The old hunter had said: may the mist of the cloud sea carry her home.

If this monster got out, this cloud sea would cease to exist. The string reached its limit. The Crimson Core in the beast's chest contracted all at once. The hot wind stopped for a heartbeat. Gu Zhiwei saw the Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman standing on a cliff above the sea.

The sky was blotted out by aberrants. The people who had migrated to the new continent had bred through generations. Wooden huts had become cities of stone, the valleys had opened into wide terraced fields, and the newborn children could no longer understand most of the words in the songs of the homeland. The aberrants came after them anyway. The Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman stood on the cliff, white hair down to her waist, the shells in her braids smoked black by war.

Behind her were the people who hadn't gotten out in time, the far end of the mountain road packed with the old and the young. Someone asked through tears, "Shaman, where do we run to?" She looked back at the mountains behind her. There was no next continent. The sea heaved up. The aberrant mother beast lifted its head from the waves, hundreds of jointed limbs gripping the cliff face, and wherever its slime dripped the rock rotted away fast. Every time it shrieked, birds fell dead out of the valley air in swaths.

The Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman let her senses open. Reversing the method she had taught Gu Zhiwei, she began to call on all things between heaven and earth. Her palms rose slowly. She opened herself to the sea and to the mountains. The weight of the ranges pressed into her bones. Towering waves surged into every inch of every cell. The storm ran along her blood, and deeper still, the tremor of the seafloor plates passed slowly through her heart.

The plants at the shoreline sent their roots toward her ankles, birds stooped out of the sky, schools of fish turned in the dark water. All things saw her. And she was inside all things. Gu Zhiwei's awareness was swept in with her. She tasted the salty bitterness of seawater, heard a chick pecking inside its shell, felt a just-born infant close its hand around its mother's finger for the first time. And in the belly of the aberrant mother beast, all those hungry, chaotic lives.

The Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman did not refuse those voices. Through the blur Gu Zhiwei felt a vastness and a love beyond anything she had known, and she could not fully understand it yet. But she saw how the Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman gave herself over to the world, and how the world lent her ten million pairs of eyes and all their strength. The sea tore itself up off its bed and threw itself at the countless aberrants still short of shore. Peaks toppled. The land cracked apart.

Tree roots dragged down and devoured the strange beasts that had already crawled onto the continent. The Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman turned and looked at Gu Zhiwei, her aged face strangely clear through the driving rain.

"Remember this feeling. Now go back. Save your people. Save this continent's future." In that instant of communion, the Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman saw it too: the Sacred Mountain of the Cloud Sea continent, an outline both strange and familiar. So that was it. Two moments thousands years apart overlapped in that single glance.

"Catch." The Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman threw her vine staff across thousands of years, to Gu Zhiwei. The mountain wind gathered up the flames, and the roots underground burst out of the soil and clamped tight around the mother beast's limbs. Her own body dissolved swiftly in the blaze of light. The aberrant mother beast let out one last shriek, and its enormous body was torn open by the strength of the entire land. A pale-white shell, blackened, slipped free of her braid and fell into the sea.

The vision shattered with a roar.

Gu Zhiwei opened her eyes. It felt as though only a heartbeat had passed; the Earthfire Rock Beast was still gathering power in front of her. The panel opened by itself. 【Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman. Progress: 70% → 100%. 】 【Item unlocked: Sacred Spirit Vine Staff】 A vast Spirit power crossed those long ages and poured into her nearly empty mind. Gu Zhiwei lowered Windlisten and called the Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman's vine staff out of her own consciousness.

Silver-white patterns lit inside the wood and ran up her arm, and under her veins a faint light rose and fell like a tide. She heard this continent. The new continent the Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman had led her people to was the Cloud Sea world beneath her feet. Coastlines withdrew. Valleys arched up out of the crust. The ancient stone cities sank underground and towering trees pulled themselves into the sky.

The Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman, swept along in the flood of history, was called holy centuries after her death, and then forgotten across thousands of years. And in this moment her soul once again protected the beautiful world she had loved. She lent her power, briefly, to Gu Zhiwei. With the skill fully unlocked, Gu Zhiwei could finally use everything the Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman had. The Earthfire Rock Beast was confused.

Something ancient and dreadful had risen off this human all at once, as though she were not the same creature it had been fighting. It began, warily, to gather its power. Gu Zhiwei let her senses open. She put a request to every living thing between heaven and earth. Above the Sacred Mountain, the first dying adult cloud beast opened its eyes.

Then out in the cloud sea, then in Cloudperch, then at the far end of the cloud sea and beyond the Sky-Hung Falls: giant beasts raised their heads from valleys that had slept for millennia, young spirits squeezed out of hollow trees, migrating flocks turned in their course ten thousand miles away. The first answering note of resonance pierced the sky. And then every Cloud River between heaven and earth lit up.

Blue-white shapes beyond counting broke out of the clouds, broad wings blotting out the red-hot heavens, clear ringing cries converging on the Sacred Mountain from every corner of the continent. Every living thing in that whole sky of cloud was answering her call.