Chapter 111
Defiance of Natural Order
The nights within the Brooch were vastly different from above it, Yue noted.
There was never silence--either it was the howling of the distant Demonic Beasts, clashing of the swords just outside the fort's walls, or the chortling of the winds as they carved their way through the canyon and the surrounding tunnels, but it was never silent.
She spent the entire night meditating instead of sleeping, something she hadn't done for a long while. Even Liang appeared restless, waking up a few times before finally deciding to give up trying, joining her in meditation.
Gon, on the other hand, seemed wholly impervious to the sounds--the old man flattened on his back as soon as the night arrived, and started snoring no more than three minutes later. He must have experienced these sounds thousands of times before, all until they've become mere background noise that hardly mattered.
They'd delayed their departure a bit as Gon was promised there'd be better concoctions tomorrow, and had managed to reserve a batch for them. Yue and Liang emptied what few of the Spirit Stones they still had on them, a bit reluctantly at that, but it wasn't as though they had any other places to spend it. Neither was particularly interested in any of the martial arts or weapons being offered, as they needed neither, and as far as defense items went... well, they had two that would likely rank number one and number two in the entire known world.
As such, ensuring an ever so slightly safer passage down to the Sword was likely the best use of their Spirit Stones reserves.
Master Leo's apathetic indifference to wealth rubbed off on them slightly, as the man lived entirely off the land. However, this wasn't the sort of place they could do that--if they hadn't had a healthy reserve of the stew and fruit juice inside their spatial rings, they would have had to use the stones to buy food first and foremost.
Gon woke up just before the crying of the roosters signaled the start of the new day. The old man stretched lazily and quickly washed his face before leading them to a nearby structure jutting out of the side of the cliff. At the counter was an elderly woman, perhaps older than even Gon, with whom the latter chatted for a brief few minutes, eventually leaving with something packed in white cloth. The old man kept it close abreast, stuffing it inside his coat, before leading them to the building standing opposite of it--wooden beams framed an arched entrance, and a somewhat fading scent of food just barely managed to evacuate the interior, inviting the hungry.
As both Yue and Liang were cultivators (ones with access to the best food in the world, at that), they elected to simply accompany Gon rather than join him. The old man swallowed up two courses of rather expensive meat, guzzled an entire cup of ale, and even had a small desert to top it all off.
Even Yue picked up on one simple fact--the man believed, with all his heart, that he would not return from this trip alive. He likely thought that Liang and her were just a pair of naive, desperate kids, and that it would be a miracle for them to even get halfway to the Sword, let alone all the way down to it.
Ordinarily, that would have been the case--after all, a pair of kids in their twenties, both of whom seemed to be in Core Formation Realm (Master's cultivation method was superb at masking one's true realm, the two had come to learn), hardly seemed like the sort equipped well enough to handle the Cradle.
Yue, however, was not afraid.
After watching Liang's battle (and calming down after), she'd come to a simple realization: she actually fought Liang a bit better than the Face Thief did. Admittedly, that was because she knew Liang inside and out whereas the Thief simply saw a kid without an insignia of a Sect, but that alone was enough to give her a burst of confidence. Though she would definitely lose to someone at Avatar Realm, dealing with Spirit Creation cultivators and beasts, and even some in the Fusion Realm, was entirely possible.
Gon, of course, knew none of that.
The man simply got tired of living, it seemed, and decided to make one last trek down the tunnels that he spent his entire life exploring.
"Alright, let us depart," he proclaimed as soon as he was done, and the three left.
Even Yue wasn't blind or deaf to the looks and the whispers that accompanied their departure. She found it odd that none of the people in the fort even attempted to interact with them; at first, she chalked it up to it being the nature of this world. The two were newcomers, unknown, but it seemed that there was more to it than that, and Gon's presence, at least partially, played a role in it.
The trio left the fort quickly and began their descent. Well, 'descent' wasn't quite the right word--as before, the tunnels were largely flat, with the faintest of declines. They were also far darker, but also wider than the ones they trekked through on their way down.
Though Gon 'led the charge', Liang was at the front. Her Junior Brother's countenance was rather relaxed as he sauntered through the darkness as though he was taking a trek back through woods at home, though Yue herself wasn't as calm. She perked her ears and her eyes, and she watched for the flickering of every shadow she saw.
It wasn't even ten minutes into their journey that she felt a drifting wind from her back, prompting her to execute two arts within the span of a second--the movement one, which shuttled her sideways as if she teleported, dodging a dagger to her throat, and the attack one which swiftly decapitated the assailant.
She caught a fleeting flicker of a confused expression on the middle-aged man's face as the head rolled outward into the dark, stopped by Liang's foot who glanced back for a moment before stomping it.
"His face was familiar," Yue said, frowning.
"Hm," Liang mumbled. "He'd been eyeing us all the way back in the fort. Not alone, either. There's probably a few more that have intentions of attacking. Well, had, most-likely. Why'd you have to be so perfect, Senior Sister? Struggling a bit to lure them in... that's the creed, no?"
"Ah, so you like struggling, Junior Brother? Maybe I skewer your kidneys one night while you're asleep. It's a mighty struggle, I hear."
"Forget the struggle. Perfect, clean execution, Senior Sister."
"Yeah, yeah. Keep moving. Blood and stench might attract stuff we don't need to waste energy fighting."
**
Gon stayed silent, though was rather shocked inwardly.
He, too, had noticed many people eyeing them. He knew well enough the three would be lucky to make it out of the fort's outskirts, let alone any further. Truthfully, he came here to die--he found dying alone loathsome, so he figured he may as well do it with a pair of desperate kids.
Two cultivators in their twenties, not associated with any of the major Sects, both at Core Formation Realm... though they were certainly talented, more so than most others, in fact, that was it. Talent was an idea, a concept, that had to be utilized and realized before it amounted to anything. Core Formation cultivators simply had no place hanging around in smaller clusters. They were porters for the massive groups of the hundreds, occasionally fighting if the reality permitted it, and silently cultivating.
Though the man young girl just killed wasn't famous, Gon knew him--he was at the peak of Spirit Creation Realm, and had been staying in the Cradle for the past eight years. And yet... he was killed like he was an insignificant bug.
Alarms began to softly ring inside his mind, alarms that were silent for decades now.
He used a flutter of Qi to clear his head and stop the effects of alcohol. Though he'd come here to die, if the kids could carve open a path to the bottomless abyss... would he not want to go there? Was that not his dream ever since that dreadful day?
Even if he answered their queries with heartfelt honesty, it was more so a guide's courtesy than anything else. However, if they were somehow one of those heaven-defying exceptions... why would he not use the scourge of their miracles to perform one of his own?
"A new one, huh?" this time around, Gon didn't even know what happened.
One moment, it was silent and dark--the next, there was a body beside him, neck wrung opposite of where it ought to be, eyes round and wide, filled with horror. Gon knew this one too, and to his horror, the woman was at Avatar Realm. Avatar Realm. Though, yes, she'd only broken through a few months ago, it sent shockwaves throughout the entire Cradle, so much so that they even reached Gon.
And yet, despite that, she died without Gon even seeing how. In the span of one sentence, before the voice even faded, she went from one of the most decorated and promising cultivators of the Cradle, to a nameless corpse meant to be devoured by the Demonic Beasts.
Who the hell are these kids?!
A question hung at the top of Gon's mind, devouring him. The way he looked at the two changed, as did the stirrings of his heart. Neither appeared particularly bothered nor even excited to have done what they did, as though they've been doing it all their lives.
"You okay, old man?" the man asked, startling Gon out of his thoughts.
"Hm? A-ah, yes. Thank you for asking. Perhaps we should have been a bit stealthier."
"It's a good practice," the man seemed to shrug, tossing something overhead toward the girl. "How long will it take you?"
"--about three days? There are some twenty arrays on top of it. She wasn't just a nobody."
"She wasn't," the man said. "Though she erased most traces of it, there's a good chance that she's a Heavenly Pavilion Disciple. Or, at least, was at some point."
"What? Really?" Gon felt his entire body shudder and shake as the girl asked with a faint surprise in her voice. "I thought they are unmatched."
"Some of them are," Liang said. "But as with every place, there are the chosen, and there are the others. Pavilion's unmatched would never come here, it's pointless."
"Right. Why would they? They'd have the entire world at their disposal. If that's the case, there's a good chance that unlocking the ring might alert someone, even if she's a former member."
"So?"
"So, wouldn't it be annoying to deal with them?"
"I have nothing but bad experiences with the bastards," the man said with a trace of scorn in his voice. "Rather, it'll be annoying for them to deal with us."
"You seem to have a lot of folk you have... annoyances with," the girl said with a faint chuckle. The three never stopped moving, with Gon using Qi to disperse the breakout of cold sweat.
"Says the one who has 'annoyances' with her entire family."
"Fair point. Ah," the woman sighed softly and, not a moment later, Gon saw another. This time around, she went for the heart, easily tearing through a piece of armor that the man likely counted on to stop precisely that from happening, and exploding the entire heart with overflow of Qi. The man seemed to manage one last gasp for life before dying, both in shock and confusion. "Oh?" the woman crouched by the body, tearing open the robes. "This one's got an insignia."
"A Sect Disciple?" the man raised his tone slightly. "Can't be anyone of importance. Most Disciples see it beneath themselves to thieve and rob, especially here."
"It's the Moon," the girl said as the man paused for a moment. "Probably a defector, then. Last I heard, they've isolated themselves from the world."
"Hm. Leave him," the man said. "Old man, do you have phobia about being carried?"
"C-carried? No, why?"
"If we walk at this pace, we'll never get rid of these pests," the man said as Gon felt a rather broad and muscled arm wrap around his body and lift him. It was evident that the man was a giant from the onset--he was at least twice as tall as Gon himself--but being 'cradled' in his arms... in a strange way, it was akin to a father cradling his baby. At least size-wise, in fairness. "So, keep the instructions brief and direct. Senior Sister, you think you can keep up?"
"If I don't, I'll just go back home without you."
"... that's just mean."
"You started it."
"Alright, fair. I will keep it at 60%. I can't spoil you any more than that."
"Aah, I'll have to ask Master to beat you until you're bruised from your toes to your head once we go back. You do deserve it, you know?"
"Ha ha ha, I suppose I do. Okay, I'm off. Hang on tight, old man."