Chương 88: Chapter 87: TO BE OVER

CHAPTER 87 TO BE OVER —∞— Still reeling from the complete turn of events, Jieyuan could do nothing but watch as Qingshi moved to Yunzhu's side, knelt, and wrapped an arm around her. Yunzhu was sobbing now, whimpering quietly as she cradled her father's crystallized corpse in her arms, and she didn't hesitate to lean into Qingshi's embrace. Qingshi, who was to blame for her father's current state. Qingshi murmured something to Yunzhu, too quiet for Jieyuan to make out; Yunzhu just kept sobbing.

Jieyuan didn't even know where to begin making sense of that, so he didn't even bother. A glance at Wanxin told Jieyuan Yunzhu's mother seemed just as dumbstruck as he felt, if not even more so. Wanxin was still standing where the blood cocoon had been, a large pool of fetid blood around her feet, as she stared—eyes wide and pale, a look of utter incomprehension on her face—at her daughter and at what had become of her husband. What now? Jieyuan wondered.

Fatebloom Incarnation was still ongoing, even if it was only a matter of seconds now before it petered out. His body was already fully healed. Huaxin would be out of commission for a good while afterward, and it'd be a month before he could use Fatebloom Incarnation again, but besides that, he was just as fresh as he'd been at the start of this whole debacle.

He glanced at Meiyao; she still had her upper body raised off the ground, sitting up with her broken arms dangling uselessly to the side and her broken legs lying just as uselessly on the ground. Jieyuan moved his gaze to Daojue and confirmed his friend hadn't moved either, standing on just his left leg, his right arm and leg hanging limp. He was still holding the metal cylinder with his left hand, but the spear of light was gone. It was just a cylinder again. They were in no condition to make a run for it.

Not that that had ever been an option, though. Even if Meiyao and Daojue had been in tip-top shape and primed for a quick getaway, they wouldn't have been able to outrun Qingshi and Yunzhu. Taishou, the biggest danger, was dead. But the three of them were hardly out of trouble. Jieyuan's heart skipped. And then a sudden, profound feeling of weakness washed over him, like a sand castle dissolved by an abrupt wave.

That feeling of immense strength, that perfect control over his body, that unnatural keenness of his soulsenses—all of it vanished from one moment to the next. And, along with it, Huaxin's presence in his mind. Jieyuan swayed for a moment, unsteady, but quickly recollected himself. He glanced down at his hands. Sure enough, the glowing streaks of golden veins were gone. He took a deep breath. He felt hollowed out. Drained empty. Not that he was actually exhausted, though.

Ninth-step Redsouls were just shy of untiring (tenth-steps were truly incapable of getting tired). But compared to the limitless energy he'd felt under Fatebloom Incarnation, he might as well have been halfway dead. Yunzhu slowly stood back up; Qingshi rose smoothly alongside her. Qingshi's arm was still wrapped around Yunzhu's shoulders, and Yunzhu was still leaning into him. Taishou's body was left on the ground, gleaming and crystalline and barely distinguishable from the crystal underneath it.

Yunzhu's blood-red gemstone eyes lingered on her father's corpse for a little longer before rising. Her face was wet with tears. Her gaze went first to her mother before slowly, inevitably, shifting to Jieyuan and Meiyao, and finally to Daojue. Qingshi also regarded them; he had no eyes with which to see them, but Jieyuan just knew the man was focusing on them.

There the two of them stood, under the glare of the sun reflected by the gleamstone ground, Taishou's crystallized corpse at their feet, the ground around them drenched in blood and littered with corpses of family and severed heads. The air was thick with the foul stench of the unnaturally red blood of the transformed Liangshibai clansmen.

"Well," Qingshi began.

"It appears—" An abrupt pause. Qingshi's brow furrowed, and he tipped his head down. Toward the Gleamstone Maw. Yunzhu also looked down at it. She wasn't frowning like Qingshi was, but there was an unsettling touch to her gaze that he knew all too well. What's this now? Jieyuan glanced at Wanxin. She was also staring fixedly at the Gleamstone Maw. And the look in her sapphire eyes—it reminded Jieyuan awfully of the one that lurked in her daughter's gaze.

A blank, terrible intensity that belied a deep, unnatural fixation. The air shook. So did the crystalline ground. Jieyuan's whole body shook with it. His bones rattled; his teeth chattered; his ears thrummed. It took Jieyuan a moment to understand what was happening: there was a sound rising from the Maw. An impossibly deep sound, like the motion of a mountain. But Jieyuan knew what it was. A hiss. It didn't sound anything like a hiss. But he knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that what he was hearing was a hiss.

Faintly, Jieyuan could hear other sounds: sharp, ringing chimes. It was the Gleamstone Valley, vibrating to the hiss, the crystalline landscape singing its eerie, sibilant song under its thrall. The hiss ended. The valley quieted. Jieyuan's body stopped trembling. But Qingshi and Yunzhu and Wanxin were still fully concentrating on the Gleamstone Maw. And then Qingshi said, softly, reverentially, like a prayer, "It has awoken." Yunzhu said nothing. She took a step forward. Another.

She was at the very edge of the Maw, now. She looked down. She looked utterly entranced. But then something flickered across her expression, and she frowned before looking back at Qingshi.

"We need to go." Go? They were staring into the Gleamstone Maw. Jieyuan wasn't sure he was reading the situation correctly. But if he was right…

"Yes," Qingshi said. He also sounded off, unsteady. Uncertain. His normally expressive face was slack. Rather woodenly, he joined Yunzhu at the very edge of the Maw. Jieyuan stared. Something bright flickered inside him. Oh, Heavens, please let me be right. Yunzhu turned her red eyes to Jieyuan and Meiyao, then to Daojue. Her gaze still had that fathomless, deeply unsettling quality. She cocked her head. Considering. Jieyuan's heart seized. No.

"Yunzhu, don't." Yunzhu turned in the other direction. Toward her mother. So did Jieyuan, Meiyao, and Daojue. Wanxin's eyes were firmly on her daughter, now.

"Mother?" Yunzhu asked.

"No more. No more of… what your father did. It's over, Yunzhu." Sapphire eyes peered into blood-red ones." Please." Yunzhu looked away from her mother. Back to Jieyuan and Meiyao, and then to Daojue. And then back down at the Maw. She sighed.

"Yes, Mother." A pause. Yunzhu cocked her head again, but this time in her mother's direction. Wanxin was still standing in place.

"Mother?" Yunzhu asked.

"Aren't you coming?"

"I…" Wanxin's eyes flitted down to the Maw, then back up to her daughter. Suddenly, she looked tense, like she was struggling with something.

"I… I'll be right along." Yunzhu nodded. Then, she took Qingshi's hand and stepped off into the Gleamstone Maw, Qingshi mirroring her. They fell together, out of sight. What. Jieyuan could hardly bring himself to believe it. His heart raced. It happened. It really happened.

"Aunt Wanxin?" Meiyao's voice. Jieyuan turned to his lover and saw that she had her attention on Wanxin. Wanxin approached. Slowly. She kept glancing toward the Gleamstone Maw. She stopped, though, in front of a pair of corpses. Corpses that weren't wearing red robes. One missing its head, the other missing its chest. Yuyan's and Junjie's bodies. This time, Wanxin's gaze didn't flicker to the Maw. She stared firmly at the corpses, face stony. Meiyao had also turned her attention to the bodies.

Wanxin then looked up, her gaze coming to rest on another body in white, this one just at the edge of the Maw. Yongyi's body. Meiyao also looked at it. And all the stupefied elation that had come over him with Yunzhu's and Qingshi's abrupt exit faded. From the looks of it, he, Meiyao, and Daojue had managed to survive. But the same couldn't be said about Meiyao's family. And that had been the whole reason they had taken this risk in the first place. Saving her family.

There was still the rest of the Liangshibai clan, supposedly being evacuated by the Viridian Death Cults. But the ones that really mattered—to Meiyao, and to them by extension—were all here, in the middle of the Gleamstone Valley. And only one of them still lived. They had won; they'd made it out alive. They had also utterly failed. Rot. Meiyao's green eyes were like drops of jade, stone-cold, as she regarded the corpses of her family. She wore a dead look.

Jieyuan shifted himself to the side and back, moving to kneel behind Meiyao, then pulled her back into his chest, her hair just brushing against his chin, careful not to disturb her broken arms. She didn't resist. Didn't react, in any which way. Just stared at the dead people they had meant to save. He didn't say anything. Meiyao didn't need words, right now. What she needed was her family alive, and he couldn't give that to her.

Xiaohu gave a low, sad whine before jumping onto Meiyao's shoulders and coiling around her master's neck. Wanxin approached, leaving the corpse of her sister and brother-in-law behind. She glanced briefly at the red-robed corpse by Daojue's feet—her father's corpse—but then shifted her gaze down to Jieyuan and Meiyao. She knelt in front of them, then reached over, cupping Meiyao's chin. Wanxin smiled sadly. Her eyes were watering, now.

"I'm so sorry, dear."

"I…" Meiyao began, her voice thick. Jieyuan rose a little higher and craned his neck down, searching Meiyao's face. The coldness had melted away from her eyes, their corners turning moist just like Wanxin's.

"Aunt, you…"

"I'm sorry," Wanxin repeated, an odd look in her eyes that set Jieyuan on edge.

"But I must leave you as well, my dear." Meiyao froze up. She looked past Wanxin to the fissure in the ground.

"The… Depths?" Meiyao asked. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"The Depths," Wanxin agreed.

"But… why?" Meiyao asked. Wanxin frowned. She still looked off, like she was only half-there, with them.

"You already know about it. The Pull. It's always been there, drawing us toward the Depths. And it's stronger now. Stronger than it's ever been. Too strong to resist. Whatever's down there, calling us, making our blood sing… It has awakened. That power Qingshi used to fight Taishou. I think that's what did it. What woke it. What drew its attention." Jieyuan felt cold all over.

"It?" Meiyao said.

"What is it? What's awake, Aunt Wanxin?" Wanxin seemed to lose what little grip she still had on the present, on their conversation. Her expression completely lost focus, and her head began to turn to the side, toward the Maw, before she blinked and concentrated back on them.

"I don't know," Wanxin said, sounding alarmingly calm.

"But… You can't…" Wanxin shook her head.

"Meiyao, it's taking everything I have right now to resist it. Rot, every moment I have to remind myself that I want to resist it. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up. I'm so, so sorry, girl." Meiyao looked at Wanxin in horrified disbelief. It only got worse as Wanxin went on.

"You'll have to take care of the funeral rites. For everyone here. They deserve at least that much. Even the ones… the ones my husband… transformed. Can you do that for me, Meiyao?" Meiyao seemed at a loss for words.

"I…"" Please." Wanxin's blue eyes were suddenly desperate. Just like when she'd begged her daughter, earlier, to spare them.

"Wanxin," Jieyuan cut in, uncomfortable, "I don't think—""I will do it," Meiyao said, like she hadn't heard him. Jieyuan wasn't sure she had. Wanxin's look was one of sad relief.

"Thank you."

"Will you… Will you be coming back?" Meiyao asked, and Jieyuan got the impression she hated the words coming out of her mouth.

"From the Depths?"

"I don't know," Wanxin said.

"But probably… probably not." Then Wanxin seemed to hesitate.

"Those things Taishou said about your mother. I hope they are true. I hope you are reunited with Lianhua. But if you aren't… There are things you must know, Meiyao. About Lianhua and Yuyan and Junjie. We might never meet again, and you need to know the truth. Especially about Junjie. I owe it to the man, if nothing else." Meiyao blinked. Confusion crept into her face.

"Truth? What truth?"

"Your father… He didn't hate you. Nor did he hate your mother, like you seem to believe. In fact, he loved you two. More than anything. The Viridian Death Cult might have worshiped your mother, but Lianhua was Junjie's entire religion. Your mother, on the other hand, never cared for him. She was never interested in men, to begin with. And just as Junjie's heart belonged to Lianhua, Lianhua's heart belonged to Yuyan."

Meiyao's disbelief had only seemed to grow with every word Wanxin said, but at that last bit, Meiyao sat up so abruptly her head slammed into Jieyuan's chin. She didn't seem to notice.

"My mother… loved Aunt Yuyan? What?"

"Yes, she did. While my poor sister only had eyes for your father," Wanxin said.

"Yuyan loved your mother, but in the way she loved me. Like a sister. Yuyan had as little interest in women as Lianhua had in men. And all three of them would come to me with their woes. Even Junjie, believe it or not. I always thought it was some sick joke the Heavens had played on them." Wanxin gave a short, shaky, bitter laugh. Jieyuan noticed how she hadn't glanced at the Maw even once for a while now. It seemed like it was easier to resist the pull when your mind was busy with something else.

"I was the one to convince your father to marry Yuyan," Wanxin said.

"And I was also the one to convince Lianhua to marry your father afterward, telling her it'd be the closest she'd get to having Yuyan as her wife. Sister-wives, better than nothing. I thought that was the best solution to the whole problem. And it worked, somehow. For the most part."

"That can't…" Meiyao said. Disbelieving, or unwilling to believe.

"That can't be true."

"I'm afraid it is," Wanxin said.

"I even know exactly when you were conceived. Lianhua came to me in the middle of the night, disheveled, saying she'd murder your father come morning. The Heavens must have really wanted you to be born, because I believe that was the only time your parents ever lay together." Meiyao straightened up again.

"Did he force himself on her? Did he ra —""Oh, Heavens, no. Junjie would never. Lianhua… You have to understand, your mother was given to certain moods. Times when she wasn't exactly thinking straight. And your father… he misunderstood. Fool that he was. You have to understand, Lianhua could be impulsive like that. It was how I managed to convince her to marry your father. She never really thought things through. She never really outgrew her upbringing—the way she was worshiped and deified."

"No," Meiyao said, shaking her head.

"That can't be right. My father… When that man came, that man who took my mother away, my father… He just let the man do it. That's what everyone said. That my father didn't put up a fight. That my father just let the man take her away."

"And all of that is true," Wanxin said.

"Because Junjie could never deny Lianhua anything. When that man came and said he'd take her away—Lianhua told us all through a mind-link to let her be taken. Because there was nothing any of us could do about it, and because she wanted the man out of there as fast as possible, so that he wouldn't find out about you. She had known immediately it was her bloodline the man was after."

"No, no… That's… But what about me, then? My father, he never cared about me. He always kept away. Ignored me. He—" Wanxin smiled sadly.

"He stayed away, when Lianhua was around, because your mother made him do it. After she had you, she liked to pretend that you were her and Yuyan's daughter; his presence made it harder to keep up that illusion. And after Lianhua was gone… Junjie couldn't face you, because of the guilt. And because you reminded him too much of your mother." Meiyao still didn't seem to accept it.

"But the arranged marriage, with Dayang—""Was meant to ensure you'd leave the sect, that you'd take the Howling Lightning Sect's offer," Wanxin said.

"That you'd become an Orangerealm, and then a Yellowrealm—if not even higher. That you'd become strong enough so you'd never suffer your mother's fate. Your father also knew you'd then seek out Lianhua, once you were strong enough. He hoped you'd find her. That you'd bring her back." Wanxin took a deep breath, then nodded.

"Well… I think this is it. That's all I had to say. I…" Her expression flickered in the worst way. Grew distant.

"I need to go, now." Meiyao's eyes widened, but Wanxin was already on her feet and moving toward the Maw. Just like that.

"WANXIN!" Meiyao cried. Wanxin stopped at the edge of the Maw. Turned around. Sapphire eyes met green eyes.

"Please… Please don't," Meiyao said. Begged.

"Please don't leave me too." For a moment, Wanxin's expression tightened, her eyes clearing up again. Hesitation flashed across her face. But it was gone just as fast, and Wanxin turned back toward the Maw, leaving them facing her back. Then, without a word, she stepped into the empty air over the Maw and dropped out of sight. Just like Yunzhu and Qingshi had done earlier. And just like that, the last of Meiyao's family was gone. And only Jieyuan, Meiyao, and Daojue were left in the clearing.

Them, and a multitude of broken corpses. For a long while, Jieyuan just stayed there, kneeling, holding Meiyao to his chest, staring at the Maw. Wondering how so much could change so fast, and in so many different ways. Wondering if it wasn't just Lianhua, Yuyan, and Junjie that the Heavens liked to play sick jokes on. Meiyao was just as still as he was, the only movement coming from her that of her breath. Jieyuan didn't need to look down at her face to tell what expression she wore.

Clinking sounds drew Jieyuan's attention to the side, and he turned to see Daojue hopping over on his one good leg, his broken one still hanging limp. On someone else, it might have been a sad, if comical sight. Somehow, though, Daojue still managed to look both dignified and graceful as he hopped over. Daojue stopped beside them. He stayed standing on his sole foot.

"Jieyuan, put me up against a tree," Meiyao said, her voice curiously flat, lacking inflection. Jieyuan didn't hesitate to comply, carefully picking her up, propping her against his chest again, and moving over to the tree line. Meiyao kept turning her head as he carried her, looking down at the corpses around them without much expression. Daojue hopped along. Reaching the nearest tree, Jieyuan set Meiyao down even more carefully than he'd picked her up, propping her back against the crystal trunk.

Meiyao was still staring at the corpses.

"Gather them, please," she said. Jieyuan rose back to his feet. He made just a few steps before he heard those clinking sounds again, and turned to see that Daojue was following him, hopping after him on his good leg. Jieyuan almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

"Don't be stupid. Sit down." Daojue's violet eyes were undecipherable as they peered into Jieyuan's. Then, wordlessly, Daojue hopped over to the next tree over and sat down. Jieyuan walked back into the clearing. He stopped and stood there, just for a moment. Scanning the area, considering the corpses. Remembering all that had just happened.

"Rot," he murmured to himself. He noticed the Shifting Sisters lying on the ground. The crystal floor around them was curiously clear, devoid of blood. Their egos had been crying in his head the whole time, desperate to return to him, but with everything that had been going on, he'd been forced to block out their connection so he could concentrate. Sorry about that, girls. There was a shot of joy to their bond at being heard, followed by a frantic desire to be picked up. Jieyuan walked over.

He was about halfway there when Meiyao's scream cut through the air, "JIEYUAN!" Jieyuan spun on his feet, scanning for danger—but all he saw was a wave of darkness. Enveloping him. And then he didn't know anything anymore. —∞— When Jieyuan came to, he was bound to a chair. It took less than a second for instinct and clarity to kick in. He quickly took stock of the situation. The first thing he noticed, before anything else, was that he didn't have his soulsenses.

His mundane senses were working just fine, but his soulsenses were beyond him. A void, where they should've been. He was in the middle of a room. Roughly square, big. Metal walls, perfectly even. Dust-free, too. The room looked empty save for himself and the chair he was bound to. No smell stuck out to him. On the ceiling were glowing white stones, filling the room with dim, pale light. Directly opposite him was a door.

Heart and mind both racing, alarmed to the Heavens and back, Jieyuan turned his attention to the chair. It was a standard chair. Metal. The bindings on his arms and legs looked like leather, wrapped around the arms and front legs of the chair. He tested them, but they held fast. He couldn't access his mantle and the strength it offered him. It was as if he was back in the Absolute Sword Trials. As if he'd been rendered mundane again. He also tried to move the chair itself, but it seemed fixed to the floor.

The door opened, revealing a woman and a metal corridor behind her. The woman stopped there at the doorway, eyes wide, staring at him.

"You're awake." The woman was familiar. Tall, strong-jawed, sharp-eyed. Halfway between handsome and beautiful. It took Jieyuan just a moment to place her.

"Xiyunfeng Caoluan," Jieyuan said. The woman from the Xiyunfeng Clan he'd faced in the fifth round of the Radiant Gold Tournament, before his fight with Yongyi. The one who'd almost beaten him. Also the one who'd warned him of the Xiyunfeng Clan's and the Gleaming Noble's revolution. She looked different, though. When he'd faced her in the ring, she'd stood cold and proud and tall.

And later, in the golden corridors of the palace, when she'd been grieving Xianjun—the Xiyunfeng heir who'd committed suicide by Daojue—she'd still had that steel in her spine and eyes. She looked different now. Her clothes were gray and drab. A servant's clothes, Jieyuan couldn't help but note. Her face was a reflection of her attire: drawn, tired, in a way he hadn't thought possible for a cultivator. What in the Heavens is going on? It made no sense. Caoluan remained on the doorstep.

"I… I was supposed to check on you." She licked her lips, uncertain.

"See if you were awake." Jieyuan didn't like the sound of that.

"Caoluan, what's going on? Where am I?"

"I…" Caoluan hesitated. Then she shook her head.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry, Jieyuan." She stepped back, reached for the door.

"Wait, hold on— Caoluan, don't—" Jieyuan strained against his bindings, but they held tight; the chair didn't budge, either.

"Don't—" The door closed. Jieyuan didn't hear anything from the other side. Jieyuan stopped struggling, slumping back against the chair. His mind was still frantic, though, trying to make sense of it. He'd been in the Gleamstone Valley, about to pick up the Shifting Sisters—then darkness—then he was here, in this metal room, and Caoluan was at the door and looking like a servant. And now she was gone, off to report to someone he was awake.

Someone who'd apparently captured him—using darkness—blocked his powers and bound him to his chair in this metal room. No matter how Jieyuan looked at it, that did not bode well for him. And what about Meiyao and Daojue? Had they been captured, too? As good as the two of them were, he couldn't imagine them fighting off an Orangerealm in that state. Not unless the Red Ring stepped in, but if that had happened, Jieyuan didn't think he'd have been in this metal room right now.

Whoever had taken him must've been at least Orangerealm. And if Caoluan was here, then they were probably connected to the Xiyunfeng. Jieyuan recalled the information he'd bought from the Mysterious Night House, how the Xiyunfeng Clan had ties to an Orangerealm sect. The Restless Flame Sect. How the Xiyunfeng had meant to use that connection to take over the city, but Qingshi had killed everyone they'd sent over, and they'd written off the district. Except Qingshi's gone now, isn't he? But… No. That's too fast.

Qingshi and Yunzhu had just left. There's no way they could've acted that quickly unless they'd been there, in the Gleamstone Valley, watching the whole thing. Could they have been there? Some hidden Orangesoul observer, watching from afar? It wasn't impossible, Jieyuan had to concede. But… Really? Jieyuan barked a short, disbelieving laugh. Really? After all that, after surviving all that, being captured by some lurking Orangesoul? Really? The door opened.

Again, there was a woman on the other side, but a different one. This new woman was shorter than Caoluan and wore black. Her skin was very pale, and her black hair straight and long, neatly combed over a thin face. Black eyes. She looked no older than he was. Just shy of twenty. Jieyuan had never seen her before. He was sure of that much. She did look familiar, though. The woman regarded him coolly. Then she smiled a slight, frosty smile.

"Hello, Jieyuan," she said.

"My name is Heiyingmi Zixuan. I believe you know my brother." Jieyuan's stomach dropped. Heiyingmi. That Orangerealm who'd ambushed them after the Mysterious Night House, the one from the Obscuring Shadows Sect. His name had been—"Heiyingmi Jiahao," the woman said, stepping inside the room. The door closed behind her, seemingly on its own. She walked over.

"Ah, yes. That's recognition I'm seeing in your face, is it not? You do know my brother. Of course you do. You killed him, after all." She stopped right in front of him, looking down at him.

"Killing my brother—that hurt me, Jieyuan," Zixuan said. She cupped his chin, forcing his head up, and stared straight into his eyes.

"So now it's my turn to hurt you."