Chương 45: Chapter 44: CULT OF DEATH

CHAPTER 44 CULT OF DEATH —∞— They headed straight down the root-laden street of the main avenue, past the deformed bridges and growth-filled ponds. Meiyao at the front, Jieyuan by her side, Daojue just behind. Meiyao was the one setting the pace, and it was just shy of cautious, steady but slow. Jieyuan couldn't help but notice how her eyes kept flicking from building to building, each one as bent and overgrown as the last. She had this intense look on that Jieyuan couldn't tell whether it was wonder or wariness.

Both, probably. In Jieyuan's case he knew he was leaning more toward the latter, though. Way more. But soon they were closing in on the end of the pocket—if it could even be called that anymore, given how large this new clear zone was—and she'd yet to call a stop. That was a good thing. What wasn't a good thing was the way the vague sense of doom kept on rising inside Jieyuan the deeper they went into the city. Growing, much like the city itself. But Huaxin was being awfully tight-fisted with the details.

Granted, it wasn't on purpose. Jieyuan could tell through their connection that Huaxin itself wasn't quite clear on what kind of danger the city posed. Just that it was there. There was something else bothering him, too. The corpses; or, rather, the lack thereof. Apparently, a great many people had decided it was a bright idea to stick around while the city was slowly being swallowed by a literal death trap, and yet he hadn't come across a single dead—and plant-infested—body.

Even though there'd been plenty outside the city. It could be that they had all died somewhere indoors—which would've been very neat and proper of them—but he'd have expected at least one bush-corpse, or tree-cadaver, or some other macabre Linzushen state of stalled decay. They reached the end of the zone, a barrier of solid green cutting off the way, and still no more corpses in sight. Meiyao stopped in front of it, stared at it thoughtfully for a few seconds. Something occurred to Jieyuan.

"How exactly does the mist work here?" he asked, and Meiyao turned to him.

"What do you mean?"

"The mist's taking us closer to the center of the Dome, right? Does that still apply here?" Jieyuan asked." Can we return in the direction we came from?" He felt it was very important they determine that before they continued. Because what if there was only one city entrance? If they couldn't return to it, that meant they'd have to scale the city walls later, and though that could be done, Jieyuan would like to know about something like that head of time.

"I... It is different here," Meiyao said, frowning.

"That's what I was trying to determine just now, actually. I think you're right, but give me a moment." She turned back toward the boundary of the pocket and stared at it for a good while before nodding.

"Yes. The position of the pockets here in the city is fixed. We can return in the same direction."

"All right, then," Jieyuan said.

"Is it safe to proceed, then?"

"Yes," Meiyao said, and without another word, crossed into the next pocket. Jieyuan and Daojue followed. As Jieyuan passed through, just for a moment everything was pure green, but then the view opened up far and wide, revealing another great stretch of the city. The buildings around them were no longer cluttered near the avenue. Rather, they were spread much farther apart, set back from the main street, with individual paths leading to them. Size was another difference. These were bigger, more sprawling.

Some had even been compounds—multiple structures linked together—though the rampant growth had all but erased any sense of division. Jieyuan could only just make out where one building ended and another began. Their shapes, too, were different. Earlier in the city, the buildings had been blockier, but here, he saw an abundance of curved, rounded lines, with dome-shaped roofs everywhere.

The architecture must've been as organic as the materials used, and centuries of unchecked growth had only reinforced that impression. It couldn't be any more different from Radiant Gold City, which was all straight lines and harsh angles. The deeper they got into the pocket, the more lavish and elaborate the buildings around them became. Or, rather, Jieyuan could tell they had been lavish at some point given their size and the hints of decoration he could see here and there. Now, they all looked rather grotesque.

But it was something else that caught Jieyuan's attention: a garden. It sat off to the side in a massive, walled-off lot of land that started around the middle of the pocket and stretched all the way to the opposite boundary. The walls were short, barely waist-high, clearly meant more to mark the garden's boundary than to keep anyone out. Jieyuan didn't like it. Viridian Death City was, despite nature's best attempts, still a city.

It still had the appearance of one, even if two thousand years had gone a long way bending it out of shape. But somehow, the one place that should've been the most overgrown—that by all rights should have given way to a forest by now—was by far the tidiest, most orderly area they'd come across so far. Jieyuan frowned. That couldn't be natural. Never mind two thousand years; this garden didn't look like it'd been left unattended for a day. The highlight of the garden was doubtlessly the trees.

They were all of the same type, with thick, sturdy trunks—and very unusual crowns. The lower half of each canopy flowed downward like a green waterfall, drooping branches covered in long, slender leaves that formed a dense curtain around the trunk. The upper half was completely different, with upward-sweeping branches and smaller, firmer leaves rising to form a high, sheltering green canopy. The overall impression was of domes that bled seamlessly into waterfalls of foliage.

Each tree had its own patch in the garden, neatly divided in a grid-like pattern. Connecting everything was a short, verdant carpet of grass, tidy and well-kept. The trees didn't glow. Neither did the grass. The only thing glowing was the viridian mist hanging in the air. The vegetation was still clearly chromal (there was a deep, almost unnatural vibrancy to it, the kind you'd never find in mundane plants), but it wasn't like the usual flora of the Dome.

The lack of glow was one thing, but there were also the dimensions of it all. The trees weren't particularly tall (just about twice his height, he guessed), whereas all the other ones he'd seen so far in the Dome were so tall he could barely see their tops. These looked more like the kind of plants he'd seen around the Viridian Death Palace back in Radiant Gold City. Jieyuan narrowed his eyes. The garden looked normal. Too normal.

In a dangerous place, if you came across something that seemed harmless, eleven times out of ten you were better off steering clear. You were better off dealing with the obviously dangerous than with the deceptively safe. Most important of all, the garden looked neat. Well-kept. Which really wasn't right. He glanced at Meiyao and found her standing frozen in place, staring straight at the garden; the vague sense of doom Huaxin had been sending over through their bond spiked. WARNING. I knew it.

Jieyuan tensed, eyeing the garden warily. This region was clearly special; the center of anything usually was, and they should be close to the city's center now. But it was more than that. The buildings here were tall and wide and ornate, boasting grandiose columns and domes. They had clearly been temples once. You could still tell, despite the best efforts of nature and time. So the garden must've been important, too. Even more so since it was allotted as much space as several dozen buildings.

But then Meiyao set off again, heading not forward but diagonal, toward the garden—and when Jieyuan saw the distant, unfocused look on her face, he reached out and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her back.

"Meiyao?" She turned to him but didn't shrug his hand off.

"What?" Jieyuan studied her, watching the flicker in her eyes. She didn't seem dazed, no dullness in her gaze. Just confusion, like she had no idea why he'd stopped her. Huh. Maybe I was wrong. He gave a quick jerk of his head toward the garden.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" She looked at him for a moment, frowning.

"I— Of course…" She blinked, took a breath, and looked back at the garden, her brow furrowing deeper. Jieyuan let go of her shoulder, but she didn't move away. She just kept staring at the garden like she was trying to see something he couldn't.

"Right," she said, after a while.

"For me, it's safe. But you and Daojue should stay away. The garden's… I think it's the Sacred Garden. You remember how I told you earlier that the Linzushen bury their dead in gardens? That's one of them. A funeral garden. But this one's special. How many trees do you think there are over there?" Jieyuan scanned it briefly, did a quick count.

"Fifty? Sixty?"

"About that, yes," Meiyao said.

"But Viridian Death City was home to several hundred thousand at its peak. There were tens of thousands of Linzushen alone, and our burial practices spread to the non-Linzushen too; it became a part of the Viridian Death Faith itself." She nodded at the garden.

"There wasn't enough space to bury everyone, so what we did—and what the Viridian Death Cult still does—is build underground gardens. Beneath Viridian Death City, there should be a massive funeral garden, as big as the city itself. Maybe even with several layers." Jieyuan looked down at the roots-covered ground. Oh. He'd thought the roots extended from the nearby buildings or had sprouted from the wooden streets themselves.

It hadn't occurred to him that they were standing over a garden—no, a forest, more like, given the size of it. Or possibly multiple forests, one under the other. And he really didn't like the sound of that, not when the plants here were what they were.

"Viridian Death City only had one topsoil garden," Meiyao said.

"The Sacred Garden. Only the Sacred Ones were allowed to be buried there—Linzushen whose bloodline was fourth-order, the highest ever recorded in the clan's history. Supposedly the same as the founder's. I'd have been one of them, myself." Jieyuan recalled the way that disciple from the Viridian Death Cult, the so-called Viridian Eye, Houliao, had referred to Meiyao as Your Sacredness. She was one of those Sacred Ones, all right—as far as the cultists were concerned.

"Those trees, they are special, too," Meiyao continued.

"They're called viridian oakwillows. Sacred trees created by the First Linzushen, the clan's founder. Their seeds were one of the clan's greatest treasures. None of the Linzushen who fled during the Dome's advance were allowed to take them, so these trees can only be found here. I've only ever seen them in jadebooks." Jieyuan gave the trees another look. They were certainly beautiful—and that was saying something, coming from someone who didn't care much for plants. But…

"What's so special about them? Or is it just the fact your founder—""They're Orangerealm," Meiyao said. Jieyuan really, really hoped he'd heard that wrong.

"What?"

"They're Orangerealm," Meiyao repeated.

"The only plants in Viridian Death City at that realm, as far as I know. Nobody really understands how the founder created them, since she was only a Redsoul herself. Everything else in the city is tenth-step Redrealm."

"Right," Jieyuan said, letting out a slow breath.

"Orangerealm. Great. Golden. So… what do they do? You said Daojue and I would be in danger if we went inside? Isn't it just plants?" That was the part that concerned him; because Orangerealm or not, these were just plants. Huaxin seemed to fully agree with Meiyao, though, if the ominous feeling it kept sending his way was any indication.

"Plants can be dangerous, too," Meiyao said. He'd been really, really hoping she wouldn't say that. Because if plants could be dangerous, then their prospects didn't look good, what with how they were in a city made of plants.

"Dangerous how?" Jieyuan pressed. Meiyao frowned, focusing back on the garden.

"I'm not… sure. It's just a feeling. I just know that nobody without Linzushen blood should go near it. There's something… off about it, something in how it was preserved. Even though the trees look just like the old recordings, I can feel the Dome's touch on them. They've been changed somehow."

"But it should be safe for you?" Jieyuan asked.

"Do you— Will you head inside?" He didn't like the sound of that, but it was Meiyao's choice, and she'd know it best.

"I…" She looked hesitant for a moment. Then she shook her head.

"Yes. But later. That thing I've been sensing in the city, it's not the garden. But it's close, and we should take a look at it first." She turned away from the garden without another word and started back down the avenue. Jieyuan didn't say anything as he followed; and, of course, neither did Daojue. He kept a wary eye on the garden the entire time, redoubling his focus when they reached the middle of the pocket, where the garden began.

But nothing came out of it; they reached the end of the pocket without incident. as they walked in front of it. The garden ended right alongside them, within just a few feet of the curtain of dense mist. Again, Meiyao stopped at the boundary, standing still for a moment, alert and intent, like she was listening for something only she could hear.

"It's right on the other side," she said finally, her voice low. As she spoke, her right hand drifted to the handle of her saber. Jieyuan took that as his cue to reach for his weapons too. He closed his hands around the handles of the Shifting Sisters. Daojue was the only one who didn't have much of a reaction, but that was because he was holding Gleaming End at all times anyway. Meiyao stepped forward first, pushing through the wall of thick mist.

Jieyuan followed right at her shoulder, and Daojue brought up the rear. As Jieyuan's vision cleared, one thing immediately jumped out at him. Ahead of them was the biggest building they'd seen in Viridian Death City. By far. It sat on the left side of the avenue, hulking and rounded. Nothing else crowded its side—just that one monolithic structure, standing alone. Its walls rose to about half the height of the city's outer walls, and the dome at the top was half again as high, looming over everything around it.

It dwarfed all the other buildings without even trying. It was wooden, like everything else in the city, but unlike the other buildings, which were layered green with vines and creepers, this one was all brown. Thick, flowing roots—like the ones at the bridge, but without that glossy sheen—clung to every inch of it, forming a living shell of tangled growth.

"An… arena?" Jieyuan stared at it. The building had the right shape for one—broad and circular. It could've been an amphitheater, if not for the huge dome up top.

"No," Meiyao said.

"It's… a temple, of sorts. The Viridian Cradle." She was staring at it with wide eyes, in wonder. Now, Jieyuan would be the first to admit the arena—or rather, the temple—was impressive enough, even after everything they'd seen in the city so far. But the sight of it alone didn't explain the way she looked at it. Not enough to warrant that sort of reaction. He took a moment to look around, scanning the other side of the street, the mist-draped buildings behind them. Nothing else caught his eye.

Nothing that could warrant her reaction. Nothing that could be pulling at Meiyao like this. She'd said whatever she was sensing was close. Which meant…

"This is it?" he asked. His voice came out quieter than he meant, but that was just as well. Probably a good idea to keep quiet.

"It is." Meiyao's tone was soft, distant. Jieyuan watched her a moment longer.

"We're going inside?"

"We are." Her answer was calm, but her eyes never left the so-called Viridian Cradle. Jieyuan wet his lips.

"Is it safe?" Meiyao closed her eyes and went still, focusing. She held that pose for a beat, two—then said, "It should be." She didn't sound too sure, though. Jieyuan's grip on the Shifting Sisters tightened. Huaxin was making a racket in his chest again. DANGER, it pounded at him, over and over. Huaxin, buddy, I get it, Jieyuan sent back. Just tell me one thing. Will we die if we go in? Their connection went quiet for a heartbeat. Then… NEGATION.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. That would've been just about the best thing to hear—if it weren't for the flicker of UNCERTAINTY Huaxin had sent along with it. Jieyuan sighed long and deep. Golden. Just golden. Judging by how Huaxin started beating faster still, it wasn't any happier with the direction things were heading than he was. Jieyuan had never been one to shy away from risk.

He was more than willing to gamble—so long as the gamble made sense. He liked his risks calculated. You had to weigh the gains against the losses, run the odds in your head. If the potential payout looked good enough, and the odds weren't too insulting, he wouldn't even blink at putting his life on the line. But the numbers here weren't adding up. The math was skewed in the wrong direction. Everything on the winning side looked awfully vague, while the losses—the danger—were all too clear, real enough to taste.

And the odds? At best, unknown. At worst, downright rotten. Jieyuan glanced at the other part of their party. Daojue was facing the Cradle, impassive. No expression on his face, no reaction to speak of. Daojue might as well have been looking at a particularly uninteresting rock by the street. And I might as well be looking at a statue. If Daojue had shown any kind of reaction, Jieyuan might have been able to work it into an argument (look, even Daojue doesn't think this is a good idea), but that wasn't happening.

It would've been a long shot, anyway, Jieyuan decided. He might be the Firesoul, but he had a good handle on most of his more fiery traits, his impulsive nature. Daojue, though, was full-on Metalsoul, no holds barred. Metal didn't feel fear—metal didn't feel anything—and neither did Daojue. Just cold, sharp purpose. When Jieyuan focused back on Meiyao, he found that she was already looking at him, expectantly.

"So?" she said.

"Is there a problem?" It sounded like a challenge.

"Possibly," Jieyuan said, diplomatically.

"I—" He shot Daojue another glance. Rot secrecy. It's not like he even cares.

"Huaxin doesn't like it. It really doesn't like it." Sure enough, Daojue didn't react, didn't even seem to be listening. Meiyao, though, frowned.

"But it is safe," she said. Her gaze shifted briefly to Daojue before returning to Jieyuan. She didn't seem to have much of a reaction, though; didn't seem particularly concerned about Daojue listening in. Considering how openly she'd been talking about her bloodline for a while now, she'd probably come to the same decision he had about how much to keep to themselves.

"It's not like the garden," she went on.

"It was dangerous. I think I even know what it is I'm sensing."

"And that is?"

"It's… It's the…" She turned back to the arena-like temple.

"You're better off seeing it for yourself. But it really shouldn't be any danger. There are mentions of the Viridian Cradle, back in the records my mother had gathered. It's as important as the Sacred Garden, if not even more so. I know what's inside it, and it explains exactly what it is I'm feeling. And it really isn't anything dangerous." Huaxin would beg to differ. Was begging to differ. Meiyao seemed fairly set on it, though. And it wasn't like they'd gone inside the city expecting a pleasant little stroll.

Danger had always been on the table—that was the whole reason they'd come straight here, to the source of it all, to get it out of the way. Huaxin, I'm asking again, just to be sure. We're not walking straight to our deaths here, right? I know it's dangerous—but it's not guaranteed, is it? AFFIRMATION, Huaxin responded. It sounded rather disgruntled, though.

In human terms, the jumble of impressions and emotions it sent over their bond would have amounted to something along the lines of, yes, it's not an outright death trap, but it's still deadly, so don't be an idiot and don't go inside, please. Meiyao must've caught something in his expression, because she said, "Look, the Viridian Cradle's practically the cornerstone of the sect. And the thing inside it—I need to see it." It was like the conversation they'd had at the entrance of the city all over again.

And his answer could only be the same as it had been back then.

"I get it," Jieyuan said, sighing.

"Lead the way." Everything else aside, Meiyao did keep insisting it was safe, so that had to count for something. What really settled it for him, though, was that he was fairly sure she'd be going into the Cradle no matter what he said. With or without him. One thing that kept bothering him, though, was how Meiyao's eyes kept flicking back to the massive temple while they'd been talking. Quick, rapid glances. Seven times in all. He'd counted.

He thought back to what Meiyao had said about a week ago, about the Liangshibai Bloodline and the Pull of the Valley. How the Linzushen Bloodline didn't have anything like that—how it had no mental effects at all. So that was a lie. The way this place—the Cradle, the city, the Dome—seemed to pull at Meiyao wasn't all that different from the Liangshibai's obsession with the Gleamstone Valley. And the look it put in her eyes was unsettlingly familiar. The same look he'd seen in Wanxin's that one time.

And in Yunzhu's, every time she looked at Daojue. Meiyao gave him a relieved smile, and without wasting a moment, she set forward. Jieyuan and Daojue followed close behind. It was a short walk to the entrance of the Cradle, but the air seeming to grow thicker and more charged with every step they took. They were just steps away from the entrance when Jieyuan realized he wasn't just imagining things.

That the viridian mist was getting thicker the closer they got to the Cradle, something that he'd never seen happen so far. Amazing how the bad signs just keep piling up. But there was nothing to it; if he'd noticed it, so must have Daojue and, more importantly, Meiyao, and it hadn't stopped them. Moments later, they crossed the threshold, stepping inside the massive structure. The first thing Jieyuan felt was the air: it was like he'd stepped into another climate altogether. Cooler, heavier, thicker.

It pressed against his skin, clung to the inside of his nose, weighed down his lungs. It smelled of damp earth, rich and moist, laced with something older and almost sweet, like sap or resin. Rolling down the back of his throat, it left a faint sting at the top of his chest, and spread to his tongue in a thin, bitter tang that turned the smell into taste. Jieyuan's eyes roamed the inside of the temple. It had looked huge enough from the outside, but inside it was something else entirely.

They weren't at the base of it, like you'd expect. Rather, they were at the middle. The Viridian Cradle didn't just rise high into the air; it also sank, burrowing deep into the valley floor. It went as far down as it did up. The scale of it was dizzying. Jieyuan felt it like a weight at the back of his neck, pulling his gaze up and down and leaving his breath just a little bit shallow. He'd never seen anything this vast.

The Justice Hall of the Gleaming Stone Sect and the sect palaces in Radiant Gold City had been bigger, sure; but those were sprawling complexes, dozens of buildings pressed together, each one with its own role and purpose. This was different. This was one single structure—one single room, even—carved out and raised for a single purpose. He took it all in. The walls curved away in a perfect circle, lined with stacked tiers of galleries, each one jutting out a little farther than the one above it.

They formed a descending funnel, drawing the eye down to the bottom. The middle of the temple was left open, nothing there but a yawning shaft of air, plunging straight to the pit. It was really just like an arena. Except it didn't have seats, and there weren't people filling the galleries. There were trees. A single row of them on the uppermost level, which hung right beneath the start of the massive dome overhead. Jieyuan could just make it out from where he stood.

But with each level down, the space grew broader, enough to fit one more row of trees than the level above it. At the lowest level—the first gallery—sat ten complete rings of trees. The trees were fairly spread out, but given the size of this place, there were easily a few hundred on the uppermost level alone. On the last one, thousands. They were all small, smaller even than the viridian oakwillows he'd seen earlier. Barely taller than he was, their narrow trunks and canopies neat and compact.

They looked like pure oaks (or at least pure chromal oaks, at any rate). But then Jieyuan glanced to the side, to the tree right beside the entrance, just to their left. And he realized it wasn't just a tree. Near its base, barely a foot off the ground, legs jutted out: bent knees and thighs, only a third of them showing, the rest swallowed by the trunk. Further up, a human face—a woman's face—eyes closed, mouth slack, serene and almost peaceful.

It was encased in bark, the wood framing her from forehead to chin, with not a hint of neck or hair showing. A treeified corpse. Just like that first dead Linzushen woman they'd come across. But this corpse wasn't half-draped, half-swallowed by the tree. It was sitting cross-legged inside the trunk, as if the tree had grown up around it, leaving only the face and the ends of its legs bared to the air. As Jieyuan's eyes moved to the other trees nearby, he saw it was the same for all of them.

Tree-corpses, every last one. They were all connected, too. Those same roots that overran the outside of the arena wove through the floor inside, tangling around each trunk. Jieyuan couldn't tell if they were reaching for the treeified Linzushen or extending from them. He couldn't decide which would be worse, either. It hadn't been that long ago that he'd wondered where all the corpses were, where all the other dead Linzushen had gone. Looks like I have my answer now.

The only good thing about all of this was that the trees weren't glowing, so they probably weren't that much under the influence of the Dome. He swallowed dryly. If Meiyao said it was safe, he'd trust her—for now. But he couldn't help the weight pressing at his chest, the sheer sense of presence in the tens of thousands of treeified cultivators and the ten levels winding down into the earth around them. But the important part was something else. They were at the middle tier, the fifth level.

Ahead of them, a broad, steep stairway cut down through the lower tiers, ending at the bottom of the arena, at the edge of the pit. Jieyuan followed its length with his eyes, all the way down to the center of it all… And there, his gaze settled on yet another tree. He'd seen it already in passing, but now he really focused on it. A viridian oakwillow, half its crown the dome of an oak, the bottom half the drooping canopy of a weeping willow. But it wasn't like the ones he'd seen outside, in the Sacred Garden.

It was bigger. Much bigger. The distance made it hard to be sure, but the top of it was almost level with the lowest gallery, putting it at least several dozen feet tall, maybe even over a hundred. Its canopy sprawled out, taking up over half the pit and leaving only a thin ring of root-choked space around it. In that narrow space, right in front of the massive oakwillow, there was another oak—just like the ones lining the galleries—dwarfed completely by the oakwillow's presence.

Jieyuan spared it only a brief glance. His attention was already locked back on the larger tree. That was the one that mattered. What they must've come here for, in fact. Nothing else really drew the eye. Huaxin? How's it looking? DANGER, it sent back. Still no specifics about just what the danger was. But it was clear on where it was coming from. The massive viridian oakwillow. Jieyuan had already figured as much, but it was good to know there wasn't some other hidden threat lurking just out of sight.

"Meiyao?" Jieyuan said. She was staring fixedly down at the viridian oakwillow—didn't even seem to notice anything else.

"What's the plan now?"

"We go down," she said. On the one hand, that answer meant she wasn't in another one of those trances. On the other hand… well, there was the answer itself.

"Still no danger?" Jieyuan asked, though he already had a fairly good idea what she'd say.

"None," she said. And as if that was all there was to it, she started down the steps. In for copper, in for gold. Jieyuan and Daojue followed after her. It was a long way down. Thousands of steps, each one thick with tangled roots, to the point you could hardly see the original, darkened wood underneath. Their footsteps echoed faintly in the hush of the Cradle, hollow beats that barely stirred the still air.

The roots made for some awkward footing, but after the first couple of steps, he found his balance and settled into the rhythm. Before long, he barely had to think about his feet at all. He started off with his focus locked on the massive, towering viridian oakwillow below. He watched it warily, carefully, eyes narrowed for any hint of movement, any small sign that something might be off. He didn't like the thing, and he wasn't about to take his eyes off it.

But after a while, he noticed how Meiyao's gaze never wavered from the great tree. Daojue, too, stared dead ahead, unflinching and silent. Between the two of them, the path forward was more than covered. So Jieyuan shifted his attention outward. The deeper they went, the more he felt the air grow denser, almost oily, heavy with the scent of resin and ancient earth. The mist was thickening, too. Not by much, but enough that he noticed.

He let his eyes flick from side to side, scanning the thousands of trees that ringed the galleries. Each one, for all effects and purposes, a living coffin. Huaxin had said the danger was the tree. But Fatebloom Intuition wasn't perfect (and the mist had already shown it could mess with it), so Jieyuan wasn't about to leave things to chance. It was the ones nearby he paid the most attention to, the ones right by the steps.

The three of them were already nearing the fourth level, and he eyed the trees they'd soon be passing by, just ahead. Again he looked for signs of motion, of something that didn't belong. But he caught nothing, and as they walked past the trees, nothing happened, either. And then the fourth level was behind them, and they were closing on the third. This time, Jieyuan did notice something different. One of the trees beside the stairway was smaller than the rest by almost half.

As they got closer, he turned his head to get a better look at it. What he saw was the face of a child. Probably not even into the double digits. Eyes closed, like everyone else, that Linzushen beauty still only half-formed. So young he couldn't even tell if it had been a boy or a girl. He felt a sudden tightness in his chest. It'd been one thing with the adults. He could accept that—not agree, but accept. They'd made their choice to stay behind, to surrender themselves to the Dome. But the children…

They'd have only been following their parents. Their clearly insane, lunatic parents. Jieyuan looked around, casting his gaze out further. And now that he was looking for it, he saw them. Several smaller trees, scattered here and there, especially down in the lower galleries. He hadn't noticed them before, hadn't thought to look. Now he did, and he didn't like what he was seeing. It'd never really occurred to him to wonder what it must've been like, growing up in the Viridian Death Cult.

But now that he did, his thoughts took some bad turns—and he suspected the real thing had probably been worse still. Even the Linzushen wouldn't have been spared. They might have been worshiped like living saints, but they'd been just as much slaves to their faith as everyone else. Maybe even more so. He felt a sudden, sharp surge of gratitude for Meiyao's mother, Lianhua—for getting away from it all, and for keeping her daughter safe from the worst of it, too.

"It's called the Viridian Death Cult for a reason." Meiyao's voice cut through the quiet, pulling Jieyuan out of his own thoughts. He blinked, and only then realized he'd stopped moving at some point, just standing there staring. Meiyao and Daojue had stopped, too. Daojue was still looking ahead, as steady as ever, but Meiyao's eyes were on Jieyuan. She looked at him, then at the dead child, then back again.

"Life and death, to the Faith, aren't separate," she said.

"Life in stillness, death in motion. The cycle of growth and decay, feeding into each other. The wax and wane of rot and bloom. The Faith has all sorts of ways to describe the concept." She pursed her lips, frowning a little, thinking it through.

"But it all comes down to the fact that the cult believed the Viridian superseded the Heavens when it came to life and death. They lived to worship the Viridian, and in death the Viridian would claim them, make them part of itself. That's the whole idea of growing plants over our dead, of having funeral gardens. It's all to ease the transition into the Viridian's grasp." Jieyuan watched her. Her eyes were bright, catching the glow of the mist.

"Of course, ask a cultist just what the Viridian is, and matters get far more complicated." Her tone was light, almost casual, but her face didn't match it.

"But you can think of it as nature itself. Or, more precisely, a part of nature that commands the rest of it. The Primeval Grace, it's sometimes called. Supposedly the Dome is a manifestation of it, the Viridian's attempt to assert its dominion over the living world." She smiled a dark, bitter smile as she nodded at the kid's corpse.

"Those are the words everyone who grows up in the Cult is raised to. The Linzushen most of all. So as far as everyone here was concerned, the Viridian had come for them. So what else was there to do, except welcome it with open arms? If nothing else, they'd have died content, strong in their faith. And there's a certain peace in that." A small mercy, that. Maybe. Jieyuan didn't quite agree. But it was a done thing, and he didn't feel like arguing the point.

No use in talking about the dead—there was enough to deal with in the living. He let the matter slip from his mind. Meiyao was in a talking mood, and he figured he'd use that while it lasted. Better to focus on what mattered, on what he could do something about. Which, right now, was figuring out just what this place was and what the huge, haunting tree could be up to.

"You said this place was a temple. But what exactly is it? And…"—he nodded toward the massive viridian oakwillow—"what exactly is that?"

"The Viridian Cradle was the cult's greatest temple." Meiyao glanced back down at the pit, eyes thoughtful.

"Every day, the Linzushen would come—young and old, cultivator and mundane alike—and meditate here. It's where they'd cultivate, too. As for why this place was special, it's all because of that tree. The Sacred Source." She started down the steps again, slow and deliberate, but didn't stop speaking.

"It's a viridian oakwillow, as I think you can tell. And like the ones outside, it was planted over a dead Linzushen. A dead Sacred One. Not just any Sacred One—the very first one. The First Linzushen, the Primeval Daughter, the Viridian Progenitor." She looked back at him.

"She was born in Radiant Gold City, about five thousand years ago. She'd been a cultivator—the scriptures aren't clear on the details, but most sources point to the Radiant Gold Sect—who'd been drawn to the Dome and spent an indeterminate amount of time inside. And then she came back, changed by the Viridian." Meiyao's voice was quiet, but it carried in the empty space in a way their footsteps couldn't. It was steady, and Jieyuan could tell she'd thought about these words a lot before.

But Jieyuan was more concerned about what she'd said rather than her tone.

"Wait, this ancestor of yours—she left the Dome?" Jieyuan asked. Because that was certainly news to him; he'd grown up hearing that the Dome was impossible to escape from.

"You didn't mention this before, I'm sure. And I think that's something that would've warranted a mention, considering our whole situation." Meiyao shook her head softly.

"It's not like that. The First Linzushen… she's like a mythological existence in the Viridian Death Faith. It all happened so long ago, and when you take religion into consideration… the line between truth and legend grows indistinct. There's no real proof that she entered the Dome; she only claimed that she did, and her followers took it as the Heavens' own truth. I never brought her up before because it wouldn't change anything."

"I see," Jieyuan said quietly, Meiyao's words dousing his excitement before it could really spark.

"Anyway, the First Linzushen founded Viridian Death City," Meiyao said.

"Grew it from a sapling, here in this valley. She went back to Radiant Gold City, preached her faith, and found herself believers. She taught them to study the Dome and the Viridian, to unravel its secrets, so they could understand it. And in understanding, worship it better—prove their faith, so that the Viridian might recognize them as its own." Meiyao gestured vaguely with her arms, as if to take in the whole of the Cradle around them, even as they kept climbing down the steps.

"She was the one who created the Viridian Cradle. Grew it herself, supposedly in a single day. And over two centuries later, when she felt her time had come, she lay down at the center of it, placed the acorn of a viridian oakwillow upon her chest, and breathed her last. Overnight, it grew into that tree. The Sacred Source." They were nearing the second level now, and Jieyuan felt the weight of the place pressing in around them, the sheer age of it.

"This was all a very long time ago, of course. And most of the original records were lost when the Dome took over the city." Meiyao fell quiet for a moment.

"They should still be here, though—somewhere. Something we can take a look at later. But that's not the point." She shook her head, refocusing.

"What matters is that here, in the presence of the Source, the Linzushen felt the closest to the Viridian. Viridian oakwillows are also called the living corpses of the Sacred Ones. And the founder's living corpse served as a window of sorts to the Viridian." Jieyuan squinted at the massive tree. He didn't know about much else, but he'd have said it was these smaller oaks, grown right over the dead Linzushen, that better fit that living corpse label.

The big one was too vast, too alien, to feel like it had ever been human at all. And, of course, it didn't seem to have an actual corpse sticking out of it—unlike the others.

"I don't believe in the Faith, or in the idea of a Viridian as some kind of personification of nature," Meiyao said suddenly. Her voice was layered with that calm certainty she always seemed to wear when talking about the cult.

"But we do have a chromal bloodline, so there must've been something special about the First Linzushen. And it does seem to be connected to the Dome. And I'll admit I'm rather fascinated by all of it. Death cult or not, this is my clan. My family, my history. And…" She trailed off, silent for several more steps.

"There is something special about the Sacred Source," she finally said.

"I could feel it even from outside the city. You've noticed how the mist here is thicker, right? It's because of it. It's drawing the viridian mist in, somehow. And it's doing other things as well, but I'm not yet quite sure what." They walked past the second level. Now only the first gallery stood between them and the bottom. This close, Jieyuan realized just how badly he'd misjudged the scale of the place. The viridian oakwillow was far bigger than he'd thought from above.

Forget a hundred feet; it was closer to a hundred yards, maybe more, pushing four hundred feet easy. It loomed above them, massive and silent, and Jieyuan couldn't shake the feeling that this was just the surface of whatever was really going on here. Meiyao didn't say anything else. Jieyuan didn't know if it was because she'd run out of things to say, or because the sight of the tree from this close had shut her up. He couldn't judge her either way.

He felt it too: the weight of the thing, the way it seemed to press in on them from every angle. And whatever he was feeling, her bloodline would have her feeling it even more intensely. He didn't envy her that. Of course, what Meiyao had said about how the tree was doing other things didn't help any. But it wasn't news to him that the tree was dangerous, and at least her words proved she was aware of it. Better to have her watching for that than pretending it was harmless.

Still, he wasn't sure how much good that'd do. The viridian oakwillows outside had been Orangerealm plants, according to Meiyao. He doubted this one was any different. Just bigger, older, and probably a whole lot meaner. They left the first gallery behind them, the final stretch ahead. No more levels, just the bottom of the Cradle. In eerie silence, they took that last step, out of the root-covered stairway and onto the root-covered ground of the pit.