Yun Jieshi remembered that Honghuo had wanted to pay him for defeating the Imp King and retrieving whatever the fiend had stolen from him by showing him this – an interesting sight.
And interesting it was, to be sure, but as Hua Dongmei had argued, Yun Jieshi could have reached this place on his own. Heck, Yun Jieshi had already seen it from the distance.
The great trench, or as Honghuo had called it, the Great Gap, was like a mass of darkness cutting across the hard ground and the piled snow. It spread before Yun Jieshi to the far distance kilometers away. He could hardly see the walls of the Gap on the other side. The darkness masked most of it, along with that strange fog that restricted his vision past a point.
Yun Jieshi could still tell where the Gap ended, however, just barely making out what was beyond.
Whispers echoed from the darkness several meters from him right then.
'What is that?'
Someone was speaking. The voice seemed to come from the deep within the Great Gap, but it was faint. Yun Jieshi was almost convinced it was a trick of the wind until he heard again, a little louder. If the echo sounded like a whisper to his keen ears though, he imagined Hua Dongmei and Honghuo couldn't hear anything at all.
Taking careful steps closer, Yun Jieshi peeked down the Great Gap. Unlike the depth where he extracted the Shuang Fingers, this one gave no hints of him ever escaping if he were to fall in – with or without a strategy. He almost jumped back.
The darkness was threatening. It drew in his eyes, hoping that he would jump into its embrace. It made delectable promises, but Yun Jieshi was not stupid.
He coughed.
"What caused this?" he asked, trying to look like a simple inquisitive soul completely unbothered by the depth.
"I don't know," said Honghuo.
"I was asking Hua Dongmei," said Yun Jieshi. While the fiery ball gasped in realization, the fairy next to it scoffed importantly and flew over to Yun Jieshi's side. Her thick brows rose and she put a finger on her chin.
"I'm not sure," she said. "Some of the older fairies – our elders – have mentioned it in passing, but they have differing stories. One said Wei Fang went berserk one day and slashed the ground with one of his prongs. Apparently, it was hot for seven days straight after that."
Yun Jieshi wished he could have called this story absurd, but he had no right. For all he knew, it might have been true.
"What did the others say?" he asked just to hear another queer theory that could possibly be true. If he ever escaped this bizarre world, he would have no shortage of stories to tell.
"Old Lan said that the world once tried to devour the Imp King, but he was too quick. She says there are many of these gaps all around the world – on the ground, in the sky, in the seas – and that the Imp King changes his shape to avoid them. He has evaded death by the world's effort so many times."
"…I see," Yun Jieshi said with a deadpan face.
'He can change his shape?'
The little monkey could imagine the Imp King writing himself some epic songs if this were true. But a suspicious thought nagged him right then. "Does this… Gap, pre-date all the fairies and everything here? These things your elders told you sound like second-hand information."
Hua Dongmei gave it some thought as she dropped the quiver she had been carrying.
"I don't think so. Some of the elders say they are older than it is, but they can't decide on how the Gap was formed. It probably has to do with the fact that they say our kind didn't live in Reed Lake back then."
"Oh. Where did you live then?"
Hua Dongmei bowed her head in shame.
"The elders can't decide on that either," she said.
Yun Jieshi sighed.
'So, in short, it's all just feihua.'
"What do you think happened? Do you believe either of the two stories, Sage Xingyu?" Hua Dongmei asked him timidly.
"No," Yun Jieshi hurried to say. "The answer will be revealed in time." He collapsed in on himself with cringe. He couldn't find a quicker lie to tell, or at least a decent one-liner to skirt the responsibility of answering Hua Dongmei's questions.
The fairy nodded furiously.
"That's right. I should probably be patient. By the time I have matured, I'm sure I will know why the Gap exists."
Yun Jieshi went back to gazing upon said Gap. For his immediate goals, he had to cross it.
'I don't think I've tested my ruan's limit yet. I could probably cross this if I enlarged it to its limit,' Yun Jieshi thought as he threw a Shuang Finger in his mouth.
He pulled out his ruan from the sack and had it grow to its normal size.
"Would you two follow me across this Gap?" he asked Honghuo and Hua Dongmei.
The fairy whimpered and drew back while the entity of light and heat shrank to the size of a fist.
"I wouldn't dare!" Hua Dongmei cried.
"What?" Yun Jieshi was taken aback by her response. "Why not?"
Hua Dongmei shivered.
"The elders always tell us to never go beyond the Gap. That is the bad side of this place. They say something terrible and evil lives there – something they don't dare describe.," she said in a fearful voice.
Yun Jieshi frowned.
"Something terrible and sinister? Even more than the Imp King?" he asked. "Is this another one of your senior's fake stories?"
"No!" shrieked Hua Dongmei. "Even though their stories about the Gap differ, they agree on what lives on the other side. They say it's a monster that even the Imp King strays away from. I-I couldn't possibly cross."
Yun Jieshi didn't have any words.
Just like that, the reverence Hua Dongmei had for him vanished. She trusted the words of her seniors over his strength which she had seen with her own eyes. Knowing her though, if he asked why she doubted him now, she would probably say something like, 'You couldn't possibly defeat it with your mortal body, Sage Xingyu.'
'There must be some really foul stories about whatever is over there then,' he thought as he squinted, catching a limited glimpse of the land that persisted past the darkness. 'But that's where I must go. And if this monster really exists…'
He turned to the quivering Hua Dongmei… and then to the shrunken Honghuo.
"Even you are scared? You know about this monster?" Yun Jieshi asked.
"No, but I've crossed the Great Gap before. It was so cold there that I nearly froze," the orb of flame said, shuddering. "I still remember that chill. It was terrible."
"You nearly froze?" Yun Jieshi could hardly believe it.
"Yes, Sage Xingyu!"
The little monkey scratched his head.
This concerned him more than the possible existence of a monster stronger than the infamous Imp King.
While he wasn't very tolerant to heat, Yun Jieshi was very resistant to extreme cold. But could he withstand a frozen hellscape that could freeze a miniature sun?
"How long would it take to go around the gap? Some other route I could use," he asked Hua Dongmei.
The fairy looked relieved that Yun Jieshi was considering alternatives.
"It would take about ten days and nights if you didn't stop to rest. There is a point where the Great Gap ceases," she said.
'That's too long. Even if days and nights here are short,' thought Yun Jieshi. 'Should I just cross after all?'
Another echo came from the Gap right then, distracting him. Someone was speaking, whispering perhaps, from somewhere not too far away.
"What is that sound, Hua Dongmei? Do you hear it?" he asked the fairy.
She had calmed down considerably now.
"No, Sage. What do you hear?"
"Like someone speaking. Somewhere closeby. The voice sounds a bit… angry," said the Discount Sage, frowning.
"Oh! In that case, it must be that one!" Hua Dongmei exclaimed exasperatedly.
"That one? Who?" asked Yun Jieshi with a duck face.
"It's this strange man," chimed in Honghuo. He was returning to his usual size. "He is always trying to cross the gap, but he always fails in the end and has to start over again. I've watched him sometimes – when I'm bored. He's always in the same place and he never notices anything around him. If you speak to him he ignores, as if he can't hear."
Yun Jieshi reeled.
"A man?" His eyes went round. "You mean… a human?" he asked, looking between Hua Dongmei and Honghuo.
"Yes, Sage Xingyu," said Hua Dongmei, her small face looking confused. "What's wrong?"
"Where is he?" Yun Jieshi half-screamed, frightening his two companions.
Hua Dongmei hesitantly pointed to her right, and just as she did, Yun Jieshi was off. He even forgot to pick back up his bone bow which he had set down temporarily.
A human? There was a human here?
Yun Jieshi could have heel-clicked.
'I don't know why I didn't consider it before, but of course, a place like this has to have humans. Did I get too engrossed in sifting through all the folktales and fictional works I have read, comparing them to this place?' he thought.
Finally, he would have someone to talk to – someone that could relate to him. Someone who wasn't a ball of fire or a fairy. Perhaps it would be someone he could tell the truth, that he wasn't a Sage, and that he was just a random Zhang (or Joe) reincarnated in this world.
Surely, if a human lived in a place like this, they could easily digest the concept of reincarnation, right?
The little monkey crossed a large distance in a few minutes.
The echoes from the Great Gap continued to grow louder, but he was soon able to see their source.
His eyes locked in on the individual standing, no, floating right by the edge of the Great Gap.
Yun Jieshi beamed… and then he gaped in shock.
Was this the man Hua Dongmei and Honghuo were talking about?