Chapter 156: KILL AND BLOOD

CHAPTER

156

KILL AND BLOOD

Jieyuan

—∞—

Well, Jieyuan thought, his gaze lingering on Jiahao’s corpse, if we weren’t in a hurry to leave before, we sure are now.

The nearest Shifting Feather—the one that had nearly split the Orangesoul in half—was still within range of his soulforce; he lowered its weight and then pulled it back to him using his soulforce. The half-amphis shot back through the air, slamming into his outstretched hand with a meaty thump.

He immediately noticed the glowing red lines. They sprawled over the blade, throbbing like blood vessels. From the Shifting Feather’s ego, he got a feeling of satiation—but also the impression that the blood it’d drunk hadn’t been all that tasty (and what a weird impression that was).

Ignoring that for now, Jieyuan searched for the other Shifting Feather. He found it quickly: the blade was half-sunk into the building across him; Jieyuan had dialed back its chromal weight at the last moment, otherwise it’d have gone right through the building too (and a few more buildings besides). It was way outside his soulsenses, though.

He could go over there and fetch it; it’d only take a few seconds. But the sooner they got out of the city, the better. So instead, he channeled chroma into the single bracelet he wore, willing the cloudcraft to take form again. The silky, cloudy red material spilled out of his sleeves, pooling on the brightgold street at his feet.

While that happened, Jieyuan glanced backward, searching for Meiyao; she’d been thrown back earlier by that last blast Jiahao had used. He found her already on her feet and making her way over. She wasn’t hurt too badly, then. Though she did look awfully roughed up.

Her mask was gone (Jieyuan didn’t know if she’d lost it in that last blast or before it); there was a glaring red cut on her face starting at her chin and ending—thank the Heavens—just under her eye. Her robes were torn in several places, baring bloodied skin. She was still transformed, with claws for fingers and furry ears topping her head.

Xiaohu was perched on her shoulders; the little beast, at least, looked no worse for wear.

Daojue was also in sight and heading over, though from the opposite direction; he looked as roughed up as Meiyao did, his mask also gone.

Jieyuan tapped into his mind-link with Meiyao. There wasn’t anyone on the streets, but it didn’t hurt to be careful; transmitted thoughts were also way faster than speech. Meiyao, can you fetch the other Shifting Feather for me? Also, see if you can get us our sealed-space rings back from Jiahao. Don’t take anything else, though. If Jiahao’s really from the Obscuring Shadows Sect, he might have something on him that others can use to track him.

Daojue might have been able to puzzle out if any such tracking artifact existed with his special senses, but that could take a while; Jieyuan just didn’t think it was worth the risk. Their Yellowsoul sealed-space rings, at least, he knew were safe.

Meiyao didn’t answer, but she nodded at him and changed directions.

Daojue arrived at his side just moments later, wordlessly taking up position, Gleaming End held at the ready. Glancing at his friend, Jieyuan saw his wounds were already clotting. That was fast, even for a tenth-sign; Daojue must’ve already taken a regeneration augmenter. Their supply of augmenters of all kinds was borderline inextinguishable, even split three ways, with how much refining Meiyao had done in the Dome.

Jieyuan watched as Meiyao made a brief stop by Jiahao’s corpse, crouching down to rummage through his clothes. Jieyuan wasn’t too sure she’d be able to find the rings (Jieyuan wasn’t sure if you could put a sealed-space ring inside another; if that was a thing, there was a chance Jiahao could’ve done it), but Meiyao stood up just moments later.

Her voice sounded in his mind: Found them.

You sure they’re the same ones?

I am. He has other Orangesoul rings on him, but they’re all black. These ones were in a pocket.

It was probably against the regulations of the Mysterious Night House to kill whoever bought your auctioned artifacts and take them back from their corpse. Jieyuan was well past the point of caring, though; if Jiahao really was from the Obscuring Shadows Sect, and if that sect really did control the Mysterious Night House, then the three of them had already made an enemy out of the establishment.

The Mysterious Night House had certainly made an enemy out of him.

Meiyao ran over to the building next, smoothly plucked the Shifting Feather from the wall (the ego of the Shifting Feather in her hand blasted him with a feeling of deep and grudging discomfort, making it abundantly clear it did not appreciate being held by anyone who wasn’t him) before rushing over. The cloudcraft was halfway formed when she arrived, holding out the half-amphis to him.

Jieyuan took the blade; its ego almost sang in glee.

Heavens, but my weapons are dramatic.

There was a white blur as Xiaohu jumped off Meiyao’s shoulders and onto his, briefly nuzzling his neck before lazily draping herself across his shoulders. Jieyuan ignored the little beast for now, taking the offered weapon and giving Meiyao a good look up and down.

“You holding up all right?” he asked.

Meiyao grinned, baring teeth that were more like fangs, eyes a vivid, wild green.

Untransformed, she could already pull off a predator’s look like no one else.

When she was looking like this, half-beast?

Even with everything going on, his throat still went dry at the sight of her. His traitorous mind had him wondering if he could convince her to do this while—

Heavens, this is really not the time for that.

“I could fight another Orangesoul,” Meiyao said, “if that’s what you’re asking.”

She sounded almost eager for it.

Jieyuan had this theory that when Meiyao used her bloodskill, it wasn’t just her appearance and powers that changed. That resonating with a beast had a similar effect on her mind.

This, he reckoned, might be considered corroborating evidence.

“That’s great,” Jieyuan said, “but let’s not tempt the Heavens, yeah?”

Meiyao’s green eyes—brighter than usual, almost glowing—gleamed with amusement.

Jieyuan swallowed thickly. It amazed him how she could still have this effect on him, even after everything; then again, they were all still riding the high of the fight.

He glanced down; the cloudcraft was nearly formed, but not quite there yet. He gave the streets one last scan, but they were still empty. His eyes fell on the corpses of Sovereign Aoxin and Dayang.

His gaze lingered on the pair of golden-robed corpses. Uncomfortable emotions bubbled up inside him. He looked away.

Not the time for that, either.

The last of the chromal silk flowed out of his sleeve, joining the cloudcraft below, completing it. They all hopped onto it and aura-lashed themselves to the silky red surface under their feet.

Then Jieyuan had them rise into the air.

Back when he’d been a mundane—and for some time even after he’d become a cultivator, when he was a low-sign—cloudcrafts had seemed incomprehensibly fast. Now that he was a ninth-sign Redsoul, that wasn’t the case anymore.

He’d started soulstilling the moment they’d launched their attack on Jiahao; he hadn’t stopped, still holding onto the pressure in his soul that warped time in the space around him. And with his current timewarp, the cloud wasn’t moving that much faster than he could run.

To a mundane observer, they’d be zooming into the air, just a streak of color, reaching the skies in a literal blink of an eye. To him, that same ascent stretched into minutes, the wind faintly brushing against his skin as the cloudcraft rose higher and higher, barely ruffling his hair and clothes.

Because he had them flying straight up, though, they’d be leaving the bounds of the city itself quickly enough. Within seconds, they were higher than even the tallest building around, and for a few moments afterward, all there was to be seen was the glowing, golden expanse of the massive walls that encased Radiant Gold City.

Another couple of seconds, and the walls were also left behind. The view yawned open around them: a far horizon reaching in every direction, rolling grassy hills extending as far as the eyes could see.

A few special features marked the otherwise idyllic landscape, and Jieyuan quickly found what he was looking for.

There, in the distance, was the Viridian Dome with its almost absurd dimensions, green and eerily glowing, swallowing the slice of horizon behind it. It was a much smaller dome he focused on, though: one sitting right next to the Viridian Dome, dwarfed by its vastly larger sibling.

This smaller dome was a deeper shade of green than the Viridian Dome and not as uniform. It was impossible to tell from this far away, but Jieyuan knew the reason why. This smaller dome wasn’t made out of viridian mist, but rather thousands of massive chromal trees carefully grown to form a dome with their sprawling crowns.

This miniature replica of the Dome—still hundreds of feet tall, mind you—was their destination. The seat of the Viridian Death Cult.

Jieyuan hadn’t been fully sold on heading straight there before, but given they’d just fought an Orangesoul to death, he reckoned they’d be safer with a cabal at their back (even if it was a Redsoul one) than in a mundane safe house. And if Meiyao was wrong about the reception they’d get in the cult?

Well, they had just killed a third-sign Orangesoul. The three of them had reached a point where there was very little Redsouls could throw at them that they wouldn’t be able to handle.

Jieyuan oriented themselves in the Viridian Death Cult’s direction, but he didn’t move them towards it yet. Rather, he kept them on a straight upward course. Their priority right now was to disappear, and there was really only one way of achieving that in the sky.

They kept rising. More than a minute passed. Jieyuan didn’t stop scanning their surroundings for even a moment, especially the area immediately below them—the airspace of Radiant Gold City—but it didn’t look like they were being followed.

So far, so good.

They breached the clouds.

White swallowed their vision; a shock of damp, clammy air struck them. Jieyuan stopped their ascent, keeping them within the cloud, before putting the cloudcraft on forward course. He couldn’t see the landscape below anymore, but he’d already oriented them in the right direction and had a rough idea of the distances involved. He’d also made a similar trip just a few days ago, from the Dome to Radiant Gold City.

About fifty miles; at their speed, accounting for the timewarp, that’d be a little over an hour. He hadn’t sheathed the Shifting Feathers, and with them in hand, he drew on Twin Serpent Cognition. His mind split, and he set half of it to keeping track of time.

He trained his other half-mind on his soulsenses. His physical senses weren’t much help right now. Meiyao and Daojue were right beside him, but he would hardly have been able to tell that much with his eyes; he could barely see their silhouettes amid the wet white of the clouds.

The building pressure that came with soulstilling outside of combat was already well into headache territory; it wouldn’t be long before it became unbearable. He’d be keeping it up for as long as he could manage, though. This first stretch, when they were still near Radiant Gold City, was the most important one, when the odds of pursuit were the highest.

They weren’t out of the fire. Not yet.

Xiaohu, still on his shoulders, jerked up, then let out a little yip.

“What—” Meiyao’s voice, abruptly cut off. He shot a glance at her and saw that her silhouette had changed slightly: two raised, triangular shapes had appeared on top of her head. She was resonating with Xiaohu again.

The very next moment, Meiyao’s voice rang in his head, We’re being followed. Two Orangesouls. They’re keeping their distance.

His stomach dropped. His soulsenses still told him nothing, but of course they didn’t. He’d known they might be pursued, but he hadn’t been expecting another Orangesoul to come after them this quickly. Let alone two.

It was like all Orangesouls around were coming out of the woodwork.

His tempt the Heavens comment had been meant as a joke, not prophecy.

They’re keeping their distance? he sent back. Do you think they’re trying to tail us in secret?

It seems like it. They’re keeping well outside the range of a tenth-sign Redsoul’s soulsenses. Nearly twice the range.

That was both good and bad. Good, because it gave him time to come up with something. Bad, because it meant that the ones after them weren’t recklessly coming at them and might have a plan of their own.

Their soulsigns?

Second-sign for one, third-sign for the other.

That didn’t match any Orangesouls he knew of. Qingshi was supposedly at the peak of Orangesoul, whereas the one after Daojue—Gaofengzhi Zhuoji—was at first-sign and, as the Mysterious Night House elder had put it, unlikely to advance any further.

Had this Orangesoul pair also been at the wrong place and at the wrong time, like Jiahao? Was this another case of just pure rotten luck?

Got it, Jieyuan sent back to Meiyao. Give me a second—but alert me if anything changes.

Jieyuan first sent Daojue a quick update on the situation in case he hadn’t also sensed the new Orangesouls through their artifacts or something (he didn’t get a reply) before focusing on a different kind of mental connection. Huaxin? Got anything for me?

FRUSTRATION, Huaxin immediately replied. Jieyuan quickly parsed the incoming jumble of impressions and emotions. Something was interfering with Huaxin’s ability to divine the future.

Jieyuan had been prepared for bad news, but not this. Huaxin being unable to divine the future meant there was even more to this situation than the two Orangesouls after them, which was already bad enough, thank you.

This was especially bad considering that, just a few minutes ago, Huaxin had been working just fine. The Fatebloom Heart just hadn’t been able to give him a sequence against Jiahao at first because such a sequence had been impossible at the time.

Keep trying, buddy. Thanks.

Jieyuan focused back on his mind-link with Meiyao. Anything else you can make out about them?

Yes. They’re standing upright, and there’s this cloudy mass under them. An Orangesoul cloudcraft, I think. I can’t sense artifacts as clearly with Xiaohu’s spiritskill. It’s better for living beings.

An Orangesoul cloudcraft? Jieyuan hadn’t even known that those were a thing, with how Orangesouls could already fly on their own. Unless Orangesoul cloudcrafts were faster? Or maybe so they could carry others with them?

Either way, though, they couldn’t have outflown a first-sign Orangesoul flying on their own power, let alone ones at second- and third-sign, so the Orangesoul cloudcraft didn’t matter.

What now?

If the Orangesouls were tracking them in secret, odds were the pair meant to only make their approach after they’d landed—or at least only after they were sufficiently far from the city, so as not to draw attention.

It was probably like with Jiahao just now; the Orangesouls should be after the information the three of them had, rather than planning on just killing them on the spot for whatever reason.

One thing was for sure, though: Jieyuan didn’t want those Orangesouls ambushing them in the sky. Orangesouls could fly; Redsouls could fall. Granted, the ground below should be mundane—they weren’t overflying a chromal woodland—so falling wouldn’t be dangerous. But it wasn’t the crash that was the problem; it was being caught by an Orangesoul in free-fall.

Leaving it be until they were at the Viridian Death Cult was an option, but none of the cultists would probably be any help other than as meat shields. And considering their plans to ask the cult for help with the whole Liangshibai business, bringing Orangesouls to their doorstep didn’t seem that good an idea.

Besides, if it had been Jieyuan in the place of the Orangesouls, he would have made his move before his targets descended. Again, Orangesouls had too much of an advantage in the air.

That settled it; they’d have to do something about the Orangesouls before they reached the Viridian Death Cult. The strain from maintaining the timewarp wasn’t helping with his thoughts, though; the headache was in full swing now, mean and throbbing.

Rot it. I’ll risk it.

He stopped soulstilling—and he got to experience the cloudcraft’s speed in all its howling glory.

The wind screamed at him, almost ripping his hair and clothes out of his body; the white expanse of the clouds turned into whipping, roaring currents. If not for aura-lashing, he’d have been flung into the air.

One second. Two. Three.

The headache faded rapidly, the pressure dying.

Four. Five. Six.

The pressure was fully gone; Jieyuan reached for his soul again and stilled the chroma imbuing it.

Stilledspace snapped back around him.

And the world around him slowed eighteenfold. His hair settled back down; so did his robes, also caught in his stilledspace. The pressure from maintaining the stilledspace started building up again, but it’d be a while now before it reached the same point as before.

Sure enough, the Orangesouls hadn’t attacked. That was the first part of his plan done. Now he just had to come up with the other parts.

And as it turned out, with his mind clear again, that only took a couple of seconds.

Jieyuan roughly estimated their distance from Radiant Gold City. They should be about a third of the way to the Viridian Death Cult. Far enough from Radiant Gold City that nobody would really be able to see them. Well in the middle of nowhere.

It would do.

He sent both Meiyao and Daojue quick, brief instructions. He watched as their silhouettes suddenly rippled (they’d stopped soulstilling, just like he had) before becoming normal again. Then he caught it with his soulsenses as Meiyao reached into her robes, before taking out a stack of chromal paper. Talismans. All the talismans she had on her.

If he had any, he’d have also given them to her, but he’d spent all his remaining ones during the days he’d been fighting for his life with Daojue in the Dome.

What he had in mind might draw attention from afar, but the odds were slight enough given the distance that it was worth the risk.

Ready, Meiyao sent him.

Now for the tricky bit.

Jieyuan braced himself.

Then he drove the cloudcraft down.

Full speed.

They plunged in a straight dive. Gravity on their side now, pulling them down, they went even faster than before: even soul-stilling, the wind howled at them. They broke out of the clouds, the white dispersing around them in a rush. Drier air enveloped them, and the landscape appeared far below; Jieyuan was looking upwards, though, and he caught it as another cloudcraft broke out from a patch of clouds further back just a beat later.

That other cloudcraft was also dropping fast, angled in their direction—and it was faster than his.

Meiyao activated one of the talismans; prepared for it, Jieyuan looked away. A blinding surge of light erupted from behind it, so bright that even catching the edge of it had him blinking.

Radiant Light Blasts. Redsoul talismans, sure, but the idea wasn’t to actually hurt the Orangesouls, but rather to delay them (and ideally blind them, even if only briefly).

He immediately looked back—and found that the Orangesouls had veered wildly off-path; the Orangesouls even hung there for a moment before diving after them. In that little interval, Jieyuan had managed to put several hundred more feet between them.

He’d hoped it’d work, but he hadn’t thought it’d go half this well. The Orangesouls could’ve taken the hit head-on—and they’d been within range of their soulsenses when Meiyao had used the talisman; they’d have known it was a Redsoul talisman she was using, that nothing that came out of it could harm them.

So why had they avoided it like that? Instinct? That’d be awfully jumpy of them, for a cultivator.

No matter their reason, though, the Orangesouls were shooting down again—and gaining in on them.

Jieyuan was about to tell Meiyao when she suddenly opened her arms wide, an array of floating talismans between her outstretched arms. Jieyuan whipped his head away again.

And it was like a sun had exploded behind him. Six Radiant Light Blasts, erupting all at once.

Jieyuan was still blinking away dark spots when he looked back, the wind still howling in his ears as they plunged, the ground closer and closer.

The Orangesouls were far above them, having flown straight up to avoid the barrage Meiyao had sent at them.

All right, that really doesn’t make sense. They might have been caught off-guard by the first blast, sure, but they really should have known better the second time.

Jieyuan wasn’t complaining. But there was definitely something he was missing here.

He risked a quick glance downward—and saw that they were seconds away from the ground, a plain of grass right underneath them.

We did it. We actually did it.

“JUMP!” he shouted at Daojue and Meiyao before throwing himself off the cloudcraft; he hit the grass rolling—but otherwise completely unharmed. He got to his feet with the Shifting Feathers already at the ready, looking upward. Daojue and Meiyao had also already gotten themselves into position, landing on either side of him. Xiaohu, still on his shoulders, was on her feet and hissing.

The cloudcraft was on the grass, just a few feet away. Jieyuan didn’t collect it back into his sleeves; there’d be time for that later.

The Orangesouls came to a hovering stop in front of them, about three dozen feet above the ground. Jieyuan got a good look at them.

They were both men, wearing plain gray robes not too different from the ones he, Meiyao, and Daojue had on right now. Discreet and understated. Incognito.

The one on the left was a bit taller, with a mane-like crown of hair; the one on the right had thicker, broader features. Black hair and black eyes for both; nothing special.

Jieyuan was ready for a fight, but the Orangesouls took no further action, just glared down at them.

But one thing caught his attention; they had come within range of his soulsense. And while the man on the right, the shorter one, didn’t register at all to his soulsenses, the one on the left did. His soul and aura were both clearly that of a tenth-sign Redsoul. Jieyuan could also sense Redsoul artifacts on him—or at least the shrouds wrapped around his artifacts were Redsoul.

What’s this now?

Before Jieyuan could think about it further, he realized something else: it wasn’t the three of them that the men were staring at, but just one of them.

Daojue.

Jieyuan glanced at Daojue out of the corner of his eye. And froze.

Daojue was glaring right back at one of the men: the one on the left, the taller one, the one who Jieyuan’s soulsenses were telling him was a tenth-sign Redsoul.

And Daojue looked murderous.

He was trembling. Eyes locked, unblinking, on the man. Jaw locked so hard Jieyuan could hear the grinding of his teeth. His normally pale complexion was flushed red.

He looked like violence barely contained.

Jieyuan wrenched his gaze off Daojue, back to the Orangesouls. Both their expressions had grown darker, grimmer—particularly that of the taller man, the one Daojue was glaring at.

The air was thick with tension, but still none of them moved. Eying each other. Jieyuan wondered if they’d managed to catch their fight with Jiahao—if they knew that just moments ago they’d felled a third-sign Orangesoul. That might explain their hesitation to make the first move. Or was it something else?

Daojue? What’s going on here? Do you know these two? Jieyuan sent the question through their mind-link. He already had his suspicions, though. Jieyuan gave it a few seconds; the answer didn’t come. He sent another thought, but to Meiyao this time: Which one’s the third-sign?

The one on the left, Meiyao sent back. The one pretending to be a Redsoul.

That confirmed two things. One was that the man really was masking his true realm. The other was that Xiaohu’s spiritskill could see through such artifices. The latter was definitely something good to know for the future; the former, though, might very well have immediate applications.

Jieyuan recalled the things the Mysterious Night House elder had told them about Daojue’s clan and what had happened to him. How an Orangesoul had supposedly destroyed it, and that a tenth-sign Redsoul had likely also played a role in it. And how the aforementioned Orangesoul and Redsoul were in Radiant Gold City, hunting down Daojue.

And then there was Daojue’s rage. Very few things came to mind that might provoke that kind of reaction from Daojue. Slaughtering his family, though? That was definitely one of them.

Gaofengzhi Zhuoji and Chiyanhao Huifen.

Jieyuan glared up at the two Orangesouls.

No doubt about it, that was who these two men were. Jieyuan had dismissed them as a possibility earlier because what Meiyao had told him of their pursuers’ soulsigns didn’t match the Mysterious Night House’s information, but he’d been missing pieces of the puzzle.

The shorter one, the one not masking his soul—that should be Gaofengzhi Zhuoji. The man was supposed to have been at first-sign Orangesoul. He must’ve advanced. And the other one, the one masquerading as a Redsoul, would be Chiyanhao Huifen.

Jieyuan was willing to bet good gold on it.

The way Daojue was glaring at Huifen also confirmed the Mysterious Night House elder’s suspicions that Huifen had been involved in the massacre of Daojue’s clan. Not just that, given Daojue’s reaction, Huifen had probably played a leading role in it.

And the way he’s hiding his soulsign—that raises questions. But also possibilities.

Was Huifen just hiding his true realm from them—or maybe from Zhuoji too? There was no way to tell; there were way too many unknowns at play. But if Jieyuan was right and Huifen was keeping the fact that he was an Orangesoul a secret from his partner, Jieyuan could definitely make use of that.

“Tianzijun Daojue,” the man Jieyuan was certain was Chiyanhao Huifen—the pretend Redsoul—said at last, breaking the silence. He shaped each syllable with care, as if savoring the taste. “It does not seem your master is here to save you again, boy.”

Jieyuan started to speak, intending to test the waters—

Daojue snapped his arm up.

Rainbow light exploded.

It was brighter than the Radiant Light Blasts before; for a heartbeat it drowned the world, and Jieyuan’s vision washed to white. Somewhere in the glare, something hit the earth with a heavy thump.

He blinked hard, forcing the dark spots away.

When his sight cleared, Jieyuan found Huifen still hanging in the air—but his cloudcraft wasn’t. The Orangesoul had drifted farther back, half-recoiled, blinking too fast.

Huifen’s gazedarted from Daojue to the ground; Jieyuan followed it.

The cloudcraft lay in the grass where it had crashed. Beside it sprawled a gray-robed lower body.

Only the lower body. Everything above the waist was simply gone.

Zhuoji, Jieyuan realized. That flash—it had come from Gleaming End. A spiritskill. The same blinding burst of light Jieyuan had seen only once before, back in Viridian Death City.

Daojue had used it again.

And he had used it to erase an Orangesoul in an instant.

Color drained from Huifen’s face. Something in his expression cinched tight, as if his mind had slammed into a wall.

Daojue had stopped shaking. His face had gone smooth again: cool, stony, unreadable. Only his violet eyes betrayed him, burning like coals as he leveled Gleaming End at Huifen.

“You…” Huaxin began; Jieyuan got the impression the man was seriously reconsidering the situation. “You are—”

Daojue’s gauntlets clattered to the ground, and Jieyuan’s gaze snapped to his hand.

Daojue’s mysterious red ring was glowing, bleeding an eerie crimson into the air.

Jieyuan had just focused on it when the light surged, tbursting outward in a single pulse that swallowed Daojue whole. It wasn’t blinding, more like a cocoon of red that hid him from sight. Less than a second later it drained away, and Daojue stood there again.

He was different.

Hair the color of fresh blood spilled from Daojue’s scalp down his back. Bright red lines—like the markings Jieyuan had seen on the Shifting Feathers earlier that day—glowed across Daojue’s face and along his exposed hands. His eyes had changed too, matching that same deep, rich crimson: twin blood moons staring back.

Jieyuan had seen those eyes before.

At the last stage of the Absolute Sword Trial.

On Tianzijun Juechen’s face.

BLOOD.

Pressure surged inside Jieyuan as one of his soulskills kicked awake—Binding Blood Resonance. It honed in on Daojue as if of its own accord; to Jieyuan’s blood-sense, the figure before him was no longer human at all. In Daojue’s place roared a rolling, howling tide of blood—so dense, so thick, so impossibly potent it could beggar the heart of a dying star.

BLOOD.

Before Jieyuan could even begin to make sense of it, something else seized his attention.

His soulsenses couldn’t find Daojue. His soul and aura—both gone. And it wasn’t only Daojue himself; Jieyuan couldn’t detect a single artifact on him either, as if everything had been swallowed into the same mute void.

Then Daojue rose into the air. He floated upward, slow and effortless, until he was level with Huifen.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then Huifen exploded into motion—but not toward Daojue. He spun and shot away.

A red streak cut through the air.

Daojue reappeared in front of the Huifen, spear already driving forward—straight through the man’s chest. The blood-soaked, cloth-wrapped spearhead erupted from the Orangesoul’s back.