Chapter 56: Climbing to Heaven

A massive black tide surged from the cracks between the stone walls and the fluorite slabs. At first glance, it resembled liquid, but the flow felt unnaturally rigid. Gu Xianwang narrowed her eyes for a closer look and realized those weren’t waves of water at all—they were densely tangled clusters of long, thin worms, each slightly thicker than an earthworm and no longer than the span of a hand. Writhing together like a flow of raw meat, they squeezed out from the fissures.

Sara sensed something was off and swept her flashlight across the base of the surrounding stone walls. Her scalp prickled with horror. “What the hell is this? Did we just poke a bug nest?”

Under the beam of light, Ye Chan finally got a clear view. Clutching her arm, she stammered, “Those… they look like snakes. The tiniest kind. Called… hiss… blind snakes, right?”

“Ah?” Yao Cuo stared at her in a daze. “You know what they are? Are they poisonous?”

“N-no, they’re not poisonous.” Ye Chan’s voice trembled as she fought back shivers. Poison wasn’t the issue right now—it was the sheer disgust. These thin little snakes were pouring out from every direction, seemingly endless.

What kind of nightmare was this? It was like renting an apartment for three years, then flipping over your mattress during move-out cleaning only to uncover a cockroach nest underneath. You just stared at the huddled mass of baby roaches warming themselves against each other, too stunned to even scream.

Earlier, Gu Xianwang had suspected the fluorite platform under their feet was a later addition. Now, she wondered if she wasn’t onto something—had the Witch Clan people simply paved over an entire pit of snakes with a slab of fluorite ore?

What kind of design philosophy was that? All flash on the outside, rotten filth within.

By all rights, they weren’t poisonous, but this was Witch Clan territory—who could say for sure? And even if they weren’t venomous, with tens of thousands of the things swarming up to engulf them… wouldn’t they burrow into people’s bodies just like the Earth Threads in the Living Soil Forest?

Gu Xianwang wiped the cold sweat from her forehead and shouted, “Fall back to the base of the Stone Tree first!”

The group had just converged toward the center when a golden, chubby whirlwind spun upward against the tide. Flapping its wings, it charged straight out with heroic abandon—like the first eager guest at an all-you-can-eat buffet. The Golden Crow’s eyes gleamed as it dove into the snake swarm, snapping up one wriggling body per bite and devouring them with gleeful abandon.

Ye Chan burst out laughing. “Whoa, is this the Golden Crow’s personal cafeteria or what?”

She mulled it over and nodded to herself. “Makes sense. Back outside, that Submerged Jiao showed the Golden Crow some respect. Jiao and snakes share a common ancestry, so these little snake spawn are probably all relatives of that old jiao. With the Golden Crow on our side now, it must be their natural counter!”

She spoke with utter conviction, but no one hugged the tree trunk tighter than she did. The snake tide was now just a dozen paces away. Gu Xianwang watched the Golden Crow’s movements—it was eating furiously, but it hadn’t truly stemmed the snakes’ advance toward the Stone Tree.

It was only a matter of time before this place was inundated.

Long Li craned her neck to look up. “Our only option is to climb.”

“Climb?” Sara gripped the chunk of black stone she’d pried loose and eyed the colossal Stone Tree towering over a hundred meters high. “Climb how far?”

Yao Cuo fretted that going up might be easy, but coming down would be a nightmare. “Maybe we should observe a bit longer. If we climb, these snakes might just follow us.”

Gu Xianwang knew Long Li was right. Upward was their sole path forward—no other roads remained. But she’d been enduring weakness in her limbs, and with her shoulder like this, climbing might as well have been impossible. Steeling herself, she gritted her teeth and unwound the bandages from her shoulder and leg. She wrapped them tightly around her palms and wrists, layer after layer, to secure her joints.

Ye Chan blinked in confusion. “Sister Gu, what are you doing?”

“Stabilizing my joints,” Gu Xianwang replied. “It’ll make climbing easier.”

Ye Chan hadn’t expected Gu Xianwang to prepare so quickly. She let out a wail of despair. At the same moment, the Golden Crow outside—having foraged its fill—finally flapped back in fits and starts. The instant it landed, it kicked its claws skyward and flopped flat on its back.

The message was clear: stuffed to bursting. Not another single one.

Tears welled in Ye Chan’s eyes as she resigned herself to fate. “Fine. Climb it is! Climb! Waaah, what kind of rotten luck do I have?!”

Long Li said, “You all go first. I’ll bring up the rear.”

Gu Xianwang nodded. This time, she didn’t argue over who went ahead. For one thing, her body simply couldn’t handle it. For another, her decision to scramble up the tree without hesitation stemmed from a selfish motive of her own.

From the abandoned village all the way to the altar, the only clue in her hands had actually gone cold outside the karst cave. She had seen the scenery from the photo, but the life-saving item she sought remained elusive, nowhere to be found. She didn’t even know if the thing the Mountain-Seeking Traveler had mentioned was a line of text, an engraving, or some specific object.

At the end of this altar, she needed to examine everything. She couldn’t afford to overlook a single possible lead. She had to stick close to Sara and Long Li—only then might she lay her hands on the true object of her search.

No matter how perilous or deadly the path ahead, she could only grit her teeth and press on upward.

They had come this far. No one was willing to turn back now.

Sara thought the same, so she leaped up first.

The trunk of this stone tree was formed by two thick stems twisting together, providing plenty of footholds and handholds. Ye Chan slapped her cheeks hard and shouted, “It’s do or die!” before following right behind Gu Xianwang as they began the climb.

Yao Cuo had wanted to guard Gu Xianwang, but his junior sister asked him to help Ye Chan as much as he could. With no other choice—his junior sister’s words were as good as law—he went to assist Ye Chan instead. Gu Xianwang wouldn’t have let him protect her anyway.

The first two or three meters weren’t difficult at all. Gu Xianwang glanced back for Long Li, only to see her and the Golden Crow moving outward, deliberately stepping into the black tide of snakes. Yet the surrounding serpents didn’t attack her. Instead, they slithered around her and the Golden Crow.

What was going on? Did the snakes here not attack people?

As Gu Xianwang pondered this, her pace slowed unconsciously. If the situation weren’t so urgent, they might have considered a safer way to climb. But when she looked up, she saw Sara bounding upward like a monkey, ignoring whether Long Li had started climbing or not. Sara shot higher and higher, quickly putting five or six meters between them.

If this kept up, Gu Xianwang would be left behind. If the true sacrificial altar was hidden amid the tree’s crown, she would find nothing. But… Ye Chan and Long Li were still below. Gu Xianwang’s heart felt like a ragged cloth being pulled from both ends—one tied to self-interest, the other to loyalty. Chase after her, or not?

In her hesitation, she glanced down again. In that short time, a couple of fast-moving small snakes had already caught up, slithering onto Ye Chan’s shoes and apparently trying to worm into her pant legs. Terrified, Ye Chan clung desperately to the trunk, kicking wildly with one leg and shrieking at the top of her lungs.

Did these snakes only spare Long Li? Why?

Suddenly, Gu Xianwang recalled her earlier suspicion about why she hadn’t pressed on: that jug of wine—how did it identify Witch Clan members?

What if the wine was just part of a screening mechanism? If someone drank the liquid upon entering, the snake swarm inside the altar wouldn’t attack them. Without it, the snakes served as a third line of defense.

That would make Long Li the safest one here right now. Had she figured it out earlier?

Soon, Long Li caught up to Ye Chan. She used a slender shard of fluorite to flick the small snake away, then pointed out a route for Ye Chan to follow.

With Long Li watching over things below, Gu Xianwang felt relieved. She looked up at the distance, clenched her teeth, and charged upward with grim determination.

Once fired up, the thirty or forty meters of height seemed nothing. Gu Xianwang felt her blood surging as if her body had been hollowed out, squeezing out the last dregs of strength from her very bones. Her finger joints had gone completely numb and rigid, barely able to straighten. The base of the leaf crown was right there in front of her. If she could just climb up, there would be plenty of footing once she reached it…

She steadied herself and exhaled slowly. Tilting her head back to find Sara’s position, she saw that Sara had just entered the tree crown and come to a sudden halt, apparently staring at something.

Gu Xianwang narrowed her eyes and followed Sara’s gaze. Faintly, at the tips of those stone branches, she spotted slender specks of light drifting and scattering downward. The canopy was so thick and dense that it was impossible to notice from below.

So the top of this tree—the ceiling of the cavern they were in—had cracks?

Gu Xianwang’s heart leaped with joy. She had thought escaping from here would require battling through five more trials and slaying six generals at minimum, or at worst retracing their steps and trying to force open the stone door from inside. But now there was light overhead. Didn’t that mean if they climbed to the top, they had a good chance of getting out directly?

She was just about to share the news with Long Li when she turned around and spotted her only two or three meters away. A soft belt was tied around Long Li’s arm, its other end looped through the belt on Ye Chan’s pants, effectively turning Long Li herself into Ye Chan’s safety tether. With Long Li leading the way up front and Yao Cuo guarding from behind, they had managed to haul Ye Chan all the way up to nearly the level of the tree crown.

Looking down from this height was downright lethal. Past the halfway mark on the trunk, the swarms of blind snakes had stopped chasing them. For the trio, their greatest foe at the moment was actually holding back the urge to glance downward—to keep their fear of heights from overwhelming them.

Strangely, the Golden Crow was nowhere in sight. She had assumed the bird would climb up alongside Long Li, but since it fed on blind snakes, it was undoubtedly far safer than they were inside this altar. There was no need for her to worry about it.

Gu Xianwang pursed her lips, deciding against calling out and startling them, lest she spook Ye Chan and sap her momentum. Just as she prepared to resume her own climb, a sharp whoosh cut through the air from the side. The sound was so sudden that it echoed several times louder in the rock cavity—

Her whole body jolted. Before she could even turn her gaze, a carbon-fiber short arrow sliced straight through the belt linking her to Ye Chan. The sudden attack nearly sent Ye Chan tumbling backward; only Yao Cuo’s quick hand pressing down on the back of her neck saved her from plummeting to her death.

Gu Xianwang whipped her eyes toward the arrow’s origin. In her single-minded focus on climbing earlier, she hadn’t spared much energy to scan her surroundings. It was only now that she noticed the rock walls at leaf crown height were riddled with those small cave mouths she’d spotted before. A narrow platform, barely large enough for one person, jutted out from each opening. Iron chains connected the platforms to one another, and dangling from those chains were countless white bones just like the ones below.

The crossbow-wielding shooter now lounged on a platform across from her on the opposite wall. Utterly fearless of the heights, she swung her legs idly against the rock face, looking relaxed and utterly at ease. That half-melted face of hers beamed at them with a sly grin.

Yuzi wagged a finger at Long Li, her voice a eerie, coquettish lilt. “Climbing the God Tree is the most sacred ritual there is. You mustn’t cheat, oh no.”