"Are you sure this is going to provide enough light?" The Light Crystals we'd chipped off weren't particularly large things, and we'd hand to tie them to sticks or let them dangle from ropes like weird accessories without any real way to focus their light.
Maybe I could reinvent the flashlight with the right pieces, but I'd need glass or something like it to start with - and then something to hold everything together. I'm sure it could be done with the right tools and materials… and skills. Skills I didn't really have. Craftsman I was not.
"It'll let you see where you're putting your feet at least," Hou Bohai says simply, "Nothing moves all that quickly in the Sea of Lights so don't worry about being surprised by ambushes or anything. Just put your trust in me!"
Then what are we worried about? You can't tell me there's nothing to worry about.
"If anything, they should be worried about us," Tian Mingfei declares, puffing her chest out and striking a fierce stance. "I'm looking forward to facing the terrors of the deep!"
"At least that makes one of us…"
My muttering must not've been quiet enough because Zhou Cheng elbows me gently with a look. What? I let you drag me into this, I never said anything about pretending to be happy about it.
We follow behind Hou Bohai, just a few steps behind him as he holds a particularly large chunk of Light Crystal in one hand like a lantern and his sword in the other, ready to fight off anything that got too close.
Not that we'd actually been attacked by anything. I was expecting more danger, honestly, but so far, the greatest threat had been that time I nearly slipped on some slime mold. Fortunately, I had enough grace and reflexes to catch myself but it was a near thing. I could've… bruised myself! Terrifying, truly.
"We're coming up to it now," our fearless guide murmurs, gesturing with his sword, "See? You can see the lights already."
It's certainly true that the tunnel is growing dimmer and dimmer the further we go along, as the natural formations of Light Crystals seem to die off. There is a darkness ahead, undeniably, and the faintest glimmers of lights within.
"Stick close," he adds, "Hold on if you have to. If you get separated, we may never find you."
Gee, where have I heard that before? Still, I take the opportunity to grab a fistful of Zhou Cheng's robes.
He glances back at me, and then takes my hand in his. Really, shouldn't it be the other way around? I feel like I'm being led around by a baby… even if I am squeezing tight.
I may be terrified out of my mind right now. Maybe.
The darkness seems to swell and grow the closer we get, and the lights within become more distinct, more numerous - more colourful. I have to remind myself that each one of them is probably some kind of horrifying abyssal monster to stop myself from just gently gasping in awe at the beauty of it all.
"How… big is the Sea of Lights?"
"Who knows?" Mo Jianyang murmurs, his own sword held out, "There should be an exit directly across from the entrance - maybe an hour's walk at our pace? - but it's not as though anyone has ever mapped it." He pauses for a moment, glancing at Hou Bohai, who is still facing forward resolutely. "... That I know of, at least."
Uh huh. Sounds like fun.
"Wait," Hou Bohai calls quietly, holding up his crystal hand. He starts to wave his sword in front of him slowly, like he's trying to feel for something. "... There. Above, do you see it?"
I… see… "Those lights, I guess?" It's not like I can see an actual shape or anything. Just a few winking lights that sure look like the other lights up there.
… actually, how high is the Sea of Lights? Either they're small lights or that's really high up and I can't tell the difference.
"Indeed. Glow Drifters are the most dangerous thing in the Sea - their tendrils are practically invisible, but if they sting you, you're paralyzed for hours. Easy prey for anything nearby, if the tendrils don't draw you up first."
… Are they jellyfish? They sound like jellyfish. Although that name sounds oddly familiar…
"Just go around it carefully…" He traces out a curving path around it, his sword held to some invisible point in the 'center', and we carefully thread along it as well.
Of course, halfway along, something shuffles out of the darkness. Some weird misshapen… toad looking lizard with big white bulbous eyes that looked like they couldn't actually see a thing. It only comes up to our knees, knobbled with warts and lumps, and crawls along on all fours.
Judging from the way Mo Jianyang tenses up, I'm pretty sure the appropriate reaction is panic.
Before either of us can do anything though, Tian Mingfei has already lashed out, her heel slamming into the weird toad-lizard's head and crushing it against the stone floor effortlessly.
She seems disappointed it didn't put up more of a fight. "Was that it?" she asks, genuinely put out.
"I'm not cooking that," I throw out pre-emptively. I've cooked a lot of weird things, and I probably will continue, but I'm drawing the line at weird toads.
Hou Bohai just tsks warningly. "You shouldn't move suddenly, Senior! Movements like that can get attention and then-"
Whatever he was going to say is cut off as a pink, fleshy tongue shoots out and slams right into his startled chest with enough force to knock the air out of him - which is alarming enough on its own, really, but he stumbled right into where he was keeping his sword pointed.
Any doubts I had that there was something there are pretty quickly alleviated as he screams in pain, his sword arm going slack as something visibly coils around the limb. 'Practically invisible' doesn't really do it justice given the only way I can see that there is something there is the way it's pressing against his flesh.
If there's tendrils then-my kitchen knife is in my hand without any further thought, unleashing a wide sweeping cut right above him. I can feel something providing resistance, but it's no match for the knife.
Of course, it's at this point that I realise I probably should've cut it closer to Hou Bohai, because now the limp, severed, entirely invisible tendrils fall right onto my face. I know this because suddenly my face is stinging.
In perhaps one of my oddest moments to date, my first thought is not oh gods not my face or oh gods the pain but instead this feels vaguely familiar. This tingling sting, the faint numbness spreading across my skin…
Ah, I realise with a jolt, I know what this is now. That fucking bastard used to eat these as a dessert. I can't count how many times I lost feeling in my hands and arms wrestling with these fucking tendrils, but there is one good thing that came out of that.
I know for a fact that I've built up an immunity so I don't hesitate to grab the severed tendrils - an endeavour made a little more awkward by the fact that I still can't see the little fuckers - and flinging them roughly in the direction of where the tongue came from.
"You alright, Junior?" I offer, trying to get a clearer examination of what damage Hou Bohai's taken. His sword arm's completely limp, so that's a wash, but the real test is whether he can move.
He grimaces visibly, trying to put on a strong face. He knows I can see he's about to cry, right? It's kind of cute when Zhou Cheng does it, but come on. Nobody is going to blame you for crying. "It's… I can… manage." He gives me a look I'm pretty sure is meant to be inquisitive but comes off as more desperate. It's the tears, Junior. "You…?"
"I can manage." I give him a quick pat down - just featherlight touches to make sure there's no tendrils left over. The paralysis sets in pretty quickly, from what I remember, so you stop feeling them. You don't stop feeling the pain, of course, because that'd be too easy.
"How…?" he hisses out weakly, lips pursed and teeth clenched. "It… you touched it?"
I'm assuming he's commenting on the fact that I'm still moving. As tempting as it is to just say something like 'Skill issue'... "Long story. Here. Swallow this." I don't have a good antivenom for this, but it should help. "Do I have your permission to treat you?"
He grimaces a little more, but manages a pained looking nod.
Now, what I remember about the stings… they didn't actually attack the nerves, but your Qi. They disrupt the flow, and that causes the paralysis without really paralysing you. So a little nudge can help clear it out - the pill can help cycle his Qi more aggressively, and a nudge here or there should help things along. It'll probably be a small while until he's got full movement again though unless we have enough time for us to sit there and help me completely treat him.
With Hou Bohai situated, I risk a glance up at everyone else. Mo Jianyang is holding point now, and Zhou Cheng is flanking him, ready to fend off any other attacks but… "Where did Senior Sister go?"
Zhou Cheng makes a face, which is probably answer enough. "Tian Mingfei… she charged into the darkness. We lost sight, but I can still smell her."
She would, wouldn't she. "If we call out to her, is that going to get more attention?"
"... Probably," Mo Jianyang admits after a long moment, "But we can't really stay here either."
Gods fucking damn it, why are you like this? I glance over to our 'guides', and then back to Zhou Cheng, waiting for one of them to make a call.
After a long moment of consideration, Zhou Cheng sighs. "Let's try and get to where she is," he declares, "I can track her."
I help Hou Bohai up, letting him lean on me - or well, letting his limp, paralysed arm hang over my shoulders and using it to hold him upright - as we begin moving.
With any luck, Tian Mingfei will stop moving long enough for us to catch up… but I remained doubtful.
The path we were on seemed to take much longer than I was promised - it was enough that around halfway through, Hou Bohai managed to recover enough to walk on his own. It's hard to say how long we were actually walking for though - it's not as though anything really happened.
Oh sure, we did get one ambush as some weird crab-thing leapt straight for me, and sure, I screamed like a little girl. But we're not going to talk about it. Anyone would've screamed if that came straight at them from the darkness, no warning or anything.
… although I admit, I'm impressed that Zhou Cheng managed to hold me so easily. I mean, he's a cultivator, so I probably shouldn't be that surprised, but it's still a little hard for me to shake the visual difference between expectations and reality. He comes up to my chest, and I weigh like, three times more.
I'd be more impressed if he let me down, but he insisted on carrying me. 'In case something else frightened me' were his words.
Cheeky bastard.
"She's in there," he murmurs, inclining his head in the direction of an opening in the cave wall because he still won't put me down. "And… there's something else in there. It smells like… the sea."
Mo Jianyang and Hou Bohai both ready their swords as though they could stand a chance against anything that managed to defeat Tian Mingfei.
Finally, Zhou Cheng set me down, and I did my best to seem dignified about the whole thing, but I'm pretty sure any chance I'd get respect from our 'Juniors' was… well. It would've been nice. For once.
We advance slowly and carefully, until…
"Ah! There you are!" Tian Mingfei declares cheerfully, like we were the ones who were lost, "I would've gotten back to you, but this bastard refused to let go of my leg - so I had to kill him."
'This bastard' is some kind of horrifying gulper eel looking motherfucker, with six… eight pairs of legs? It's long, slimy, and has a mouth with more teeth than the Tooth Fairy's stash. No eyes that I can see, and Tian Mingfei is sitting on its corpse like its a throne.
She is also bleeding. I know it's her blood, because that thing has a weird bluish-purple blood oozing out of the wounds she's left on it.
"Junior," she continues, as we stand there and take in the sight with open shock and dropped jaws, "I'm going to need some medical attention, yes? I'm not sure how much blood I've lost, but I'm pretty sure the room is starting to spin."
My jaw snaps shut with a click. "You are so lucky I like you, Senior."
She grins weakly, her skin deathly pale in the weak light of our crystals. "Truly, I am blessed… but the medicine, please?"
