Ling Qi sucked in a breath through her teeth. In this place on the border of Dream, it did nothing. The body she perceived was no more than a construct of her mind. Even so, it felt steadying. She turned to look at Zhengui. "You're certain?" She asked. It felt like she was dragging the words from her lungs by force.
"Yes," Zhen and Gui spoke as one. There was no doubt.
"Sixiang, I want to be connected while you keep watch," Ling Qi said tersely, not bothering to cloak her words from the listening fungal spirit, which looked on with wary hunger.
"Will do," Sixiang murmured.
"You'll have your dream in a moment," Ling Qi said, turning to address the creature. "You will not take anything which is not offered."
The sibilant chorus of agreement from the swarm scratched painfully at her ears, and Ling Qi had to fight back a scowl. "Zhengui, do you know what you want to offer?" she asked quietly.
Gui craned his neck to look up at Zhen. and Zhen hissed irritably back, flicking his tongue. ...Gui thinks so."
At her side, Hanyi shifted from foot to foot, looking unhappy.
"Can I see?" Ling Qi asked gently? "Sixiang and I need to make sure it doesn;t try to take anything else."
Gui bobbed his head, and she reached out, Sixiang's multihued mist drifting from her sleeve. She touched his head, and the world whirled away in a stream of images.
Zhengui's perceptions were difficult for her to parse. It was only her practice with clairvoyance arts which allowed her to understood the multiple points of view he lived his whole life with. Even then, the 'eyes' she created still worked much like her own. Zhen's view was fuzzy and colorless, constructed more out of sound, scent and taste than sight. Gui's on the other hand was indescribably vibrant, rioting with colors that she didn't have words to describe, but his hearing was dull and muted, and his sense of smell almost alien, blending with his sense for vibrations picked up through the roots which sprung up beneath his feet wherever he went. Surrounded by stone down here, Gui had felt half blind, and had been relying on Zhen to get around properly.
His thoughts were just as difficult to categorize, one mind with two expressions, made for an alien train of thought, yet… She understood him the moment she immersed herself, even if processing the information of his senses took longer. She felt his pride and determination, she felt his stubbornness and affection. She felt the buried scars of fear.
Yet, for all that, Zhengui's mind was young and simple. He wanted to be strong. He wanted to help and impress her, the one who had raised him. He wanted tasty food and to play with Hanyi. He missed spending time with Cui and Linhuo. He wanted to meet new friends when they started their sessions with Wang Chao. He wanted to step on or eat the Shishigui because they had hurt her and scared her family. He was excited to have another chance to fight beside and support her.
His feelings flowed around and through her, a thousand fleeting images passing by in each second. Like a school of startled fish, the fragments of thought and memory scattered as he pushed something else to the fore. It was a project he had been struggling with, something he wanted to do but lacked the knowledge to do properly. Something he had avoided sharing with her because he wanted it to be a surprise.
His own garden, Zhengui had daydreamed of creating a beautiful place, a place where everyone he liked could come and relax and play, the beatific image in his dreams were marred by flashes of his actual attempts, overgrown clearings that were riots of overgrowth and disorder, contained and removed by his fires.
The dream still shone through, a beautiful garden vale, filled with ordered and sculpted trees, a babbling brook of clear waters, filled with flowers and fruit and plenty, not something that was found, but something that he had made.
It made her feel awful to accept it, and push it out into the hungry storm of eyes and teeth that hung like a stormcloud overhead. But she could feel Zhengui's certainty and determination.
And she had promised not to be the only one who sacrificed.
Teeth tore into the bright blue sky, they shredded the green grass and the clear waters. They chewed the trees and gnawed at smiling faces. The dream was dragged out, into the morass of lost thoughts in which the creature swam, and Ling Qi was once again herself. A whiplike tendril of colorful water snapped out, slapping a mouth away from a drifting figment of Zhengui's memory.
"...You have your payment. Clear the path now," Ling Qi said. She rested a hand on Zhengui's shell. He looked fine, he felt fine, but she could tell that he felt drained and morose. Zhen drooped, and Gui hung his head.
For a second, just a second, the fungus ignored her, chittering and whispering and swarming.
"Now," her voice cracked like a sudden gust of frozen wind, echoing with the howl of blizzard. An eye that had strayed too close froze solid and shattered.
The creature or creatures shyed back and hissed. [Go, go Silver Thing, the way is clear the path…]
She stumbled backward as a tremendous jumble of images crashed into her mind, impressions of height and depth, stone and metal and labyrinthine tunnels which wrapped around her like a vice, containing, constraining. It was followed by a tremendous push and the dark tunnel reasserted itself.
"Are you okay," Hanyi murmured.
"Yeah. Can we go now Big Sister," Zhengui replied glumly.
Ling Qi merely nodded, turning on her heel away from the winding lower tunnels to return to her group. She found them where she had left them, in a wider section of tunnel. She swept her gaze over them all. No one seemed any more tense than normal. Xuan Shi and Ji Rong stood on opposite sides of the hall flanking Bian Ya and Su Ling. Guan Zhi stood at the front, awaiting her return.
"Report, Disciple Ling," she said crisply.
"I have negotiated passage with the spirit, and obtained intelligence regarding the paths ahead. I can share knowledge of the paths ahead with Disciple Bian," she said evenly.
Ji Rong looked like he was going to say something, but then he glanced at her face and shut his mouth. Xuan Shi looked at her with concern.
"And do you estimate that the spirit both understood and clearly communicated the potential dangers ahead?" Guan Zhi asked.
Ling Qi contemplated that, pushing her ill feelings aside. "I do not think that it lied or concealed information… It does primarily operate on a spiritual level though. It is possible that it does not notice things that would be dangerous to us."
"Guess I need to keep earning my keep then," Su Ling huffed.
"Yes," Guan Zhi said gravely. "Disciple Ling, do you believe this spirit to be reliable for long term dealings?"
"No," Ling Qi replied instantly. "It is hungry and bestial and nothing more. It would be possible to feed it again but I do not think it would be amenable to more than that. I believe my method only worked because he had difficulty discerning my power. In the future, you would need a stronger cultivator to cow it."
Guan Zhi gave her a hard look, but nodded. "Some potential then, if only in the long term. Let us move on. Disciple Bian, convey my signal to Disciple Liao to begin his operation."
Bian Ya nodded, closing her eyes as everyone prepared to move. Ling Qi only glanced to Guan Zhi. "What is Senior Brother's operation?"
"He has determined the local ecosystem on the far side of this creature, and communicated with the apex predators there to create a distraction which will prevent our enemies from discerning that something is amiss with these halls," Guan Zhi replied. "Disciple Ling, take the lead until we are free of this creature."
Ling Qi nodded turning back to the tunnel she had emerged from, the sooner they were out of here the better.
They descended in silence through the winding fungal passages, through tunnels that doubled back and looped and sometimes dropped straight down. On and on it went, Only Bian Ya's regular base reports allowing her to keep track of time. Liao Zhu rejoined them three hours in, they reached the base of the fungal growth six hours further on, reaching tunnels of black stone that seemed to drink in any light cast on their surface.
As they left the last tendrils of roots behind, they paused to allow Su Ling to make her divinations, and Ling Qi dutifully recited every detail of the surrounding passages that the fungus had shared with Bian Ya to be communicated with the Sect. It was objectively quite a coup. Dozens of square kilometers of mazelike passages mapped out in mere moments rather than days.
Ling Qi found it difficult to be happy with the bargain though.
Over the course of the next day, they descended further and further, sometimes traveling east, or west, or south but always, always down. Their surroundings grew oppressive, the alien ecosystems of the upper region giving way to lifeless darkness, silence and the tremendous weight of the world overhead. The mask on her face began to feel warm and slick, and her whole being felt as if it were drenched in something slick and filthy.
It was a miserable, grinding slog, and soon even Xuan Shi and Ji Rong's occasional bickering ceased, leaving only tense silence.
At last, as the second day waned, they reached the bottom.
Peering out of the tunnel mouth, Ling Qi beheld a vast vault. The tunnel opened out into the abyss, a drop of multiple kilometers to the floor of the cavern below. Below was a bizarre landscape, it seemed almost like a scene from the surface, transplanted deep below the earth. Beneath her stretched rolling hills and forests. The 'grass' was a dark and feathery sort of growth, and the trees were pale grey things that glittered with a strange phosphorescence, and dark blue 'leaves' that were far too thick and fleshy. In places where 'earth' was clear, she saw yellow-ish white soil, and the places where white and grey boulders jutted forth left her feeling unsettled. There was something unnerving about their shape that she could not quite place.
The vault overhead was concealed by a thick grey mist, like a single vast cloud, but there was something odd about it, it made her eyes tingle when she looked at it.
"It is casting light, but not light which the human eye is built to see," Liao Zhu's quiet voice caused her to glance over her shoulder at him, where he crouched at the lip of the tunnel.
"I wonder, is this a fine summer's day in these lands?" Liao Zhu mused.
Ling Qi shrugged, she had dismissed her cloak and mantle long ago, the cloying humid warmth of the tunnels had proved unpleasant. More importantly, peering into the distance, she could see the signs of artificial construction. The forest ending in a straight line, a too uniform silhouette at the edge of their vision.
They were well and truly in enemy territory now.
"Come, let us report back. We will need a moment to rest before we begin the next stage of the operation."
Ling Qi nodded silently, and turned to follow.
Your last chance to rest before the operation proper commences. Select up to three characters to interact with. Zhengui and Hanyi are both valid choices, Sixiang will be present regardless of scene.
[] Character 1, Character 2, Character 3
AN: Extraction surgury got rescheduled due to COVID so i figured I might as well get an update done. Enjoy!
