1044 Chapter 1044 Leave it to Lily
Lily’s perspective.
—–*
It didn’t take that long for Lily to find the secret door. It was only five minutes of sneaking around. The servants were much too casual, and the clues for the hidden door easily found by someone that had eyes at ankle height. In one of the hallways, there was a display case between two rooms. It showed off a number of poorly done clay sculptures and water colour paintings. If Lily was all but certain the display case was for little arts and crafts projects Bing and Feng made growing up.
It was actually rather sweet. The secret to the vault wasn’t behind the suits of armour, the legendary blades, or the medicinal pills cabinet. It was behind the deeply personal examples of Bing and Feng’s childhood. Lily felt her respect for Meng and Bang, the real ones, rise by a good margin at the discovery.
As to how she discovered it, well, the cabinet clearly moved away from the wall to reveal something hidden, and Lily could see the marks on the floor to prove it. They were subtle things, and the servants had cleaned wonderfully… but the slight gauges in the wooden floors were unmistakable. It was the mark of something being moved across the wood over and over and over. The vault might not have been a particularly regular place to visit, but this was a cultivation world, these marks had likely been growing in prominence for centuries.
A short time later, Kat and Lian made there way over, and Lian seemed shocked at seeing the hiding place, but nodded, as she too understood the reason for it. “Can you open this Lian?” asked Kat as she examined the cabinet.
Lian frowned, “Um… yes probably but it would take time. I think it’s all mechanical… can you just… force it open?” asked Lian.
Kat tapped her foot a few times before moving up and placing her hands over the cabinet. Meng and Bang had tried to protect this entrance through obscurity rather than a bunch of seals. Lian’s guess was correct, it was purely a mechanical lock that kept this cabinet in place as a door. Kat tested it, pulling lightly, and felt the cabinet wobble with less then a percent of her strength. “Yeah. It’s not stuck to the wall much at all. I can lift it… but it might cause a bit of a disturbance with the noise…” said Kat.
Lian just shrugged, so Kat returned with one of her own and got to work. Their was a screeching sound of metal on metal, but it took no effort to peal the cabinet away from the wall revealing a small hole and a well lit room with an intrigue design carved into the floor. “This is it!” said Lian as she jumped into the hole. Kat and Lily followed quickly, with Kat starting to shut the door, only to hear more metallic screeching. Kat winced and left the cabinet as is.
.....
Lian was already working on the array, mumbling to herself, “Yes… right one… where does… but if I… no… made an imprint key… not the easiest curse… what if… no… yes… hmm… eleven by three, carry the remainder… wait but if I scratch this here… hmm…”
Kat and Lily shared a look, but didn’t want to interrupt Lian and risk the hole exercise failing. They did keep an ear out, and when after about four minutes, they could hear someone approaching, Kat spoke up, “Lian, someone is coming. Can you do it? And are we good to go?”
Lian nodded, “Yes… I should be able to send you through…” said Lian slowly.
Kat, missing the phrasing in that moment, hopped onto the transporter with Lily in her arms. It was only as she turned around to see Lian as the glow started up that it all clicked. Lian had a look of determination and resignation. It was the look of someone that knew they were about to do something stupid because it needed to be done, and wasn’t about to regret the consequences.
Kat had fractions of moments to decide what to do. Her mind sped up to maximum speed, even as the light was rising around her. She ran through a number of situations, of what she could do. Of how they could all get out of this. And Kat’s heart clenched. There was only one way to keep Lian safe. Lian wasn’t quite so resigned that Kat suspected Lian was about to die… but it wasn’t much better.
[LILY! I TRUST YOU. PROTECT LIAN]
The world sped up for Kat in that moment. For Lily, even with her improved body and brain, she hadn’t the time to reach the same conclusion. Kat’s message reached her, sped up and distorted even as the light surrounded Kat and Lily felt herself landing on Lian. The light built up in intensity and then it was gone. And so was Kat. Lian collapsed with Lily on top of her, and Lily had a moment of panic.
*KAT!* mentally shouted Lily, not quite expected a fast response…
Which of course meant Kat was able to answer instantly. [Yes?]
*What the fuck Kat!*
[What’s wrong? Did you think I’d died or something? Lily I’m off to fight Fake Meng, but Lian looked like she was about to go off to war. I couldn’t leave her alone, and she clearly wasn’t coming with us. What else was I supposed to do?]
*Give me a bit of warning perhaps?*
[It’s not like we had time for that Lily. I trust you. You’ve gotten better at magic, and it should just be the servants. If Fake Bang shows up… or well, to you it should look like real Bang… I’m not sure really. Just do your best?]
*We WILL be talking about this later Kat. It was the right move, I don’t want to criticise that, but I barely got that mental message, from my perspective it was like you were speaking five times faster then normal. I panicked massively, and that was before Lian collapsed. It really wasn’t good for my poor heart. And yes Kat, for a moment I did think there was something wrong with the teleporter and you were day. It wasn’t rational, I shouldn’t have jumped straight for that but dammit I was worried.*
[Look, you can chew me out for it later, but you need to focus on Lian for now and I need to focus on my own upcoming fight. I think I’ll be closing the link so that things don’t bleed over, on either end. Too much of a risk.]
Lily cursed mentally as she felt the link closed like Kat said and returned to her human form. Lian was panting heavily on the ground and sweating somewhat. Her hands were shaking even though she’d collapsed, and her eyes were closed. “Lian? Can you hear me?”
“Lily?” rasped Lian as best she could.
“Yes it’s Lily you absolute MORON. What the hell have you done to yourself?” hissed Lily, keeping her voice low. She could hear the a servant approaching faster now, they didn’t have much time.
“It… it’s nothing…” started Lian only to be cut off by Lily summoning her claws and resting them on Lian’s neck.
“Lian. I am rather pissed at the moment. Not for any real reason. A simple misunderstanding and poor assumption on my part just a moment ago. I am not in the mood to deal with misdirection and self-sacrificial bullshit. I get enough of that from Kat, and I let her get away with it because I love her, and she can regenerate. You are not well and you will tell me what the problem is OR SO HELP ME whatever you’ve done to yourself will be the least of your worries,” hissed Lily, even as she could hear the footsteps just outside the room. A glance at the array revealed it was trashed, so that wasn’t going to be useful.
“I… didn’t have enough qi to power the change… so I had to… on the fly… swap out qi for a sacrifice of blood. Not… not all of my blood obviously but I might’ve sacrificed… like half…” answered Lian shakily.
“Half your blood? Half your blood?” hissed Lily, and now that she was looking Lian had paled massively. It hadn’t been obvious before, considering how pale Lian normally was, but now Lily had been told about the blood loss, it was beyond obvious. “How are you not dead?”
“Qi mostly, and good living,” said Lian with a dark chuckle.
At that moment, the servant who had come to check things out reached the door. Before he or she could see anything though, Lily poured mana into her spell. Wall upon wall of paper quickly appeared to cover the gap inside, buying them precious time, at the cost of arguably more precious mana. Lily just had to hope it would buy her enough time to regenerate a big chunk of the cost.
“Ok Lian. We’re going to need a plan. How dangerous exactly are the servants here? And are we running? Or fighting as we go?” questioned Lily.
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