Chương 10: Twelve Hours to Say Goodbye

The long cry of the cloud beasts drowned out the volcano's roar. The first to reach the Sacred Mountain were the cloud beasts that nested in the nearby Cloud River. They wheeled above the crater, broad blue-white wings slicing the churning heat, and then, farther out, the cloud layers themselves began to swell and move. A hundred. A thousand.

Cloud beasts filled the sky, circling the Sacred Mountain, the faint light on their soft scales linking one to the next until it became a blue-white river of cloud hung upside down in the high air. More kept streaming in, and the luminous ring pushed outward, layer upon layer. Everyone stood struck dumb by the sight. Even the people of Cloudperch noticed the disturbance on the Sacred Mountain and crowded onto the highest platform to watch.

Chen Li stared at the distant spectacle with one eye and at the quest panel with the other. Maria was praying under her breath beside him. Blue-white motes of light fell like fine rain, streaming toward the Sacred Spirit Vine Staff clenched in Gu Zhiwei's hand. In the instant the resonance of ten thousand beasts poured into her mind, countless unfamiliar runes surfaced with it. Some came from what the Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman had left behind.

Some had lain hidden in the endless clash between mountain winds and the earth veins. And some belonged to an ancient script she had never seen, so intricate that a single glance sent pain splitting through her skull. They overlapped in a rush, and kept annihilating each other. What remained, at last, was one clear and enormous pattern in Gu Zhiwei's mind. The Earthfire Rock Beast reared and roared, but the Crimson Core in its chest withdrew beneath layer after layer of black armor.

It sensed a lethal threat radiating from this human, one that made it want, absurdly, to run. Gu Zhiwei stepped forward and set the staff's tip against the broken black stone of the sacred altar. The first stroke came down. Blue-white light spilled from the staff's end, and with the resonance as her ink she drew a silver-white arc across the altar, hundreds of feet long. Where the arc crossed the lava, it did not go out. It sank instead, biting deep, engraving itself into the black stone under the magma.

The Earthfire Rock Beast thrashed its vast body and found itself pinned to the sacred altar by a force it could not break. The second stroke ran straight through the eye of the formation. The third traced out one huge rune after another, each of them breathing something old. Everywhere Gu Zhiwei walked, the runes lit in sequence. The cloud beasts in the sky cried out as one. More resonance came down from above and poured into the vine staff. The Earthfire Rock Beast recognized a danger it had never met before.

It tried to send another killing gout of flame at Gu Zhiwei. Gu Zhiwei swept the vine staff through the air, completing the final line of the formation. Silver-white resonance flowed around her feet and joined the first arc. Formation complete. BOOM. The whole sacred altar dropped. The runes cut into the black stone rose all at once, becoming interlocking ranks of silver-white pillars of light, and every one of them passed clean through the Earthfire Rock Beast's enormous body.

It fought like something gone mad, its endlessly regenerating shell of black rock slamming into the curtain of light at the formation's edge, hunting for a way out of this terrible cage. But each time the curtain dimmed, more cloud beasts answered from the heights, and their resonance flowed through Gu Zhiwei into the altar. Silver-white lines climbed her wrists and traveled up along her veins until her skin was nearly translucent.

The breath of forest seas, of storms, of the Cloud River, all of it mixed with the resonance sent by ten thousand living things and bore down into her body. Her bones made a small sound of protest. Gu Zhiwei set her teeth and drove the staff into the eye of the formation.

"Formation, activate." The vast pattern contracted at her word. Four runes shaped like beast pupils flared beneath the Earthfire Rock Beast's limbs, and silver-white columns of light shot skyward, nailing it to the center of the sacred altar. The Earthfire Rock Beast opened its chest plates. Layers of rock shell ground against each other with a scrape that set teeth on edge.

The vents around the Crimson Core spewed magma all at once, and a ball of blue-white fire, several times larger than the last, condensed inside its chest cavity. The heat bent the air. Gu Zhiwei smelled the ends of her own hair burning. She pulled the staff back and brought out Windlisten. The bow lengthened in her hands, and the hollow stone beads at its tips became two great eyes of wind.

One by one the silver-white runes in the formation lifted free, thinned into streaming light, ran along the bow's body and gathered at the arrowhead. An enormous shaft of light blazed into being in front of her. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Reading her intent, the High Priest hurried to warn her.

"The Earthfire Rock Beast's Crimson Core can't be destroyed. We've tried so many ways..." Gu Zhiwei did not cut her off, and did not stop. She only gave the High Priest a steadying look. Across the whole sky the cloud beasts spread their broad wings and let out one long cry that shook the Cloud Sea. Ten million threads of resonant light came down. The wind stopped. The Earthfire Rock Beast hurled itself again and again at the curtain of light.

It could smell death on that arrow at last, and the fury in its roar turned to panic. Gu Zhiwei let go. The silver-white shaft screamed toward the beast, and more resonance chased after it, feeding into the point as it flew. The light struck the Crimson Core. Crack. The small, precise sound of breaking reached every ear. The Earthfire Rock Beast went rigid. The first fissure opened on the Crimson Core's surface, then ran outward in every direction.

Dark red light lanced from the seams and lit up the beast's huge frame from within. The next second, the Crimson Core burst. Gu Zhiwei heard the long, rolling collapse traveling through the beast's body. The beast could survive without the Crimson Core. But once the Core was destroyed, it died for real. The black rock shell caved in starting at the chest. The red glow went out inch by inch. The foreclaw it had stretched toward Gu Zhiwei stopped in midair. Then it came crashing down.

The supposedly undying Earthfire Rock Beast was finally, truly dead. The vast corpse broke apart inside the formation, turning by degrees into black rubble with no heat left in it. The cold, mechanical female voice chose that moment to speak. 【Final quest: [Destroy the Earthfire Rock Beast, save the Cloud Sea world] complete. 】 【Main quest: [Earn the priest's trust, become the successor priest] complete. 】 【Shared quest progress: 85% → 100%. 】 【First clear: Gu Zhiwei.

】 【The beginner world will close in twelve hours. At that time, all surviving players will return to their original world. 】 【Calculating rewards... 】 Julie was still sitting where she had been. The priest's attendant was dead. The young hunter was dead. Su Ye's cub and countless grown cloud beasts would never fly again. The High Priest did not kill her on the spot. She had the hunters bind Julie's wrists with water-soaked vine rope and march her back down to the tribe's underground cell. Julie finally broke.

She struggled against the ropes, insisting she had only been a little slow. She hadn't known the seal would shatter. She had trained for the Rite too. She had done so much for the tribe. No one answered. Then Julie turned to the players.

"Gu Zhiwei, Gu Zhiwei! You know we're all players. I'm not like those priest's attendants, I just wasn't as well trained!" Wang Pu had been standing far off and wasn't sure what had actually happened. Figuring players ought to look out for each other, he opened his mouth to put in a word. Su Ye stood up with her cub's body in her arms. The tears came again before she could stop them, and her voice cracked.

"Don't listen to her! Don't listen to her! She did it on purpose!" She was soft, not stupid. String together what Julie had said to her during the Rite and how Julie had behaved afterward, and the truth all but said itself out loud.

"She was jealous that Gu Zhiwei would get the first-clear reward. She kept her cloud beast away from the sealing pillar on purpose!" The people of Cloudperch couldn't hear the part about a first-clear reward, but they heard the rest, and one after another they turned furious stares on her. The High Priest's face went iron gray. She forced down her anger and ordered the hunters to take Julie away. They did not deal with criminals on the Sacred Mountain. Julie was still spinning excuses as they led her off.

As everyone came down, the Cloud Sea flooded back over the ridge and soaked the stone steps. A trace of sulfur and blood still hung in the air. Su Ye walked last, carrying the cub's body. She refused to leave it on the Sacred Mountain. Twelve hours is neither long nor short, but it is enough time to say goodbye. Su Ye told the two remaining cubs that from now on they were not to steal the herbs the priest set out to dry.

The two cubs pressed against her shoulders, one on each side, answering her with low burbling purrs. Back at the tribe, the celebrating crowd lit bonfires and laid out roast meat and fruit to welcome the heroes home. Matt went down to the lower platform. The old head hunter sat by the fire. He listened to the whole account of the Sacred Mountain and was silent a long while.

"You did everything you could, boy." Matt's fist closed around his bone whistle.

"They were so young." His voice shook a little. The young hunter's death had dragged up memories he preferred not to face. The old hunter let out a heavy sigh. He had lived through too many deaths, and all he could do now was clap Matt on the shoulder.

"The Cloud Sea will carry their spirits home. They'll be born again on this land." When Gu Zhiwei finished eating and got back to the tree house, her aunt was waiting by the door. The old woman didn't ask what had happened on the Sacred Mountain. She saw the scorched blue feather band at Gu Zhiwei's brow, hauled her inside, took it off, and began trimming away the blackened ends bit by bit. She slapped away the hand Gu Zhiwei offered to help.

"You were gone one day, and this is how you come back. You weren't half this much trouble to raise when you were small." Gu Zhiwei sat on the low stool, lost in thought as she watched her aunt's profile bent over her sewing. There was something greedy in the way she wanted to keep this warmth. Resin popped and crackled in the fire pit. The faint bitterness of dried herbs hung in the room. Tomorrow. Would the system fill in their identities for them? Or simply erase them from everyone's memory?

In a dozen or so hours, would there still be a Gu Zhiwei in this tree house? Would her aunt remember that she had left, or would she suddenly notice that the room she'd kept for years had never had anyone in it at all? Her aunt tied the feather band back across her brow. Her fingers were rough, and they carried the fire pit's warmth as they brushed past her ear.

"The High Priest says you're to be her successor. You'll have to smile more from now on." There was pride in the old voice, and a whole future in it. But none of that... had anything to do with Gu Zhiwei anymore. Her throat tightened. She managed one word.

"Okay." As the countdown approached zero, every one of them was wound tight. The vine rope had rubbed dark red welts into Julie's wrists. She watched the countdown with a raw, urgent impatience on her face. The hunters guarding her had already raised an execution platform outside the cell, though the system did not care in the slightest how the locals intended to dispose of a traitor. 【Return sequence initiated. 】 The cold female voice rang in every player's mind.

Twenty shafts of white light came down, one for each of them. Gu Zhiwei took one last look toward where the tree house stood. The last thing she heard before her mind blurred was Chen Li shouting: "Don't vanish when we get back. I'm in Shanghai too. Let's meet up."