CHAPTER 482: THE GREAT WALL

Izanami, goddess of death. Among the most powerful women in all of mythology. Dasha could count on one hand the number of entities in Japanese mythology with as much authority and power as her.

Dasha turned.

"We vaguely know the circumstances. A piece of Yomi, Izanami’s realm, was seized by the Heavenly Tower. She came after it. Ripped the barrier between dimensions and...was fended off by a single player."

"A single player stopped the Revered Lady of Death...?"

What...? That shouldn’t be possible. Dasha had to go through a hundred step plan in order to take out a Royal Guard. Who in the world could push back a creator goddess a thousand times more powerful?

"I don’t understand. Seized by the Heavenly Tower? How?"

"I do not know."

"Like any of us know how the Heavenly Tower works," Grace murmured. "It’s practically a Supreme God with what it can do."

"..."

"We believe her son was there. All of Izanami’s children, without exception, are Class Six entities."

Class 6: the impossible class. The barrier between the ordinary and extraordinary. The Indians would call such an entity an Atirathi. It didn’t make sense.If Dasha dared to fight a Class 6 at his current power level, his death would be equivalent to an ant getting stepped on by a human.

"Izanami could snap her fingers and annihilate a planet. She is a Creator Goddess. She is not an opponent you or I or anyone in the Whispers could touch, let alone handle." Xavier pulled his hat down. At long last, he glanced at Dasha. ""Whoever this player is, he is likely stronger than you."

"...what’s the other piece of information you want to tell me."

"It’s about Old Rocco. I doubt you know this but I learned he has his own orphanage. He is quite fond of them."

’A weakness to exploit.’

"What I’ve discovered is that some of Old Rocco’s children have gone missing. Security has become a bit uptight and he has been sending spies in order to discover them."

"Has he?"

"No."

"Have you?"

"Yes. I believe a cult took these children for reasons unpolitical and pertaining to their beliefs."

"Oh?"

"They are a Japanese-based cult with serpent tattoos on their wrists. I witnessed one kidnapping a child in the Slums and followed them to their base. I wasn’t able to go inside. However, from what I gleaned from the locals, they are likely to conduct a ritual. Old Rocco’s orphanage was but a coincidence."

"There is no coincidence. There is only reality. Everything is connected in some way. It is our job to either cut those threads or weave them further together." Dasha closed his eyes. "It is for my sleep. I will talk to you in thirty minutes."

"But Dasha—"

Grace stopped herself. He was already fast asleep. She sat back down and inhaled sharply.

"A player who defeated Izanami...it’s impossible. It just...it just can’t be," Grace murmured.

Oh, but it was.

****

When Dasha opened his eyes, Xavier and Grace were gone. The Cultivator pulled his legs up to his seat and crossed them in order to enter a meditative state.

To waste time was to lose power. Every second mattered.

His current goal was to learn Tu Na Breathing. With no mentor and only books as a guide, he had to figure it out on his own. Having achieved Foundation Establishment Late Stage, his Qi had reached a certain quality and quantity, not only physically materializing but granting the skill of Internal Healing. One of three Dantians had completely manifested at this point.

Tu Na Breathing meant to Spit and Collect: to exhale the dirty Qi and inhale the pure Qi of the world. Very difficult as it required the body to be specifically trained to pick out clean Qi and avoid the dirty. It was among the most advanced and well-known Breathing Techniques. Meditation was the only method of achieving it. Combat? No, that had nothing to do with this.

Tu Na Breathing required daily meditation until the body was able to learn what its master was asking. Exhale the dirty, inhale the pure. Spit and collect.

Dasha Pang opened his eyes.

"So close," he murmured. "But not yet. My body hasn’t been conditioned yet."

Weeks upon weeks of meditation. A piece of Jack the Ripper’s white mask was attached to him like a seal.

He was almost there. Almost.

After an hour of meditating and kneading his Qi, he uncrossed his legs and opened his eyes. Xavier was waiting for him.

"Do you wish to go to the slums?" Xavier asked. "If so, you will need to get the Great Wall."

The Great Wall acted as a divider between the main part of the Underground holding the Dark Tower and the Slums outside—as well as other areas. The Sukhothai was a market like few so there had to be a degree of provision.

"Quite ironic," Dasha mused. "Even among the impoverished, there is class division."

"You made your hay in the Slums," Xavier said, "as Jack."

"...let us go."

"Before we do..." From inside his cloak, Xavier handed out a folded cloth. Dasha immediately recognized it: it was his old invisibility cloak, Tarnkappe. A white cloak that granted invisibility like few did. It was of an unparalleled quality.

"That was faster than expected."

"Although the Tarnkappe you own is indeed the same as in Sigurd’s legend, it is not a one-of-a-kind cloak. It was created by the Dwarf Alberich. One of our Whispers managed to study under the Dwarf and learned a few of its secrets."

"This isn’t the first time you’ve repaired it either," Dasha noted.

"How could you tell?

"In legend, Sigurd’s cloak increases his strength by manifolds. He uses it to aid King Gunther in physical tasks and even to overpower Brünhild. I clearly do not receive any of these benefits. Therefore, I suspect someone must have used it before me."

"...indeed."

That was all Xavier would say on the matter.

***

The further out they went, the more suffocating and narrow the Underground became.

The Great Wall loomed like a titan, an immovable black force standing between two worlds—the Underground proper, where power and ambition thrived, and the Slums, where the forgotten and discarded withered away.

Xavier led him through a quieter passage, avoiding the main roads where guards and informants might watch. His knowledge of the Underground showed in every turn, every chosen alley. He knew the watch schedules, the blind spots, and most importantly—he knew the Hecatoncheires.

The Great Wall rose ahead. It was taller than the Dark Tower by leaps and bounds, yet not at all visible in the distance because of the dark tint. It stretched endlessly in both directions, disappearing into what felt like the darkness but was in reality just itself. The Great Wall was a loop, a circle that hid away the full scale of the Underground without effort.

Protecting the Great Wall were the Hecatoncheires. The Guardians of the Wall.

The Hecatoncheires were the law of the Great Wall. They did not answer to rulers, nor did they engage in political schemes. They simply existed, enforcing the one truth of this place: not everyone was meant to pass.

There were three of them.

Cottus, the Furious at the south. A being of wrath and motion, his hundred limbs like serpents, constantly moving. His restlessness made him the deadliest of the three, always watching, always waiting for someone to cross.

Briareus, the Sea Goat at the east. The only one that spoke and the only one who supposedly could listen to reason. Many corpses disagreed with that notion.

Gyges, the Long-Limbed at the west. The quiet one. His limbs could stretch for miles, snatching those who tried to flee. He moved the least, but his reach was absolute. They say Gyges was the most merciful.

Yes, they were the same giants that aided Zeus some time ago during the war against the Titans. Their strength changed everything. Their strength was too great. No doubt, they were Class 7 or above. Removing them was next to impossible.

Attempts had been made before. The corpses of those who tried still littered the ground below.

Xavier and Dasha stopped at an abandoned structure that had once been a temple of Cottus. The worshippers were warned to stay away or die. They chose to die. Now, the temple lay abandoned.

"This is the closest we can get without dying. Cottus has a soft-spot for this place."

’That comes at a price. If the giant sees us here, he will instantly kill us, no questions asked.’

They got onto the rooftop, invisible through their cloaks. They sized up the giant of the south. Cottus the Furious—nearly a thousand feet tall, his complexion as red as the concept of rage itself, and with a thousand limbs. He possessed one large primary head on top of five hundred smaller heads.

Three points amongst this vast wall. Why not climb the areas in between? According to the rumours, at the areas where the giants did not guard, the wall became impossibly slippery and constantly changed in temperature. It could either freeze a man’s hand or burn their climbing limb to ash. He heard many a story of some simply blasting away from a sudden gust of wind.

The Great Wall itself was acting. The areas bestowed with the presence of the giants was entrusted by the wall to be without them; or so they rumours went.

The red giant’s back was practically pressed to the Great Wall. He was half its height. If he jumped, if he moved, everyone would sense it.

"Cottus is the most dangerous in battle" Xavier said. "But even he must rest."

"You know his patterns."

"Most of the locals do." Xavier gestured upward. "Every third cycle, he sleeps for thirty minutes. It’s hard to tell for most. It changes every time too. However..."

Xavier lowered his hat.

"I have a good eye."

Dasha followed Xavier’s gaze to the red mass of limbs and heads. Cottus was still. Always still. Yet the energy within, that was what was constantly moving. Dasha subtly sent his waves of Qi Sense. It worked. The red giant did not notice.

It was a massive, hulking creature. His little waves meant nothing to it.

For the first time in hours, Cottus’ inner Qi halted. His limbs did not move. Not one bit. Indeed, for an ordinary observer, it was impossible to tell.

Neither Xavier nor Dasha were ordinary.

Xavier leapt off the rooftop of the temple. "Now."

Dasha wasted no time. They ran. Xavier was several steps faster. Impressive.

They threw themselves at the wall, their hands instantly finding the grooves and imperfections in the wall’s surface. Xavier was practiced; Dash was talented. They were faster than any human had any right to be. In five minutes, they traversed over two hundred feet.

The climb was perilous; there were no footholds, no ropes—just the unforgiving stone and iron, their fingers scraping against rough edges.

"Remember, not too much mana or Qi," Xavier said. "The Great Wall is a mass of anti-magic. You try and use too much mana and it will react."

Thereby killing both of them.

This was not an ordinary climb. This was not something anybody could cheat through via magic. The wall rejected weakness. It allowed only willpower.

The higher they went, the more unnatural the structure became. The stone pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.

Xavier spoke only once. "Do not stop. We are almost there."

Dasha didn’t intend to.

Down below five hundred feet, Cottus’ body twitched slightly, a small movement, but one that sent a wave of tension through both climbers. If he awoke now, it would be over.

In twenty minutes, they reached two-thirds of the way there, their arms aching, their lungs burning. The air here...

’The atmospheric pressure...it’s severely worse than Mount Everest.’

The air, the anti-magic...

The Great Wall was truly intended not for the strong but for the most will-powered. Dasha was impressed that Xavier managed to go back and forth. Below them, everything was darkness. Only small flickers of light existed.

Xavier did it first. He found the final handhold that would take them over the wall’s edge. Dasha followed, pulling himself up with a final exertion of strength.

"Haah..."

The air was worse here.

Here, at the apex of the Great Wall.