Chương 20: Chapter 19: TAKE YOUR TIME

Jieyuan felt his own heart race even faster, like it was picking up the slack, compensating for the Fatebloom Heart's sudden lack of movement. Though the Heart had ceased to beat, it remained mildly warm, if not warmer than before. All of Jieyuan's attention was on the Heart, looking for any other change.

If the ritual had worked then he should've felt the Heart's presence in his mind, but he felt nothing of the sort. Is it a bust? Jieyuan frowned. Nothing would've happened, normally, if he tried to bond something at a higher realm. The ritual just wouldn't take. And if he'd tried bonding something at the same realm, then he'd immediately feel a connection form between himself and the artifact. But the Heart had stopped beating. That had to mean something.

Jieyuan was just about to chant again when he felt something brush against his mind. Soft and faint, like someone was lightly prodding at his awareness with a feather. He tensed, startling, but not to the point of pulling his hand away. Under his palm, the Fatebloom Heart trembled softly, like it was shivering, and the faint, prodding feeling grew stronger, more tangible. And then it was another presence he felt in his head, as if he were in a mind-link with someone else.

It didn't feel like a person's mind he was connected to. In a mind-link you could get a general impression of the one you were connected to, and though this wasn't a mind-link—at least not a conventional one—it felt like one. This presence he sensed was… simpler, and somehow structured differently. Jieyuan recalled Daojue and Gleaming End. How Daojue had said Gleaming End refused to be lent to him. How Daojue had revealed that Gleaming End was alive. Was the Fatebloom Heart really an artifact, then?

A sentient one, like Gleaming End?

"Is that you?" he asked, looking down at the Fatebloom Heart. It gave another little tremble, and from the odd presence in his mind, he got… something. Something like a sensation, or an emotion, but conveyed like a thought. Similar to the feelings and impressions he'd get from a spiritual song. Affirmation, Jieyuan figured out. That's what it was sending him. Assent, agreement. The moment Jieyuan put it together, the emotion the Heart was conveyed changing into something else. This one, Jieyuan placed instantly.

Curiosity. Meanwhile, the Heart's presence in his mind grew stronger, more tangible.

"Hello?" Jieyuan said. He didn't know how to go from here. Was it looking for something? Curiosity was what it was telling him, conveying to him. Was he supposed to talk with it? What about the bonding ritual, was it still going on? He couldn't think of anything else he could do (as far as he could tell, he'd done his part) so it seemed like the ball was now in the Fatebloom Heart's court. He was guessing that to bond with a sentient artifact, it had to accept you, agree to the bonding.

That'd make sense, even more so if the artifact was at a higher realm. That'd explain how Daojue had bonded Gleaming End. If Jieyuan had known this would happen—that he'd get his own turn at bonding what he was guessing was a sentient artifact so soon—he'd have liked to ask Daojue some more questions about how it worked. Though, knowing Daojue, chances were he wouldn't have gotten any answers. At the very least, he wasn't dead, not yet, or otherwise regretting his decision. Just confused.

The impression the Heart was sending him changed again. It was a subtle shift, into something brighter, cheerier, energetic. Excitement, Jieyuan realized. And just as he recognized the feeling, it changed again. Still bright, still light, but now it was more nuanced, more complex. Satisfaction? No. Almost. It was… ACCEPTANCE. The Fatebloom Heart started beating again. Slowly, softly, but quickly getting faster and louder.

Moments passed, and already it was outright thrumming, beating so fast its outline seemed to blur, and sounding as loud as a war drum. The Heart's presence in his mind kept going even stronger, and it kept sending Jieyuan the same feeling, over and over. ACCEPTANCE. ACCEPTANCE. ACCEPTANCE. ACCEPTANCE. Hearing swishing sounds from all around him, Jieyuan looked up and to the sides.

The trunks of the fatebloom trees enclosing the clearing were trembling like they were being buffeted by furious winds, even though all Jieyuan felt was a slight breeze. Over a hundred feet above, their crimson crowns—sprawling branches filled with flowers—shook, letting loose a shower of fatebloom blossoms, which drifted down to the ground like a curtain of red and green. The half-grown golden trunk in front of Jieyuan and the golden cabin were also shaking. Jieyuan looked back down at the Heart. ACCEPTANCE.

The Fatebloom Heart had accepted him. But what did that mean? Had they bonded? And what was going on with the Fatebloom Woods? Jieyuan's own heart seemed to be beating just as fast as the one he was trying to bond. Blood thumped in his ears, almost as loud as the drum-like rumble from the Fatebloom Heart. He wasn't sure what he was feeling. Excited, for sure—but also a tad apprehensive, because he had no idea what all of this meant or what would come next. He was completely out of his depth.

When Daojue bonded Gleaming End, the Gleamstone Valley hadn't decided to join in on the fun. And Gleaming End, sentient or not, was clearly an artifact, a weapon. What the Fatebloom Heart was or did wasn't nearly as evident. It was then that the Fatebloom Heart vanished. Just winked out of existence, his right hand, which an instant ago had been firmly pressed against it, now touching nothing but air. And in that very same instant, Jieyuan felt a pressure in his chest, a weight, physical but also chromal.

Then Jieyuan realized that though the Fatebloom Heart had disappeared, he could still hear it. And it sounded louder, to the point his whole body was trembling, shivering along with its blazingly fast beats. Jieyuan put all the pieces together in a split-second, and even before he'd figured it out, he was already sending his soulsenses inward. Before, all he'd been able to sense within him had been his soul, floating in his chest, enclosed by his rib cage.

Now, he could sense something else—and it was also in his chest. Overlapping with his soul was now a heart-shaped form. Though it occupied the same space as his soul, he could sense them separately, for the same reason you could stab a chromal weapon through a cultivator's chest without piercing through the soul. Your soul wasn't actually inside your chest. It was anchored to your body, but it occupied a separate, non-physical space. What you saw with your soulsenses in your rib cage was only an image of it.

This heart-shaped structure was a different story. Its presence was firmer, more solid. He could tell it was actually there, chromally, spiritually, and physically. Physically—where his mundane heart should've been. The Fatebloom Heart. No doubt about it. From the looks of it, it'd just replaced his original heart, which had been… destroyed? Vanished? Normally, the sudden removal (or rather, the replacement) of his heart should've been a fairly big deal, but right now Jieyuan had other, more pressing concerns.

The color of its spirit. Violet. He'd expected that, given it came from Beidao, a Violetsoul, but it still would've been enough to startle him, because Violetrealm. But that wasn't everything. The Heart's spirit wasn't just violet. It also had a metallic sheen to it. A silvery sheen. Jieyuan had expected violet. Silver, not so much. It was the only other case he'd seen of something chromal not adhering to one of the chromal shades, besides his soul.

But while black didn't really have a specific meaning, any association that he knew of, silver did. Silver was the color of the Heavens, the color of the Laws—star-shaped specks in the Void—when you got a vision of the Heavenly Vault, as he had when he'd bonded Absolute Will Command. There was a reason why bond bands were only made of silver and why the only silver jewelry people wore over their necks were bond bands. Is it over? The Fatebloom Heart was now in his chest.

It was also perceptible to his soulsenses now. He must've bonded it, then. It had worked. He didn't know for sure that was the case—he was wholly in unfamiliar territory here—but he was confident of it. Especially the way it was no longer invisible to his soulsenses. This must be why Daojue could tell Gleaming End was at Orangerealm. When you bonded an artifact, it became part of you; it stood to reason your soulsenses wouldn't be impended by the gap in realms anymore.

There was still the question of its silvery color and what had happened to his old heart. But Jieyuan would have to worry about those later, though, because the Fatebloom Heart was still thundering. Now he could not only hear it, but also see it with his soulsenses. And now he wasn't sure how much of the anxiousness he felt was his own, and how much was caused by the fact that his heart—his Heart, now—was beating far beyond the point a mundane heart would have burst in a gory mess.

The blood thumping in his ears was now like a rushing river, and he felt warm and tingly all over, like there were ants crawling frantically under his skin. The Fatebloom Woods remained awfully, absurdly animated, sending more and more fatebloom blossoms falling to the ground, like waterfalls of blood. If anything, they seemed to be shaking even harder than before. In his mind, the Fatebloom Heart's presence was still there, but quiet now, no longer sending him its emotions. Now, Jieyuan was flying blind here.

Blind as it got, blinder than Qingshi. But he felt that all of that served as a fairly solid indication that things weren't quite over yet. Problem was, he'd already bonded the Heart. So what was left? Though the Heart wasn't sending anything specific across their connection anymore, Jieyuan could still feel something coming from its presence in his mind. Something building, gathering. Intangible, like tension. Then warmth bloomed in his chest, and there was nothing intangible about that.

It wasn't hot (nothing at all like the searing agony of the First Pain), but still warm enough to be uncomfortable even to a cultivator. Through his soulsenses, Jieyuan saw the Heart radiating a dim, golden light even as it kept on beating like mad. This light extended from the Heart in the form of minuscule tendrils, hair-like golden lines, reaching outward from the Heart. Reaching and growing.

As the golden lines spread throughout him, where his mantle overlapped his body, growing longer and more numerous, branching out, the warmth spread along with them. But outside the Heart, the warmth seemed skin-deep, superficial. He was itching, too, everywhere, in the exact same places he could see the golden lines spreading. Jieyuan loosened his belt, then pulled his outer robe open to the right, and then did the same for his inner robe, leaving his chest bare.

On his skin was a thin spiderweb-like sprawl of glowing golden veins, matching the golden luminous lines he saw with his soulsenses. They all extended from a point in the center of his chest, and they were pulsating like throbbing veins, at a rate of about a pulse per second. With each pulse, they spread just a bit further, like hairline fractures on cracking glass. Jieyuan had little doubt that he'd see the same sight on his arms and legs, still covered by robes and armor.

As he was focusing on these pulses, Jieyuan noticed that the tremors of the fatebloom trees now matched them, and while the Heart still beat madly, the glow from its spirit pulsated at the same rate as the veins. Jieyuan still wasn't feeling anything specific from his connection to the Heart, but its presence in his mind was stronger, now. Growing stronger. Jieyuan forced himself to remain calm, steady.

It wasn't easy, not just because he had no idea what was going on now, but because the Heart was still doing its best to compress entire marathons into each passing second. But there was nothing he could do about this except wait. He'd tossed the coin, and now he'd just have to see how it'd land—though it sure was taking its time falling. So he stood there, surrounded by the trembling trees, his attention now back on his soulsenses, focused on the Fatebloom Heart.

And because of that, after about three dozen pulses or so, Jieyuan saw the Heart's spirit shimmer, then turn red. Red. It still had a silvery sheen, but it was red now. Close to third-shade red, the shade of red his soul should've been like. The fatebloom trees stopped shaking. So did the pedestal-like trunk the Heart had been in, as well as the fatebloom wood cabin. And it wasn't a gradual stop, but an immediate one, going from looking like they were about to go flying, plucked up by a tornado, to perfect repose.

There would've been no indication of all the moving they'd been doing had it not been for the fatebloom blossoms still falling from the trees, piling up under each tree in scattered mounds. Returning his attention to his bare chest, Jieyuan saw that the glowing golden veins on his skin had dimmed and cooled, both warmth and glow gone. Then, as he watched, they darkened to a muddy brown, before turning beige. From that, they became more and more like the surrounding skin, until they completely faded away.

Likewise gone were the corresponding golden lines that had spread throughout his mantle. In his chest, the Fatebloom Heart slowed, going from vibrating to thundering, from thundering to racing, and then from racing to steadily beating. Jieyuan was only barely paying attention to all of that, though. He was more concerned about the Heart's spirit, how it'd gone from violet to red. Violetrealm to Redrealm. If it'd gone even lower, the Fatebloom Heart would've turned mundane.

It was still silvery, and he'd only had the Fatebloom Heart at Violetrealm for moments, and he didn't know how its powers or capabilities had changed. But that didn't change the fact it'd just changed from Violetrealm to Redrealm. Whatever happened to Gleaming End in the Gleamstone Depths, it'd raised its realm to Orangerealm. That was an increase. So how come, when it came to him, bonding the Heart caused its step to plunge?

The Fatebloom Heart, silent up to this point, sent him something again, something that felt suspiciously like amusement. That gave Jieyuan a pause. Amusement. It wasn't just a reminder that the Fatebloom Heart was alive and connected to him. It also revealed a certain degree of intelligence, despite its rudimentary form of communication. AFFIRMATION, the Heart sent him. And then… Jieyuan furrowed his brow. Cockiness …? Pride? PRIDE. Jieyuan was about to speak again, but stopped himself.

If his connection to the Fatebloom Heart functioned like a mind-link, and assuming it'd read his thoughts just now…. Can you hear me? He thought, focusing on the presence of the Fatebloom Heart. AFFIRMATION, was the impression he got back. All right. What now? There was so much he wanted to know. Needed to know. But he also recalled something from Beidao's jade slips. Are you Huaxin? The name had always appeared together with the Fatebloom Heart, and it'd meant Bloom Heart.

He'd wondered at it, but now he knew that the Heart was sentient. AFFIRMATION, the Heart immediately sent him. Physically, it gave a little skip, and then transmitted… SATISFACTION? Huaxin. So now not only was his new heart an artifact, but it also had a name. Huaxin. Jieyuan had questions. Many of them. But there was really only one that mattered. What can you do? What he received in response wasn't one specific emotion, but rather a series of impressions and images. A drop of golden blood. SACRIFICE.

AUGMENTATION. The Heavenly Vault, seen from below, but with faint lines connecting all the stars. INTUITION. DIVINATION. And then a rushing river of thick, crimson blood. REGENERATION. VITALITY. Frowning, Jieyuan tried to put it all together. He hadn't been exactly expecting a manual, but… Well, it was better than nothing. Huaxin had divided the transmitted impressions and images into three groups, so… That's three spiritskills, then? AFFIRMATION. Jieyuan nodded to himself. Three spiritskills.

He could work with that. He could definitely work with that. He wasn't quite sure what they did, but the first one, the one with the golden blood, seemed promising. Sacrifice. Augmentation. He'd go over this back home, though, and preferably with Maeva. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Jieyuan cast one last look around the clearing. Technically, he was still missing something: the artifact the distracter field around the Heartseat was anchored to.

The field-focus. But he'd already searched everywhere, and it wasn't as if he'd be taking it with him, particularly since it'd keep others from finding Beidao's corpse, and he didn't want anyone coming across it and investigating its mystery. And Beidao might have used some special, Violetrealm method to set up the distracter field, in any case. Now, to return. Jieyuan eyed the direction he'd arrived at the Heartseat from.

It had been devoid of fatebloom elk except at the very end, and he hadn't spent that long in the Heartseat. Chromal beasts weren't known to move around much. He glanced up, checking the sun's position, seeing that it was still on its way up. He'd go over and check whether the dust beacon had attracted any beasts. If not, he'd go out that way. Gripping in his left hand the two talismans Meiyao had given him, and in his right hand Meiyao's saber, he set off.

It was just a short while later that Jieyuan caught the glow of the dust beacon among the trees. It was very faint, but still there. Just a few steps later, he found the core disciple's body, lying in a pool of its blood just where he'd left it, marking the very edge of the distracter field. But it wasn't alone. There was a man standing in front of the corpse, his back to him. A man in emerald robes, with an elder's coat on top, holding a sword. A sect protector. But—How? This can't be.

He'd dragged the woman's corpse into the inscribed field, so the man couldn't have found it. But—the man was closer to him than the corpse right now. Inside the inscribed field. How— The man turned around. He seemed to be about middle-aged, with graying hair, in his fifties, though with a tall, solid build. He was one of the oldest-looking cultivators Jieyuan had seen yet. Given a Redsoul's lifespan, the man should be over a hundred. The man was looking at him. Straight at him.

Similar to how the core disciple had done at the end, but while she'd looked as if she was seeing through him, the man seemed to be looking at him. Jieyuan's heart— Heart— skipped. He whipped his right arm, but even as he was reaching for the Radiant Light Blast talisman's spiritskill inside his mind to activate it, the man flicked his wrist. There was a gray blur. And then Jieyuan staggered back. For the second time that day, he felt a weight in his chest. This time, though, he knew clearly what it was.

He looked down, staring, uncomprehending, at the hilt of the sword sticking out of his chest. Its blade, buried inside him. Inside his rib cage, through his Heart. The Heart. PAIN, Huaxin sent through their connection. And in another blur, this one blue, the man was standing in front of him, one hand taking hold of the hilt of the sword, the other on Jieyuan's back, pulling him into a parody of an embrace. Blood bubbled up Jieyuan's throat. He coughed, sending it splattering on the protector's robes.

The man leaned in, pulling him closer, and put his mouth next to Jieyuan's ear.

"She was my granddaughter," he said, softly, almost tenderly.

"Before you join her, I want you to know that I'm aware of your family in Radiant Gold City. I also want you to know that with them, I'll be taking my time." Then the man pulled out his sword, stepping back, and Jieyuan collapsed to the ground. The protector's footsteps sounded faint, muffled, and they only grew fainter, until Jieyuan could barely hear them. He lay on the ground, head to the side, grass prickling the right side of his face. Darkness crawled around the edges of his vision, creeping in.

What he did see was hazy, and cast in dull, washed-out tones. A small, scattered pile of fatebloom blossoms sat just in front of him, beneath the golden behemoth that was the trunk of a fatebloom tree. They were blood-red—the very same color as the blood pooling beneath him, streaming out from his chest like water from a broken faucet. More blood bubbled up his throat, filling his mouth, dribbling down his lips. A deathly chill had its grip on him, and it was gaining ground.

Starting at his extremities, fingers and toes, and going up, hands and feet, arms and legs. Only his chest felt warm, but it was a diminishing warmth, petering out as his blood fled him. His awareness was like a lone, stuttering flame, a candle on the verge of winking out, with just the barest hint of wick left. Thoughts floated in his head, loose and drifting. They each lingered for a moment before slipping away, finding no purchase. Through his connection with Huaxin, Jieyuan could feel the Heart's agony.

It was a loud, bright thing, overwhelming. Jieyuan's own pain was vivid, raw—torn skin, ripped muscles, shattered bone, on his chest where the blade had come in, on his back where the blade had come out—but he'd faced much worse when imbuing. No, the pain was no issue, even more so when it seemed to grow distant with each passing second, less tangible, turning into a vague notion of pain rather than the actual thing. Jieyuan clenched his teeth, trying to summon his strength and coming up short.

That was the problem. The weakness. His strength was pouring out of him, carried away by his blood. He was holding on, but he was just barely there, tethered to life by little more than a strand of hair. The fire was there, meeting him, matching him. Angry, raging, but impotent. Still, he threw himself into it, trying to move, to get up, to do something —he didn't know what, he was just barely thinking, but he couldn't, wouldn't, just lie there and die. And for a moment it seemed to work.

His body responded, his abdomen engaging, and he curled up, pressing his arms down—but then the surge of strength sputtered out, and he flopped back down into the pool of his own blood that had gathered under him. No. No. Not yet. Jieyuan tried to move. Nothing happened. Not even a twitch. Desperate, he kept trying, but his body wasn't reacting anymore, and his vision was darkening. And he felt the cold slowly fading, as a weight settled over him, and he couldn't see anymore, and he was drifting, floating— REFUSAL.

Jieyuan snapped right back into stark awareness, jerking, drawing in a lungful of air in a single breath. He blinked, his vision entirely clear now, eyes sharp. His heart—the Heart —beat fiercely, madly. Blood rushed—not outside him, but inside him. That realization gave his fire all the fuel it could ever need, and it roared, soaring. Jieyuan wasn't feeling Huaxin's pain through their connection anymore.

All he felt from the Fatebloom Heart now was a burning fervor that matched his own—and a desire for RETRIBUTION that Jieyuan was only too happy to deliver on. Strength filled him, incandescent strength. When Jieyuan tried to move this time, his body answered, snappy, as readily as it ever had. He made a grabbing motion with his left hand, and it closed around the pair of talismans he'd let go of at some point. He pushed his upper body off the ground so hard he almost toppled back, but he barely even noticed.

He was on his knees now, halfway to standing. Straight ahead was the protector, once again standing by the core disciple's corpse, his back to him—just as he'd been when Jieyuan first saw him. The sight of him was all that mattered. Burning clarity directed Jieyuan's actions as he threw his left arm out, his mind reaching for the Radiant Light Blast talisman's spiritskill.

The protector turned around, eyes wide— A herd of fatebloom elk poured out from the swathe of trees behind the elder, hooves clacking loudly, shrilly crying, rolling out like a wave of gold, and the elder immediately turned back around— And the talisman activated. There was a blinding white flash, so bright Jieyuan immediately shut his eyes, and even then his eyes throbbed, tearing up, white spots blooming over his closed eyelids. He could smell something metallic, sweet and pungent.

He blinked his eyes open, his vision quickly returning to normal, and then he saw it. Where the elder had stood before, there was nothing. The fatebloom tree in front of it had a massive, circular hole running through it. Same for the next two trees in front of it. The herd of fatebloom elk was still there, but the area directly ahead of him was clear. On the ground were the corpses of several fatebloom elk. Closer to him was the corpse of the disciple. And slumped down beside it was what looked like…

a pair of legs. Someone's lower body, everything up from the waist simply missing. It lay to the side, beside the disciple's corpse. At the waist, where the rest of the body should've been, was a charred line of cloth. Jieyuan jumped up to his feet, his gaze flicking from the protector's corpse to the several dozen fatebloom elk standing in front of him. He forced himself to focus, throwing away all other thoughts. He clutched the remaining talisman in his left hand—the Radiant Light Haven talisman—tighter.

But then the Heart skipped a beat. AMUSEMENT, Huaxin sent him. The herd of fatebloom elk lowered their heads to the ground, as one, while bending their forelegs, in a very good approximation of a bow. Jieyuan stared, confused, still wondering whether to use the talisman, even as the Heart's amusement only seemed to grow. The beasts then raised themselves back up, turned around, and trotted out, disappearing into the trees without another word, leaving behind the corpses of those caught in the talisman's beam.

Keeping a wary eye on the surrounding forest, Jieyuan reached a hand to his chest. The tear in his robe was clear, evident, and so was the wet, sticky feel of blood around it. But as he prodded the skin left exposed by the tear, where there should've been a significant gash, all he felt past the wetness of blood was firm, whole skin. Unbroken skin. It felt a little tender, a little raw, but that was all. Was that … Jieyuan paused.

His thoughts were already jumbled enough without having to add a mental conversation to the equation.

"Was that you, Huaxin?" Eyeing the forest, he wasn't sure whether he was asking about the sudden appearance and departure of the herd of fatebloom elks or the way he'd suddenly healed from what should've been a mortal wound. AFFIRMATION, was Huaxin's reply to both questions implied. And if there was just the slightest bit of smugness to it, Jieyuan would be the last one to find fault in that.

"Regeneration. Vitality. That's one of your spiritskills, isn't it?" Jieyuan had expected the Heart's regeneration spiritskill to be something more along the lines of regeneration augmentation, like his mantle did. This had been different, though. He hadn't been all that aware of time, in that state, but it'd felt instantaneous. One moment he was on the verge of death and the other he was good as new. Huaxin didn't reply immediately. And when AFFIRMATION came again, it didn't ring as certain as before.

"You're not sure?" The Heart stayed silent. Jieyuan frowned.

"And the elk? How did you do that?" What the Heart sent him in response struck him awfully like a frustrated huff. Jieyuan's gaze fell back on the two human corpses in the clearing. Or, at least, the one whole human corpse, and the half that remained of the other. That reminded him of how the protector had somehow gotten inside the distracter field. Jieyuan recalled how he hadn't found a field-focus.

"Were you the one maintaining the distracter field?" AFFIRMATION, but hesitant.

"Why did you stop?" Jieyuan got an image of a patch of third-shade red. It took him a moment to puzzle it out.

"Your realm? You stopped because it changed? You lost the ability to do it?" Another uneasy, resistant affirmation was his reply.

"So you can't do it again? Affirmation, and this one was strong, solid.

"All right," Jieyuan said.

"All right. That's that, then." His eyes found the elder's body again. He walked over to it and looked it over, but he couldn't sense anything chromal on it besides its robes and greaves. The Radiant Light Blast had hit him low enough in the waist to wipe out his holder pouch, too. At the top was just a slice of charred, darkened flesh. There was no skillseed in sight, either, and Jieyuan didn't bother looking for it. It'd have been destroyed by the Radiant Light Blast, sure as everything else it'd hit.

Only Orangerealm entities would be able to survive it—and, in their case, outright ignore it. That was the thing with tenth-step offensive talismans. They could erase everything at the same realm as them or lower, but on a higher-realm entity, they wouldn't be worth the paper they were inscribed on.

He quickly put away the elder's tenth-step Redrealm greaves; with the elder dead, they'd expanded, no longer being fed chroma, so it was only a matter of sliding them off the elder's legs and feet off and tossing them in his pouch. He then used his cleanser ring to clean himself up (as well as sizeable pool he'd bled onto the ground, while he was at it) before changing into clean outer robes. He didn't bother changing out of his inner robes.

He was pressed for time, and the new, pristine outer robes covered his ruined inner robes. That'd be enough to keep others from asking why in the world there was a ragged tear in his robes directly over his chest and how he was still alive. If he met someone on the way back to his residence, he'd rather not give them more reasons to be suspicious of him. That done, Jieyuan turned to the surrounding trees again.

He'd already had lots of questions even before his little brush with death just now, and now he had even more. But this wasn't the time or place for thinking up answers. He didn't know how the protector had followed him here—seriously, what was up with these noble clans and their tracking ability—but if one had come, so could others. Granddaughter, the man had called the core disciple. Another Fusongshi he'd killed, and a protector this time.

He really was moving up in the world, just not in the way he'd have liked. That's what I get for tempting fate. And while that was already bad enough on its own, and more than enough reason to make himself scarce, there was an even bigger issue at hand. The distracter field was gone, and with that, it was only a matter of time before others stumbled upon the Heartseat.

And Jieyuan definitely didn't want to be around when that happened and people started asking questions about the gleamstone statue and the cabin and whether someone had been there before and took something away with them. He glanced at the dead grandfather and granddaughter but then shook his head; they were too big to fit inside his holder pouch.

Slicing them up would take too long (not to mention the thought of carving up a human corpse like that rubbed him wrong); he was better off making it straight to the sect. And if he was caught and someone looked inside his holder pouch, he'd have a very hard time explaining two diced-up corpses. I'm out of here, Jieyuan decided. Just as he was about to rush off, an idea occurred to him, and he pulled back his left sleeve. He eyed the bracelet he wore around his wrist, over his gauntlet.

It was a thick, gray band, plain and tightly wrapped around his gauntlet. Looking at it, if you didn't know what it was, you could easily mistake it for a solid, smooth piece of stone. Marble, maybe. But it was chromal silk—compressed many times over until it was sleek and hard. A cloudcraft, in bracelet form. The one he'd taken from the core disciple. He hadn't considered using it. If he were to get caught flying it, there'd be questions.

Questions he most certainly wouldn't want to answer, as he'd rather keep his involvement in the murder of a core disciple under wraps. But now, with the distracter field down and a protector dead, the possibility of others coming wasn't only just a possibility anymore, but rather a certainty. That meant he'd have to take some risks. Focusing on the bracelet's presence in his mind, he found three spiritskills; Jieyuan scanned them briefly, then activated one.

Chroma began vanishing from his soul as the bracelet unraveled itself into thin, wisp-like threads, floating and flowing, which gathered in front of him, pooling themselves by his feet. Just as he visualized it all happening. He'd never gotten any instructions on how cloudcrafts worked or how to operate them, but with most artifacts, using them really just came down to activating their spiritskill and focusing on what you wanted it to do.

The transformation took some time; the bracelet came undone slowly until a cloudcraft proper was left lying on the ground by his feet. It was roughly square, looking like just about the most comfortable thing in the world, and big enough for him to lie down any which way he wanted with a bit of room left over. Jieyuan climbed onto it. He could feel the cloudcraft not just with his soulsenses, but also through his active bond with it.

He hadn't stopped using its first spiritskill; he had to keep it up, sacrificing his chroma, just for the cloudcraft to remain in their current state. It wasn't a significant expenditure, though; it was barely even noticeable. With his feet firmly on the cloudcraft, Jieyuan activated another one of its spiritskills. He felt a subtle shift in his center of gravity as his body was anchored to the cloudcraft below him.

Just to be sure, he tried to pull one of his feet up, but the soles of his greaves were fully stuck to the silky surface underfoot. Satisfied, Jieyuan activated the cloudcraft's remaining spiritskill before before willing it upwards, visualizing it ascending. And he shot up. The Fatebloom Woods turned into a golden blur, which then gave away, for just an instant, into a red blur, and then he was above the Fatebloom Woods, far above, rising— Stop.

The cloudcraft immediately halted in place—and Jieyuan could feel his body tugging upwards, tugging so hard he almost felt as if his legs, thighs, and calves would come apart, before he used up the inertia, and settled back down. He slumped unceremoniously, plopping onto his backside, the Fatebloom Heart hammering in his chest. Huaxin sent a heady, joyous sort of glee over their bond. Clearly it had enjoyed the thrill.

Jieyuan laughed, just the slightest bit hysterical, sitting on the cloud, looking out at the vast landscape laid out in front of him. He turned up, and saw that the nearest clouds were barely more than an arm's length away. But then the nervousness and the shock faded, and he surrendered himself to the thrill Huaxin was sharing with him. He felt all his worries, all his doubts and concerns, just fade away for a moment, taking the backseat. Power was what had driven him to become a cultivator.

His need for it, his need to live up to his potential, to rise as far in the world as he could, and then some more. But things like this? He considered, wonderingly, how he was flying on a cloud of silk, so high fatebloom trees, which normally towered over him, now looked like little more than red dots. The ability to do whatever he wanted, this freedom, the possibilities —he'd have become a cultivator for them, paid the price, suffered the Pain, even if it weren't for his ambitions.

He enjoyed the fighting and the struggle, as he imagined any Firesoul did, but things like this had a charm all of their own. So much so it rendered his brush with death, just minutes ago, into a distant, fading memory.

"Note to self," Jieyuan murmured, standing back up, "a little less intent." Checking his soulprism, he found the cloud hadn't taken that much more chroma during its ascent, and it was just taking a little more, hovering in place thousands of feet above the surface, than it had earlier, on the ground. He briefly scanned the area. The Fatebloom Woods were far below, now looking like a massive pool of blood on an otherwise grass landscape. Over in the distance, he could see the Gleaming Stone Mountains.

No other cloudcrafts in sight. Still, he willed (moved, drove, he wasn't really sure of what this counted as) the cloudcraft just a bit higher, until he was inside a cloud. An actual, mundane cloud. Cotton-white, misty, moist. As far as he knew, most cultivators flew either just below cloud level, if they didn't mind being spotted by those on the ground, or just above it, if they did mind. Jieyuan reckoned nobody flew inside clouds. Unless, of course, they didn't want to be spotted by other cloudcraft riders.

"All right," Jieyuan murmured.

"Easy, now." Focusing on the cloudcraft again, he imagined it moving forward, just a bit, like how he'd willed it to rise just a bit more just now. And it worked the exact same way, the cloud drifting onward just as he'd visualized it. Proper visualization was key, then. As long as he was clear on exactly how he wanted the cloudcraft to move (rather than his vague idea of upward when he'd shot up into the air earlier) it'd comply. That was just about what he needed to get the hang of it.

He followed the mundane cloud he was in to its end, then quickly shot into the next one, just slightly above it; he kept at it, flying his cloudcraft from mundane cloud to mundane cloud, going faster and faster as he got more comfortable with the control, and not even half an hour later, he was already at overflying the Gleaming Stone Mountains. Jieyuan dipped below the clouds and eyed the rough location where he'd come out of the mountain range from, the end of the way Meiyao had shared with him.

He couldn't see it from here; it was a small, narrow opening tucked near the base of one of the outermost mountains, but he could roughly tell where it was. He directed the cloudcraft so that he was directly above it. And then he focused on the cloudcraft and sent: Plunge. And he plunged. The cloudcraft accelerated downward, and its adhesive properties kept his feet fixed onto it, dragging the rest of his body.

Again he was pulled upwards, his body straining to keep itself connected to his feet, stretching, extending. That lasted all of three seconds before the cloud landed on the ground, coming to an abrupt halt, and then he was pushed down instead. He snapped into a crouch, dissipating some of the impact, and even still he felt his body contract. But then it was over, and his body settled.

He hopped down from the cloudcraft, and then focused on his connection to it, visualizing it becoming a bracelet again, wrapped around his wrist. That did the trick. He barely blinked, and the cloud had already gathered back around his arm in the form of a bracelet. Again, he felt Huaxin's thrill (and wasn't it curious how the artifact heart was apparently an adrenaline junkie) and Jieyuan felt it was half Huaxin, and half himself that had the Fatebloom Heart beating faster in his chest.

Jieyuan still wasn't quite sure how that worked, but he reckoned it'd be better to get himself used to thinking of it as his heart, which it was. After a brief search, he found his way back into the sect. A narrow fissure on the face of the mountain, about twenty or so feet above the ground, mostly hidden from sight by the tree in front of it. He climbed up the tree, then stepped out from one of its branches directly into the gap.

Inside was an unlit, narrow tunnel that cut through the mountain, leading straight into a small grove near the residential area of the outer court. As he was about to step inside, Jieyuan turned around, and from between the gaps in the foliage, looked up at the sun—and saw that it still wasn't midday yet. Meaning that in the span of a morning, he'd killed a core disciple, gotten a new heart, almost died, and then killed a protector.

Not to mention discovering, through Beidao's jadebooks, that the Linzushen and Tianzijun Clan were somehow connected to the Yikongwei Founder, the names of other sects, and that the Gleamstone Valley was a place he definitely didn't want to have anything to do with. And that he should be watching out for Heavens and Fate, somehow. For probably the first time in his life, Jieyuan felt like he could do with a little break. But this was the life he'd chosen for himself when he'd chosen to become a cultivator.

The path he'd picked, when he'd decided to follow Daojue—and Meiyao—around and get involved in their business.

"Ups and downs," Jieyuan said to himself, turning back and stepping inside the tunnel.

"Ups and downs." The Fatebloom Heart beat softly in his chest, echoing AGREEMENT.