Chương 11: Chapter 10: TO ADVANCE

CHAPTER 10 TO ADVANCE —∞— Jieyuan's soulprism fell apart in a slow, drawn-out explosion, the chroma comprising it dispersing evenly throughout the center of his soul like a blooming cloud of red. As the first particles of chroma began penetrating the soul shell, imbuing it, Jieyuan felt the familiar, prickling, needle-like sensation, starting first in his chest, where his soul was.

It quickly spread until not an inch of him was spared from the invisible, intangible needles, one for each chrom squeezing its way into the soul shell. What followed was a business Jieyuan had long since grown used to, as familiar to him now as the cool touch of coinage. Needle pricks grew stronger, into stings, and stings soon gave way to proper stabs, like countless unseen daggers were hard at work at rendering him into minced meat.

Throughout this painful prelude, Jieyuan waited as he usually did, bracing himself. But where he'd typically brace himself for the next step of the process, now that same next step was also just part of the prelude. With his soulsenses, Jieyuan could feel the unstable chroma imbuing his soul shell, growing ever closer to a full prismful with every chrom that the imbuing ritual forced through. The stabs turned into sears, hot and burning, and Jieyuan gritted his teeth. Endured it.

Endured it as he'd seen Daojue and Meiyao enduring it these last few days, showing no reaction except for a very slight tremble. Endured it to the best of his ability, because if he couldn't even handle this much—if just this level of pain was enough to make him break —then he'd stand no chance when the soul-flare came.

So even as his body burned endlessly, impossibly hot, every part of him sizzling, boiling, and melting all at the same time, Jieyuan managed to remain conscious enough, grounded enough, long past the point he'd have normally given in and let the Pain consume him whole into white agony, to spare enough of his attention to his soulsenses, keeping track of the chroma imbuing his soul shell. When it came, he was prepared. Or at least as prepared as you could be for the Second Pain.

The moment the unstable chroma in his soul shell reached exactly one prismful, to the chrom, Jieyuan felt a shock. Bright and cutting, it shot past the First Pain, past the fiery agony he was in, and completely seized the front and center of his mind, leaving no room for anything else. One shock turned directly into a thousand, and then a thousand turned into a number far beyond the countable, each one a vivid, charged sear, like he'd swallowed a storm's worth of lightning. That lasted a total of three seconds.

On the fourth second, the fire—the burning —returned. Returned with strength that dwarfed anything that Jieyuan had ever felt while imbuing. Pain beyond comprehension, beyond description—pain that stretched the very boundaries of what pain was. His body was now fire. It wasn't burning, but there was nothing to burn. All there was was fire. Only fire.

Only fire, and it burned and it burned and it burned and it burned and it burned— Jieyuan's eyes flew open as he gasped, drawing in entire lungfuls of air with each breath. His head was ringing. The back of it hurt something fierce, though compared to what he'd just experienced— no don't think of that— it was nothing, literally nothing at all.

And he blinked, because even though his eyes were open he wasn't seeing, not really, and he blinked again, and he saw that he was staring up at the canopy of the gleamstone trees, and that he wasn't sitting anymore but instead lying down, and there was something wet on the back of his head, wet and sticky, and…

"Up you get," came a voice, distantly, muffled like it was coming from underwater. Like he was underwater. Arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him up so that he was sitting again, his back against the trunk. A pair of bright green eyes met his, set in a face so lovely it hurt, framed by thick waves of brown hair. Thousands of slightly different hues played on that face, across those eyes, coming from the innumerable faces of glowing crystals all around them. Meiyao. Jieyuan snapped back into awareness.

He still felt dazed, his thoughts swimming, his vision flashing, but at least now he wasn't deliriously lost anymore.

"Feeling better?" Meiyao asked, and Jieyuan couldn't take his eyes off her lips, soft and rosy and full, shaped almost like a heart— And that's enough of that. Jieyuan looked Meiyao straight in the eyes, worked his lips for a moment, searching for something to say, and then settled on, "Yes. Thanks." Meiyao had him tongue-tied more often than not, and he wasn't exactly on top of his game right now.

He'd already have his hands full trying not to come across as the utterly love-struck fool that Meiyao so easily reduced him to. Meiyao didn't look entirely convinced. Her eyes were narrowed as she looked him up and down, studying him. She was kneeling in front of him, close. Very close. Close enough he could feel her breath on his face, light as it was. Something else he shouldn't be paying attention to.

"You threw your head back, at the end," she said.

"It banged on the tree." Her eyes darted to the side, and he followed her gaze to the spot on the ground where he'd been lying just now, and he saw a little patch of blood on the gleamstone floor. Oh. He reached up to the spot in the back of his head that felt sticky and, sure enough, he felt a little jolt of pain—which he barely even noticed—as he touched a gash. A small one, but still a gash.

"Let me take a look," Meiyao said, and before he could consent or deny or otherwise react, she already had both armored hands on his head, twisting it to the side while she leaned over him. And if she was close before, now they were practically glued together, her breath falling directly onto his shrouded nape, her body partially pressed against his. He felt her fingers on his hair, brushing it away. The cool metal was surprisingly soft against his scalp. She held the position. A beat. Two beats. Three…

Jieyuan stayed still, breath caught in his chest, locked in it. If he was holding onto any doubts that Meiyao was a Woodsoul, that was no longer the case. Not after this. Then she let go of his head and pulled herself back. Jieyuan almost whipped himself back—and it was both the fact that'd have meant ramming his head into the tree again and his unwillingness to make any more of a fool of himself that had him readjusting his position in a much calmer, controlled way.

"You should be fine." Meiyao was back in her original position, kneeling in front of him.

"By tomorrow it should be mostly healed. Even more so now that you're a third-step Redsoul. Congratulations, by the way." His throat went awfully dry.

"Thanks," he said again. Her words brought his mind to the breakthrough he'd just experienced, but he felt disconnected from it—like it wasn't him that it'd happened to, like it wasn't him she was talking about. Meiyao narrowed her eyes at him, and given the way the corners of her lips lifted slightly, Jieyuan had a feeling it wasn't out of simple scrutiny this time. Not when she was smirking like that, green eyes bright and clear, playful-like.

But she didn't say anything else, only stood up and began walking away. But then, after a few steps, she glanced back.

"And next time? Maybe sit a little further away from the tree?" He was probably flushing. His face felt warm enough.

"Sure." What he'd have given for a clever comeback right now, or anything else besides that single word he'd managed. Meiyao's eyes lingered on him for a little longer, then she turned back, crossed the few steps that were left until she was at the tree she'd picked out before, and sat back down. It was only then that Jieyuan managed to pry his eyes off her.

He looked over to his other teammate, but Daojue was sitting in the exact same position Jieyuan had remembered him being in before, eyes closed and looking as distinctly unperturbed as he always did, more statue than man. Jieyuan did his best to ignore everything that had just happened. All of it, from the moment he'd snapped out the soul-flare and from the looks of it flopped like a fish on the ground, to Meiyao looking him over, to their last exchange just now. Instead, he focused on his breakthrough.

Breakthrough. He grinned; he couldn't help it. Excitement coursed through him, so strong it let him completely ignore his aching head. He might have fumbled things there towards the end, but that didn't change the fact that he'd broken through. That he was stronger. That he was practically an inner disciple now. And that tomorrow, they'd be finally breaking into the Fourth Ring. But before that … His gaze glanced down at his hands. At the golden ring on his right index fingers.

And then his gaze dipped lower, to the holder pouch hanging by his waist, tied to his belt. He took a deep breath; his heart drummed in his chest. A bright, almost anxious fire filled. He first felt for his strength, confirmed the pressure that he could feel inside his muscles, the augmented strength from his mantle, had increased. And it had. By exactly half. He then shifted his attention to his soul. The first thing he noted was the change in shade.

With his breakthrough he'd stabilized a full prismful of chroma, so now his soul was reflecting the change in its color. It was now a deeper red, and the blackness in it was less apparent, its shade much closer to the shade it was supposed to be now than it'd been before. Even though his soul was still definitely the wrong shade, it was to a much lesser extent. A very much so welcome improvement, that. He then sent his soulsenses deeper inward, to the soul hollow, and saw that his soulprism was whole again.

Whole and smaller. Precisely two-thirds the size it used to be. But the quantity of chroma in it was still just short of two prismfuls. Its maximum size hadn't changed; rather, what had changed was its density, from second-density to third-density, to match the density of the stable chroma imbuing his soul shell. He focused on his soulprism, his chroma reserves. Before, he'd only been able to affect his chroma while chanting the heavenly hymns; he'd had no control over it otherwise.

But now, as his soulsenses brushed his imbued chroma, he felt a solid, tactile, almost physical feeling. Concentrating on this feeling, he reached into his soulprism and pulled a small clump of chroma away from it. Chromal Manipulation. That was the third-step Redtalent. It unlocked the cultivator's soulforce—the ability to influence other things through the soul. His soulforce wasn't fully unlocked, though; currently, he could only affect his chroma with it.

Only after he advanced again and unlocked the fourth-step Redtalent—Spiritual Interaction—would he be able to also use his soulforce on himself and entities he'd bonded. But even limited as his soulforce currently was, there was already plenty he could do with it. Plenty he was about to do with it, in fact. Barely able to contain his excitement, Jieyuan began to shape the clump of chroma he'd gathered inside his soul.

He struggled at first, losing control over his gathered chroma, causing it to disperse, but he persevered. After a few attempts, he managed to stretch a portion of his chroma into line, stretching out of his soul through one of its chroma vents and then down his arm, until it finally made contact with the spirit of the haster ring on his right hand. And just like that, a chroma bond was established: a line of chroma connecting his soul to the artifact.

Opening his eye, his heart racing, Jieyuan stared down at the golden band, entered Heavenly Communion, and with the weight of the Heavens' presence suffusing his mind, he chanted, " Ablaze." Ablaze. His attuning heavenly hymn. Except when paired with a chroma bond, it could also be used to bond artifacts. The moment the word left his lips, Jieyuan felt something shift. A tremor that ran through his being. And then another presence bloomed inside his mind: that of the haster ring he'd just bonded.

His spiritual song imprinted on it, stamping its echo onto its spirit; the haster ring was now a part of him, an extension of his being just like his attuned chroma. Jieyuan didn't hesitate. Concentrating on the ring's presence in his mind, he found what he was looking for: a feeling akin to a phantom muscle, something he could flex, engage, just like with his bondskill. That was the haster ring's sole spiritskill: Facsimile Hastespace Manifestation. Jieyuan flexed it, activating the spiritskill.

Immediately he felt chroma start vanishing from directly within his soulprism, being sacrificed at a steady rate. And the world around him changed. The very first thing that struck him was the sound; the Gleamstone Valley was filled by a slow, never-ending hum as wind brushed the crystalline wildlife. Background sharp chimes also rang constantly. Now those sounds were drawn-out, dull, hollowed. Jieyuan's eyes opened wide as he took in his surroundings.

He looked up, at the previously rustling crystalline branches above; they weren't rustling anymore, but rather lethargically swaying, moving so slowly you had to pay attention to tell it was in motion. He then noticed a crystal leaf hovering in the air. No, not hovering, Jieyuan realized, but rather very slowly drifting downward. Hastespace, encompassing his body and everything he had on him. The power that made tenth-step Redsouls so terrifying. It was finally in his grasp.

Granted, hastespace manifested through the haster ring couldn't compare to that of a tenth-step Redsoul—theirs would hasten space by twenty times, while his only did by six, proportional to his step—but it was still a massive advantage. Jieyuan jumped to his feet and did a few quick tests, moving his body this way and that. Sure enough, even though the world around him was now much slower, his speed remained unchanged in his perspective.

But from an outsider's perspective his movements just now would have been so fast his body would've blurred. He'd been the outsider in that scenario too many times these last few days. Jieyuan's grinned. He finally had it. The power that granted cultivators their fearsome speed. He had gotten faster after he'd broken through to second-step and unlocked the ability to draw on his mantle, but that had only been a consequence of augmenting his strength. Speed and strength were related, but only up to a certain point.

After he'd unlocked the second-step Redtalent he'd gained the ability to multiply his strength by four, but his speed hadn't increased by much more than half. And he'd tried. He'd spent over a week after his breakthrough to second-step doing his best to convert his augmented strength into speed, but it had come down to a matter of reaction time, coordination, and agility; they were required to translate strength into speed, and a cultivator's mantle didn't improve those aspects.

No further increases to his strength would make much of a difference, because he'd already reached the limits of his natural agility. Hastespace was different. It affected the space itself around a cultivator. There was no ceiling to it, no biological or mechanical limit to how much faster you could become. Jieyuan grabbed a slowly falling leaf out of the air and brought it up to his face. He could move it without issue. Sure enough, whenever he grabbed something, it got pulled into his hastespace.

He'd already guessed as much, given that his robes weren't inhibiting his movements in the least, but it was good to have confirmation. He drew his spear and tried out a few moves with it; no problems with air resistance, either. There was one obvious downside to how hastespace worked, a matter of physics simple enough that Jieyuan didn't need Maeva to point it out.

A target he struck was pulled into his hastespace at the moment of impact, so the force behind his attacks was governed by his mundane speed, not his hastened one. His augmented speed gave him no devastating power. But he was fine with the trade-off. If his attacks had carried extra force, he'd have also needed even greater durability to withstand the backlash. Satisfied with his experiments, Jieyuan glanced at his teammates; Daojue still had his eyes closed, meditating under his tree, completely unperturbed.

As Jieyuan sent his gaze over to Meiyao, though, his eyes locked with emerald ones. He blinked. Meiyao was looking at him from where she sat, eyes bright, an amused smile on her lips. She must've been looking at him while he was moving about, playing around with his new power like a giddy child who'd just gotten a new toy. Jieyuan froze, struck by a bout of self-consciousness. That only made Meiyao's smile widen, laughter in her gaze. No malice in it, just humor.

Then she shook her head softly before closing her eyes. Her smile lingered, though. Jieyuan cleared his throat, still feeling a little awkward; focusing on the haster ring's presence again, he let go of Facsimile Hastespace Manifestation. Chroma stopped vanishing from his soul. The space around him shifted again, and then everything was back to normal, the ambient sounds and the moments of the forest regaining their speed. Still standing, Jieyuan checked on his soulprism.

The moment he saw it with his soulsenses, he winced. It was visibly smaller than before, even though he hadn't kept Facsimile Hastespace Manifestation running for more than a handful of minutes in his perspective. I heard it was expensive to use, Jieyuan thought, stunned, but I didn't realize it would be this bad. Supposedly true hastespace manifestation, used by a tenth-order Redsoul through their Redtalent, was cheaper to use by more than half, but remained one of the most chroma-intensive powers out there.

The cost of hastespace manifestation also increased proportionally to the haste factor, making it, in turn, proportional to one's chroma reserves. Meaning hastespace manifestation would never be cheap, regardless of what realm and step you reached. Considering how much time it took to recover chroma, Jieyuan realized it was a good thing he'd stopped using hastespace just now. He'd need about an hour of harvesting and attuning to make up for the amount of chroma he'd just spent.

Jieyuan's fire wasn't dampened, though. Expensive or not, what mattered was that he could use hastespace now. Moreover, the haster ring wasn't the only artifact he could bond right now. Jieyuan sat back down in front of his tree. Crossing his legs, he reached for his holder pouch; he unhooked it from his belt and dumped it on his lap. Then he reached into his soul again, formed another line of chroma, and connected it to the pouch." Ablaze," he chanted. Another presence appeared in his mind, just like the ring's.

The holder pouch was now his second bonded artifact. As he focused on its presence, he found that just like the haster ring it also had a spiritskill. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Activating it, Jieyuan suddenly felt the presence of the holder pouch expand in his mind; a new awareness appeared inside his consciousness. His soulsenses immediately stretched to extend inside the holder pouch; everything inside it was now perfectly clear to him.

And that wasn't all. A golden wood ring in his pouch caught his attention, and Jieyuan willed it up to the mouth of the pouch. The internal space of the pouch twisted in response to his wishes, pushing the ring up. He reached down, drew open the pouch, and saw that the inner walls of the pouch were raised, holding the ring he'd wanted at the entrance. The mysterious, higher-realm fatebloom wood ring he'd found among Rongkai's belongings.

Jieyuan smiled, satisfied, but didn't pick the mysterious ring up; rather, he let it return to the bottom of the pouch. Meiyao and Daojue were around, and he would rather not bring it out near others. Using the pouch's bondskill, he moved all the other things he wanted to the top and removed them from the pouch one by one, setting them down on the crystal ground in front of him. Once he was done, Jieyuan ran his eye over the assortment of items. Two rings, both silver.

A pair of cultivator's gauntlets, another of cultivator's greaves. Two jadebooks. Besides them, there was also his steel spear, lying on the ground beside him. Those were all the artifacts that concerned him right now. Almost all of which he'd gotten from Rongkai, the inner disciple Daojue had killed back in the Fatebloom Woods. Jieyuan started with his third-step Redrealm spear; picking it up, he chroma-bonded his soul to it before chanting his attuning hymn. Its presence also appeared in his mind.

But its presence was different from that of the pouch; it was dull, blank. No spiritskill to be found in it. All it had were the most basic, durability-augmenting inscripts. But that didn't mean there was no advantage to bonding it. Once he reached fourth-step Redrealm, he'd be able to use his soulforce on it, move it just like he could move his chroma. There was also something else he could do with it right now. He focused deeper into its presence.

He wasn't entirely sure how to proceed, but he'd talked with Meiyao about what he wanted to do. And as his impression of the spear's presence deepened, he found that its imprint in his mind gained a new depth to it. An ephemeral, indistinct feeling. There. The Law. Jieyuan then gleaned a feeling from that impression: defensive. That was the default expression of all material Laws. It protected the being against lower-realm Laws, making it invulnerable, and annulled the Law of same-realm beings.

But material Laws had another state, a different way they could be expressed. Jieyuan had never done this with another Law before, but he'd done it with his own. He changed the spear's Law to offense. Nothing changed, outwardly. But there was one easy way to test. Jieyuan ripped of a small piece from his robes (it was ruined anyway), oriented the spear on his lap so the blade was facing upward, and let the mundane piece of cloth drift down.

The moment it touched the blade of the spear it was cleanly, perfectly split through, the two halves of the torn cloth falling to the gleamstone ground. It works, then. Granted, controlling the spear's Law wasn't that useful, not unless he was planning on mowing down mundanes. Offensive expression only made a difference on lower-realm entities. Still, it could be useful in the future. The spear would be able to ignore the defenses of any mundane material, even diamond.

Jieyuan set the spear to the side and picked up one of the silver rings. His soulsenses informed him what type of an artifact it was: an all-cleanser. Jieyuan bonded the cleanser ring without preamble, then used its spiritskill. An unseen pulse of power issued out from the ring, and all the dirt and blood on his body and robes—anything he'd consider unclean—vanished, leaving him good as new. It left him with a refreshing, wakeful sensation.

He also felt a lightness inside; all the waste in his body had also been vanished. Basking in the sensation, Jieyuan leaned back against the crystal trunk of the tree beside him, thoroughly pleased. I had forgotten how good it feels to be clean. He slipped the cleanser ring on; with it he didn't need to worry about getting dirty anymore. He also had no more use for cleansing pills. Jieyuan shifted his attention to the second ring. He picked it up. With his soulsenses, he saw a fifth-shade red spirit.

Rongkai's mind-linker. He bonded it, then activated its spiritskill. Something appeared in Jieyuan's mind's eye. A blank list. How he could tell it was supposed to be a list given there was nothing in it he had no idea. He simply knew it was supposed to be a list. This should be the cipher roster, Jieyuan realized.

After a cultivator bonded a mind-link artifact it would manifest a cipher—a chromal imprint specific to a pair of mind-linker artifact and bond-master—and ciphers could be recorded in a mind-linker's cipher roster. He wasn't quite clear on the details, but he knew the basics of how it worked. To communicate with another cultivator, you had to have their cipher recorded in your artifact's roster, then tap into it to start a mind-link. Jieyuan felt a pang of disappointment. So it's empty after all.

Before, when he'd first inspected the mind-linker, the day after their mission in the Fatebloom Woods, he'd wondered if he'd find anything incriminating on it. Qingshi's cipher, hopefully. He'd known the odds were low, but he'd hoped it'd be the case. Especially after Yunzhu's conversation with Meiyao before the Hunt, in Ruby Square. She'd mentioned how Meiyao's stepmother, Protector Yuyan, had given Meiyao a ring with Protector Yuyan's cipher already recorded in it.

That had confirmed that a mind-linker's roster wasn't erased even when it changed owners. Well, pity that. Jieyuan donned the ring, then glanced at his teammates. Both were still sitting under their trees, mostly motionless. He'd ask tomorrow if they had mind-linkers. If something happened (something Qingshi-related, maybe), it'd be good to have the option to mind-link his teammates.

Meiyao had already confirmed she hadn't been lying to Yunzhu back in Ruby Square: she really hadn't brought the mind-linker her stepmother had given her. She had told him about it on their second day in the valley, after he'd brought to her his concerns about their supposed hidden watcher and she admitted she had no way of ascertaining the circumstances. It was possible she'd brought a different mind-linker with her, though. He wouldn't be surprised if she had. Daojue probably had one, too.

Nodding to himself, Jieyuan then picked up one of the cultivator's gauntlets. He looked over the thin, smooth, scale-plated armor piece, admiring it. Then he slid it on his right arm. It was easy to put on, loose and flexible. But after he bonded it and activated its spiritskill, the scale-plating rippled before abruptly compressing. It melded itself perfectly to his arm and hands, from the tip of his fingers all the way to his elbow. It clung to his body like a second skin.

He wiggled his fingers and found it didn't impair motion in the slightest. Jieyuan's clenched his armored hand into a fist, smiling widely. Now this was cultivator's armor. He quickly put on the other gauntlet, before standing up and putting on the greaves, which he wore over his boots and trousers. Like the gauntlets, they stuck perfectly to his body, covering his foot all the way to his knees. Gauntlets and greaves were a cultivator's traditional armor set, the only pieces of armor cultivators normally wore.

If something chromal covered any more of the body—particularly the chest area—it started interfering with their soulsenses. That was also why cultivators wore mundane robes. Thankfully, the mantle also spread to encompass whatever clothing you wore, making it as durable as your body (it mistook the fabric for skin, supposedly, something that didn't happen with other materials). Jieyuan took a moment to inspect himself, clad in his cultivator's gauntlets and greaves, feeling awfully pleased with himself.

It was silly, but he felt like a cultivator now more than ever. He probably wouldn't be taking them off until the end of the Gleamstone Hunt. It cost chroma to keep the gauntlets and greaves molded to the body, but it was a negligible amount; Jieyuan checked on his soulprism just to be sure, and after a few seconds confirmed that even if he wore them all day it would only consume a minuscule fraction of his reserves. It was the opposite of a haster ring.

Sitting back down, Jieyuan finally turned his attention to the remaining two objects on the ground: two small, smooth green cubes. The two jadebooks he'd found in Rongkai's holder pouch. Out of everything, they were what Jieyuan had been looking forward to the most. He might be about to find out just how Rongkai might have gotten his hand on a Violetrealm bondskill like Absolute Will Command, and on the mysterious higher-realm fatebloom wood ring.

He knew the odds of it were low, though—because that wasn't the sort of information you committed to jadebooks if you were smart. Matters of that level were best kept strictly in your head. Still, Jieyuan couldn't fully curb his expectations. He took hold of one of them, closed his eyes, and chroma-bonded his soul to it.

The instant the line of chroma connected to his soul touched the little jade cube, words appeared in his mind's eye, much firmer and clearer than thoughts, as if a book had just opened inside his head. There we go. Let's see… Quickly skimming the text, Jieyuan found it was the formula for refining Rongkai's special Cultivator Agony's Beacon pills. Jieyuan frowned. Rongkai's beacon pills had left an impression on him.

Rongkai had almost managed to take both him and Daojue using it, and Jieyuan had later used one to overwhelm that first onyxgleam wolf he'd faced. Problem was, Jieyuan didn't know the first thing about refining pills (he'd been too busy trying to catch up to Meiyao and Daojue to have the time to dedicate to the chromal crafts), so he didn't have much use for it. He put the jadebook away and moved to the second one.

Moments after he began reading, his eyes widened—but then he caught himself, remembering Meiyao and Daojue were nearby, and forcibly regained his composure. Inwardly, though, his shock kept rising the more he read. After he was done, Jieyuan went over the second jadebook one more time, just to be sure, before cutting off the chroma bond. Then, closing his eyes, Jieyuan slumped back against the tree and thought about what he'd read. He had been right.

The jadebook did turn out to be a lead into Absolute Will Command and the fatebloom wood. And one thing Jieyuan had quickly found out was why the jadebook even existed in the first place. Rongkai had been losing his memory. Supposedly it was a condition that had plagued his family for generations. The contents of the jadebook covered almost all of Rongkai's life. These last few months his conditions had gotten worse, so he'd taken to writing an entry every day.

It was to the point he'd carved onto his wrists the symbols of fate and jade as a way to remind himself to check his jadebooks every day. An image flashed past Jieyuan's mind's eye; he'd seen those carvings on Rongkai's pale corpse. At the time they'd mystified him. Rongkai had even included in the jadebook his dealings with Qingshi. It turned out Daojue had been right: Qingshi was the one behind his assassination attempt.

Qingshi had approached Rongkai about it; this wasn't the first time Rongkai had taken a hit on someone else. This was the confirmation Jieyuan had been looking for, proof that Qingshi really posed a threat to them—but this piece of information utterly paled in comparison to everything else Jieyuan had read, so much so he barely spared it any thought. It took Jieyuan a great deal of effort to keep his face neutral as he thought about all he'd read. Rongkai's full name was Yikongwei Rongkai. Yikongwei.

That wasn't the name of any of the Gleaming Stone Sect's adjunct clans, so up to this point Jieyuan had never really paid any attention to it. He'd assumed that Rongkai was a mundane-born like himself, that the Yikongwei were a mundane family. What he'd just read put a different spin on things. The Yikongwei, according to the jadebook, had originally been a secretive chromal clan about two hundred years ago.

They also had something to do with somewhere called the Heartland: where the trees were gold, with emerald roots and blood-red flowers. A place known to Jieyuan and the rest of the world as the Fatebloom Woods. The jadebook claimed that the Yikongwei were behind the appearance of the Fatebloom Woods, though it wasn't clear how they'd pulled that off.

The jadebook also claimed that the clan's founder had left his inheritance behind for his descendants in a place called the Heartseat, located in the center of the Fatebloom Woods, and that was what Jieyuan was really interested in. Absolute Will Command's skillseed was supposedly also a legacy left behind by the Yikongwei founder.

There were a couple of annotations in the jadebook that revealed that Rongkai was all that remained of the Yikongwei Clan in the present day, and that he'd been unable to reach the Heartseat because of the fatebloom elk, which were guarding it. There were also notes on the Cultivator's Agony Beacon pills, which Rongkai had developed to deal with the fatebloom elk. The mysterious wooden ring was also mentioned a few times.

Supposedly, the founder of the Yikongwei Clan had set up a distracter inscribed field around the area that would affect anyone who wasn't wearing the ring, turning them away. Jieyuan took a moment to process that. He'd looked into the Fatebloom Woods when he was assigned the mission of picking fatebloom blossoms, and the records said that it'd mysteriously and spontaneously appeared about two centuries ago and quickly expanded to its current size before stabilizing.

All the sects of the Radiant Gold Province had sent people over to investigate, but they'd all come up empty. As the sect nearest to the Fatebloom Woods, the Gleaming Stone Sect had then laid claim to it, leaving it in control of two of the district's three chromal zones. A distracter field could explain why nobody had been able to find anything. It scrambled your mind so thoroughly you didn't notice its influence, even after you were no longer under its hold.

The local sects would've definitely sent tenth-step Redsouls to take a look at the Fatebloom Woods, so the distracter field must've been at least Orangerealm to work on them. At least Orangerealm … Jieyuan's thoughts stalled. To have set up the inscribed field around the Heartseat and created the Yikongwei Ring, the Yikongwei Founder must've been at least at Orangerealm.

But if Absolute Will Command's had come from him, then what awaited Jieyuan at the center of the forest wasn't the inheritance of a mere Orangesoul, but that of a Violetsoul. Violetsoul. Violetrealm. Jieyuan swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. His heart hammered in his chest. Violetrealm was the last realm, the highest height a cultivator could reach. The ultimate goal. His ultimate goal. He stared down at the jadebook in his hand and at the promise implied in it.

He didn't know what exactly he'd find in the Heartseat, but anything that concerned a Violetsoul had to be significant. This was something much more tangible than the possible promise of power that he suspected would come from pursuing the mysteries of Daojue and his memories of Amyas further. Assuming the Yikongwei Founder was a Violetsoul, of course. But the more Jieyuan thought about it, the surer he grew. He'd have to pay a visit to the Fatebloom Woods, and soon.

Rongkai's notes mentioned that according to the Yikongwei Clan's calculations, the distracter field over the Heartseat shouldn't last much longer. It was why Rongkai had started taking assassination requests; he'd been desperate for resources to prepare for his venture into the Heartseat. Half a year. That was when the distracter field was predicted to fail. The notes acknowledged that estimate wasn't a sure thing, though, so the sooner Jieyuan went there, the better. After the Hunt, Jieyuan decided.

He returned the jadebook to his holder pouch; he'd see about shattering and disposing of it tomorrow in secret. Unlike Rongkai, he had no problems with his memory; he wasn't about to take any risks, not with something this big, this important. He wouldn't be telling Meiyao and Daojue about Rongkai's notes on his deal with Qingshi; they'd have asked to see the jadebook, and he didn't trust them with everything else in it.

It wasn't like it'd have made much of a difference, anyway; they were already working under the assumption Qingshi might be after them (if anything, the two had always been much surer about Qingshi's involvement), and jadebooks wouldn't count as damning evidence in a Justice Hall investigation. Taking a steadying breath, Jieyuan settled his heart. The Gleamstone Hunt. Then a trip to the Fatebloom Woods. And finally, the Radiant Gold Summit. And then he'd be off to a higher-realm sect.

Jieyuan couldn't help the vicious grin that split his lips. Clearly, he had some busy days ahead of him. —∞— Jieyuan leaped out of the way of the massive head that had just crashed down into where he was. He kept retreating in a series of quick, frantic steps as the rest of the vermilion gleam boa's body followed its head in a twisting, shimmering wave of flowing red crystal. The beast lunged after him, letting out a distinctly unsnake-like roar, a rumbling noise like massive stones grinding against each other.

Back in the First Ring, Jieyuan had come across a shifting gleam python. It'd been a timid, harmless thing, despite the way it'd spooked him and the fact it'd been big enough to wrap itself several times over the length of a fairly tall tree. This snake, though? The vermilion gleam boa? It was at least ten times the size of the shifting gleam python, and timid and harmless were hardly the words Jieyuan would use to describe it. In fact, those words didn't make it into the list of words he would use to describe it.

No, that list was mostly populated by words like rabid, insane, and bloodthirsty. Jieyuan tapped into his mantle, augmenting his legs, and jumped to the side as the monster serpent spit out a stream of fire at the spot he'd just been at. A chill crawled down his spine; everything else aside, he was on his last set of robes (one he'd done a good job keeping in a decent state so far), and he didn't really fancy fighting in the nude.

Jieyuan managed to grab onto one of the lower branches of a nearby tree, and hung off it. The boa, undeterred, launched itself at him, trying to flatten him against the tree. It paid no attention at all as Meiyao and Daojue attacked it from the other direction. Jieyuan quickly climbed up the tree; behind him, the snake slammed its massive body against the crystal tree so hard the trunk shook. Leaves fell from above, but slowly, hastespace making their fall look almost comically crawl-like.

The snake coiled its body against the tree, rising faster than Jieyuan could climb it. Jieyuan didn't hesitate; tapping into his mantle again, he pushed off the tree with is feet, flinging himself into the air. He landed down on the other side of the snake, a fair bit of distance between them. Meiyao and Daojue were nearby, both striking at the gaps in the snake's armor.

The gaps took the form of thick circular rings spaced throughout its body at set intervals, where patches of normal, non-crystalline scale were bared. Already the snake was coated in its own blood (even though it wasn't that apparent, what with both its normal scales and its gleamstone ones being a similar color). But it paid that little mind as it flung its head back, found Jieyuan with its massive, slitted crimson eyes, and let out another roar as it lunged at him, ignoring everything else.

Once again, Jieyuan got the chance to experience first-hand what a mouse trapped in a cage with a snake must feel like. Not an experience he'd care to repeat later. The snake went after him with dogged determination. It hated him like Jieyuan had never been hated before, and from the looks of it, it'd gladly welcome death if that meant taking him down together with it. In hindsight, Jieyuan acknowledged he probably shouldn't have tried to draw its attention by stabbing the egg he'd found lying around.

Well, you live and learn. And that was what Jieyuan was doing right now. Living and learning. Primarily living, though, because his priority right now was definitely not dying. The snake lunged at him again, moving with a speed that was impressive even to Jieyuan's hastespace-augmented perception of time, and as he stepped to the side to dodge its rush, he attempted to stab it in its massive eye. But the snake moved far too quickly, and his spear hit it harmlessly on its coat.

Already it was coiling back, and just as Jieyuan made to jump again, Daojue landed on top of its head, his spear slamming down into the unprotected area between its eyes. The blade disappeared into the snake's body, as did most of the shaft. The snake let out a weak, squeaking noise before it slumped. Daojue jumped down from it, landing near Jieyuan. Jieyuan stared at the snake, panting. Actually panting. From running. Even though he was a third-step Redsoul.

Heavens damn him, but there wasn't a workout quite like playing tag with a murderous giant snake.

"Good job." Meiyao flashed him a smile as she made her way over to the massive corpse. Jieyuan watched as she stopped in front of a ring of unprotected scales near the middle of the snake's body and immediately got to work, slicing at it, opening further the tear that had already been there, either Daojue or Meiyao herself having made it during the fight. Jieyuan's attention was more on the snake itself than on Meiyao, though. The vermilion gleam boa, the undisputed king of the Fifth Ring.

A fifth-step Redrealm beast, and one so unusually strong that (in great part because much like the onyxgleam wolf, it could manifest hastespace), according to Meiyao, it was ranked as a greater threat than many sixth-step beasts. And they'd beaten it. Beaten it as a trio of third-step Redsouls that only had the barest basics of cooperation down, even if he and Meiyao were working together quite nicely nowadays. Jieyuan grinned, bright and wide; the satisfaction he felt was nothing short of triumphant.

Sure, he'd spent most of his time running around, and Daojue and Meiyao had done most of the bleeding work, but still. The gap between third-step and fifth-step was already slightly bigger than that between second-step and third-step, and this was no common fifth-step beast. Jieyuan didn't care too much for details right now. This had been Meiyao's idea. Today was the sixteenth of Yellowfull.

Yesterday had been the last day of the Inner Hunt and the halfway mark of the Outer Hunt, so they'd agreed to hunt one last beast today and spend their remaining time cultivating in preparation for the Radiant Gold Summit. And to seal the deal, she'd proposed they make their last hunt a vermilion gleam boa.

They'd been spending most of their time in the Fourth Ring since his breakthrough, but they'd ventured into the Fifth Ring a couple of times already to face fifth-step beasts; they'd fared nicely enough that she'd been confident they could pull it off. He'd readily agreed. Daojue hadn't said a word, but that was just par for the course. And so here they were. Victorious. Triumphant. If any other team of outer disciples managed a higher score than theirs, Jieyuan figured they'd very well deserve it.

Having opened a bloody hole of considerable size in the beast's bulk, Meiyao stuck her entire right arm inside it, all the way to the elbow. She'd soon have its gleam core out, and then they'd be all but officially bidding the Gleamstone Hunt goodbye. Jieyuan wasn't sure how he felt about that. Meiyao had been right that they'd be better off spending their remaining time preparing for the Summit, but he'd been enjoying himself, even more so these last few days.

He didn't really want it to— Daojue grabbed onto him and pulled him out of the way. There was a ringing sound, and in the spot Jieyuan had just been standing at, there was now a saber, over two-thirds of its blade disappearing into the gleamstone ground, sticking out at an angle, its hilt pointing in the opposite direction. Wrapped around it, blade and hilt, was a white cloth that to Jieyuan's soulsenses registered as tenth-step Redrealm. Jieyuan recognized the cloth.

A spirit-shroud, an artifact in the form of a cloth that cultivators wrapped around other artifacts so that others wouldn't be able to use their soulsenses to tell the properties—or even the step—of the artifact it was covering. It was common for cultivators with artifacts above fifth-step to use them, even more so if the artifact was a prime artifact, one with a spiritskill. Meiyao was immediately at his other side.

All three of them with their weapons drawn, staring into the path of trees the saber must've flown out from. Jieyuan's heart beat loudly in his chest. He'd long since shaken off the shock. They'd come across other disciples a couple of times in the forest, but nothing had come out of those encounters. The other teams they came across would blink or stare for a bit at the ruby robes they wore before simply heading off in a different direction. This was different.

This had been an assassination attempt, straight and simple. And they were in the Fifth Ring. Where the floor was fifth-step gleamstone. Gleamstone was an almost indestructible material; even first-step Redrealm gleamstone was near-impossible to damage. Barring higher-realm existences, only powerful Redrealm spiritskills or gleamstone of a much higher step should be able to cleave it like this. Whatever the case, the saber wasn't a weapon someone participating in the Gleamstone Hunt should have.

The saber, moving seemingly on its own, dislodged itself from the ground and floated up. It shot straight into the outstretched hand of the topaz-robed woman who'd just stepped out from behind a tree. The topaz-robed woman who also had an elder's coat on. Merciful Heavens. An inner elder. A tenth -step Redsoul. One who'd just tried to kill him. And judging from the hard, apathetic look on the woman's face, one who would be trying again.