The group quickly made what few defensive moves they could. Tian’s first instinct was to pull out some barricades he had in a ring, but quickly decided against it. The Monkeys would be attacking from the trees, either coming straight down on top of them, or attacking from a high angle. Nothing he could cobble together would give them an edge there.
The Wang Clan prepared differently. Brother Wang quickly hung a talisman around his neck, while Sister Su slipped a carved bit of glass in a gold hoop over one eye. She also, Tian was relieved to see, pulled out her little flag and bundle of darts. The monkeys were about to find out that numbers were not on their side.
As for Sister Lin, she had her bow out, a beautiful construction of heavy wood and horn, and a generously stocked quiver of arrows hanging at her waist. She daintily cleared her throat, and proceeded to screech, howl and yap in a way that would have had Tian delivering a therapeutic kick to the head in almost any other circumstances.
The monkeys, now visible in the trees, made no reply.
“It was worth a shot.” Lin shrugged and knocked an arrow. “Though they are too quiet to be proper macaques. Expect odd behavior.”
“Like the fact that they are on fire?” Tian had his rope dart out, the head lazily spinning by his side.
Lin drew her bow back, and loosed a long arrow. One of the monkeys was impaled and pinned against a tree- falling off the tree almost immediately. It seems the arrow didn’t manage to penetrate.
“Oh nonsense! I can put an arrow through granite-” The monkey exploded in a puff of fire. “Like I said. Unnatural.”
“Deploying swarm countermeasures.” Sister Su said, cool as a knife in autumn. She swung her little flag out like a swordsman making a point, and instead of her usual upward launch of her darts, she flung them side-arm at the monkeys.
“Is that flag a little different? I think it is.”
The bundle accelerated, separated, then separated again. Clouds of rock dust popped up, as the uncontrolled darts smashed into trees and shattered. Enough of them hit monkeys. Then the next wave of darts came. Then the next. Sister Su had never forgotten the battle at Depot Four. She had killed more than her fair share of demons, killed so many that people thought a Heavenly Person had made a move. But there was always room to optimize.
It was good that she had. “That’s a lot more than two hundred monkeys!” Brother Wang yelled, and he was right. Worse, the monkeys were using their brains and starting to move from cover to cover in the trees. There was an eerie silence to them. Lin and Su kept up the stream of attacks, but while it thinned their numbers, the wave of monkeys pressed in.
“Are they glaring at me? I feel like they are staring at me. Fixated on me.”
Liren dropped back a little, positioning herself close enough to help, but still out of the likely radius of a swinging dart. They had trained and fought together for half their lives, and her eyes had always been sharp. The others picked up on it when the monkeys started clumping, converging on Tian. The good news is that it made Su’s darts more effective. That was the only good news.
They swarmed in, in their hundreds, flaming fur, long claws, eyes narrowed in fury. Twenty yards out, they started screaming. It was the only way he could describe it, primal screams of absolute hatred and fury. All aimed at him. Anger so pure and ancient it shuddered the soul. He didn’t wait for them to get any closer. He reached like a vine, and twisted.
The heavy steel head rushed out and plucked a monkey from the air. The heavy steel head bit into the small chest with enough force to punch completely through it, then returned to his hand all in the space of a single breath. The monkey burst into a small fireball in the air. The other monkeys didn’t seem to notice or care. They kept right on coming.
Liren’s spear was lively as a dragon, relying on skill and control more than explosive speed and strength. Instead of skewering individual monkeys, she tried to slap them away, knocking them into heaps for Su to exterminate.
Brother Wang was doing something similar. His shield was nearly as big as he was. Monkeys that hit the iron slab bounced off again, usually quite some distance. He, too, tried to deflect the monkeys into a heap for disposal.
“Form up around Brother Tian. I don’t know why they are targeting him, but it makes them easier for the rest of us to kill!” Wang yelled.
An old memory intruded, from before Tian had joined the Monastery. Baboons had furiously pursued him through the jungle. In part because he had killed one of their troop, but also…
“I smell good to them. I smell… really good to them.” Tian felt like crying.
“I don’t think the unnatural magic monkeys are interested in lotuses, Brother Tian.” Lin snarled as she put another arrow to her string.
“Well what the hell else could it be?” Tian kept his rope dart moving, dipping around tree trunks to pick off the monkeys protected from Sister Su’s barrage. “Could it be because I killed one coming in here?”
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Everyone was focused on the monkeys for a few more seconds. Then Liren spoke. “It’s the pinecone. They didn’t attack until you got the pinecone and brought it here. Two gates, one water, one fire. Two types of energy in the pinecone, fire and water. It will have seeds.”
Tian’s brain raced ahead. The bowls coming out of the gate were too far apart to be manipulated at the same time by one person. He had a feeling that the timing would matter.
“Liren, Wang, Su, cover me.”
“On it!”
Tian pulled out the pinecone, doing his best to rip it open. It was stone, naturally, and tough. There was probably a trick to it. Tian couldn’t be bothered to figure it out. He opted, instead, for violence. Slim white fingers burrowed into the stone and started tearing. Shimmering seeds of blue and red emerged, carrying a faint woody fragrance and a twist of spiritual qi that promised they would be the very best body cultivation supplements. Just holding them, you knew they were an absolute treasure in the Earthly Realm. Just one of each would be enough. Just one of each, and you could elevate an ordinary physique into something special. Heavens alone knew what it would do for a physique like Tian’s.
“Once again, the tension between the petty scumbags and the broadminded.”
“Sister Lin, with me. You will put the seeds in the water basin, I’ll put ‘em in the fire basin. Don’t be tempted!”
Tian rushed to the gate, Lin dropping back with him. Tian poured the water seeds into her hand, and held on to the fire seeds. She looked like she had questions, but bit them back. Then did a double take and stared down at the seeds in her hand. You could see the desire flash across her like a prairie fire. Her face set into something hard.
“At the same time! It’s a teamwork test!” Lin yelled as she moved. Tian grunted in agreement and raced for the basin holding the flame. The monkeys were screaming even louder now, frantic, raging. Diving through the barrage and scrambling to get past Brother Wang. Liren was barely keeping them back with big swings of her spear, knocking a half dozen or more together with a single blow and funneling them into clumps for Sister Su to clear.
Their fixation on Tian was their undoing. If they were a little more flexible, they would attack from more directions. As it was, they followed the shortest route they could manage. A straight-ish line. Su had no problem dealing with a lot of enemies obediently coming straight at her.
“On Three! One! Two! Three!” Lin yelled, and matched actions to words. Tian followed her play, dumping the precious seeds into the fire. They puffed into brilliant life, then, ash. And with the ash, the fire extinguished.
The gate opened, silent on its ancient hinges. The monkeys looked confused and suddenly hesitant, but Tian didn’t intend to wait around for them. “Through the gate, go, go!”
They piled through, Wang coming up behind, his shield making a wall behind the group. The monkeys didn’t pursue very hard. It seemed like they knew about the barrier. Tian swore he saw some of them looking puzzled, like they couldn’t imagine why they were there in the first place.
“I refuse to believe that was the intended difficulty for this challenge. No way. We have excellent skills and equipment, we are at level nine… or near enough… and we have had our shares of fortuitous encounters. Some newbie cultivator was supposed to get through that? Not unless they had already been raised by a cultivator clan.”
Brother Wang collapsed in a sprawl, entirely uncaring about the dignity of the Wang Clan Patriarch. Though, Tian wondered if it wasn’t really a matriarchy. Brother Wang was thoroughly outnumbered, and Sister Mei had the highest cultivation level. Tian collapsed with far more dignity on a rock.
“Maybe there was supposed to be a limit on the number of monkeys. What would have happened if you had eaten those seeds? Or refined them?” Liren asked.
“We would have died.” Sister Su gave Liren a bewildered look.
“What I want to know is how you knew to put fire with fire and water with water. What if the key had been to extinguish the flames? Or to burn away the water?” Lin asked.
“Snobs.”
There was silence at that. Tian waved a tired hand and elaborated. “We are guessing that the people who designed this challenge were scumbags. But they weren’t. If you could make all this, you are a genius, and probably a bunch of geniuses. Of course, they have to plan for the scumbags, because rock throwers are universal.”
“Rock throwers?” Sister Su asked.
“Not important right now. Basically, they are screening for character, and they are screening for some understanding of the… I don’t know, the basic rules of the universe. Particularly five element theory. Remember the Saintess?”
“I never had the pleasure of meeting her.” Lin’s voice was icy. Tian winced, but quickly pressed on.
“Water restrains fire, but fire restrains wood. Earth restrains water. But people don’t think that way normally, and they definitely don’t if they are distracted and under heavy pressure.” Tian continued.
“I did find the giant horde of screaming monkeys that were also on fire pretty damned distracting.” Brother Wang admitted.
“So the test is this- are you disciplined enough to not eat the treasure immediately? Is one person strong enough to hang on to all the seeds, or do they get divided up, increasing the chance that they are lost or eaten? When put under pressure, can you remain composed? Can you remember your education? Can you figure out your elder’s intentions? And does that one strong person have enough trust in the rest of the party, and have the trust of the rest of the party, enough to open the gates? If the answer is yes to all that, then congratulations, you are the kind of people the Palace wants. If not…”
“They won’t be picking up your bones.” Brother Wang pulled a handkerchief out of his ring and wiped down the back of his neck. “Lovely. I see what you mean about snobs. That is an… excessively high standard to meet, given that they are screening potential servants.”
Liren nodded, then shrugged. “They were a transcendent power covering several countries. I feel like having too many applicants was more of a problem than too few.”
Lin looked thoughtfully at Tian for a long moment, then started to laugh. It was the most cheerful noise Tian could remember her ever making. “Oh heavens! It makes perfect sense why you figured out the first two tests before everyone else- it’s you! The perfect candidate to join the Eight Directions Palace’s Servants Division is none other than that rising dragon, Tian Zihao!”