Chương 8: One Step from the End

The cloud bridge to the Sacred Mountain hung above the cloud sea. Its span had been woven from hundreds of aged vines, floored with wide planks sanded smooth. When the procession for the Rite stepped onto it, the whole bridge rode up and down on the mountain wind. The priests had put on long white-feather robes, their brow ornaments strung with crystalline stone beads that knocked together as they walked, a fine scattering of sound drifting all the way down into the gorge.

Gu Zhiwei reached the middle of the bridge and looked back once. The stand of giant trees where Cloudperch lived had already sunk into the mist, only the corners of tier upon tier of timber houses and vine bridges showing between the crowns, the fire basins shrunk down to warm yellow pinpricks. Cloud beasts drifted along the Cloud River in migration, broad wings dipping now and then into the water vapor. The procession numbered somewhere past fifty. The High Priest and ten priest's attendants walked at the front.

Su Ye and blonde Julie, because they could resonate with cloud beasts, had also changed into long white-feather robes and followed among the priests. The hunt party split into two lines, Gu Zhiwei at the head with Windlisten across her back, Matt bringing up the rear. Wang Pu came right behind Gu Zhiwei with four bone knives through his belt and one strapped to each calf, two casks of glow powder and waterskins on his back, a pouch of Maria's prepared herbs hanging on either side.

The living image of a walking supply depot. Gu Zhiwei glanced at him.

"Why are you carrying so much?"

"Brother Matt said the more the better." Wang Pu, several days into Matt's special training, lowered his voice.

"I have reasonable grounds to suspect he thinks my combat ability is straight-up garbage, so he'd rather develop my hauling value." Matt's voice came from behind: "Still got the breath to snitch. Want another cask of glow powder?" Wang Pu shut up immediately. The far end of the cloud bridge joined a stairway cut along the ridge. At first there were still thick giant trees on both sides of the steps, leaves steeped in the mist of the cloud sea, cold droplets rolling endlessly off their edges.

A stretch higher and the trees shrank fast, roots twisting down into cracks in the rock. The slope grew steeper. To the right the cliff face ran straight up into gray clouds; to the left, the cloud sea with no end in sight. When the wind pulled the thin mist apart, they could still see the sea of trees rolling below, several magnificent cloud rivers winding and branching among the giant trunks, all of them finally pouring into a distant waterfall. Gu Zhiwei's foot slipped.

She looked down and only then saw the skin of thin ice over the stone. Farther on, the whole ridge turned ice-white. The rock looked as though years of cold wind had scraped every other color out of it. Fine snow lay buried in the shadowed hollows, crunching faintly underfoot. Frost sheathed the ridge. Beneath it, the veins of fire ran. Thud. A muffled impact came up through their feet. Dust and ice chips leapt off the steps together.

Several adult cloud beasts swam toward the summit, broad wings taut, letting out short shrill cries. The cub on Su Ye's shoulder wound its tail filament nervously around her wrist, coil after coil.

"The cub told me the thing is right down there."

"The seal holds. He can't get up." The High Priest tightened her grip on her bone staff without breaking stride.

"Keep walking." Ahead, a fissure cut the stairway in two, scalding white vapor jetting up out of the break. They crossed one at a time, carefully. When Wang Pu's turn came, he shuffled to the lip clutching all his jars and casks and looked down. Red light churned below.

"Think if I'd brought some fire oil and chucked it down there, I could've blown the boss up early?" Gu Zhiwei screwed her waterskin shut.

"You'd probably just make him cozier." Before long they reached the Mountainguard Stone Gate: two enormous stone pillars pinching the mountain path narrow, their surfaces carved over with cloud beasts in full wingspread. The lines that should have been pure white had been scorched to charcoal, and cracks crawled across the shafts in a spiderweb. The High Priest called a short rest and took several attendants off to inspect the sealing pillars at the four quarters.

While they waited, Wang Pu looked up again at the summit hidden behind volcanic ash.

"Is the sacred altar right past the Mountainguard Stone Gate?"

"There's still a short stretch of the wind valley." An old attendant, dark blue water patterns tattooed on his cheek, pointed toward the end of the ridge.

"The sacred altar is below the crater. Twelve sealing pillars there hold down the Crimson Core." Gu Zhiwei caught the word.

"What's the Crimson Core?"

"The source of the Earthfire Rock Beast's power." Cloudperch had never once truly killed the Earthfire Rock Beast. Centuries ago, it had crawled up out of the earth's core. They ran spears through its skull, and it sank into the magma and came back out of the fire reborn. Its limbs were hacked off, and the wreck of it swallowed stone and fitted itself together again. Hunters lured it into a freezing pool once, and it stayed locked in the ice for three full days. But on the morning of the fourth it broke out anyway.

That disaster lasted years. Black rain screamed across the sea of trees, and even in daylight there was nothing overhead but a blood-red sun. Countless tribesfolk were devoured. Cloudperch's lower settlements of that age were destroyed down to the last one. The High Priest of that generation had a gift of dazzling brilliance. He was also Windlisten's previous owner. He led the hunters against the rock beast again and again. The last time, he walked into the crater alone.

He used the mountain wind to peel back the smoke, drew in the cloud sea, woke the ancient cloud beasts, and at last punched through the Earthfire Rock Beast's body, stripped out the Crimson Core, and pressed it down into the sacred altar. Without the Crimson Core the Earthfire Rock Beast still lived, only with its power greatly reduced.

Besides the twelve sealing pillars in the altar, he set three more stone pillars at each of the four directions, east, west, south, north, sealing the crippled beast deep in its lair. Every ten years after that, the tribe's priests had to hold the Rite together with the cloud beasts and reinforce every seal.

"And that High Priest?" Su Ye asked softly. The old attendant was quiet for a moment. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"He never came out again." To finish that seal, he had sent the last thread of his power into the pillars. When the hunters opened the Mountainguard Stone Gate and crossed the wind valley again, all they found was his bone staff standing in the center of the sacred altar. He never walked back down the Sacred Mountain. Gu Zhiwei lowered her eyes to Windlisten. The hollow stone bead at the bow's tip was trembling in the wind, giving off the thinnest hum, as if it were remembering someone gone.

Not long after, the priests who had gone to inspect and repair the pillars at the four quarters came back. Everyone passed through the Mountainguard Stone Gate and crossed the wind valley. The sacred altar lay at the valley's end. A black stone platform hung against the inner wall of the crater, twelve sealing pillars ringed upon it, and at the center a dark red sphere with blood-red light surfacing and vanishing across its skin.

Beneath the platform an enormous black shape hurled itself upward again and again, and again and again an invisible barrier turned it back. That was the shuddering they'd felt outside the gate. The Earthfire Rock Beast. It was more than ten times the size of the giant earthcore beast Gu Zhiwei had seen before, its body seemingly built mostly of black rock and hardened magma, a ridge of searing red bone spurs humped along its back. It had no Crimson Core, and still it kept the sacred altar shaking without pause.

The High Priest assigned positions fast, one priest's attendant to each sealing pillar. Su Ye and Julie were among them. Then she turned to Gu Zhiwei.

"Child, try using your power to lay one more barrier under this platform. Near the end of the Rite there's a brief stall in the sealing energy. Hold through those few seconds and he'll be sealed back into the earth."

"All right." Gu Zhiwei went to work at once. Her control over her Spirit was far surer now. She sank it into the rock beneath her feet and had it finished in the space of a few breaths. The High Priest felt out the barrier's strength and finally showed her first smile in half a day.

"Very good. This will hold through the gap while the seal restarts, no question about it." As though it had felt her mood, the system chimed.

"Player Gu Zhiwei has completed stage event: [Recognition of Ability]."

"Shared quest progress: 70% → 85%."

"Personal priest trust: 70% → 85%." The announcement put a jolt through every player, the ones on the mountain and the ones left behind in the tribe. Just the last fifteen percent to go. Good odds it would break through once the Rite was done. At the center of the sacred altar, the High Priest sank her Spirit into the eye of the formation. The pounding under the platform turned instantly more violent.

"The Rite begins!" The hunters at the altar's rim struck a solemn drumbeat. The fire basins beside the pillars were lit one after another. The High Priest began to chant low. Inside her song, the priest's attendants opened resonance links with their cloud beasts one by one. The cloud beasts had been waiting off to the side; feeling the summons, they came drifting slowly down from above in turn and wound their tail filaments around the sealing pillars.

The first sealing pillar lit, dazzling blue-white light racing up along its carvings. The second. The third. Su Ye kept her eyes closed, mind joined with her cloud beast's, calling it to the pillar and settling it into place. Her pact-bound cloud beast was still a cub, but it had power enough to light a sealing pillar. Julie stood before the tenth sealing pillar. The cloud beast beside her circled restlessly, moving toward the pillar several times and each time being steered away by Julie's mind.

She looked over at Su Ye.

"You're really not angry?" Su Ye was concentrating on holding the resonance and didn't catch it.

"What?"

"You were the one who pushed the quest forward first." Julie's tone came out stiff.

"Now Gu Zhiwei's taken it to eighty-five percent, and the first-clear reward's going to be hers too." She looked toward one corner of the altar. Gu Zhiwei stood there, wholly absorbed in holding her Spirit barrier. Julie drew her gaze back.

"And all you get to do is stand here making animals glow." Su Ye blinked, then her brows pulled tight.

"She earned that progress by her ability. Why would I be angry?"

"You don't want the first clear?"

"Sure I do." Su Ye only wanted this pointless conversation over.

"But whoever's got the ability takes the lead. Is that so hard to understand?" Julie had nothing to say to that. All this time she'd been farming visibility in front of the priests, and her personal trust was still nowhere near Gu Zhiwei's. The moment the sealing formation completed, the system would almost certainly credit the quest to Gu Zhiwei, and everything she'd done to win the priests' approval would turn into a joke. By what right?!

She stared at the tenth pillar and kept withholding the right command from her cloud beast. Maybe if she dragged it out just a little longer... let Gu Zhiwei burn a bit more Spirit, let her look a bit more out of her depth... The formation was perfectly fine anyway. What harm could a short delay do? All she had to do was look like she was trying very hard, and the High Priest might even notice the effort she was making to light the tenth pillar. This was the one link that couldn't be completed without her.

Thinking that, she even ordered her cloud beast back. The beast was thoroughly confused, but it folded its transparent wings and left the pillar. The light had already come more than halfway around the altar, blue-white radiance running toward Julie's position, and stopping dead there. The tenth pillar stayed silent. The High Priest's head came up, her voice full of urgency.

"Get the cloud beast to the pillar, now!"

"I'm trying." Julie threw herself into the performance, knuckles going white with strain. Watching from beside her, Su Ye felt something snag. Was Julie usually this slow at getting through to her own cloud beast? Beneath the platform, the Earthfire Rock Beast suddenly stopped ramming. It raised its head. The dark red firelight inside its maw brightened inch by inch, as if a moment it had waited a very long time for had finally arrived. The seal had a gap in it.

The ninth sealing pillar, holding energy it had no way to pass on, burst open from the inside, and every remaining pillar went dark in the same instant. Su Ye, beside the ninth pillar, was thrown up by an invisible force and slammed back-first into the mountain wall. The tail filament linking her cub to the pillar was blown apart, and it shrieked in wave after wave of pain. It happened too fast for anyone to react. The High Priest's bone staff still stood planted in the eye of the formation.

The blue-white light flickered a few times and then went out completely. The cloud beasts circling above the altar loosed long, keening cries. Between the pillars, light broke apart and scattered upward across the whole sky. The seal that had held for centuries failed utterly. Julie went rigid with fright, stumbling backward.

"How… was this formation really that fragile?!" Right then the hair on the back of Gu Zhiwei's neck shot up.

"Everyone get back!" BOOM! The Earthfire Rock Beast threw a hundred times its earlier force into the barrier overhead. Gu Zhiwei poured out Spirit like a madwoman, but for a C-rank like her it was still far too much to ask. A few seconds she could hold. Sustaining it endlessly, the way this was going, was simply not possible.

"Hold it!" The High Priest pressed her own Spirit onto it as well. Seeing that, the priest's attendants all rushed up to help. In the end it was like spitting into a furnace. The Earthfire Rock Beast finally tore through their Spirit barrier and surged up onto the sacred altar. The High Priest whipped around, every trace of blood gone from her face.

"The Crimson Core!" On the altar, the dark red sphere with its skin of fire-veins rose slowly, hanging in a column of scalding air. The Earthfire Rock Beast opened its chest wide in satisfaction, welcoming its power home. Gu Zhiwei raised her bow and shot. The arrow crossed the heat wash and burned to flying ash half a foot from the Crimson Core. The Crimson Core seated itself squarely in the Earthfire Rock Beast's chest. The air went still for a second.

Ominous red light blazed skyward from the cracks in the rock beast's hide, and the vast body drew itself higher, inch by inch. The sacred altar under its feet began to melt, the edges of the black stone dripping away as crimson magma. Centuries of sacrifice, countless lives spent standing guard. In this one moment, all of it fell apart a single step from the end.