Book 2: Chapter 49: Lost in the Murals |
The party stopped in their tracks and stared. A sense of foreboding passed through them all as they tried to extend their cultivation and perceptions to find whatever it was that Yin Hu had found. Yet, not even Da Ruis or Rong could locate the blip even slightly. It was strange to have not noticed it either until he stepped onto the stone road himself.
“What is it, Master?” Rong asked.
“A focal point of Qi that my perception caught. Let’s see what it has in store for us.”
Yin Hu had been expecting to deal with a ton of monsters including an ominously named White Demon that had torn the couple apart. Not only that though. A giant dragon fast enough to vanish from powerful cultivators’ vision and reappear a thousand miles in the sky. Spirit Demonic Trees reaching and begging to drink from their life essence and blood and a dozen other things that had a propensity toward causing them harm.
He hadn’t seen anything of that yet.
Not even a tuft of fur, insect buzzing, or even a tiny bird flying about. This place remained a replica of what they had seen in the Bleak Forests with the exception of the blip and the stone work that indicated life had once existed here.
Which did prove Hu Rong correct, again. His testament to the safety of the forest even with the obvious signs of danger had come out truthful and accurate, building his relationship with Yin Hu as the First Elder of the Hu Clan. He could be trusted to make decisions. The others, not so much. Yin Hu would keep Da Ruis and the couple as close as possible until they too showed their loyalty and proved they were capable.
It was just strange to listen to the high pitched voice of a little kid and take it seriously.
Only the fact that Yin Hu knew that Rong was actually thousands of years old made the entire thing easier to swallow.
Except, everyone in the party acted like they weren’t there.
Walking through the structures, placing their footsteps in the perfect areas to not touch anything that would hinder their stride, dodging anything large enough that needed dodging, and even narrowing to fit through areas without ever questioning why.
I have to test this. It can’t be that none of them see any of this.
“Zhong Da? Rong?”
Everyone paused in their tracks, turning to look.
Yin Hu waved them all toward him and pointed at a large block on the ground with clear letters that formed three words that he did not understand. “What do you see here?”
The whole group had confused looks, Jun, Shui, the couple, even Rong. That also meant the Weapon Spirits were silent too or they would have shed light for the girls about the matter at hand. It meant this was not only basic illusion work, technique, or whatever else they called it in a cultivation setting, but rather something strong enough to affect beings as strong as Mr. Mo Mo, the kaiju sized bear, and the She-Devil.
“A bush?” Zhong Da said as he turned to his wife with a questioning glance.
“Rong? What do you see?”
Yin Hu went through the entire party; every single one of them saw the same exact bush. Confusion was apparent in their expressions.
My perception skill is somehow able to pierce through this illusion being cast on the whole group. Maybe that was the problem this whole time!
Maybe Yin Hu’s skill wasn’t exactly a detecting system, but rather one that finds things like this. Rong had taken the form of a bumblebee when he was in the hidden forest glade. This entire situation was based around an illusion as well. He had to wonder whether Shao Yating had been throwing them around during his fight with Jun. Yin Hu had never asked in their haste to get out of the area.
He turned away from the stone and kept moving toward the blip, leading the party.
This time around, Yin Hu did not stop to look or point at anything. Intent on reaching his destination and figuring out what was going on around them.
It didn’t take long to break through the foliage and forest into a large clearing.
One with a massive stone building rising like a palace dead center of it all made of bright, white stones. It was covered in moss and overgrowth, patches of trees and vines, bushes, and everything else to show how long it had been sitting there.
The blip’s inside of this palace.
“We camp here,” Yin Hu walked toward the far left walls where he saw color.
He ignored the party’s questioning and subsequent hurry to set up camp as he stood before a wall covered in scaling branches that covered most of it. From the little he could see, this was a mural or painting that had survived the ages. He reached and pulled at the plants, ripping them off of the wall to expose beautiful color and an entire side of the giant building covered in paintings.
Yin Hu turned back to the group and again none of them could notice the ten story building made of stone, towers peeking over the canopy, glass windows that were gray with time, the giant gateway inside, and not even the painting on the wall.
Zhong Da and Rong placed the tents around the stones on the ground, unintentionally in the perfect spots.
He turned back toward the painting and looked from the beginning of it all.
This wasn’t just art, he quickly noticed.
Yin Hu realized this was a story that the residents of this place were trying to tell. Something had happened here and they wanted whoever arrived to see it in all of its glory.
To no be forgotten in the annals of history.
It started with a vibrant city. One filled with thousands of what were clearly cultivators with giant bunny ears that lived peacefully and exchanged information with the outside world. A golden age based on all the bright golden borders to each section of the image surrounding libraries, markets, sects and clans, but the largest circled a white palace dead center of everything.
The same one he was currently standing in front of.
He could see a king with a crown and his family standing on a ledge four stories high. Yin Hu looked up and found where their monarch had once perched with his family.
At each tower stood an ancient cultivator that had bright colors surrounding them to indicate their Qi Affinity. The obvious ones he could understand, red for fire, blue for water, brown for earth, but some had pink, yellow, green blue, purple, and even one with a pure white that stood in the sky above the highest tower. That one had its own golden circle to indicate its importance.
Yin Hu matched every single tower to the image. Nothing from the palace had crumbled due to age.
“Wait,” he narrowed his eyes and moved closer to the first painting of the city.
What’s that?
In the middle of the palace, there were two black dots, both perfectly placed equidistant from what looked like a crystal and glowed. That couldn’t be a mistake, not on something this well crafted at least. Or so he hoped, to think a vandal had not only broken through the illusion, but messed with such a beautiful mural would have been heartbreaking and made Yin Hu question what else had been added.