Chapter 134: BARREN PLAINS

So. A quick author note: So far, I’ve been restricting myself pretty heavily punctuation-wise, but that’s led to a gross overuse of em-dashes, so it’s something I’ll be addressing in the rewrite. However, I figured I’d already start putting it into practice, so expect to see some semicolons, colons, and parentheses peppered throughout the text going forward. (You might’ve already caught some of those in earlier chapters because of some edits I’ve recently made.)

CHAPTER

134

BARREN PLAINS

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Jieyuan was on his feet the next moment, his hands reaching for his weapons as his eyes scanned the area.

Daojue was standing to his left, also looking ready, holding Gleaming End ready.

Jieyuan’s mind reeled with everything that had just happened. Frantic thoughts and frenzied emotions all screaming at him, demanding attention. Worse still were the things that he immediately realized were missing—some of them very concerning.

But he pushed it all away for the moment. He was in unfamiliar territory. Before anything else, he needed to make sure they were safe.

He grabbed onto the Shifting Feathers—he’d gone for his scale daggers first, but for some reason they weren’t there, whereas his short glaives were—and drew them out, falling into a stance as he took a good look around.

They were in some sort of rocky plains. The ground was dark gray rock, and a quick turn of his head told Jieyuan the plains extended far into the horizon in all directions.

The place was barren—nothing but ash-gray rock as far as the eye could see. But while there was nothing else, there was the absence of something.

Thick, pitch-black jagged lines sprawled across the plains, splitting the ground into countless individual platforms.

The platforms varied in size and shape. He and Daojue were standing near the middle of one, and theirs was about a hundred feet across. The one in front of them was almost half again as big, but the ones to the side were significantly smaller. Most platforms looked empty, but a few had some rocky formations and outcroppings.

Nothing stood out to Jieyuan except two things.

One was the lines separating the platforms. They were wide—over six feet on average, judging by the closest ones—and impenetrably black.

Not like abysses or dark crevices. It was more like someone had used an over-sized brush and the blackest ink known to man—or maybe unknown to man, because Jieyuan hadn’t been aware black could be that black—to draw them on the ground.

Jieyuan didn’t even get a sense of depth from them. Rather, it felt like he was looking at nothing at all. At a void.

The other thing that stood out to him was far off in the distance. A very thin dark line on the horizon—except it was vertical, extending from the ground and disappearing into the gray skies above.

The sheer sameness of the area was muddying up Jieyuan’s sense of depth and scale, but whatever that razor-thin, dark thing in the distance was, it was big.

And then there was the sky—the first thing Jieyuan had seen. It was like a mirror of the ground. A featureless, dull, gray expanse. A few shades lighter than the rock on the ground, and lacking the off-putting void-black lines, but otherwise, much of the same.

Jieyuan couldn’t see a single cloud—or any celestial body, for the matter. No stars, moon, or sun. Light came down from above evenly—not too bright nor too dark. But even though there didn’t seem to be an angle to the light shining down on them, Jieyuan could see his shadow on the ground. Long, as if it was a few hours past midday.

No obvious dangers in sight. Jieyuan didn’t let his guard down, though, keeping the Shifting Feathers up as he turned his attention back to the black lines on the ground.

He didn’t like them, plain and simple. They weren’t natural. Nothing about this place seemed natural—Jieyuan stopped himself from chasing down that particular thought quite yet—but these black lines in particular were the worst offenders. Bad business. Dangerous business, he was betting.

Right now, though, they weren’t doing much besides existing, so Jieyuan—without taking his eyes off the black lines, just in case—turned his attention to his next concern.

His soulsense was gone.

He’d realized it right away. The months he’d spent with just Daojue in the Dome had left him very attuned to it, and the much easier time they’d had afterward after Meiyao was back with them hadn’t been nearly enough to dull that connection.

He reached deep inside himself, searching for it. But he didn’t just come up empty. Rather, he pulled up short—because the very act of reaching within himself was something he did mostly with his soulsense. There was also a physical component for it—an internal sense of sorts, spanning the bodily sensations—but it was his soulsense that did most of the heavy lifting.

Right. So that’s a no-go. Jieyuan tried again anyway, focusing on the sensations of his body, trying to reproduce the feeling of looking within he was used to, but nothing came out of it. He could feel his body—his heartbeat, the tension in his muscles, the depth of his breath—but nothing else. Nothing beyond the mundane. Nothing spiritual.

No soulsense.

And without it, Jieyuan couldn’t use his soulforce. Or any of his artifacts—not that his inability to use them made much of a difference, considering most of them were missing.

His hands were bare, and all he had on his feet right now were his boots. His gauntlets and greaves had vanished. He couldn’t feel the cool metal of any of his rings on his fingers, either, or the trusty weight of his many glyph-stretch bags or the many weapons he kept on his belt.

A quick glance down confirmed both things—his hands were bare, and all that was currently attached to his belt were the sheaths of the Shifting Feathers.

Jieyuan didn’t waste time wondering why or how that had happened. He was much more concerned about figuring out just what else he’d lost.

He reached for his aura, trying to tap into it. In theory, he needed soulsense to sense his aura, but using it should still be possible through muscle memory—or the spiritual equivalent of it, at any rate.

Drawing on his aura had always felt like a pressure on his muscles. A pressure he could draw on, spread over himself and control as needed.

That pressure was gone.

Aura use was something that came naturally to cultivators, as easily as moving a finger. But no matter how much Jieyuan felt for the pressure that had become so familiar to him over the last year, nothing happened. It was as unreachable as his soulsense.

Jieyuan was seeing a pattern here.

He wasn’t liking it any. He was, in fact, hating it.

Soulsense, soulforce, and artifacts, gone. Aura, also gone. Or at least active aura use was, including the ever-useful aura-lashing. He would have to test if he’d also lost the passive increase to his durability, but he suspected he had, since the very clear trend here was that he couldn’t have nice things.

There were only two things he had yet to check. Jieyuan was dreading the answer, but he didn’t hesitate in confirming it.

Turning his focus to his mind, he searched for other presences there. The faint but constant touch of Absolute Will Command—waiting to be drawn out, to be flexed like some unseen, intangible limb—and his bond with Huaxin.

He wasn’t at all surprised to find that he couldn’t feel his realmskill. Disappointed—and more than a little rattled, sure. But not surprised.

But he did get something from Huaxin.

He could feel their bond. It was very, very faint—like it was miles away. But he could feel it. And as Jieyuan grasped the bond, throwing himself fully into it the moment he realized he still had one thing going for him, he felt Huaxin sending something through it, trying to communicate.

Jieyuan had never tried to listen to the heartbeat of an ant. But he reckoned it’d be pretty close to what he was doing right now.

He had absolutely no idea what Huaxin was trying to convey. He could only just barely feel the activation of their bond, feel Huaxin’s attempt to communicate. Whatever Huaxin was sending through, it was so faint it might as well be imperceptible.

So he’d managed to keep Huaxin. But a fat lot of good it did him, when he couldn’t get anything from their bond.

Jieyuan wasn’t panicking. He wasn’t.

But he’d be lying if he said he was feeling particularly serene right now.

He took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. By his side, Daojue was silent. A quick glance in his direction revealed he’d stopped looking around. Daojue seemed to have come to the same conclusion about the black lines, because he was staring intently at them.

Something else that quick glance revealed was that Daojue, like him, seemed to have misplaced all his artifacts besides Gleaming End. No armor, no pouches, no accessories—

Jieyuan squinted at Daojue’s hand. At the red band on one of his fingers.

Daojue’s mysterious red ring.

Interesting.

So both of them had kept two artifacts. Their main weapons, plus the Fatebloom Heart for Jieyuan—though Jieyuan wasn’t so sure it counted, useless as it was right now—and the red ring for Daojue. Besides that, they’d kept their robes, belt, and boots, all of which were mundane anyway.

And on the topic of artifacts… Jieyuan shifted his gaze to the Shifting Feathers. Daojue was keeping an eye on the area, so Jieyuan allowed himself to fully concentrate on his weapons.

They looked the same. Golden and absurdly ostentatious. Golden was the important bit there, because they were made of gold. Which meant they should be awfully heavy. Without his aura to boost his strength—and their gear-skill, which let him further regulate their weight—the short glaives should weigh over fifty pounds each.

Jieyuan waved both short glaives in the air in front of him, paying close attention to the way they felt.

They felt right.

Jieyuan narrowed his eyes.

Something’s wrong.

His body was strong enough he could easily lift upwards of fifty pounds even without aura, sure. But not nearly this easily. The short glaives felt like they were barely a tenth of their actual weight. As if he was still unconsciously drawing on his aura, like he normally did when wielding them.

An idea came to Jieyuan, and he brought the two short glaives together, shaft-first. And as their two blunt ends met each other, Jieyuan felt not quite a click, but something a tad more subtle, a faint thrum through his fingertips.

And the two weapons were joined together into one whole.

The full form of the amphis.

It’d been months since he’d last put the Shifting Feathers together like this. He hadn’t had any reason to. Or the opportunity. Joined together, they were closer to the spear in length and shape, the weapon he had the most practice with.

But the two opposite blades made them nearly impossible to wield. He reckoned it was possible to use them this way, but it’d require learning a whole new style, and he just hadn’t had the time for it. Not during the Radiant Gold Tournament—and definitely not when he was fighting for his life in the Viridian Dome.

Using them split-up came much more naturally to him. It made them into short glaives—which were nothing more than sabers with extended hilts. And though sabers did rub him the wrong way because of their similarity to standard swords—even if not nearly as much as swords themselves—the short glaives, probably because they had a shaft instead of a hilt, had no such effect on him.

What was curious right now, though, was that joining them together was an option in the first place. Because the ability to merge the Shifting Feathers was a property intentionally inscribed into it. He needed to give the Shifting Feathers a little pump of chroma to both join and split them.

Chroma, which he had no access to right now.

And if I do this? Jieyuan tried to pry the Shifting Feathers apart. Again he felt that faint thrum, and the two-bladed polearm split back into a pair of short glaives.

Jieyuan didn’t think it’d work, but he kept concentrating on the split-up weapons. One of the Shifting Feather’s properties was still functional. Even though Jieyuan had no idea how, he wanted to see if he could get its primary property—its gear-skill—to work too.

Change weight, he thought at his weapon. Nothing happened. Shift weight? Vary mass? Lighten? Become heavier?

He tried all variations he could think of. None produced any result. Merging and splitting them, on the other hand, barely required a concrete thought on his part.

Giving up on that front, Jieyuan gave the area a quick check again—nothing had appeared, Daojue was still keeping watch—then did a little test. He placed the blade of one of the Shifting Feathers against the skin of his other hand, then very gently pressed down.

A sharp stab of pain hit—though it might as well be a tickle, by a cultivator’s standards—and Jieyuan pulled the blade away, eying the thin, superficial cut on the back of his right hand.

That confirmed two things.

One: the Shifting Feathers still retained its other inscribed properties. They felt as solid and as tough as steel in his grasp, and retained the same cutting edge—well beyond the limits of mundane, uninscribed gold.

That was good news.

Two: he had, indeed, lost his augmented durability along with all the other advantages his aura afforded him.

That was not good news.

Eying the cut, Jieyuan observed how even after a few seconds it kept bleeding, little droplets of blood gathering just above the wound before streaming down. That confirmed a third thing. He’d lost his augmented regeneration too.

Also very much not good news.

Jieyuan sighed, looking away from the cut.

With both his surroundings and circumstances dealt with for now, he finally let himself consider the situation itself.

The cave. Muyeshen. The Plunderer. Meiyao.

He ran it all over in his head again. He focused on the facts, still setting aside his feelings over this whole situation.

The picture didn’t look pretty. But it wasn’t exactly catastrophic, either.

From the look of things, they’d gotten caught up in the conflict between two unimaginably powerful beings. One of them was Muyeshen, also supposedly the Viridian and the Primordial. Muyeshen, it seemed, liked Meiyao well enough—and, by extension, himself.

Muyeshen did not like Daojue at all. Daojue was apparently descended from some other entity called the Scourge, who seemed to be connected to the Plunderer—the fifth party to join this utter mess.

The Plunderer liked Daojue—or, at least, he had some interest in keeping Muyeshen from killing him. Muyeshen did not like the Plunderer, though, and it appeared to be mutual.

The Plunderer revealed Muyeshen wanted Meiyao to take her trial—some kind of test, Jieyuan was assuming—and made the decision to have Jieyuan and Daojue join his. He’d mentioned, Jieyuan recalled, a trialworld, and how it wasn’t lacking for space.

Jieyuan looked up. At the sky, which looked nothing like the sky he knew.

Which, he was pretty sure, was not at all the sky he knew.

Trialworld. World.

They were in another world. A world that was apparently dedicated to the Plunderer’s trial. Trial. Test. Examination.

There was risk. The Plunderer had mentioned that if Jieyuan survived he’d be returned to the cave, which meant that dying was a possibility. But trials, as far as Jieyuan knew, also had a reward component. Assuming you passed.

Being returned to the cave, to Meiyao—he did not let himself think on how they were separated again, because that’d do him no good right now—was its own reward, sure.

But Jieyuan wouldn’t mind getting something to sweeten the deal, while he was at it.

Trial. That word got stuck in his head.

All of his powers seemed to be gone, leaving him little better than a mundane. 

“Hmmm.”

He looked down at the Shifting Feathers, ran his eyes along the golden, bejeweled blades.

They retained just enough of their original properties to remain useful. All his other artifacts were gone.

Jieyuan hadn’t been sure how to think of all of this—except, of course, that it was terrible. But if he were to look at it from the perspective of a test, things might make more sense.

He could see it. His own natural abilities, a weapon, and nothing else. He did have the Fatebloom Heart, but it wasn’t even remotely useful right now, so he might as well not have it.

Jieyuan turned to Daojue. There was something he could test right now that should just about confirm his suspicions.

“Daojue,” he said, “I want to try something.”

Daojue turned to him.

Jieyuan raised one of the Shifting Feathers up, holding it pointed to the side, showing the shaft to Daojue.

“I want you to try nicking the shaft with Gleaming End. Stop the moment you actually cut something, though.”

Wordlessly, neutrally, Daojue turned fully toward him, then brought Gleaming End forward, resting the spearhead against the shaft of the short glaive. Then Jieyuan felt his arm be pushed back slightly as Daojue pressed the blade down.

Nothing happened.

As an Orangesoul weapon, Gleaming End should’ve gone through the shaft of the Shifting Feather as if it weren’t even there.

And yet all that happened was the Redsoul weapon being pushed back, otherwise unharmed.

“That’s enough,” Jieyuan said, feeling Daojue increase the pressure. He didn’t want to actually damage the Shifting Feather.

Daojue stopped immediately, pulling his weapon back.

“All right,” Jieyuan said. “I think I’ve got an idea—”

Daojue’s gaze snapped away, concentrating on a spot in the distance, behind him.

Jieyuan whirled around.

Far off was a shape, quickly approaching. Running across one platform, then leaping to the next.

A human shape, still too far away to tell much more. With one of its arms up.

It was…

Waving at them?

The figure was fast, and barely a second later, she was close enough (though still several dozen platforms away) for him to make out some more details about it. Or, rather, her.

A woman. White-robed, holding a naked sword in her left hand. He couldn’t see much more than that, given the distance, but given how fast she was moving, he’d soon—

As the woman crossed into the next platform, something surged out of the pitch-black, void-like line she’d just jumped over.

Jieyuan couldn’t tell what it was. It was too far away, and moving too fast. All he could make out was a black, vaguely human mass—like a living shadow.

Whatever it was, it shot straight into the air, toward the white-robed woman.

The woman was already turning around, sword swinging, even before she landed. Just as her feet touched the ground, the shadow reached her.

They clashed. The shadow had a sword. Or, at least, a dark mass in the shape of one. Jieyuan wasn’t sure if it’d suddenly appeared (sprouted out of its body, maybe) or if it’d been there all along and he just didn’t see it. Either way, it used it well.

Jieyuan faintly heard the sharp rings of metal as the woman and the shadow crossed blades. They both moved quickly; cultivator-quick, with the kind of speed you’d expect from a first-sign redsoul. If not second-sign.

Considering that Jieyuan didn’t have access to his aura, and that he was pretty sure that should apply to everyone else in this place?

The woman was fast. Jieyuan could count on one hand the number of people he knew that were that fast, and he’d still have three fingers left over.

Half of Jieyuan’s attention was on the woman as she fought the shadow. The other half was on the nearby black lines marking the edges of the platform he and Daojue were on.

The shadow-thing had come from one of those gaps. Jieyuan had already been wary about them because of how they looked. Now that he knew that strange shadow creatures could jump out of them?

His wariness was not just justified—it was reinforced threefold.

Heavens, how he hated being right sometimes.

The woman’s fight with the shadow didn’t last long. Jieyuan didn’t quite see how it happened given the angle and distance, but after a few exchanges, she slashed her sword in a wide arc, before turning around.

As she resumed her run over to them, Jieyuan saw the shadow she’d left behind. Or at least, what remained of it. He could just barely make out a gap between its body and its now-floating head.

And as he watched, the body began to disappear. Dissipating, from the head up and from the neck down, the amorphous black substance making up the shadow-creature’s body vanishing into thin air. It was gone within seconds.

The woman kept running. No more shadows appeared, and soon, there was only a single platform between them. Close enough that Jieyuan could take in the details.

Black-haired, fair-skinned. Dark-eyed and attractive. Maybe even beautiful, though constant exposure to Meiyao (and Daojue, Jieyuan grudgingly admitted) might’ve skewed his standards of beauty.

What really drew his eye, though, was her smiling, bright-eyed expression. Jieyuan wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.

He’d been ready for a fight from the moment he saw her. But as she crossed into his platform, barely fifty feet of dry, barren rock between them now, he tensed further. By his side, Daojue did the same.

It didn’t matter how friendly she looked. If anything, that only put him more on guard. He only had the vaguest idea what this place was and what they were supposed to do here. It’d be better to assume that everyone besides Daojue was an enemy.

The woman cut off her run the moment she was on their platform, making her way over to him and Daojue at a more sedate pace. She didn’t sheath her sword, but she kept the blade down and to the side, nonthreatening.

The weapon, Jieyuan noticed, was very fancy-looking. The sleek blade was some kind of white metal with rippling patterns, and what he could see of the hilt was golden, with elaborate designs on it. The guard was red, and shaped like an open lotus.

She was still smiling. Her eyes were still bright. Jieyuan was pretty sure he’d never seen an expression quite like that on a cultivator. Yunzhu was easily the most friendly and bubbly cultivator he knew (when she wasn’t, of course, being the most disturbing, unsettling creature he’d ever had the misfortune of laying eyes upon), but even she had never been this cheerful.

“Hey!” the woman called. She was waving with her free arm. Actually waving. “I didn’t think I’d be seeing anybody else so soon! Let alone two people! I thought it’d be days before—”

She froze up on the spot, halfway to them. Her eyes widened, and Jieyuan tracked her gaze to him. To his hands, more specifically.

Even more specifically, to the Shifting Feathers.

The woman’s eyes flicked back and forth minutely between the two shortglaives.

“Are those… Is that an amphis?”

She crossed the rest of the distance so fast Jieyuan barely managed to react, putting up his weapons, Daojue doing the same. But the woman didn’t seem to notice. If anything, it looked like that served to give her a better look at the Shifting Feathers.

She stopped just a few feet away, eyes wide as she ran her eyes over the split weapon. She looked utterly absorbed in them, completely lost to her surroundings.

“By the Absolute,” she murmured. “They’re beautiful.”

She looked up at him, eyes wide, her smile even wider. “I don’t even know the last time I saw a human with one of those. Did you get a lunar from the Xieyueshen Clan to teach you? I actually spent some time learning under them, you know? And I’m really surprised to see someone else who uses them.”

The woman was looking at him. She was without a doubt looking at him, her eyes fixed squarely on him. But Jieyuan didn’t think she was seeing him. He was pretty sure he was looking awfully confused right now, and the woman just kept at it, jumping from sentence to sentence without showing any signs of stopping.

“Especially here! I was sure everyone here would be just boring old swordsmen—not that I don’t like the sword, mind you. It’s my favorite weapon, of course. But, I mean, variety is everything. And your amphis is just gorgeous! Can I hold it?”

Jieyuan hadn’t known what to make of the woman’s expression before.

He knew even less what to make of what he’d just heard. Of what had just happened, really.

Discreetly, he looked her over, searching for any signs of danger, any signs of tension or subterfuge. But he didn’t see anything. Her sword was still bared, but it was still to the side, and all she was doing right now was staring at him expectantly as her eyes kept flicking down to the Shifting Feathers.

Jieyuan glanced at Daojue.

His friend was visibly tense, eyes on the woman, ready for a fight.

“I think,” Jieyuan said, slowly, “that we should probably introduce ourselves first.”

“Oh! Of course!” The woman beamed. “I’m Anren! Core disciple of the Whirling Wind Sect, tenth-sign violetsoul!”

It was through sheer force of will that Jieyuan kept his shock—the kind of shock that made him want to cough, gape, and splutter—from showing. Or at least he did his best to keep it down.

Violetsoul. This woman, Anren, was a tenth-sign Violetsoul. If her words were to be believed, of course, but all Jieyuan saw on her face was pure, almost blinding, earnestness.

“Right,” Jieyuan said.

His mouth felt dry. Glancing at Daojue, he saw how still he’d gotten.

“I’m Jieyuan,” he said. He gestured at Daojue with his head. “The big guy’s Daojue.”

No surnames. Anren hadn’t revealed hers, and he was very glad for that, since it meant it wouldn’t be weird if he also omitted his and Daojue’s.

He didn’t think Haoyujin would be much of an issue. Tianzijun, though? Both the Plunderer and Muyeshen had known it, and from what little he’d understood of their conversation, that name was associated with some very bad things. Better keep it on the down low.

“Jieyuan, Daojue,” Anren repeated. As she said so, she turned to Daojue—and froze.

Her eyes, which until now had only shifted between varying degrees of wideness, narrowed sharply.

“You wouldn’t be Tianzijun Daojue, would you?”

Jieyuan was pretty sure he’d never had a plan go wrong this fast.

Daojue had already been tense before, but he looked even more statue-like than usual now. Whole body taut. Violet eyes boring into Anren.

If this were anyone else, Jieyuan might’ve tried to intervene. But this was Daojue. He’d either deny or confirm, regardless of what Jieyuan tried to do.

No, that wasn’t right. Jieyuan already knew what Daojue would do.

The smart thing would’ve been to hide his name. But Jieyuan knew Daojue. He was too proud to hide like that. More than that, Daojue was proud of his name. He had told Jieyuan very little of his family and clan during their months together in the Dome, but Jieyuan had still managed to puzzle a few things together.

“I am,” Daojue said.

“Hmmm.” Anren pursed her lips, looking Daojue up and down. “It’s been a long while since I’ve seen someone of your clan. I definitely didn’t think I’d see one of you here. I mean, I thought your clan was still forbidden from advancing to Violetsoul? Why would one of the sects send someone who can’t make it past Bluesoul here? Not to mention I’ve never heard of a Tianzijun leaving the clan for another sect.”

Daojue just stared at her. Stared hard. Stared harder than Jieyuan had ever seen him stare at someone. And that was saying something, because sometimes it felt like Daojue’s stares could bend steel and shatter rock.

Anren, to her credit, seemed entirely unaffected, looking right back at Daojue unabashedly.

But then, defying all of Jieyuan’s expectations, Anren suddenly smiled.

“Well, I guess I don’t have to ask you what faction you’re from,” she said. “If you aren’t a Fangxuanist, I’ll swallow my sword. You must be a Metalsoul too. Thank the Absolute for that, at least. Any time spent around a Juechenist—or, Heavens forbid, a Firesoul Juechenist—is too long by far.”

Factions? Jieyuan wondered. Fangxuanist? Juechenist?

Anren cocked her head. “But what sect are you from, then? I know for a fact only the Violetsoul vassals of the Absolute Sword Sect are given trialworld tokens, and the Tianzijun Clan hasn’t been Violetsoul for a very long time.”

Jieyuan’s list of questions about the Tianzijun Clan had been growing for a while now. He’d only gotten more interested after learning about bloodrights from Meiyao, and what happened with Muyeshen and the Plundered just earlier had only served to make him even more curious.

Right now, from Anren’s words, he’d just had maybe a couple of those questions answered.

Only for dozens more to take their place.

Absolute Sword Sect. That name was familiar; it took Jieyuan a moment to place it. He’d come across it once before. Months ago, back in the Fatebloom Woods, when he was going through the violetsoul Yikongwei Beidao’s jade books.

But Jieyuan shelved that thought for the moment. Anren was waiting for an answer, and it obviously wouldn’t be coming from Daojue.

As he saw it, they had three options. None of them was particularly appealing.

Refuse to answer, tell the awfully convoluted truth, or come up with a name and hope for the best?

He decided to play it safe. “We’d rather—”

“We are from the Metal Heart Sect,” Daojue said.

Jieyuan, again, had to stop his surprise from showing. And he had to do it a third time as he heard Anren’s response.

“That’s on the far east of the continent, right? Near the Iron Heart Peaks?”

Continent? Jieyuan had never heard about a continent before, only islands.

Anren very deliberately eyed Daojue’s spear, and then Jieyuan’s short-glaives. “But I was under the impression only islanders are divergent practitioners. Everyone I’ve met from the continent uses a sword. Unless—you two are islanders? Where were you scouted from?”

Jieyuan didn’t try to answer this time. He just stood to the side. Someway, somehow, Daojue seemed to have this handled. And even considering everything that had happened over the last few hours, Jieyuan found he still had the capacity to be surprised.

“The Silent Serenities Sect,” Daojue said, simply.

“I’ve heard of it. It’s from the Outer Isles, right? I don’t know much about it, though. I’m much more familiar with the Inner Isles vassals.”

Shrugging, Anren went on, “Well, I don’t know how the trial selection worked in the Metal Heart Sect, but I’m sure you two must be very skilled if your masters got you slots here, considering neither of you is a sword-user.”

She looked between the two of them expectantly. The warm, wide smile was back on her face. It wasn’t quite as large anymore, but it still looked perfectly honest.

“How about the three of us team up?” she asked. “We’ve got just over two weeks to make it to the Sword Tower. We can talk some more on the way, share some strategies for the next phase. Maybe we could even—”

Anren cut herself off, her gaze stopping on Daojue again, who hadn’t stopped staring fixedly at her.

Anren frowned. “Ah. This is going to be a problem, isn’t it? Even if you’re a Fangxuanist, I guess you’re still a Tianzijun. Better get this out of the way first, then. I know just how to handle a Tianzijun.”

She took some steps back, before she raised her sword, pointing it at Daojue.

Then, glancing at Jieyuan, she asked, “Mind making some space for us? I need to beat your friend up a little bit.”

She flashed him an impish smile. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll make sure to leave him in one piece.”