WangXian Forever Book 8

Chapter 46 Forward

"What is this place?" Jin Ling asked.

His words seemed to echo.

They were walking through a grove of wild trees and undergrowth, greenery all around them.

"I don't know...but have you noticed? There aren't any birds." SiZhui whispered.

The dragon babies were trying to be quiet, but their size alone made it impossible. They huddled together following JingYi, who was aiming to calm them down, but they were jittery.

Everything had a muffled aftersound like walking in sand.

"What did the tree tell you?" JingYi asked Zhitiao, who had stayed too quiet.

She was normally a reticent person, preferring to watch and listen rather than actively engage in conversation when with others, but JingYi had felt special because she was different with him.

Definitely more talkative than right now. She seemed to be lost in thought.

"That tree was old...as old as all of these." She gazed up towards the small patches of blue in the sky obscured by the many leaves. "But there's a deep magic...it's as if it's waiting for something."

"Did you feel that too?" SiZhui said, who was walking in front with Jin Ling.

"It feels old and powerful...but I don't know...right? It's hard to explain. I don't feel as if it will hurt us though." She agreed.

They paused to rest, and Jin Ling leaned back against ivy crawling up something faded that used to be pale. It resembled the white elm trees back in Gusu.

"That's a relief. Whenever we go on night hunts, there's always something trying to kill us." He grinned, wryly.

SiZhui was happy that Jin Ling's mood had improved.

He cleared away some of the ivy clinging to another tree trunk...but as his gaze drifted up, he was confused as to what he was seeing. The trunk seemed to curve upwards over them...and that was definitely not the way a tree would grow. What was more confusing was that there were several of these overhead, and no leaves whatsoever grew from them.

A sudden idea occurred to him, and he ran to the other side of the Grove, quickly clearing away the ivy and weeds clinging to the strange texture. It was smooth just as he suspected.

Jin Ling saw what he was doing and came up to him. By now, SiZhui had cleared away most of the green plants growing on them. He stepped back in awe.

"What? What is it?" Jin Ling asked him.

"What does this look like to you?" He asked instead, his burgundy eyes shining with excitement.

Jin Ling thought he couldn’t love him more. He turned and gazed at both sides of curved ivory shapes.

"They're...ribs?" Zhitiao beat him to it. "Are we really standing inside the ribcage of...of..."

"A dragon. Perhaps the biggest one of all." JingYi commented, looking around him.

"And if there wasn't a head over there," Zhitiao pointed the way they had come, "then there should be a skull of some sorts over there." She looked forwards.

Spurred on by the chance of a new discovery, they walked faster. Next to them was a ridge of what looked like boulders differing in size, and when SiZhui again cleared away the moss and plants, the same ivory bones were visible. Excited now because their theory seemed to be correct, they hurried on ahead.

Wen Ning knew they were slower than he would have been on his own, yet he couldn’t help feeling as if this was part of something bigger than just themselves. As he well knew, there was no such thing as coincidence and meeting these kids on the way by pure chance was no accident.

Besides, the scent and the tracking talisman were still strong and he knew exactly which direction they should go in.

A few yards away, they discovered the skull.

Nature had taken over and grown through all the cavities, and in between the huge fangs, the teeth grown over and hidden under moss and more weeds. Here, the skull was obviously there and since there didn't seem to be anything worth investigating, they continued onwards.

But if they had looked back, they would have seen a pair of yellow eyes watching them leave.

*********

"Watch out!" SiZhui pulled Jin Ling back as the ground fell away from them.

A sheer drop fell before them and had they not been looking in front of them, they would have fallen to their deaths.

Zhitiao looked both ways now that they were out of the dense woodland.

"Look! There's a bridge!" She called out.

Her voice echoed back towards them from the ground.

Jin Ling looked at SiZhui gratefully, his heart beating out of his chest, as they stuck to the safe side of the path.

Mists drifted up from the bottom of the valley as they made their way towards the rope bridge.

It looked highly unsafe.

Swinging from side to side, and definitely missing a few planks in the middle, it looked rickety and unstable.

"I'm not going on that." Jin Ling said.

For once, JingYi agreed with the Princess.

"We can fly across." He assured them, but the rumours eldest baby hooted. It echoed up through the canyon under them.

She nuzzled him and clicked and squealed.

"Barrier?" He asked.

She nodded exuberantly.

JingYi walked to the rope bridge, seeing it stretch out further than he could see. Mists covered part of it, hiding where it ended.

"They are definitely on the other side." Wen Ning said, looking across the gaping ravine below.

JingYi walked forward feeling not at all brave about it. But as he tried to step onto the first plank of wood, he found that he simply could not.

He tried again and again, but it didn't work.

He pressed forward with his hands and they met an invisible force blocking him completely.

They had come all this way...just to be flummoxed by a ward?

"This can't be the end." He muttered, disappointedly.

"It isn't." Said a voice from behind them.