—
The Black River Canyon was four hours east of Iron Mountain Sect.
They traveled in relative quiet. The forest was dense and old here — massive trees with roots like buried walls, mossy stone formations, the smell of cold water and wet rock. Wen Dao ran his Pale Flame circulation continuously while they moved. It had become a background function, like breathing. The qi reading-sense extended passively in all directions.
He felt the canyon before he saw it.
The qi density changed at the ridge line — thicker below, heavier, layered with something ancient. Not hostile. Just substantial. Like walking into a room that had been sealed for decades and finally opened.
They reached the ridge and looked down.
The Black River cut through a canyon two hundred feet deep and perhaps a mile long. The water was dark — not stained, but deep enough that the bottom wasn't visible. The canyon walls were sheer black stone. Waterfalls fed the river from above at three points, creating a constant low roar.
And at the canyon floor: stones. Flat, blue-black, slightly luminescent even in daylight. Black River Stones. Dozens of them, visible from the ridge.
"Easy enough to get down to," Cai Rong said, looking at the wall descent.
"What else do you see?" Wen Dao asked.
Cai Rong looked longer. "The water. It's moving wrong in the center section. The current is upstream for fifty meters."
"Yes."
Zhou Jin, who had met them at the ridge without announcing himself from wherever he'd been, crouched and studied the far wall. "Three cave openings. The largest one is above the waterline by about twenty feet. Something has worn a path to it along the ledge there."
"A repeated path," Wen Dao said. "The same creature making the same journey many times."
"Tier Two, minimum," Zhou Jin said. "Tier Two and above create habitual paths."
Wen Dao looked at the upstream current in the center section.
"There is something in the water," he said. "The current reversal is active displacement — something large moving upstream beneath the surface."
"So the canyon has a territorial beast in the water and a territorial beast in the cave," Cai Rong said cheerfully. "And we need stones from the canyon floor."
"Yes."
"Marvelous."
"The cave beast comes out at dusk," Wen Dao said. "The body's memory carries a description from a sect record I read — Slate Claw Bear. Territorial, not aggressive unless threatened. It hunts at dusk and returns by midnight. The window between midnight and dawn is safe."
"It's second hour now," Zhou Jin said.
"We wait until midnight."
They moved back from the ridge and found shelter in a rock formation twenty feet below the lip. They ate dried provisions. Cai Rong napped with the reliability of someone who had mastered it as a technique. Zhou Jin was utterly still with his eyes half open.
Wen Dao meditated. Pale Flame circulation. Building heat, building density.
At one hour past midnight, they moved.
Down the canyon wall in the dark. Slow. Deliberate. The stone was cold and the holds were reliable — erosion had created useful textures.
They hit the canyon floor. The roar of the waterfalls was louder down here. The Black River Stones were scattered across the flat rock sections. He began selecting specimens — the densest blue-black examples, the ones with strongest qi charge.
He was reaching for the third stone when the water erupted.
Not something breaking the surface. The surface itself rose. Like a section of the river simply stood up.
The shape resolved in the darkness: serpentine, long, pale-scaled, with a flat triangular head the size of a cart wheel. Its eyes were white. Completely white.
Not the cave beast.
The water beast.
It was not Tier Two.
Wen Dao grabbed his two collected stones and ran.