Unfortunate Transmigrator

32

Waterfalls and Secrets

I

Tian Jin set the magical cloud in motion again, except this time, they weren’t heading straight away, but veering toward the right. After flying for a short while in this new direction, Tian Jin then started reducing their speed and altitude, bringing the cloud closer to the canopy of trees below.

Hao Zhen sat beside Tian Jin, paying close attention to their surroundings. Inside, he was rather conflicted about his decision. By betting on the fact that there was something special about Tian Jin’s intuition, he was taking a risk, and he normally didn’t take risks if he could help it. He didn’t speak up or voice his uncertainty, however, choosing to remain silent and keep his thoughts to himself.

Lan Yue sat to Hao Zhen’s left, and there was a frown on her face. Hao Zhen guessed that she was feeling pretty confused about what was going on, but he didn’t offer her an explanation or reason for his decision. He couldn’t think of any way of going about that without having to reveal his theory that their reality was like a cultivation novel, and that was a conversation he had already decided to delay.

Thankfully, perhaps because she had just come clean about her identity, Lan Yue wasn’t her usual self, so she didn’t try to dig too deep into what was going on, nor did she voice any protests.

A short while later, a break appeared in the vast expanse of green around them. Hao Zhen narrowed his eyes, taking in the largest clearing they had come across so far. A large lake occupied most of it. Next to the lake was a steep incline, beyond which a river ran. A large waterfall connected the two bodies of water. The terrain surrounding the clearing was elevated in relation to it, forming a small valley around the lake.

It was late morning, and the sun shone down on the water, the water reflecting its light. Around the bank of the lake, there were some brightly colored plants—and considering some of them were glowing, they were probably of the magical variety.

Had they just stumbled into this clearing while wandering around the forest, Hao Zhen would have liked to spend a few moments just taking in its beauty.

They were there for a reason, however, so Hao Zhen forced himself to focus. More specifically, he focused on the waterfall. It was on the other side of the clearing, opposite them. When you took into consideration how exaggerated the dimensions of everything else in the forest were, the waterfall wasn’t particularly tall, but it was definitely wide.

Wide enough to hide a cave behind it.

Hao Zhen narrowed his eyes. Finding a cave or a secret location behind a waterfall wasn’t something that only happened in cultivation novels. It was a pretty much ubiquitous trope to the adventure genre as a whole.

Hao Zhen then shifted his attention to the lake. It was also rather common for there to be a secret hidden at the bottom of a lake, but he didn’t think that was the case. Not when there was a waterfall nearby. He still kept the possibility in mind, however. Just in case Tian Jin’s intuition couldn’t directly point him to wherever they needed to go and they didn’t find anything behind the waterfall.

“It’s here,” Tian Jin said, just as the magical cloud touched the ground. He then jumped onto the grass, Hao Zhen and Lan Yue following suit right after.

To Hao Zhen’s total lack of surprise, Tian Jin had his gaze fixed on the waterfall.

Sure enough, Hao Zhen thought, before glancing at Lan Yue. She was looking around the lake curiously, paying more attention to the surrounding vegetation.

“It’s behind the waterfall?” Hao Zhen asked, returning his attention to Tian Jin.

Tian Jin nodded his head, still looking ahead. “I think so.” He then turned back, giving Hao Zhen a confused look. “How did you…”

“I guessed,” Hao Zhen said, shrugging. He didn’t bother coming up with any excuses. If things went according to plan, he’d be telling the two of them the truth soon enough, so he didn’t see the point in trying to come up with explanations right now.

Hearing them, Lan Yue looked away from the lake, focusing on the waterfall. She stared hard at it before looking at the two of them suspiciously. “I don’t feel anything.”

“Tian Jin’s the one feeling something. Like I said, I was just guessing,” Hao Zhen said. He then gave Tian Jin a nod. “Let’s have a look.”

Tian Jin at the lead, they began making their way over to the waterfall.

Hao Zhen had Spiritual Sight activated, but he could see nothing unusual about it. All that he could see was the continuous cascade of clear blue water. The closer they got, the louder the waterfall became—a continuous burble as the water of the river crashed into the lake.

Soon they reached the face of the cliff, from which the waterfall flowed down. The waterfall took up most of the cliff, and they stood close enough to it to be hit by stray splashes of water.

They first tried to peer behind the waterfall, but the sheet of cascading water was too thick.

Hao Zhen glanced at the lake. Because the water was so clear, he could clearly see inside it, making it clear to judge its depth. And it was deep. Even Tian Jin, by far the tallest among them, would be completely submerged if he were to step inside. It wasn’t as if they could walk on water, either, or use their spiritual power to lift themselves off the ground. What cultivators could lift using spiritual power wasn’t determined by its quantity, but by its quality. Red spiritual power could be used to move swords around in the air, but it wasn’t powerful enough to lift a person.

The cascade of water also made using a magical cloud impossible.

“I’ll climb behind it,” Tian Jin said, his eyes on the cliff. “If there’s anything, I’ll call you over.”

“All right,” Hao Zhen said. “Just… be careful.”

Although similar situations in cultivation novels usually weren’t too dangerous, Hao Zhen remembered reading once or twice scenes where the protagonist came across a treasure in a secret location, only to encounter all sorts of traps. The protagonist always got out unscathed, obviously, but he felt it prudent to warn Tian Jin just in case.

Tian Jin nodded at him, then grabbed onto the surface of the steep slope before them. Then, finding a support for his feet among the many clumps of dirt and stone sticking out of the wall, he began climbing his way into the waterfall, soon disappearing behind the curtain of water.

Hao Zhen and Lan Yue stayed right at the edge of the cave. Lan Yue didn’t appear particularly concerned—if anything, she looked dubious.

“There’s something here!”

Tian Jin’s cry—almost muffled by the sound of the waterfall—had Hao Zhen snapping his head back toward the waterfall. The other boy didn’t sound like he was in any danger. “What is it?” Hao Zhen called out.

“A barrier, I think!” Tian Jin shouted back. “Come over!”

Hao Zhen glanced at Lan Yue and saw that her eyes were wide. Then, noticing his gaze on her, she turned toward him, once again giving him a look of suspicion. Hao Zhen ignored her, making his way over to the cliff. Then, just like Tian Jin had done, he found some handholds and began climbing.

He had never climbed anything before this way—not even as Amyas—so he took it slowly at first. Probably because of how much stronger and agile a cultivator was compared to graysouls, however, he didn’t have much problem moving his body around.

Once he reached the waterfall, he came to a stop. Its sound was almost deafening, and he braced himself before sticking his hand inside it, trying to find some purchase there. Once he found something to grab, he pushed himself under the cascade of water.

The water hit him hard, but he managed to hold on to the cliff. As he couldn’t see amid all the white barrage of water, he used his sense of touch to find new handholds. After moving himself to the side a couple more times, he ended up sticking his arm into an empty space the next time he reached out.

He then felt a hand grab his, and the next moment, he was pulled to the side, and then inside. A little disoriented at the abrupt move, Hao Zhen took a moment to regain his senses. Tian Jin was standing right in front of him, having already let go of his hand.

“Are you all right?” Tian Jin asked, looking him over.

Hao Zhen didn’t answer immediately, taking a few more moments to orient himself, before nodding his head. “I’m fine.”

He then started looking around the cave. The first thing that caught his eye was a barrier of light behind Tian Jin. It was pretty hard to miss, considering it was where most of the light in the cave was coming from. There was nothing else to see in the cave—the barrier hid the rest of it from sight.

Hao Zhen stepped closer to the barrier. It was the same color as the one formed by Lan Yue’s Radiant Light Imprisonment Talisman.

“That’s… a Radiant Light Sealing Schema?”

Hearing Lan Yue’s voice, Hao Zhen turned around and saw that she had joined them inside the cave. Her robes didn’t look wet, but that wasn’t surprising, as neither he nor Tian Jin’s were, either, because of the water-repelling matrixes on them. His and Tian Jin’s hair and skin were distinctly wet, however, whereas Lan Yue looked perfectly dry all over.

This all but confirmed his theory that she had some sort of illusion over her appearance. Before, he could remember that sometimes her hair would get messy, but he reckoned that she could adjust the illusion to some extent. Now that the secret was out of the bag, however, she had probably given up on keeping up the pretense.

Tian Jin seemed to notice it, too, because he gave her a curious look. He didn’t comment on it, however, and neither did Hao Zhen.

What she had just said was much more important.

“You know what that is?”

“Yes,” Lan Yue said, walking past them to stand right in front of the barrier. She reached out a hand, touching it. “It’s the strongest sealing schema the sect has. The Radiant Light Imprisonment Talisman was derived from it.” She turned back to look at them. “Whoever made this barrier was a member of the sect.”

“Hmm.” Hao Zhen looked at the barrier thoughtfully, going over a few possibilities in his head. One of them was that a member of the sect had sealed something behind it for some reason—most likely a treasure. Another was that an elder of the sect had gone into the cave to practice secluded cultivation to attempt a breakthrough, set up the barrier so that they wouldn’t be disturbed, and silently passed away while cultivating.

The second option was far more common than the first, so Hao Zhen was leaning toward it.

First, however, they needed to find some way to get to the other side of the cave, however.

“Is there some trick to opening or breaking it?” Hao Zhen asked Lan Yue.

“There isn’t,” Lan Yue said. “If we had enough time, we could probably attack it until it broke, but it’s supposed to be able to withstand a barrage of attacks from a seventh-level cultivator, so we’d need a lot of time to wear it down. This is odd, however. Only protectors of the sect who specialize in inscriptionery currently know how to inscribe this schema, and as far as I know, none of them have left the sect in decades.”

“So this barrier is pretty old?”

“It should be.”

Hao Zhen turned to Tian Jin. “What do you think?”

Considering it was Tian Jin’s intuition that had led them here, chances were that he was the key to getting through the barrier. He was also the one who knew the most about inscriptions and arrays.

Tian Jin was standing beside them, inspecting the barrier. “This doesn’t look the sort of schema that can run on ambient spiritual power, so it’s most likely being powered by spiritual stones.” He nodded toward Lan Yue. “If it has really been so long since it was set up, and the spiritual stones weren’t replenished, then the barrier should already be pretty weak. We should be able to bring it down ourselves fairly quickly by attacking it if that’s the case, but…”

Red gauntlets appeared on his fists. He then reached forward and pressed his hands against the barrier. They went right through it.

Around Tian Jin’s wrists, which were sticking through the barrier, a gap appeared, which became wider and wider until the barrier was gone.

With that, the cave became much darker, the only light source being the dull light from the sun that passed through the waterfall.

“I thought that this could also work,” Hao Zhen heard Tian Jin speak. He could see a vague, shadowy outline of the boy. Beyond them lay almost absolute darkness.

Not creepy at all, Hao Zhen thought to himself, suddenly a little apprehensive. He quickly activated Spiritual Sight, and the darkness gained a red tinge. He could distinctly see Tian Jin’s and Lan Yue’s spiritual auras, though the light that radiated from them, as it was only spiritual, did nothing to brighten up their surroundings.

Hao Zhen directed his attention to the inside of the cave. The most eye-catching thing inside was a sword-shaped spiritual radiation, floating a few feet above the ground, as well as numerous magical symbols—inscriptions—on the walls, floor, and ceiling. On the far corner was a small pile of something emanating spiritual radiation—spiritual stones, he reckoned.

Hao Zhen relaxed a little. At least it didn’t seem like there was someone inside, even if the inscriptions and arrays were a little concerning.

All of a sudden, the cave filled up with light, and Hao Zhen found himself blinking at the sudden change. Turning around, he saw that Lan Yue was now holding some kind of really bright stick in her hand.

Hao Zhen then quickly returned his attention forward, finally seeing the inside of the cave physically.

It was mostly bare. In the corner, as he had guessed, was a pile of spiritual stones. More importantly, however, was what—or rather, who—sat at the center of the cave: a middle-aged man wearing dark red robes with golden patterns on them, sitting with his legs crossed under him on top of a cushion. The man had his eyes closed, and although he appeared to be meditating, the lack of spiritual aura from him meant he had no soul, so he could only be dead.

On the man’s lap was a long, white-bladed sword.

Hao Zhen smirked—not at the corpse, of course, but at the situation.

Called it.