Chapter 97: THE CRADLE

CHAPTER

97

THE CRADLE

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Judging by how Huaxin started beating faster still, it wasn’t any happier with the direction things were heading than he was.

Jieyuan had never been one to shy away from risk. He was more than willing to gamble—so long as the gamble made sense. He liked his risks calculated. You had to weigh the gains against the losses, run the odds in your head. If the potential payout looked good enough, and the odds weren’t too insulting, he wouldn’t even blink at putting his life on the line.

But the numbers here weren’t adding up. The math was skewed in the wrong direction. Everything on the winning side looked awfully vague, while the losses—the danger—were all too clear, real enough to taste. And the odds? At best, unknown. At worst, downright rotten.

Jieyuan glanced at the other part of their party.

Daojue was facing the Dome, impassive. No expression on his face, no reaction to speak of. Daojue might as well have been looking at a particularly uninteresting rock by the street.

And I might as well be looking at a statue. If Daojue had shown any kind of reaction, Jieyuan might’ve been able to work it into an argument—look, even Daojue doesn’t think this is a good idea—but that wasn’t happening.

But it’d been a long shot anyway. Jieyuan might be the Firesoul, but he had a good handle on most of his more fiery traits, his impulsive nature. Daojue, though, was full-on Metalsoul, no holds barred. Metal didn’t feel fear—metal didn’t feel anything—and neither did Daojue. Just cold, sharp purpose.

When Jieyuan focused back on Meiyao, he found that she was already looking at him, expectantly.

“So?” she said. “Is there a problem?”

It sounded like a challenge, and he had to stop himself from meeting it head-on. From charging ahead just because that’d be the opposite of backing down. Again, Firesoul—except he had his impulses in check.

“Possibly,” Jieyuan said, diplomatically. “I—” He shot Daojue another glance. To rust with the secrecy. It’s not like he even cares. “Huaxin doesn’t like it. It really doesn’t like it.”

Sure enough, Daojue didn’t react, didn’t even seem to be listening. Meiyao, though, frowned.

“But it is safe,” she said. Her gaze shifted briefly to Daojue before returning to Jieyuan. She didn’t seem to have much of a reaction, though—didn’t seem particularly concerned about Daojue listening in. Considering how openly she’d been talking about her bloodright for a while now, she’d probably come to the same decision he had about how much to keep to themselves.

“It’s not like the tunnel, or the garden, or the river,” she went on. “Those were dangerous. I think I even know what it is I’m sensing.”

“And that is?”

“It’s… It’s the…” She turned back to the arena-like temple. “You’re better off seeing it for yourself. But it really shouldn’t be any danger. There are mentions of the Viridian Cradle, back in the records my mother had gathered. It’s as important as the Sacred Garden, if not even more so. I know what’s inside it, and it explains exactly what it is I’m feeling. And it really isn’t anything dangerous.”

Huaxin would beg to differ. Was begging to differ. Meiyao seemed pretty set on it, though. And it wasn’t like they’d gone inside the city expecting a pleasant little stroll. Danger had always been on the table—that was the whole reason they’d come straight here, to the source of it all, to get it out of the way.

Huaxin, I’m asking again, just to be sure. We’re not walking straight to our deaths here, right? I know it’s dangerous—but it’s not guaranteed, is it?

AFFIRMATION, Huaxin responded. It sounded rather disgruntled, though. In human terms, the jumble of impressions and emotions it sent over their bond would have amounted to something along the lines of, yes, it’s not an outright death trap, but it’s still deadly, so don’t be an idiot and don’t go inside, please.

Meiyao must’ve caught something in his expression, because she said, “Look, the Viridian Cradle’s practically the cornerstone of the sect. And the thing inside it—I need to see it.”

It was like the conversation they’d had at the entrance of the city all over again. And his answer could only be the same as it had been back then.

“I get it,” Jieyuan said, sighing. “Lead the way.”

Everything else aside, Meiyao did keep insisting it was safe, so that had to count for something. What really settled it for him, though, was that he was pretty sure she’d be going into the Cradle no matter what he said. With or without him.

One thing that kept bothering him, though, was how Meiyao’s eyes kept flicking back to the massive temple while they’d been talking. Quick, rapid glances. Seven times in all. He’d counted.

He thought back to what Meiyao had said about a week ago, about the Liangshibai bloodright and the Pull of the Valley. How the Linzushen bloodright didn’t have anything like that—how it had no mental effects at all.

So that was a lie.

The way this place—the Cradle, the city, the Dome—seemed to pull at Meiyao wasn’t all that different from the Liangshibai’s obsession with the Gleamstone Valley. And the look it put in her eyes was unsettlingly familiar. The same look he’d seen in Wanxin’s that one time. And in Yunzhu’s, every time she looked at Daojue.

Meiyao gave him a relieved smile, and without wasting a moment, she set forward. Jieyuan and Daojue followed close behind. It was a short walk to the entrance of the Cradle, but the air seeming to grow thicker and more charged with every step they took.

They were just steps away from the entrance when Jieyuan realized he wasn’t just imagining things. That the viridian mist was getting thicker the closer they got to the Cradle—something that he’d never seen happen so far.

Amazing how the bad signs just keep piling up.

But there was nothing to it—if he’d noticed, so must have Daojue and, more importantly, Meiyao. And moments later, they were crossing the threshold, stepping inside the massive structure.

The first thing Jieyuan felt was the air—it was like he’d stepped into another climate altogether. Cooler, heavier, thicker. It pressed against his skin, clung to the inside of his nose, weighed down his lungs. It smelled of damp earth, rich and moist, laced with something older and almost sweet—sap or resin, or both. It rolled down the back of his throat, left a faint sting at the top of his chest, and spread to his tongue in a thin, bitter tang that turned the smell into taste.

His eyes roamed the inside of the temple. It had looked huge enough from the outside, but inside it was something else entirely.

They weren’t at the base of it, like you’d expect. They were at the middle. The Viridian Cradle didn’t just rise—it sank, burrowing deep into the valley floor. It went as far down as it did up.

The scale of it was dizzying. Jieyuan felt it like a weight at the back of his neck, pulling his gaze up and down and leaving his breath just a little bit shallow. He’d never seen anything this vast.

The Justice Bureau of the Gleaming Stone Sect and the cabal palaces in Radiant Gold City had been bigger, sure—but those were sprawling complexes, dozens of buildings pressed together, each one with its own role and purpose. This was different. This was one single structure—one single room, even—carved out and raised for a single purpose.

He took it all in. The walls curved away in a perfect circle, lined with stacked tiers of galleries, each one jutting out a little farther than the one above it. They formed a descending funnel, drawing the eye down to the bottom. The middle of the temple was left open—nothing there but a yawning shaft of air, plunging straight to the pit.

It was really just like an arena. Except it didn’t have seats, and there weren’t people filling the galleries.

There were trees.

A single row of them on the uppermost level, which hung right beneath the start of the massive dome overhead. Jieyuan could just make it out from where he stood. But with each level down, the space grew broader—enough to fit one more row of trees than the level above it. At the lowest level—the first gallery—sat ten complete rings of trees.

The trees were fairly spread out, but given the size of this place, there were easily a few hundred on the uppermost level alone. On the last one, thousands.

They were all small, smaller even than the viridian oakwillows he’d seen earlier. Barely taller than he was, their narrow trunks and canopies neat and compact. They looked like pure oaks—or at least pure chromal oaks. They reminded him of the trees that had formed that tunnel back then, just smaller, their colors a little different.

But then Jieyuan glanced to the side—to the tree right beside the entrance, just to their left. And he realized it wasn’t just a tree.

Near its base, barely a foot off the ground, legs jutted out—bent knees and thighs, only a third of them showing, the rest swallowed by the trunk.

Further up, a human face—a woman’s face—eyes closed, mouth slack, serene and almost peaceful. It was encased in bark, the wood framing her from forehead to chin, with not a hint of neck or hair showing.

A treefied corpse. Just like that first dead Linzushen woman they’d come across. But this corpse wasn’t half-draped, half-swallowed by the tree. It was sitting cross-legged inside the trunk, as if the tree had grown up around it, leaving only the face and the ends of its legs bared to the air.

As Jieyuan’s eyes moved to the other trees nearby, he saw it was the same for all of them. Tree-corpses, every last one. They were all connected, too. Those same roots that overran the outside of the arena wove through the floor inside, tangling around each trunk.

Jieyuan couldn’t tell if they were reaching for the treefied Linzushen or extending from them. He couldn’t decide which would be worse, either.

It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d wondered where all the corpses were—where all the other dead Linzushen had gone.

Looks like I have my answer now.

The only good thing about all of this was that the trees weren’t glowing, so they probably weren’t that much under the influence of the Dome.

He swallowed dryly. If Meiyao said it was safe, he’d trust her—for now. But he couldn’t help the weight pressing at his chest, the sheer sense of presence in the tens of thousands of treefied cultivators and the ten levels winding down into the earth around them.

But the important part was something else.

They were at the middle tier, the fifth level. Ahead of them, a broad, steep stairway cut down through the lower tiers, ending at the bottom of the arena, at the edge of the pit. Jieyuan followed its length with his eyes, all the way down to the center of it all…

And there, his gaze settled on yet another tree. He’d seen it already in passing, but now he really focused on it.

A viridian oakwillow—half its crown the dome of an oak, the bottom half the drooping canopy of a weeping willow. But it wasn’t like the ones he’d seen outside, in the Sacred Garden.

It was bigger. Much bigger. The distance made it hard to be sure, but the top of it was almost level with the lowest gallery, putting it at least several dozen feet tall—maybe even over a hundred. Its canopy sprawled out, taking up over half the pit and leaving only a thin ring of root-choked space around it.

In that narrow space, right in front of the massive oakwillow, there was another oak—just like the ones lining the galleries—dwarfed completely by the oakwillow’s presence. Jieyuan spared it only a brief glance. His attention was already locked back on the larger tree. That was the one that mattered.

What they must’ve come here for, in fact. Nothing else really drew the eye.

Huaxin? How’s it looking?

DANGER, it sent back. Still no specifics about just what the danger was. But it was clear on where it was coming from. The massive viridian oakwillow. Jieyuan had already figured as much, but it was good to know there wasn’t some other hidden threat lurking just out of sight.

“Meiyao?” Jieyuan said. She was staring fixedly down at the viridian oakwillow—didn’t even seem to notice anything else. “What’s the plan now?”

“We go down,” she said.

On the one hand, that answer meant she wasn’t in another one of those trances. On the other hand… well, there was the answer itself.

“Still no danger?” Jieyuan asked, though he already had a pretty good idea what she’d say.

“None,” she said. And as if that was all there was to it, she started down the steps.

In for copper, in for gold.

Jieyuan and Daojue followed after her.