Chapter 144: THORN AND PAIN

Chapter 2 of 2 today. Again, please check the Discord announcement. There WILL be another chapter this (or next, for some of you) week.

CHAPTER

144

THORN AND PAIN

Jieyuan

—∞—

When Jieyuan stepped into the Heavenly Room, Shifting Feathers drawn, he did so expecting to appear in a torture chamber on the other side: some dark room stacked with torture implements. Or, if not that, some hellish landscape, where tortured souls screamed in eternal agony.

He’d picked Pain for the fifth stage, after all (and what a relief he’d felt when, in the Heavenly Selection just now, he’d gotten Pain and Fire as options again), and Jieyuan couldn’t think of a location closer to the idea of Pain than those.

So he was rather surprised when, instead, he found himself in a garden.

Blinking, Jieyuan looked left and right, taking in the area. He was in a clearing, circled by a well-kept wall of what looked like brambles, green and vibrant and standing almost as tall as a man. He stood just at the edge of it, right before the enclosing wall.

There was just one other thing in the area. Sitting in the middle of the walled patch of grass was a tall clump of briar cut into the shape of a chair.

No—that wasn’t quite right. Not a chair, but a throne.

High-backed, tall, broad. It had nothing on the one the Death’s challenge echo had been sitting on, but it still made for an imposing sight.

It also didn’t look comfortable in the least; briars had thorns, and the throne was riddled with fat, pointy bits.

Jieyuan glanced up. For once, what he saw above was a fairly normal sky: white clouds crowding a light blue expanse, with the soft, warm yellow glow of the sun shining down on him.

Even the air smelled oddly pleasant, fresh and natural. He didn’t smell any flowers, just this faint, nice, earthy scent.

“Hmmm.”

Checking in with the Pain Concept, Jieyuan confirmed that the pursuit phase hadn’t begun yet; he’d have to set things in motion himself. He focused on the briar throne.

It was pretty obvious what he was supposed to do here.

He walked over to the middle of the clearing, stopping in front of the throne. He didn’t sit down on it, though; instead, he took his time looking it over. He didn’t want to be caught off guard later.

Anren had warned him to be careful. More than usual. Pain had a reputation for being an awfully deadly pick. Pain could kill, after all—at least at the levels cultivators normally worked with. She’d stressed, over and over, that it was best to work his way up gradually, ensuring his affinity order was high enough to survive the current difficulty before moving on.

He’d had to repeat several times that he understood before she was convinced; she didn’t seem to have a lot of trust in his ability (or maybe his willingness) to hold back.  

Still, nothing seemed out of place. The briar throne seemed to be just what it looked like: a terribly designed chair. He’d have used Natural Symphony Insight to get a better idea of what it was, but he didn’t have his soulsense right now.

“Well, then,” Jieyuan murmured, before he sheathed the Shifting Feathers and sat down on the throne.

It was far more solid than it looked; he’d wondered whether his weight would be an issue, but the plant underneath barely seemed to budge as he took his seat. It felt almost as if he was sitting on a chair made of some more sensible material: wood, metal, or even stone. Of course, there was nothing sensible about its design.

Jieyuan kept his breath controlled as the thorns tore into his robes, dug into his skin. He ignored it all, flattening himself against the back, setting his arms down on the sides, getting himself properly settled in.

First difficulty, he thought, focusing on the Concept’s presence within his chest.

The thorny seat underneath him twitched. He watched, not particularly concerned, as tendril-like stems flowed out of the bottom of the chair, near his feet. Like snakes, the green, thorn-wrapped stems wrapped themselves around his boots, circling his feet and ankles.

Then they began to twist and turn like a seesaw, tearing through the leather of his boots. It didn’t take them long to reach his skin, and their motions didn’t stop there. His skin was pierced next, the thorns tearing cuts into his feet.

More tendrils sprouted out of the throne, wrapping around his calves. As they too started moving, another batch of snake-like stems appeared and got to work on his thighs. Within moments, his legs were covered in a writhing layer of green.

Green and red, in fact, as blood flowed from his rapidly multiplying wounds, running along the stems and dripping into the grass underneath.

It was an interesting kind of torture, he noted with almost clinical disinterest. Nothing a cultivator couldn’t handle, of course, but he reckoned the constant, stinging friction against raw, exposed flesh would’ve gotten a reaction from a lesser-willed cultivator. A whimper, maybe.

Humming softly, he closed his eyes.

He didn’t try to avoid the pain. That was, he’d found, the wrong way of dealing with it. Rather, he focused on it. Faced it, confronted it. He brought it into focus and pitted the flames of his will against it.

He waited for a whole minute to pass, but no more tendrils appeared; the existing ones just kept twisting over his legs. Seemed like that was it for the first difficulty.

Second difficulty.

He’d barely sent the thought when tendrils sprouted, taking over his waist and stomach. At the same time, stems rose from both arms of the chair, wrapped around his hands, and started working on his fingers, rubbing left and right, the thorns piercing his skin and shredding his flesh. With how little of it fingers had, it just took moments before the thorns were scraping his bones.

As he felt tendrils wrap around his chest and shoulders, Jieyuan opened his eyes and looked down. He couldn’t see any of his body anymore, just a grotesque vision of squirming green and bubbling red.

The pain still wasn’t a concern; the First Pain—the pain of imbuing—was infinitely worse, and he’d faced even worse in the Second Pain when he made a breakthrough. The damage he was taking, on the other hand, had him frowning.

He wasn’t regenerating, and he was starting to feel a little light-headed with all the blood he was losing. He wouldn’t be able to hang around much longer if this kept up. Not if he wanted to stay alive.

The tendrils stopped at his shoulder, didn’t go any higher, but he still had nine more difficulties to go through; if they later reached all the way to the crown of his head, covering his throat, eyes, and forehead… He didn’t reckon he’d be able to survive that kind of treatment for long.

That wasn’t the only reason for his frown, either.

Where’s the soulskill?

He’d gotten a new soulskill from every stage so far; considering how rare they were supposed to be, that kind of constancy couldn’t be just random chance, just a coincidence. The pattern was clear enough; he’d be more shocked if he didn’t get a new soulskill now than if he did.

Come on. Where is it?

Eyes closed again, he sent his awareness inward, searching for something inside him: some different feeling, some new presence, anything that could point to the existence of a new power, a new ability. Nothing stuck out to him, but he kept searching, concentrating on the idea of pain, of feeling pain, of causing pain…

The searching fingers of his mind latched onto something. A faint, remote feeling, like an invisible limb, not too different from what Absolute Will Command felt like. He didn’t hesitate; excited, he focused entirely on that feeling, on that invisible limb, and flexed it.

Suddenly, he could sense the briar he was on. Not just feel it—he was already feeling it plenty, what with how it was trying to make minced meat out of him—but sense its presence, both beneath him and wrapped all over his body. It wasn’t nearly as clear as soulsense, just a fainter sort of a feeling of something living being close to him.

He could also sense something else: his pain. This he sensed much more clearly; it filled his body, a yellowish, ethereal aura, agony quantified. It was a throbbing, pulsing thing, constantly growing, fed by the unceasing efforts of the briar’s snake-like, seesawing thorny stems.

Getting an intuitive, instinctive sense of what he was supposed to do, Jieyuan concentrated on the pain and then pushed it toward the briar. It spread out of him, expanding; the faint, yellow glow filling him didn’t decrease any, but it was spreading into the briar too now. It was being transferred; he wasn’t feeling any less pain. It was being replicated.

The briar, throne and grasping tendrils both, suddenly twitched, a shudder running through it. And then Jieyuan felt a new sensation, all over him: something warm, wet, and viscous being poured into his raw, shredded flesh.

Alarmed, he opened his eyes, and he saw a new color joining the ugly, writhing mess of green and red covering him. Yellow. Some kind of sap, being released by the tendrils, mixing with his blood and raw flesh.

Jieyuan was ready to return to the Heavenly Hall that very instant, but he stopped when he realized he wasn’t feeling any worse; rather, he was feeling better. It was hard to tell, what with how he couldn’t see his body, but he didn’t feel so light-headed anymore, even though he could see the red of his blood flowing even more vigorously.

Was the yellow sap… healing him? He gave it a few more moments, watching attentively the visage of red, green, and yellow that had become his body; he was certainly feeling stronger. He tried flexing his fingers—fingers whose tendons had long since been torn, to the best of his knowledge—and he found that he could. No two ways about it; the sap was healing him.

And as for what had provoked this change… Jieyuan hadn’t stopped using his new ability, making the briar feel his pain. When he flexed that invisible limb again, he confirmed that the briar was completely filled with the yellowish aura of pain, just like he was.

Jieyuan understood two things then. One, his new soulskill let him replicate his pain in others. Two, when in pain, the briar released a sap that healed him.

Just like that, both of his earlier concerns were solved. He had a way of counteracting the damage being done to him, and he’d found his new soulskill.

As the thorns both destroyed and healed his body, Jieyuan grinned.

It was time for some experimenting.

He also couldn’t help but wonder how Daojue was faring; they’d both picked Pain this time around.

—∞—

Suddenly appearing in the Heavenly Hall, Jieyuan needed a few moments to remember himself.

His head a little muddled, he looked around without really seeing, taking in the great metal chamber and the cultivators inside, many of whom seemed just as disoriented as he was. His head was curiously blank, foggy, like he’d just woken up from a long, deep sleep.

But he fought through the fog. Just moments ago, he’d been…

He shuddered, remembering what exactly he’d been doing—just what kind of state he’d been in—before he’d been transported back to the Heavenly Hall.

The eleventh difficulty of Pain’s pursuit was something else, and it didn’t help that Jieyuan had gone out of his way to make it worse on himself.

The Sword Tower’s ego appeared, told them to prepare for the challenge phase, and then disappeared. Jieyuan was only vaguely aware of it all.

“You all right there, Jieyuan?” Anren asked.

Jieyuan turned to her; as usual, she looked just fine. A glance in the other direction revealed that the same went for Daojue. Jieyuan swallowed, opened his mouth, but closed it when no words came. He was still a little out of it.

Anren’s expression turned concerned. She took a step forward, giving him a deeper, searching look. “That bad?”

Jieyuan shook his head, forced some words through the bruised sluggishness of his mind, and out of his throat. “No. I mean… yes. It’s complicated. I… I’m just a little rattled.”

That didn’t seem to ease Anren’s concern any. She put a hand on his shoulder, then gently but firmly guided him down. “Sit.”

Jieyuan wasn’t in the mood for arguing; he complied. Anren sat beside him, and Jieyuan was rather surprised (or maybe not—Daojue could be unpredictable like that) when Daojue joined them on the floor.

“Breathe,” Anren instructed.

Jieyuan didn’t really need to be told; he was taking deep breaths, filling his lungs with the cool, sterile air of the Heavenly Hall. He chained each breath to the next, every inhale clearing his mind a little further.

Once he felt a little better, he gave Anren a nod. He appreciated her concern, and he was grateful for her helping him like this. He couldn’t help but wish it’d been Meiyao instead, though. Heavens, how he missed Meiyao, and the feel of her—the warmth, the softness—when she’d take him into her arms after a cultivation session.

“I’m fine now,” he said.

“Hmmm.” Anren looked him up and down. “If you say so. How was it, then?”

Jieyuan didn’t have to force his smirk. “Seventh-order.”

He didn’t even have to check; he’d spent almost six whole days in the eleventh difficulty. This was his first time back in the Heavenly Hall since the last Heavenly Selection. He’d actually reached seventh-order more than a day ago, but he’d stayed inside until the very last second.

He had come up with a plan of sorts for the challenge phase, one that had needed him to spend as much time in the Heavenly Room as possible. He didn’t know exactly what he’d face next, but he could make a few educated guesses. And if he was right, what he planned might be just what he needed to secure a win.

He did some quick calculations in his head. He couldn’t be really sure, not without soulsense, but he reckoned he was nearly at his target. It would have to do.

Anren beamed, wide and bright. “I knew you could do it.” She looked across him. “What about you, Daojue?”

Jieyuan turned to face Daojue as well. He was especially interested in Daojue’s performance in this stage, what with how he’d also picked Pain.

“I reached seventh-order,” Daojue confirmed.

Jieyuan looked Daojue over. Before, when they’d just appeared, Daojue hadn’t looked rattled in the least; he wondered just what Daojue had had to face in the pursuit phase. There was a quick way to find out.

“Did you get a soulskill?” Jieyuan asked before Anren could say anything else.

“No,” Daojue said.

Interesting. It was one thing when they had picked different Concepts before, but this time, they’d both picked Pain, and only he had gotten a soulskill out of it. Granted, there was also that soulburning thing Anren had mentioned, but as she’d instructed, he was trying to avoid thinking about it.

“You didn’t get the briar?” Jieyuan asked, just to be sure. He didn’t elaborate; if Daojue’s pursuit phase had been anything like his, he’d know what he was talking about.

“Briar?” Anren looked confused, thin black eyebrows pinching together.

Daojue stared at him. Even after so long, Jieyuan was still unsettled by seeing Daojue with those black, mundane eyes. A Daojue without violet eyes just looked wrong.

After a few seconds of silent staring, Daojue said, “No.”

“I think I already know the answer, but I still have to ask,” Anren said, drawing Jieyuan’s attention back to her. “You got a new soulskill, didn’t you?”

“Guess,” Jieyuan said, simply.

“Oh, you— Unbelievable.” Anren gave him a hard look, then paused. “No. I guess it is believable, given it’s you. Nobody’s luck is that good, however. Just what is it about you that has you getting new soulskills left and right? Are you the secret son of the Absolute, or something?”

“Trust me, I’m plenty curious about that myself.”

Anren snorted.

“How did you do?” Jieyuan asked. Her Concept this time around had been Precision. She was really getting some curious Concepts, all of them abstract and related to martial arts in some way.

She shrugged. “Same as always.”

Jieyuan had a sneaking suspicion that, much like Daojue, she’d reached seventh-order affinity with every Concept so far. He wasn’t sure why she was bothering to keep it a secret, but it didn’t really matter; chances were she was doing it just to annoy him. He wouldn’t put it past her.

Anren started asking questions about his pursuit phase; Jieyuan answered, and when she moved on to Daojue, he took the time to look around the Heavenly Hall. He noticed immediately that it was much sparser; there were fewer than two dozen cultivators there now, half of them being Absolute Sword Sect disciples.

No doubt the eleventh difficulty was to blame; to reach fifth-order affinity, you needed to spend at least some time in it, and it was much more deadly than previous difficulties.

Steel-gray eyes met Jieyuan.’s.

Sitting in the center of the room, facing him, was that woman from the Absolute Sword Sect. She held his gaze for a few moments, the sharp lines of her face unreadable, before she closed her eyes.

Her again. Jieyuan frowned; he didn’t look away, keeping his eyes on the woman a little longer, observing her. He noted how even though her fellow disciples were talking with each other, nobody said anything to her, nor did she try to join in. She just sat there, eyes closed, legs crossed, as if she existed in her own world. Now that he thought of it, he had never seen her talking with anyone else.

He knew the Absolute Sword Sect had a reason to be interested in him. The Fatebloom Heart. But why was it this woman, specifically, that kept looking at him? None of the other Absolute Sword Sect disciples had paid him—or Anren or Daojue—any special attention. It was only this one woman.

Jieyuan was tempted to confront her about it. But now wasn’t the time, particularly with the other Absolute Sword Sect disciples around. He didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself. He’d consider it later; there were still two more stages to go, and each one would see their numbers reduce further and further.

If the woman dropped off before the end, that’d be it, but he had this feeling she’d be making it to the seventh stage.

—∞—

He was back in the briar garden. Bright but cloudy skies hung overhead, the space enclosed by a circular, well-kept wall of brambles.

The throne was still there. But it wasn’t empty—and the person sitting on it had Jieyuan staring, rooted in place.

If Meiyao had been born a man, he was pretty sure this is what she’d look like. Vibrant green eyes watched him from a face as handsome as Daojue’s—only where Daojue was cold and severe, all statue-like edges, this man was bright, open, warm. His hair was light brown, long and thick, falling over his shoulders in soft, artful waves.

The eyes were exactly Meiyao’s shade. Jieyuan would know, after how long he’d spent staring into hers. The hair matched too; indistinguishable from Meiyao’s.

The man lounged at ease on his throne of thorns, legs crossed, his raised foot gently swinging. He wore elegant green-and-white robes, and a circlet of thorns rested against his brow.

He smiled, rosy lips curving. “Hello there.”

“You— Are you a Linzushen?”

The man’s eyes widened a fraction; then his smile did the same. “Oh? You must know my clan well to recognize my blood on sight.”

He rose from the throne, and Jieyuan realized the man had a couple of inches on him. He stood as tall as Daojue, in fact, and looked even more solidly built.

“You could say that,” Jieyuan said, recovering. “I’m involved with one, actually.”

“Truly? Then you’re a man of excellent taste.” He didn’t move, only looked Jieyuan up and down, almost… appreciative. “Whoever they are, their taste isn’t so bad either.”

It took Jieyuan a beat to catch the implication. He pressed his lips together to stifle a laugh. Heavens, he couldn’t wait to tell Meiyao he’d been hit on by what might be one of her ancestors. “I’m taken, I’m afraid.”

“Loyal, too, are you?”

“I’m also not interested in men.”

“Oh, sapling, that’s a lie; you just don’t know it yet.”

Jieyuan rolled his eyes. The line came so easily, so smoothly, that he had to wonder how many times the man had used it.

“But this isn’t the occasion to prove it,” the man went on. His gaze dipped to Jieyuan’s waist—at the drawn Shifting Feathers, Jieyuan realized with some relief. “You’re here for Pain’s challenge, aren’t you?”

“Sure am,” Jieyuan said. “Before that, though, I’ve got some questions about your clan.”

“You do? Don’t you have your little lover for that?”

“She’s… a bit distant from the rest of her clan. These questions are mostly for her benefit, actually.”

“Curious. Very well—ask away. We have some time to spare, and if this will benefit a kin of mine in any way, I’ll be glad to help.”

Given how poorly his previous attempts at gathering information had gone, Jieyuan was surprised by how easy this was. He sorted through what he wanted to know, then started with the simple, non-sensitive things—the sort that shouldn’t invite outside interference.

“The Linzushen Clan’s a Violetsoul clan, isn’t it?”

“Of course.” Amusement colored the man’s voice. “What else could it be?”

“Right.” Meiyao would want that confirmed. “Where’s it based?”

“If we still hold our ancestral seat, then the Central Continent, near the Viridescent Origin Forest,” the man said. “But understand, I am merely an echo; I’ve had little contact with the outside world for… the Heavens know how many years. Much could have changed.”

“That’s fine,” Jieyuan said. Time for a slightly riskier question. “Do you know anything of a being called the Primordial? Or a Primordial?”

That drew a reaction. The Linzushen man’s posture tightened, his eyes narrowing. “For someone so uninformed about our clan, that is a curiously informed question.”

“My—our—circumstances are unusual,” Jieyuan admitted. “What is the Primordial?”

The man weighed him with a new, keen light in his green eyes. “Pass the challenge, and I shall tell you. Is that agreeable?”

“That’s fair,” Jieyuan said. If he failed the challenge, he’d be dead; the answer wouldn’t matter. “What will it be, then?”

“A duel, of course,” the man said, as if it were obvious. “But with armor of my choosing.”

“Armor?” Jieyuan asked.

The man didn’t answer, but what happened next was answer enough.

The briar throne behind him unraveled. Liquid-smooth, thousands of tendrils pooled into the ground and flowed forward; when they reached the Linzushen echo, they climbed his body, wrapping swiftly around his robes.

Only half the thorns went to him; the rest rolled on toward Jieyuan. Seeing what they were doing to the echo, Jieyuan held still as the thorny vines climbed his body, much like they had during the pursuit phase.

Moments later, both of them were encased up to the neck and wrists in a shifting green mass of thorn and stem. Coiling and twisting, the tendrils tore through their robes and stabbed into skin and flesh. Red lines and pinpricks bloomed over the Linzushen echo’s living armor; Jieyuan didn’t need to look to know the same was happening to him.

Then the thorns began to throb. A sour, acrid scent hit his nose as a thick, viscous liquid seeped into his exposed flesh. Not the yellow healing sap; this was the poison the briar had started producing at the fourth difficulty.

Pain flared, multiplied severalfold, the toxin sharpening every nerve. It wasn’t quite at the level of the First Pain, but it was close.

Before the pursuit phase, that might have drawn a reaction from Jieyuan. Now, he didn’t so much as twitch.

“Not bad,” the man said, approvingly. Purple liquid bled from his armor: the poison. The echo was getting the same treatment. “You don’t seem affected at all.”

Jieyuan lifted an eyebrow. “You aren’t faring so badly yourself. I’m guessing we’re supposed to fight like this?”

“Oh, I can already tell you’ll be a fun one.”

He raised an arm, and a mass of tendrils streamed down his hand, rising into the air and extending in both directions. At one end, thorns gathered, merged, and lengthened into a pointed, bladed tip. The rest stabilized, leaving a spear in his grip.

He spun it easily, fluidly, then snapped it to the side. “You must defeat me before the tendrils drain you of your blood.”

Jieyuan kept his face neutral. That confirmed a suspicion: the man knew nothing about his new soulskill. None of the echoes had, not before he revealed it—and that mattered. The plan he had come up with in the pursuit phase depended on it.

He adjusted his grip on the Shifting Feathers and settled into his stance. The thorny tendrils, thankfully, kept clear of his hands. “Sounds easy enough.”

The man’s smile turned fierce and feral—and the resemblance to Meiyao was suddenly undeniable. “Careful, sapling. Tempt me like that, and I might steal you from your lover after all.”

Before Jieyuan could answer, the man launched at him. Jieyuan was ready; he snapped both Shifting Feathers up to meet the spear. The golden blades crashed against the wooden tip for a heartbeat before the echo pulled back and stabbed again.

Jieyuan parried with one Shifting Feather and slashed with the other. Twin Serpent Cognition was already at work, his second mind drawing on Path Glimpse Divination. Absolute Death Sight wouldn’t come, though; with the pain he was in, he couldn’t get in the right frame of mind for it, even with how well he was holding up.

The echo grinned widely, burning green eyes fixed on Jieyuan. Jieyuan was smiling right back, all the while they did their best to kill each other.

They closed and clashed again and again, swinging and thrusting, both fully on the offensive. The echo’s style was aggressive, feral; he was slightly faster and stronger than Jieyuan was, and as skilled with the spear as Daojue.

It was Path Glimpse Divination that let Jieyuan keep up, giving him flashes of the man’s next moves. It wasn’t at the level Huaxin’s sequences; it showed the likeliest future, not the optimal path, and it didn’t factor in his foreknowledge the way Fatebloom did. What he saw was what would have happened if he hadn’t been using Path Glimpse Divination. Even so, it was a real edge.

For anyone else, Jieyuan reckoned the challenge would have been almost impossibly brutal. Most cultivators couldn’t endure pain like this, much less fight through it. And even without the pain, Jieyuan could name only a handful who might’ve stood a chance against the echo.

Just a little more, he thought, slipping past a thrust that would have taken his head—he’d seen that future—and answering with an upward sweep the man narrowly dodged.

He had maybe a minute before the blood loss caught up. The writhing thorns were densely packed enough to slow the bleeding a little.

He didn’t use his new Pain-based soulskill on his briar armor. He was saving it for something else.

The opening came moments later. He almost landed a hit, and the echo had to jerk back hard, momentum broken.

Now.

His second mind dropped Path Glimpse and switched to the new soulskill—he couldn’t run both at once. As the man steadied himself, Jieyuan surged forward. His second mind reached into the thick, yellow aura of his pain—and threw it at the man.

The echo’s eyes widened. He faltered, barely slipping past the strike. “You—”

Jieyuan wasn’t done. “Ravenous,” he chanted.

The moment his imbuing hymn sounded, another pain joined the thorns: the First Pain’s onset. Phantom prickles joined the very real ones.

The echo’s green eyes grew wide, wild.

“Hollow Pain Resonance!” he howled with frenzied delight. “Marvelous! Oh, sapling—if only we’d met when I was alive! What fun we’d have had!”

Jieyuan pressed his advantage, Shifting Feathers cutting without mercy. The echo was on his back foot now, only parrying and blocking, his movements noticeably stiffer. Jieyuan was surprised he was even managing that much, given he was feeling both Jieyuan’s pain on top of his own. The echo’s grin also never left his face.

“Ravenous,” Jieyuan kept chanting, and the First Pain kept rising. Phantom prickles turned into stabs. He couldn’t sense his soul or chroma, but he knew he was cultivating right now; the pain was real enough, and he’d confirmed it was possible back in the pursuit phase.

He had, in fact, spent the last six days cultivating nonstop.

“And to compound it with the First Pain!” The echo’s voice was getting tighter now, but that didn’t seem to discourage him from speaking. “By the Primordial, you’re a treat!”

Any moment now. Jieyuan braced himself. He’d done the math, but he hadn’t managed to calculate it down to the exact second.

And then it came, and he was ready for it—before the First Pain could reach its peak, a different pain took over. A white-hot blast, tearing through his mind, an explosion of impossible agony. A thousand more followed in the same instant, turning everything into blind, raving agony.

The Second Pain. The pain of the soul-flare. Jieyuan had only felt it seven times so far. This was the eighth. Usually, he’d completely lose himself in it; the pain would overwhelm him thoroughly and completely, until he lost all sense of self.

But now… Jieyuan managed to hold on to a shred of awareness. His second mind kept transmitting his pain, and the echo fell to his knees, screaming.

Dimly aware he was screaming too, Jieyuan brought his arms in. The Shifting Feathers swung, both golden blades biting into the man’s chest from either side, carving through briar, flesh, and bone.

The Second Pain cut off abruptly, and Jieyuan dropped Hollow Pain Resonance. The echo blinked, awareness returning. Jieyuan stood shaking, both hands locked on the Shifting Feathers, the blades still buried in the echo’s ribs.

“Oh.” The echo looked down at the pair of blades burrowed into his body, and then up at Jieyuan. Blood dribbled from his lips, and he coughed weakly. Jieyuan was fairly sure he’d split both lungs.

The echo smiled, teeth all bloody, skin paling fast. “Nicely… done… sapling.”

Jieyuan drew a steadying breath and forced a smile of his own. The echo looked so much like Meiyao it almost hurt to see him like this. “I take it I pass?”

“Of… course.”

As his senses settled, Jieyuan realized a problem. The man didn’t look in any shape to tell him about the Primordial. “My questions—”

“Fret not,” the man said, and Jieyuan noticed his voice didn’t sound as hoarse anymore.

Then Jieyuan spotted the yellow liquid dripping out from the man’s living armor, squeezed out by the writhing tendrils. The healing sap.

The echo rose slowly, leaving his spear on the ground. Jieyuan stepped back to give him room, though he didn’t pull the Shifting Feathers free.

On his feet again, the man already looked much more alive.

“If you would?” The echo set his hands on the golden blades lodged in his ribs and gave a gentle tug. Jieyuan understood and eased the blades out.

No blood spurted. The thorny tendrils writhed, sealing the wounds at once, more yellow sap oozing through.

The echo waved a hand, and a wave of freshness washed over Jieyuan. The pain ebbed sharply. Looking down, he saw his own armor bleeding yellow instead of purple.

Good. He’d been close to light-headed.

“Very well, sapling,” the man said. “You asked about the Primordial.”

“Yes,” Jieyuan said. “Just what—”

The world shimmered.

A steel door appeared in front of him.

Jieyuan stared at it, uncomprehending.

Then he groaned.

“Not again.”