Chapter 108: The cave of leagendry artifacts

The stone spikes closed in around us, each one as long as a man and sharp enough to split armor.

"Stay behind me, Fire Empress," I said.

"Do not give me orders in the middle of a trap!" Qing Yan snapped. But she stayed close, her fingers curled into the back of my robes.

I drew my aura inward until it burned like a small sun under my skin, then let it go.

CRACK!

Golden light rolled outward in a ring. Every spike it touched split down the middle and crumbled into gravel. The red runes on the floor flickered, sputtered, and went dark, as if the array itself had decided it was outmatched.

"Well," I said, brushing a pebble off my shoulder. "That was rude of the ravine."

Jiang Wei stared at the ruined cage, then at me, his mouth opening and closing. "That array was built to hold a Meridian expert," he said weakly. "It shouldn’t have been possible to just... break it."

"Then it was built badly," I said.

Behind us, Lu Chen sat in a heap of gravel, his sword a few feet away. His face was a mix of shame and fury.

"Plate five," I said, pointing at the floor. "It was only ever plate five, poetry boy."

"The stone shifted!" he snapped, scrambling up. "Anyone could have made that mistake!"

"Anyone did," Qing Yan said coolly. "You."

Lu Chen flinched as if she had slapped him. I decided not to say anything else. Some wounds were better left to bleed on their own.

With the first array broken, Jiang Wei’s job got easier. He read the remaining runes by the faint glow of Qing Yan’s compressed flame, calling out safe steps while the rest of us followed in single file.

The second layer was a field of hanging chains that tried to bind our qi. I cut through them with my aura. The third was a stretch of floor that turned to mud under spiritual pressure, and Qing Yan simply baked it solid with a sweep of her hand. Her fire didn’t scorch the earth. It hardened it, gently, the way a potter fires clay.

"Show-off," I murmured.

"I am being efficient," she said, though the corner of her mouth twitched.

By the time the fog began to thin, the sky above the ravine had gone from black to the deep gray before dawn. My legs weren’t tired, but my senses were wound tight. Something was wrong with the air.

"Stop," I said quietly.

Jiang Wei froze with one foot raised. "More traps?"

"No." I crouched and pressed two fingers to the ground. A faint vibration ran through the stone, steady. "Marching. A lot of feet, a few miles back."

Qing Yan’s eyes went sharp. "The vanguard army."

"They didn’t hear the patrol go down," I said. "But they will find the bodies by morning. We have until sunrise, maybe a little after."

Jiang Wei swallowed and pointed ahead. "Then we’re almost out of time. Look."

The ravine opened into a wide, bowl-shaped hollow, ringed by cliffs. At the far end, carved into the rock face, stood a doorway twice the height of a man. It was made of black stone and covered in ancient carvings, the grooves worn smooth by centuries of wind. Faint violet light leaked from its seams.

Nobody spoke. It felt like walking up to a sleeping animal.

"The cave of the legendary artifacts," Jiang Wei breathed. "It’s real."

I felt something tug at me as I looked at it. Not a sound, just a faint, low pull behind my ribs, like a distant bell I could feel but not hear. I frowned and rubbed my chest.

"Barry?" Qing Yan asked softly. She had noticed, of course.

"Nothing," I said, and gave her my usual grin. "Just excited. A cave full of treasure and a demon army on our feets. This is the best day I’ve had in this world."

"You are the most exhausting man I have ever met," she said. But she slipped her hand into mine as we started across the hollow, and the pull in my chest faded

The black stone doorway was colder than the ravine. Jiang Wei stopped a few paces from it and studied the carvings. Spirals, broken circles, and long, winding lines that looked almost like rivers. He pulled out his worn text, flipped through it twice, and shook his head.

"This isn’t a sect array," he said. "It’s older than any formation in my manual. The door isn’t locked. It’s waiting."

"Waiting for what?" Lu Chen asked, his voice a little too loud.

"For someone to prove they’re worth letting in," Jiang Wei said. "Usually that means a test."

"Then let me go first," Lu Chen said, stepping forward. "I’ll show everyone that a trained cultivator knows how to—"

He put his palm flat against the stone. The violet light in the seams didn’t even flicker. Lu Chen pushed harder, his face reddening, and a few seconds passed in painful silence.

"It doesn’t want you," I said helpfully.

"Shut up!"

"Barry," Qing Yan murmured, though her lips were pressed together suspiciously tight.

I stepped up next to the door and laid my hand beside Lu Chen’s. The carvings flared bright violet, then gold, as if they had recognized something in my aura. The grooves shifted with a deep, grinding groan, and the black stone slid sideways into the cliff wall.

"Well," I said, wiping my palm on my robe. "At least one of us is welcome."

Lu Chen said nothing. He just stared at the open door, and for a moment his face did something strange. It went completely blank, the way a face does when someone is holding in a great deal. Then he shoved his sword back in its scabbard and walked in ahead of us without a word.

The first hall was enormous, a long, high-ceilinged chamber supported by pillars carved like coiling dragons. Pale blue crystals grew from the ceiling and cast a cold, steady glow over a floor of polished black stone. At the far end, three archways led deeper into the mountain.

Between us and the archways stood forty stone warriors. They were as tall as the demon watchers and just as broad, each one carved from the same black rock as the door. Each held a stone halberd, and each stood perfectly still, facing us in two long ranks.

"Guardian constructs," Jiang Wei said quietly. "They’ll wake the moment we cross the third pillar. The old records say they can’t be reasoned with and can’t be tired out."

"Then we just have to break them," Qing Yan said. Her fingers flexed, and a thin ribbon of crimson fire curled around her wrist. "All forty?"

"Forty-one, if you count the one in the corner pretending to be a statue," I said.

She followed my gaze to a shadowed alcove near the entrance. A small, hunched figure of stone I had taken for decoration stood there, its head cocked ever so slightly toward us. As she stared, it turned its empty eye sockets in our direction.

"You noticed that?" Jiang Wei breathed.

"It’s breathing," I said. "Stone doesn’t breathe."

The figure straightened, and with a sound like a landslide, the entire hall came alive. Forty stone warriors took a single step in perfect unison. The floor shook.

"Jiang Wei, take the wounded back to the door!" I shouted. "Qing Yan, left flank. Lu Chen—"

"I don’t take orders from you!" he snapped, already charging.

"Then try not to die," I muttered.