Chương 26: The Long Road

They left Seol-Ainu two days after the tiger fight, once Zero's shoulder had closed enough to stop drawing concerned glances from Viria every time he moved it wrong.

Nikolai had come to see them off, standing at the village's edge in the grey early light with an expression that had shifted, somewhere in the two days since the den, from careful distance into something Zero did not have a word for yet, but suspected was close to the 'gratitude' Fen had shown them in Shenhua, filtered through fifteen years of a grief that 'gratitude' alone could not undo.

"You'll tell people," he started, "if anyone asks about the mountain now."

"That it's clear," Miho finished. Nikolai nodded slowly.

"My boys would have liked that. Knowing that it didn't stay closed forever." He did not say anything else, and Team Zero did not press him.

Zero's mental image of the journal's map, which was now copied onto a scrap of paper, was the only guide they had for the Obelisk's location, and it had marked it considerably further east of the Cloud Sea, in a valley along a river the map labeled in the author's hurried hand as 'the Crane'. After cross-referencing with a more recent map in Seol-Ainu's town hall, the location appeared to be called the Crane River Valley.

It sat eight days out by the most direct route the map offered, south and slightly East of Seol-Ainu, away from the cold mountain passes and back down into gentler terrain that would, by the journal's sketched elevation lines, grow warmer with each day of travel. Miho, studying the route, said, "If the weather holds, and if we don't encounter anything that costs us time we don't have to spare, we can expect an eight day journey""Other teams are likely converging there at this point," said Yukito.

"Our detour probably eliminated any lead we may have had." Miho nodded.

"They most likely have the same task we do," she said.

"Locate the Obelisk, and learn a technique from its walls. Every team in this competition has been searching for it on their own terms since this leg began. We simply found a better map than most."

The first few days passed in the particular rhythm long travel built when a team had been together long enough to stop needing constant conversation to fill it. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Viria, restless in the way she always was when there was nothing immediate to direct her energy toward, spent the second day running drills with her sword as they walked, testing the space-severing cut against tree trunks and rock outcroppings at the road's edge, refining a technique that had, over the last weeks, become something closer to instinct than deliberate execution.

"You've gotten faster," Zero observed, watching her cut a clean line through a fallen branch without breaking stride.

"I've had a lot of practice," Viria said, her expression filled with pride.

"Oxen, Horses. Tigers. You'd think someone would eventually invent a monster that doesn't require me to perfect my swordsmanship under duress."

"The duress seems to be helping."

"Don't tell Jianyu that. He'll start recommending it as a teaching method." Yukito, walking a half step behind, made the small sound that had become, over the weeks, recognizable as his version of a laugh.

On the fourth day, they crossed paths with a hunting party from a settlement they did not stop to name, four cultivators moving in the opposite direction with the particular haste of people who had somewhere urgent to be and no interest in explaining where.

"They're a team," Miho said quietly, watching them pass.

"Not locals," Viria said.

"No. But, they are moving away from the Crane River direction, not toward it." Miho's tail flicked once, considering.

"Could mean that they've already been there and failed, they're avoiding it entirely, or, it could mean nothing."

"You're cataloguing possibilities you can't resolve," Zero said. Miho glanced at him.

"Yes. I am aware that's your habit, not mine."

"It seems to be contagious." Her tail moved again, the closest she came in daylight to acknowledging a joke had landed.

On the sixth day, the terrain began to change in earnest, the cold mountain pines giving way gradually to broader leaves, the air carrying a softness that none of them had felt since Shenhua's outer markets. The road widened, worn smoother by what looked like considerably more recent traffic than the empty stretches further north.

"Other people are taking this route," Yukito said, crouching to examine a set of fresh tracks at the road's edge.

"Multiple parties. Recently."

"How recently?" Zero asked.

"Within the last day, judging by the wear on the edges." Miho crouched beside him, examining the same tracks with a different kind of attention.

"Boot patterns, not bare feet or claws. Cultivators, maybe, traveling in groups." She straightened.

"We're not the only ones anymore. We're close."

They reached the valley's edge on the morning of the eighth day, as Miho had projected, and they stood for a long moment at the top of the final ridge, looking down at the river and the green country it cut through, and at the structure that rose from the valley's center, visible even from this distance as something that did not belong to the landscape around it so much as the landscape had simply grown up around its refusal to be moved.

"There it is," Viria said, quiet for once.

"Is everyone ready?" Asked Yukito. Viria opened her subspace to confirm all the cores were present and nodded. Miho made a noise that carried her approval. Zero checked himself one last time before nodding.

"Let's go."