Chương 4: Chapter 3: TO UNVEIL

Assuming you could get away with it. That wasn't exactly news to Jieyuan; when he was seven years old, his father sat him down and went over, in great detail, all the scenarios where literally eliminating the competition wasn't just an option, but rather the ideal solution to his problems. Commerce was, after all, a cutthroat business—again, often literally.

And now, sitting down in front of his desk, peering inside Rongkai's holder pouch, Jieyuan found that even though he was now a cultivator, murder remained very much a lucrative business. He was back in the sect, in the bedroom of the lodging that had been assigned to him after his induction: a squat one-story house in the outer court. The room was mostly bare.

A small bed tucked into a corner with a chest at its foot, a desk and a chair tucked into the corner facing the bed, and a small meditation mat in the middle, all of it enclosed by stone walls. On the walls were unlit oil lamps. Just above the desk, wooden blinds partially covered a small square window, letting only a few streams of sunlight into the bedroom, but more than enough for him to see clearly. The inside of Rongkai's space-holder pouch was bigger than Jieyuan's old second-step one by half.

He could've easily fit himself inside with plenty of room left over, even though on the outside it was only about the size of a closed fist. Its weight reduction factor should also be proportionally higher. Lying on the reinforced leather bottom were a pair of cultivator's gauntlets and greaves, two silver rings, a wooden ring the color of gold, two small glass pill flasks, a pile of prisms, a sword, and two jadebooks. Jieyuan let out a low whistle. This added up to his biggest windfall yet.

And that wasn't even counting the violet skillseed he'd put away in his pocket. Meiyao had been more than right when she'd said they weren't in any trouble. An inner elder from the Justice Hall had arrived later that same morning, and after asking a couple of questions, the woman had deemed it a clear-cut case of self-defense, and told them that since Rongkai didn't have family in the sect, everything on him now belonged to Jieyuan and Daojue, the supposed victims.

Rongkai's belongings hadn't even warranted a cursory inspection; she'd just told them to grab his things (Jieyuan was the one who did it, as Daojue showed no interest in the matter) before she bound Rongkai's corpse with a talisman and put it away in her pouch. The way she'd acted had Jieyuan feeling like the woman just wanted to wash her hands of the matter. The wary glances the elder had kept shooting Meiyao had only added to that impression.

Even though Daojue had seemed supremely disinterested in Rongkai's things, Jieyuan had still offered his teammate his pick of the loot after collecting it all. Daojue, in response, had stared at him wordlessly until Jieyuan retracted his offer. Jieyuan wasn't complaining, of course. Never had he thought he'd be glad for Daojue's arrogance and privilege, but there it was. The journey back to the sect had barely taken a few minutes.

The elder had flown them back on her cloudcraft (again, just as Meiyao had predicted), dropping them off in the outer court's residential district with a promise she'd handle all the paperwork for them, telling them that they could put this whole business with Rongkai behind them. One by one, Jieyuan removed the items from the holder pouch and spread them out on his desk. He wasn't quite sure what to do with the violet skillseed yet; he figured that Rongkai's belongings might reveal some kind of clue.

The two jadebooks looked particularly promising. Done emptying Rongkai's pouch, Jieyuan set it aside and considered the items spread out on his desk. The little pile of prisms, loosely cluttered up in the middle of the desk, didn't require his attention. Each one was around the size of his thumb. Naturally occurring pieces of materialized chroma. What made them special compared to ambient chroma, besides their physical form, was that they were made up of hundredth -density chroma.

It was supposedly impossible to get chroma past tenth-density—in any form besides prisms, that was, in which case they skipped ninety density levels and went straight for one hundred. Free-floating chroma was first-density, and the chroma in a cultivator's soul—their chroma reserves, their soulprism—varied from first-density to tenth-density, according to the cultivator's step. There were forty-seven prisms (he'd counted as he'd taken them out of the pouch), and the equation there was straightforward.

The more of them he had, the better, be it for trade or cultivation. Jieyuan's gaze drifted to Rongkai's sword. He eyed it, but didn't reach out to hold it. It was a simple-looking weapon, slim-bladed, sleek, without frills. Just a long, straight doubled-edged steel blade and a leather-wrapped wooden hilt. A proper weapon, made for battle. His type of weapon, really. It'd have served him well if he'd been a sword artist. But he wasn't, and he didn't plan on changing that. Swords had never felt right to him.

Something about them just rubbed him wrong. Even just holding one long made him feel uncomfortable and unsettled, never mind wielding one. Leaning forward, eyes on the blade, Jieyuan tapped into his soulsenses. Overlapping spiritually with the sword's physical form was a uniform outline of it in third-shade red. Beasts and plants didn't have souls like humans did.

Instead, they had spiritual bodies perfectly overlapping their physical ones; if the beast or plant was chromal, their spirit was filled with chroma of a specific color and density, indicating their realm and step. Spiritual body. Spirit, for short. Artifacts also had spirits. He concentrated on the sword's spirit, getting a sense of its song. It was like when he'd sensed Daojue's song yesterday by focusing on his teammate's soul, but what he perceived was nowhere as concrete.

What he got from it was a vaguer, looser influx of ideas and concepts. The sword's chromal properties. Chromalization, self-sharpening. And that was it. The standard suite of properties for chromal steel weapons. No special property; no spiritskill. A so-called blank artifact, named for how plain its song was. Pulling himself back from the awareness of his soulsenses, Jieyuan considered the sword for a moment, frowning.

"What to do with you?" he murmured. He wouldn't be using it, that much was certain. It didn't matter that it was a step higher than his spear and that at the low steps the difference between steps was massive. In the case of blank, spiritskill-less artifacts, all that changed between steps was their durability, how tough and hard it was. The more durable an artifact was, though, the more force you could safely use on it—so the higher its effective cutting power.

Unfortunately, he just wouldn't— couldn't —use swords. He could see about selling the sword, though. Or maybe trading it. The cultivator's greaves and gauntlets beside the sword, though: those were a different story. Jieyuan picked one of the gauntlets up. It was a smooth, fluid piece of scale-plated steel armor, roughly following the outline of an arm, hand to elbow. He turned the gauntlet over in his hands. Reaching for his soulsenses again, he got a feel for its song.

Third-step Redrealm again, but with a spiritskill, though one that barely qualified as such. When it came to artifacts, chromal properties that required the user to actively sacrifice chroma were considered spiritskills. In the gauntlet's case, the spiritskill was a self-fitting ability that, assuming a steady influx of chroma, let it meld onto a cultivator's body like a second layer of skin.

He returned the gauntlet to the desk and repeated the process with the other gauntlet and the greaves, focusing on them with his soulsenses. Same results. No surprise there. They'd serve him well—only after he bonded them, though, which would only happen once he made it to third-step Redrealm and unlocked the ability to manipulate his chroma, a requirement to use the bonding ritual. Cultivators unlocked a different ability at each step of Redsoul. Redtalents, they were called.

Spiritual Perception (the soulsenses) at first-step. Physical Augmentation at second-step. Chromal Manipulation was the third-step Redtalent. You could still use some artifacts without bonding them, like space-holder bags. But even bonding these artifacts still usually provided an advantage in some way or another. In the case of a holder pouch, bonding them connected your soulsenses to its inside, and let you manipulate its internal dimensions to bring its contents to its mouth.

Bonding was especially important in the case of weapons, as bonding an artifact let you control the expression of their Law. Jieyuan pushed the four pieces of armor to the side. Which one now? His gaze lingered on the pill flasks, the wooden ring, and the jadebooks for a moment. It was the pair of silver rings that he settled on; he already had a fairly good idea of what they were. He picked them up and turned them about in his hand.

Both rings were plain, wide bands; physically, they were indistinguishable from each other. But his soulsenses told a different story. Their songs couldn't be any more different. Neither was blank; both were prime artifacts, with spiritskills. One had a couple of properties he could only roughly tell that had to do with the mind and communication.

Whereas the other was an all-cleanser, with much simpler properties: just the standard chromalization one all chromal artifacts had, and a spiritskill that let it vanish dirt, grime, and waste. Both inside and outside the body. The all-cleanser was at second-step Redrealm, which was standard. The other ring, though, was at fifth -step, and as far as he could tell, it was a mind-linker: what cultivators used for long-distance communication.

Supposedly, it worked by connecting the mind of two cultivators, letting them send thoughts to each other. Because of their complexity, linkers were at least fifth-step. Not something outer disciples usually had. But Jieyuan heard that everyone who made it into the inner court got one. It was, undoubtedly, the most precious artifact so far. Jieyuan eyed the mind-linker, wondering. Would he find anything in it? He wasn't sure how they worked, only that each one had a specific signature, a cipher, that identified it.

Each one was also supposed to contain a cipher roster: a list of recorded ciphers. Would he find Qingshi's mind-linker's cipher in it? Or did the cipher list get wiped when the owner of the mind-linker died? He wasn't sure. And it wasn't as if he'd be able to recognize Qingshi's mind-linker's cipher. It was unlikely he'd find anything incriminating, anyway. Cultivators weren't stupid.

I'll know once I break through to third-step, Jieyuan decided, before he tossed both rings back onto the desk and picked up the two pill flasks. Both held a pair of pills. The ones in the first flask were large and red-pink; the ones in the other were smaller and blue. With his soulsenses, Jieyuan found that all the pills were third-step Redrealm. That was all he could tell about them, though. Chromal pills had spirits just like artifacts, but he couldn't discern much by focusing on their songs.

His experience with chromal concoctions was minimal; he couldn't even begin to puzzle out their properties.

"Hmmm." He held up the flask with the larger reddish pills first. Even if their song didn't clue him in on their properties, he still had an inkling of what they were. He unstoppered the flask and took a whiff. Sickeningly sweet. Saccharine. Sure enough. The smell wasn't as strong as that of pure Cultivator's Agony—that was one scent he was never forgetting, that was for sure—but it was close enough. Just a little diluted. More to the point, he'd smelled it just last night. Jieyuan stoppered the flask.

He twirled it in his hand, rolling the pills inside it. These had to be the modified beacon pills Rongkai had used, the ones he'd mixed with Cultivator's Agony. Two of them. Jieyuan had never heard of such pills before, so they might be something Rongkai had come up with. The inner disciple had already used one on Daojue, meaning he'd had three on him when they left for their mission. Was he carrying the others with him just in case, or was he saving on using them for some other, unrelated situation?

Jieyuan wondered. What exactly did Rongkai have planned for me and Meiyao, anyway? Questions came to Jieyuan easily. Answers, not so much. Frowning, he turned his attention to the other pill flask and studied the blue pills rolling around inside. Though spiritually they were third-shade red, they were a mild blue physically. Cultivator's Agony antidote pills, he'd bet.

He didn't recognize them by sight or soulsenses, but based on last night's events, the way Rongkai hadn't been affected by the poisonous beacon dust, that should be an educated enough guess. Jieyuan returned both flasks to the table. The pills could come in handy further down the line. Now only the wooden ring and the jadebooks were left. The ring first, he decided. Holding up the wooden band between his fingertips, he gave it a more thorough inspection than he'd given the other items so far.

Unlike the metal rings, this one was sleek, thin, and looked like it'd been carved out of fatebloom wood. The color was a perfect match for it, the exact same vibrant shade of gold. But when Jieyuan reached out with his soulsenses, he failed to detect anything. Like the ring he was holding was just a perfectly mundane piece of wood.

"A mundane counterfeit?" Jieyuan mused. He'd never heard about mundanes trying to replicate fatebloom wood, though, and that was the kind of thing that would have reached his ears, being a merchant's son. But if it wasn't a counterfeit, there was only one other explanation. Eyes narrowing, he held the ring between two fingers and exerted the slightest bit of pressure on the band. It didn't crack or creak.

Had it been mundane, he should have been able to crush it with barely any effort because of the Law gap between them. But that hadn't happened. Jieyuan's heart started beating faster. You could only sense things at the same realm as your own and lower with your soulsenses. Entities at a higher realm were above spiritual perception. It wasn't just a Law thing, as far as he knew; supposedly, it also had to do with how chroma worked, something to do with vibrations and frequencies.

He moved the ring back to the center of his palm, then closed his hand around it, forming a fist. He tightened his grip, putting pressure on it. Instead of being crushed, the ring dug into his palm. Never mind breaking; the wood didn't so much as bend in the slightest. No give to it. That was proof enough, but he still felt the need to take it further.

He drew on his mantle—the aura-like emanation of his soul, suffusing his body—to augment his strength, tapping into the strange pressure that had dwelt inside his muscles ever since he'd broken through to second-step, a well of strength waiting to be drawn upon. But even then, wielding the strength of four men, he still felt the ring pushing back against his palm, perfectly whole. Well, that's damning. Jieyuan opened his hand and looked the ring over. No signs of damage whatsoever.

The ring was chromal, and at least Orangerealm at that. The strength of your Law was proportional to your realm, and the Law gap between realms was the same as the one between Redrealm and mundane. Jieyuan stared at the ring in wonder. First a violet skillseed. Now a higher-realm ring made out of fatebloom wood. Except it probably wasn't real fatebloom wood, either, because that was supposed to be a Redrealm material. Not a mundane counterfeit of fatebloom wood, then, but a higher-realm variation of it.

Just what kind of secrets were you keeping, Rongkai? Setting the ring back down on the desk, Jieyuan turned his attention to the two jadebooks. The answers he was after might be in them. Why Rongkai had tried to kill Daojue, the origin of the violet skillseed, the mystery of the wooden ring. Or maybe not; those seem like the kind of things you're better off not leaving any evidence of. Either way, Jieyuan couldn't do anything about that right now.

You didn't need to bond a jadebook to read its contents, but you did need to connect to them through your chroma. Stolen story; please report. Third-step Redrealm—and the Redtalent that came from reaching it, the ability to control his chroma—really couldn't come fast enough. Jieyuan leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and took a moment to consider everything on the desk. One thing was for sure.

If this was the kind of return he could expect, he hoped there would be more assassination attempts for him to thwart in the future. He couldn't use most of these new artifacts right now, but he wasn't far from his next breakthrough. Jieyuan put it all away in the third-step holder pouch. He also dumped everything he might still want from his old pouch (namely, the little sum of prisms he'd already gathered as well as some jadebooks) into the new one. And that's that. Now for the main business of the day.

Jieyuan got up from the chair and walked to the meditation mat in the center of his bedroom and sat back down on it. Fishing the violet skillseed out of his pocket, he held it over his lap in his closed fist, closed his eyes, and concentrated on his soulsenses. He'd never seen, let alone held, a skillseed before. But he'd both heard and read plenty about them. And because of that, he knew that when you focused on one with your soulsenses… Absolute Will Command. The words just flowed into his mind. A name.

And along with it, he started to feel things. Ideas, concepts. Authority. Control. Willpower. It wasn't the words themselves that he perceived, but the meaning of them. Their essence. It was a much deeper experience than feeling the song of a chromal artifact or pill. And as he inspected the skillseed's Law, he felt in complete control, like he was bending others to his will. Opening his eyes, suddenly a little breathless, Jieyuan held up the skillseed. Absolute Will Command. That was its name.

A bondskill derived from the Concepts of Control, Authority, and Willpower. Authority most of all, though, which made it the bondskill's core Concept, the one it was primarily connected to. Had the skillseed not been violet—had the bondskill inside it not already been Violetrealm—Authority was the Concept he'd have had to pursue in order to increase Absolute Will Command's realm and unlock all its forms.

As it was, though, all those forms were already unlocked; he just needed to reach the corresponding realms to access them. No need to waste time raising his affinity with the Concept of Authority. Already a massive advantage, that. The problem with Concept pursuit was that it was terribly time-consuming. And time was a resource Jieyuan dearly lacked; he needed to catch up to Daojue and Meiyao, and time spent not cultivating or practicing martial arts was time lost.

He'd even been considering looking for a Fire-aligned bondskill so he wouldn't have to bother with Concept pursuit, but a higher-realm bondskill worked just as well. He would probably have to engage in Concept pursuit eventually; he'd read it was also how cultivators created new bondskills and heavenly hymns, using Concept pursuit to seek inspiration from the Heavens.

At least for the time being, though, he didn't need to worry about such things, so by bonding Absolute Will Command, he should be spared the need for Concept pursuit at least throughout Redrealm.

"Authority. Control. Willpower," Jieyuan said, testing the words and finding he liked the taste of them. He couldn't tell what exactly Absolute Will Command did, but what he'd sensed seemed promising. He also couldn't help but recall how Rongkai had almost managed to kill Daojue with it. That was a point in its favor; anything that could bring someone like Daojue down had to be powerful.

"Hmmm." Sprouting a skillseed—bonding it—wasn't the kind of decision you made lightly. Once sprouted, a skillseed bloomed into a bondskill within you, and then only death would do you and it apart. You also could only hold one bondskill per realm. Up to six bondskills at Violetrealm. Even if the books he'd read on the subject were wrong and there did exist a way to get rid of a sprouted bondskill, he'd still be stuck with any he took into himself for a good while.

He eyed the tiny violet crystal; it caught a stray slice of sunlight, gleaming with it. He felt conflicted. He was tempted to just sprout it there and then, but also worried he might come to regret it. That he might one day find a bondskill that suited him better and lack the space in his Law for it because of one hasty decision made as a Redsoul. Indecision dies in the face of weighed truths. The words came to him in his old man's voice, deep and slightly rasping.

He and his father hadn't exactly gotten along, particularly toward the end, when Jieyuan had made his intentions to become a cultivator clear. But more often than he'd have liked, Jieyuan found himself relying on the man's words and lessons. Jieyuan set the facts on the balance of his mind. On the one hand, he could wait until he had other options before finally making his decision.

He wasn't too keen on the Gleaming Stone Sect's two signature bondskills, but if everything went right, he would be leaving the sect in a few months' time for greener pastures, and once he was in an Orangerealm sect, he should have a much wider pool of bondskills to take his pick from. On the other hand, this was a Violetrealm skillseed. All its forms were already unlocked. More importantly, it had once been wielded by a Violetsoul.

All skillseeds started out as bondskills—manifested already bound to a cultivator's Law after years of Concept pursuit and a great deal of luck. Only when a cultivator died did their bondskills become skillseeds, after which another cultivator could sprout instead of manifesting a bondskill from scratch themselves. A violet skillseed, then, must've come from a Violetsoul. And Jieyuan could hardly think of a more ringing endorsement. There were issues with postponing sprouting it, too.

The longer he kept it on his person, the higher the odds of someone somehow finding out about it. The balance was already tipping, and Jieyuan wasn't done weighing the facts yet. If he was planning on sticking around Daojue, chances were he'd be in for quite a lot of trouble if yesterday's events were anything to go by. Having a bondskill would go a long way in increasing his odds of making it through.

If Jieyuan kept delaying sprouting any skillseeds he got his hands on just because he might get more later, he might very well die bondskill-less. Jieyuan rolled the skillseed between his fingers. There was something else, too. Something that shouldn't have mattered much, but did anyway. Daojue already had a bondskill; Jieyuan was sure of it. So did Meiyao, if her lack of interest in a violet skillseed was any indication.

That made him the only one out of the three of them without a bondskill, and he didn't like the sound of that. There were already plenty of ways in which he was behind the two of them. He hardly needed another. The balance in his mind tipped overwhelmingly in one direction. Indecision died a quick, merciless death. Jieyuan didn't hesitate; he popped the skillseed into his mouth and swallowed it down, ignoring how its edges scraped his throat. His heart beat wildly in his chest.

He straightened his back, closing his eyes again, preparing himself. Now he just needed to wait a few moments, and— A profound sense of weightlessness came over Jieyuan, and he opened his eyes without really thinking. He wasn't in his bedroom anymore. Above him, both impossibly distant and within arm's reach, was a vast, starry sky—an ocean of silver orbs lighting up a fathomless black void. Jieyuan knew what was happening, the significance of it, but there wasn't any weight behind that knowledge.

His thoughts felt faint, intangible, barely causing any ripples in the serenity that now suffused his mind. His emotions, just shy of nonexistent. All he felt was a vague, illusory notion of awe at the realization that he was looking at the Heavens themselves. That each of those silver stars was one of the Laws that governed reality. His gaze drifted down, and he saw himself, red-robed, sitting cross-legged beneath the starry sky. Like the Heavenly Vault above, his body seemed both far away and just within reach.

From the top of his head sprouted a long, silver line. It shot upwards like a bamboo sprout, and upon reaching the sky, it split into countless little lines, each of them connecting to a silver star. Like branches, the lines kept spreading, extending, and soon the stars were starting to look like little silver leaves, and the original line extending from his head like a trunk. This, Jieyuan realized, was the bond in bond skill.

A direct connection between yourself and Concepts, through which you channeled their powers. The moment the image of a tree was complete, stretching out from his body and wearing the sky and stars as its crown, Jieyuan found himself back in his bedroom, staring at a blank stone wall. For one uncomprehending moment, he sat there, struck dumb. Then his mind kicked into high gear, and he let out a slow breath.

He'd heard of the vision people saw when assimilating a skillseed—the vision of the Heavenly Vault—but he hadn't thought it'd be so intense. He could also feel something inside himself. Not that heavenly presence—he wasn't Communing anymore—but something slighter. Something that felt like a part of him. Something natural, like another limb, one he couldn't see, but could still control. And with it came information. Not a surge of it, nothing he'd need to go over and assimilate.

This bit of knowing was already part of him, already known. After what had gone down with Amyas's memories last night, he much appreciated the lack of head-splitting headaches and crippling confusion.

"Absolute Mind Command," Jieyuan said, testing the word. That was the name of Absolute Will Command's first form; its Redrealm form. Bondskill forms were something else he'd read about. They were variations of a bondskill, one for each realm. Sometimes they were direct upgrades over each other; but there were supposedly cases in which each form had a different use. He wasn't sure where Absolute Will Command fell; he had no way to tell what its other five forms were.

They were all unlocked, since Absolute Will Command was already at Violetrealm, but he couldn't access them—or even learn their names or effects—until he reached their corresponding realms. For the time being, though, Absolute Mind Command should give him plenty to work with. And he felt like getting started immediately. Jieyuan got to his feet, already considering his options. He would need someone to practice with.

Absolute Will Command was all about exerting your will on someone else, and as much as he understood how it worked in theory, he needed to put it to use to get a proper feel for it. Problem was, he didn't have anyone he could just call on. Over the last two months, he hadn't spent much time building connections. For one, he'd been too busy trying to keep up with Daojue and Meiyao. For another, everything indicated he'd soon be scouted by the Howling Lightning Sect in the Radiant Gold Summit.

There was little point in getting to know the cultivators of the Gleaming Stone Sect when he'd only be here for less than half a year. Besides, between cultivation and martial arts, Jieyuan was already plenty busy. He'd participated in a few informal competitions held by outer elders (there were several every week), but he'd also stopped bothering with them. Ever since Jieyuan had broken through to second-step, nobody he'd faced had been able to put up much of a fight against him.

Out of everyone in the sect, the two people he'd interacted with the most were Meiyao and Daojue—and he'd only dealt with them as far as the dozen or so missions they'd taken together had required (they'd never shown up in the competitions, much to Jieyuan's disappointment). Gleaming Stone Sect disciples were required to complete one mission every week, and new disciples were assigned fixed teams for those obligatory missions.

Jieyuan's team was himself, Meiyao, and Daojue, with the occasional randomly assigned inner disciple for missions outside the sect.

"Meiyao or Daojue, then," Jieyuan decided. He'd check with Meiyao first. Chances were Daojue wouldn't dignify his request with a response, just stare at him until he got the message and left. Meiyao wasn't exactly the most approachable person in the world, either, but compared to Daojue, anyone was a paragon of amiability. She also seemed to be at least somewhat reasonable. No time like the present. Jieyuan was about to set off when he felt a groan from his stomach. Right.

It'd been a while since he'd last taken a fasting pill. His throat was a little parched, too. He reached into one of the inner pockets of his robes and retrieved a small, metallic flask. From it he fished out two small pills half the size of his thumb, one white, the other green. The first a fasting pill, the second a cleansing pill. He flicked the white pill into his mouth without ceremony. Swallowed. He gave it a second, two, three —and then he felt a feeling of satiation wash over him. His thirst was gone, too.

Fasting pills, one of the most jarring changes brought upon by his new life. No need for food or water; just pop one of those, and you'd be good to go for a couple of days. Jieyuan wasn't sure how exactly they worked, but the body still produced waste when you took them (though a lot less). But that was what the other pill was for. Because if cultivators couldn't be bothered to eat, they sure as rot weren't about to deign to deal with their bodily functions. Jieyuan popped the green pill. Gave it a little bit.

And then felt a different sensation, a feeling of freshness, filling him up. And just like that, any sort of waste he might have produced over the last few days was gone, the contents of both his bladder and intestines vanished. His first few weeks as a cultivator, he'd still sometimes feel the need to use the bathroom, but it'd been a month now since he'd last felt the urge; his body had already acclimated. Once Jieyuan reached fifth-step, he wouldn't even have to bother with the pills.

The fifth-step Redtalent was Chromal Sustenance, the ability to sustain themselves solely on chroma. Waste wasn't produced at all when you used Chromal Sustenance; or if it was, the Redtalent also vanished it passively (Jieyuan wasn't sure). After he reached third-step, though, and became able to use artifacts, he could at least do away with the cleansing pill; all-cleansers cleaned you inside and out, supposedly.

His body's needs dealt with, Jieyuan left his bedroom, stepping out into the little, narrow corridor connecting the living room to his bedroom, the bathroom, and the garden. Right ahead of him was the bathroom door. To his left was a slender sliding door that led to the backyard, while his right led down to the living room. The bathroom. He glanced down at himself, taking in his ruffled clothes. Tentatively, he lowered his head and gave himself a little sniff.

It wasn't too bad, and normally he wouldn't have minded going out like this. But it was Meiyao he planned on meeting. Sighing, he went back into his room, got a change of his clothes from his chest, then made a quick stop in his bathroom to freshen up. A short while later, he walked out of it in clean clothes, his hair wet and brushed back (though it would be halfway to dry and messy again by the time he reached Meiyao's).

His living room wasn't much bigger than his bedroom, and empty save for a wooden table surrounded by four chairs in the center of it. On the left and right walls were three evenly spaced square windows half-covered by wooden blinds, just like the one in his bedroom. He walked past it, making straight for the entrance. New disciples were assigned dwellings based on their rank in the entrance trials. As he'd placed third, Jieyuan had been given one of the better houses available for outer disciples.

Meiyao and Daojue, having placed higher than him, had gotten the same treatment. They all lived near each other. Meiyao's place, in particular, was just six houses down from his. Jieyuan would drop by and see if she was willing to help him out. In return, he could offer to serve as her sparring partner, or maybe as someone to practice a technique on. Only a couple of steps away from the door, he felt a pressure in the back of his head, accompanied by the knowledge that someone was at his doorstep.

It was the proximity ward around his house (a type of inscribed field, set up and keyed to him by one of the sect elders) alerting him to the presence of someone nearing his residence. Knocking sounds came from the door. Jieyuan stopped mid-step for a beat, then resumed his walk to the door. He reached out with his soulsenses, and caught the soul and mantle of a second-step Redrealm behind the door.

He could also detect the proximity ward: a very faint presence suffusing the air around his house, lacking spiritually visible or audible aspects, being just an impression. Ignoring the inscribed field, Jieyuan concentrated on the soul, searching for its song. A graceful, vibrant melody resonating through ancient woods. Proud, if not lofty, majestic. He recognized this song. Sure enough, opening the door he found Meiyao on the other side.

She looked as absurdly beautiful as she always did, standing on his doorstep with her arms crossed, almost glowing under the shine of the midday sun. Her hair, he noticed, was wet much like his own, brushed back and bound. A bit of moisture still clung to her skin; she must've just gotten out of the bath too. Heavens damn it. Jieyuan forced himself to pry his eye off her, to look anywhere but Meiyao.

Behind her was a pristine stone path, leading down the main pathway, to which other houses identical to his own were connected. Ruby-leafed trees and shrubs surrounded the pathways. Trees and shrubs. Yes. They're looking very red, aren't they? Meiyao blinked at him.

"That was quick."

"I was on my way out." To see you, in fact. Jieyuan very carefully returned his gaze back to her. Steady now. Don't stare. She waved her hand dismissively.

"Whatever it was you were planning on doing, you can save it for later," she said.

"We're on the same team for the Gleamstone Hunt." The Gleamstone Hunt. Jieyuan knew what it was, of course—it almost always came up in conversations when the Radiant Gold Summit was mentioned. The sect held the Hunt every five years, a month and a half before the Radiant Gold Summit. All disciples of the right age to attend the Summit with at least second-order heavenly affinity were required to participate. They'd be divided into teams and sent to the Gleamstone Valley to kill the chromal beasts that lived there.

It served as both population control so that the chromal beasts wouldn't spill out of the valley, and as a way to foster competition and hand out rewards in preparation for the Summit. Signing two deals with one stroke.

"I thought the teams would only be announced four days from now," Jieyuan said absently, his mind on the Hunt—and how it'd be much easier to propose training together if they were going to be teamed up for a month-spanning event like the Gleamstone Hunt. And how it'd also let him keep an eye on Daojue.

"Officially, yes. But ours was decided today." Jieyuan didn't need to ask how she'd found out. She was the chief elder's daughter, and even if the rumors were true and she didn't see eye-to-eye with her father, she must still have connections among the upper echelons of the sect.

"You, me, and Daojue?" The teams for the Hunt weren't necessarily the same ones as the temporary mission teams new disciples were assigned, but Jieyuan had a feeling that this would be the case, given the unique circumstances of the three of them.

"Precisely," Meiyao said.

"I already have some plans for the Hunt, and the earlier we go through them together, the better." Jieyuan stepped forward, closing the door behind him.

"Off to Daojue's, then?"

"That's right." Already she was turning around.

"You do realize there's a chance that he'll just turn us away at the door, right?" Jieyuan said as he followed her into the main pathway. Meiyao huffed.

"We'll see about that," she said, challenge clear in her voice. She was supposed to be a Woodsoul, but she sure came across as a Firesoul at times. They set off down the path, Meiyao at the lead. There were other cultivators on the main pathway. Invariably, each and every one of them, men and women, glanced at Meiyao. Invariably, Meiyao ignored all the glances. Normally, Jieyuan drew a bit of attention himself; he was well-known in the outer court because of his heavenly affinity.

With Meiyao around, though, he found that nobody spared him a first glance, let alone a second one. Jieyuan didn't blame them. He had a hard time keeping his gaze off Meiyao, himself. He tried to think up something to distract himself with. It didn't take long for his thoughts to drift to Amyas Auclair's memories. They'd been bubbling to the forefront of his mind every so often for a while now, and he'd been doing his best to push them back. He didn't see the point in dwelling on them.

He was Haoyujin Jieyuan now, no matter who he might have been before. Besides, he had already had enough on his plate as it was; he didn't feel like adding existential confusion to it, thank you very much. But then his gaze drifted back to Meiyao, to the way her hips— He averted his eyes. Amyas's memories, was it? Suddenly they seemed much more interesting. Anything to distract himself, really. He pulled one up at random.

They were all there, floating in his mind, just under his thoughts, and he could bring them up to the surface at a moment's notice. And he saw himself— Amyas —in a classroom. The teacher stood in front of the blackboard. The words on it were blurry, the chalk lines indistinct, but Jieyuan got a general impression of what was being taught. Something about… Physics? Rotational force? Torque? He could feel Amyas's boredom.

At this point in time, he'd already given up on making it big in the sciences, accepting he'd never live up to his sister's reputation. Jieyuan kept walking, following Meiyao but ignoring everything else as the memory played out; it wasn't really happening in real time, and most of what he was getting was impressions and feelings. But he was also getting the knowledge. Just moments ago he wouldn't have been able to explain what torque was. Now he knew all about it. Inertia. Angular momentum. Vectors.

The memory faded, but the information lingered. This … could be useful, Jieyuan realized. Amyas had knowledge Jieyuan lacked. Knowledge Jieyuan needed. Cultivators had been around for at least hundreds of thousands of years, as far as Jieyuan knew, and over that time they'd managed to come to a rather accurate understanding of how the world worked. Making sense of reality was one of the fundamental parts of cultivation. After all, you couldn't pursue a Concept if you didn't know it existed.

Like friction, or gravity, or entropy. Jieyuan recalled seeing books on atoms, fundamental forces, and cellular biology back in the outer court's library. At the time, he'd only had a very faint idea of what those words meant. He was a merchant's son. He'd been raised to take over the family business. His lessons had mostly revolved around mathematics, administration, commerce, and economics—as well as embezzlement, smuggling, and sabotage (a well-rounded education, his old man had liked to say).

He was still better off than most mundanes, though. Your average one would've been hard-pressed to tell the difference between chemistry and biology. They had no use for that kind of knowledge; mundane technology was virtually nonexistent (his old man had come up with a few theories about why that was the case). Children with cultivators for parents, on the other hand, would've been taught all those things growing up.

A chromal-born's education was both broad and deep, with an emphasis on the sciences—much like that of someone from modern Earth. Much like Amyas's. Jieyuan had been aware that he was lacking in that regard, but he hadn't really had the time to address the issue; he'd been too busy playing catch-up to Daojue and Meiyao in cultivation and martial arts. Amyas's memories could serve as a shortcut.

They wouldn't give him an advantage over everyone else (he doubted there was anything in them cultivators hadn't already figured out for themselves), but they would go a long way in bridging the gap between himself and chromal-born cultivators. Jieyuan skimmed through the memories. Finding another one taking place in a classroom, he brought it into focus. The subject was chemistry this time. Atomic structure. Protons, electrons, neutrons. He could vaguely feel Amyas's thoughts.

How he was wondering just what use he could possibly have later in life for knowing the composition of an atom. Jieyuan couldn't help but smirk. It turned out that Amyas had gotten the scope of his question wrong. It wasn't about whether that knowledge might be useful later in life, but rather, in the next life.