Heart of Cultivation 74. Descent (Patreon)

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Meirong pushed forward at a brisk walk. If they dawdled, they could be caught by the guards patrolling the perimeter of the camp, but simply racing forward risked running headlong into the next trap or alarm. Jian still itched to go faster, but despite his fears they were able to hide themselves within the first ring of tents before the guard reappeared.

The camp was a field of tents surrounding the central building. While it was astonishing that the Huang had put up a permanent building this deep in the jungle, their ambition still had its limits: most of the camp workers were housed in tents. There were to Jian's eye an awful lot of tents. He hadn't seen anything during their earlier scouting that would justify the use of that many workers.

He noted the oddity as something to look into. For now, his attention was focused on sticking close to Meirong and not doing anything foolish to bring guards crashing down on them.

It seemed Meirong had her own suspicions. She took a long look at the tent that stood between them and the patrolling guard, then up the length of the row of tents and then forward to the remaining rows between them and their destination. The tents were in rows of ten, and the camp held ten or twenty rows.

She clicked her tongue, then leaned in close to Jian to whisper in her ear. "I don't like the look of this. Can you check the spiritual energy?"

Jian nodded and brought the small jeweler's loupe to his eye. Somewhat to his surprise, nothing looked out of the ordinary. Turning to look out towards the jungle, he could see the operation of the ward. He could see the small gap he had created, that even now was allowing a small amount of wild spiritual energy to trickle into the camp.

Once he turned to look inward at the camp itself, the only thing visible nearby was the swirl of natural energy, just like what he would see outside of the Verdant Doom. The only sign of human imposition—other than the unnatural exclusion of the bloody mists—was the shine of spiritual energy surrounding the buildings at the heart of the camp.

He set the jeweler's loupe away, then leaned down to whisper in Meirong's ear. As he did, he noticed a pleasant floral scent that she had somehow maintained through several days' march through untamed wilderness. He set the thought aside as a mystery of accomplished cultivators that he could contemplate at a later time.

"There are no wards inside the camp," he said, "other than the security on the building. I'd have to be closer to analyze it properly."

She nodded in response and set off toward the heart of the camp. Jian followed. He could sense the presence of sleeping workers in the tents around them, but it seemed the Huang family worked them hard enough that nobody had the energy to wake up and wander around at night.

The building was surrounded by clear space, perhaps twenty paces' worth. It also had spirit lamps illuminating its exterior, supplementing the light of the half moon to make it impossible for anybody to approach without being seen. Even without spotting anybody himself, Jian was certain that there was at least one guard inside keeping watch on the approach. Perhaps more.

If there was a real treasure hidden away in this camp, it was inside those walls. Jian could feel it. He couldn't do more than look, though. They had drawn close, but the gap from tent to buildings was not something that he could surmount on his own.

Meirong tugged at his sleeve and Jian followed her to circle around the open space, still hiding themselves behind the last row of tents. When they reached the side of the building, Jian saw an odd shadow that had been hidden directly behind the building before. As they continued along, he finally understood what he was seeing: an enormous pit had been excavated from the jungle floor.

The pit reached nearly all the way to the tent they stopped to hide behind. While the side of the pit closest to them was ordinary dirt, the light of the spirit lamps that illuminated the building also reached down far enough to reveal that the far side of the pit was made up of regular rows of bricks, even though their rough appearance made them tricky to pick out. The Huang family's building was perched on top of an ancient tower that had somehow been buried underground.

Jian clenched his fist. They were staring at the reason that this whole camp existed. The Huang family intended to exploit whatever treasures they found beneath the earth.

Jian set his jeweler's loupe to his eye once more. The aboveground entrance to the tower had been set with a dizzying array of interlocking security wards, more intricate and more deadly than the wards protecting the camp. He doubted that any treasure that could be used by cultivators at Meirong's level would be able to see them safely through.

Below ground, the structure was supported by ancient wards. If the Huang family had been digging in order to find a weakness in the walls, they would have been sorely disappointed. The wards may have been old, but they were as solid as a mountain.

On the other hand, while they were strong, they weren't very sophisticated. There was no inbuilt protection against, for example, the sort of ward diversion array that they had used to break into the camp in the first place. If they could descend into the darkness and work on the wall unobserved and unobstructed, it shouldn't be impossible to break through.

Of course, that wasn't a decision Jian could make on his own.

"If we retrieve the ward diverting formation," Jian said, "we can descend into the pit and break through the wall."

Meirong looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "We won't have a way out."

"If we remove every other stake," Jian said, "the path through the wards should hold."

The nice thing about working with high end equipment was that it was built well enough to handle far more than its design strictly called for. In this case, going down to half of the stakes would certainly narrow the gap that they had poked in the wards, but Jian expected that the path out would remain clear for at least a half a day before the reduced formation was overloaded.

Even then, the failure of the array wouldn't set off an alarm. It would just return the wards to their normal state. As for Jian and Meirong, if they really needed to escape in a hurry then they could just force their way through the ward. It would alert the camp, but that would be a problem as long as they could disappear into the Verdant Doom.

Meirong didn't press him for the details. Instead, she simply led the way back to the edge of the camp, finding a hiding spot where they could watch the patrolling guard pass by. Once the way was clear, Jian darted out to the breach in the wards. He gave it a quick look to confirm his judgment that the reduced ward would handle the strain. Once he was confident he moved quickly, plucking every other stake out of the ground and placing them in his pocket before racing back to the waiting Meirong.

He thought he could feel the wards brushing against the edge of his shoulders as he passed through, but dismissed that as the product of an overactive imagination. In any event, no alarm had been set off, and they were able to make their way back through the rows of tents and once more approach the great pit.

"With these," Jian said, "we can break into the building through the wall."

Getting ahead of the areas of the building that had been cleared by the Huang family would be dangerous, but if they were careful and a little lucky then they would be able to bypass all of the Huang family's precautions and see just what they had been up to.

Meirong nodded, her eyes lighting up. "If we get ahead of them then we can snatch all the good stuff first."

Jian shrugged. "I'm not sure"

He didn't have a chance to finish before Meirong snatched him up and tossed him over her shoulder. She then began racing down the side of the pit.

The Huang family had dug quite deep in their attempts to assess the buried tower. They hadn't used any sort of special techniques or formations to support the outer edge of the hole, which meant that the first part of the descent was merely a steep slope. Nothing that would trouble a cultivator like Meirong.

It got steeper as they continued, until Meirong was climbing down as much as she was running. Even with one arm tied up holding Jian in place, she barely slowed down as she began using her free hand to help support her mad scramble down.

For his part, Jian was frozen in place, not wanting to risk doing anything that might throw off Meirong's balance. He had a good view of just how far the two of them could fall if things went poorly. After a moment, when it became clear that she was hardly struggling at all to carry the weight of the two of them, he brought the spiritual energy observation lens to his eye. He'd been holding the thing in a death grip ever since Meirong grabbed him.

The pit below them might not be illuminated by conventional light, but it was a mass of glowing color to someone who could see spiritual energy. Most of it was the usual chaotic swirl of natural energies, albeit somewhat muted by being so far underground. Jian focused, looking through the murk to study the organized wards guarding the building behind it. As he'd expected, there was no perimeter ward set to warn the overseers up above about any intruders to the pit.

The Huang family probably didn't think that anybody would be able to sneak in and break through the walls that had thwarted their own extended efforts. Obviously, they were ignorant of the extravagant tools that a disciple like Meirong could bring to bear.

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