The scent of earth pervaded the little armed waiting room we were in. It smelled like we were dead in the middle of a forest, the sound of earth recently disturbed by rain flooding the room. Even wind could be heard whipping against the blastdoor. We were surrounded by concrete walls under dimly flickering light. It created a strange juxtaposition. Kim was still attempting to sense the Qi in the air, and was having no luck at all.

This amount of struggle was normal, even with guidance.

“Any luck here?” I asked. We had been sitting the waiting room for an hour, though we had access to this gate for a day. It was dirt cheat, as it turned out. But not very valuable.

“Are you sure its denser here?” Kim asked.

“Even just being near this— these buildings full of portals increase the density a lot.” The Qi here was thicker— it was thinner than the martial world, but thicker than the rest of the city. “Still, going inside would be better. There are some exercises we could do to try to enhance your senses.”

“Will these ones hurt?”

“Not a lot.”

Kim stood, stretched, and pressed a button on the wall. The hydraulic door behind us shut, putting a layer of steel between us and the city. The one in front of us opened with the sound of debris and plants hitting the ground inside. For a second, it seemed like the gate wasn’t level with the ground. Plantmatter grew a foot above the exit, piles of entangled vines.

As far as I could see beyond the gate was an expanse of verdant green, suffocating in tangling green leafy vines. Birds hovered in the distance over the shapes of trees, but the trees themselves were smothered under twisted layers of green vines that seemed to suffocate everything in the world. The dirt couldn’t be seen beneath it.

Kim pulled her spear free from the wrapping it was stored in at her side, twirling it in her hand.

“Fuck it. I’ll try inside.” Kim said, side eyeing me. Her look stung of suspicion, as if she was doubting everything I was saying about cultivation was real. I shrugged. I couldn’t blame her. The first attempt at the path mostly reaching around blind in the dark. Once you can see Qi the path forward becomes clear. “Make sure not to get any stuck on your clothes. Grows everywhere. Like magic Kudzu. Carnivorous, too.”

“The plants attack?” I raised my eyebrows at that, stepping more carefully. The entire ground was covered in crawling, writhing green, like a million leafy snakes curled around eachother. I didn’t see thorns, though now that I looked I could see it was moving. It was perceptible and only just; the plants crawled inches.

“The vines don’t attack, they’re more like carrion feeders. Just be careful of any lumps you see under them. The local fauna is full of ambush predators that lurk in the growing vines.”

I nodded at that. That sounded more like what I had read about the gate, though nothing mentioned the crawling expanse of green. In the distance, a rising mountain even showed a green color. The plants suffocated the entire world.

“Lets move somewhere high up. I can cover you while you meditate.” I said, walking towards the rising face of a hill. Kim followed me wordlessly.

I had to step carefully to avoid my feet being entangled in the crawling vines, at times taking to all fours for especially steep parts of the climb. It was strange to have the plants constantly moving under me, like trying to walk through especially powdery snow. At times, plants moving deeper down would cause the entire area to shift, like a landslide of vines. It took what should have been a 10 minute trek to 30 minutes, but we eventually made it to the top.

Kim took her backpack off, setting it to her side and sitting on the ground. She pressed her spear into my hand closed her eyes, and assumed the lotus position.

I leaned on the spear and waited. I wouldn’t close my eyes and meditate myself while guarding Kim, and she had turned down me using healing potions to create more Qi in the air to sense. Instead I scanned the horizon. Distantly I could see a forest, or maybe as close to it as this world got.

Twisting shapes towered in rows like trees, branches sticking up through layers of vines that hung and intermingled through the plants like a curtain. The small inching movements of the top layer translated to a huge amount of movement in the forest below, light from the star hanging in the sky above blinking in and out of the bottom of the forest. I squinted at it, wondering what kind of monster would live in there. And how much Qi I would gain for slaughtering it.

I was interrupted from my thoughts by a bleat behind me. I quirked an eyebrow, turning to observe a single, small goat. It probably was only as tall as my knee. Its fur was a dark black, and it had five green horns curling from its head. Four curved out and away in an X, while the fifth pointed up and forward. As I watched, it stared back at me with red eyes full of burning intensity. It finished chewing, raising its head to bleat again.

Then it reached down, snapping another leaf off the crawling plants below and chewing it. Its four limbs spread out, ending in small, hooked hooves that gracefully clung to the vines.

“Shoo.” I said to the goat, leaning on the spear.

A second bleat answered me from behind, and I turned to look at it. Kim still had a look of focused concentration on her face. There was a second goat, staring at me while it chewed.

I felt something slam into me from behind, and I stumbled forward, trying not to trip over the vines.