Chapter 129: HIS AND HERS

CHAPTER

129

HIS AND HERS

JIEYUAN

—∞—

“Meiyao,” Jieyuan said, catching her attention. “Are we safe here, or do we need to move?”

To his surprise, Meiyao didn’t even need a moment to answer. “We’re fine for now.”

“Are you sure?” He didn’t doubt her, but he remembered how she’d always spend a good few minutes before coming to a decision.

She nodded. “I’m much better at sensing the viridian mist, now. Moreover, we’ve got Xiaohu. She’s an even better lookout than I am.”

“Is that so?”

Jieyuan glanced down at the beast. As if sensing his attention, it opened its eyes, peering back at him, and then purred softly. Without really thinking, he reached up and rubbed its neck, just under its head.

It purred louder. He felt the vibrations through his fingers.

Jieyuan had never really been one for pets, but he could get used to this.

“Rot,” Meiyao said. “You really stole her from me, didn’t you? Just like that.”

Jieyuan quirked an eyebrow. “You did say it liked me. Like owner, like pet?”

“I think she likes you a little too much,” Meiyao said, glaring at the beast. “And Xiaohu’s a she—not an it.”

Then Meiyao shook her head, smiling wryly. “Though I suspect you could call her anything and she'd be fine with it, the little traitor.”

“Oh?” Jieyuan’s smirk widened. “Does like owner, like pet still apply here? Can I call you whatever I—”

“Finish that sentence, Jieyuan,” Meiyao said, her glare now firmly on him. She was smiling. Darkly. “Finish that rotting sentence. I dare you.”

“Heavens, how I’ve missed this,” Jieyuan said, the words slipping out of his mouth before he could stop them. “Missed you.”

“I…” Meiyao seemed caught off-guard, for a moment. “Not as much as I’ve missed you.”

“Oh, are we competing now? Who missed each other more?” Jieyuan said, stepping closer. “Is that the game?”

He cupped her chin with his fingers, staring into the emerald of her eyes. She stared right back at him, smiling, challenging. He didn’t even know what he was doing anymore, only that it felt right.

“Because I’m warning you now,” Jieyuan said. “I don’t think you’ll be winning it.”

Meiyao’s response was to lean forward, faster than he could react, pressing her lips against his for just a moment before she pulled back.

“Well,” Jieyuan said, licking his lips. Tasting her. “Now that’s just plain cheating.”

Meiyao laughed. “And what do you know about playing fair?”

“Nothing at all,” Jieyuan admitted.

And he leaned down, kissing her again. She welcomed it readily, hungrily. And then they were lost again. In the moment, and in each other. In warmth and breath.

This time Xiaohu didn’t interrupt, seemingly content to rest on his shoulders. But after a while, Jieyuan regained enough of his senses and pulled away.

He didn’t want to stop, but they really needed to get other things done first.

Judging by the way Meiyao’s fingers clung to the back of his head, she wanted to stop as much as he did. But she still let go—though with a pout on her face that made her displeasure perfectly clear.

“You said Xiaohu’s a better lookout, right?” he asked, getting to business before he could get distracted again. “Is it—she, sorry—some kind of sensor?”

“She’s a viridian prowler,” Meiyao said. “Part weasel, part mongoose, part badger. One of her beast-skills is sensory in nature. It gives her something like a human’s soulsense, more than double the range of a tenth-sign redsoul. And it’s not affected at all by the mist.”

Jieyuan let out a low whistle. That meant a range of at least a hundred and twenty feet. “That’s good, all right.”

Meiyao nodded. “Finding her was the best thing that happened to me—after… Well, after we separated.”

“I can see that,” Jieyuan said. “There’s a story there, I’m sure. But first…”

He turned to Daojue, who was still standing to the side, doing his best impression of a statue. “We’ll be setting up camp here for today. That fine with you?”

Daojue turned back, said nothing.

“I’m taking first watch,” Jieyuan continued. “Well, Meiyao and I, anyway.”

Still silent, Daojue moved away, further off into the pocket, about as far as the length of rope connecting them allowed. Then he sat down and closed his eyes, Gleaming End cradled in his lap.

And that was that. Jieyuan turned back to Meiyao.

She’d moved while he was talking to Daojue, and was now standing over the mimic beast’s head. Jieyuan walked over.

“There’s another story there, I’m guessing,” he said quietly, stopping beside her, staring down at the head.

“It’s a wildshape fox,” Meiyao said, just as quiet. “I met it about a week ago. It was wearing the form of another beast. It was Xiaohu who warned me something was wrong. If not for her, I wouldn’t even have been able to tell.”

“A week ago?” Jieyuan frowned. That would have been around the time he and Daojue had found the jackal’s cave.

Just a coincidence, or was there more to it?

“About that, yes,” Meiyao said. “Why?”

“It’s probably nothing,” Jieyuan said. “I’ll tell you later. Anyway, that was when the fox transformed into you?”

“That’s right,” Meiyao said. There was something off about the way she was looking at it. Like she was troubled over something. Conflicted, even. “It’s… When it transformed, I got a clear sense of what kind of beast it really was. They don’t just take the form of other creatures, but also their lives.”

Meiyao crouched down and took up the head between her hands, holding it up. Blood dripped from its severed neck.

Jieyuan watched on from the side. Xiaohu wrapped her body around his neck tighter, and Jieyuan noticed how the viridian prowler’s little eyes were fixed firmly on the fox head.

“They roam around until they find an interesting enough target, transform into it, and then kill it—and then they’ll find their way to their victim’s kin and take over its place among them. And they’ll keep up the act until they grow bored or find a new victim. Usually they go after Redsouls—because when they transform into a lower-realm creature, they get a stronger version of its abilities.”

As Meiyao spoke, she turned the head this way and that, like she was committing the fox’s features to memory. “It tried to kill me, after it transformed. It didn’t get my realmskill, but it did copy my bloodskills. A stronger version of them. It almost killed me, but then I realized I could use Divine Nature Resonance on it.”

“But if it was copying you, and you used Divine Nature Resonance on it…” Jieyuan suddenly understood how Meiyao had been so fast earlier, and why she'd been glowing so brightly. “It copied you, getting a stronger version of your bloodskills—and you resonated with it, copying it in turn?”

Meiyao shot him a smirk. “I’m not sure who was more surprised by that, myself or the fox. It was still a bit stronger, but I had the overwhelming advantage in skill, so I drove it back, and it ran away. But I realized what it intended. It did what its nature told it to do—take over my life. So it looked for you.”

Her smile faded, and she returned her attention to the head in her hands. “It had my bloodskills—my ability to navigate the mist—but stronger. And like all the other beasts of the Dome, it’s immune to the effects of the mist. So it managed to track you down, while I followed. I spent a whole week chasing it.”

Meiyao gave a wry, quiet laugh. “In a way, I have it to thank for our reunion. I… I guess part of me wishes I could have spared it. I would have, if it hadn’t been so much of a threat.”

Jieyuan tried to look at it her way, but he just didn’t see it. The beast had brought them together, sure. But it’d done so with the intention of taking over Meiyao’s life.

If the real Meiyao hadn’t arrived, then he might’ve fallen for the shapeshifter’s ruse, convinced himself that it was Meiyao—that something had happened to her, maybe some bloodskill gone wrong.

The thought of kissing that creature the way he'd just kissed Meiyao, of being intimate with something impersonating her…

He shuddered.

The way he saw it, the beast was dead, and good riddance to that.

He didn’t voice his thoughts, though, and Meiyao didn’t seem to notice anyway, still staring at the head.

Sighing, she gently set the head back down on the floor. Her eyes and fingers lingered on it for a few moments longer before she stood back up. She nodded at him.

It was only then that Jieyuan felt Xiaohu relax again.

“But enough about that,” Meiyao said. “What has it been like, on your side? Tell me everything. Starting at the beginning—when we got separated, fighting that rotting snake.”

—∞—

Awareness hit Jieyuan like a punch to the gut.

All lingering hints of sleep were pushed off in an instant as he tensed, sending his senses out for threats, readying himself for danger—

And then it struck him just how soft the surface he was lying on was.

Confused, Jieyuan twisted around, only to find two pairs of green eyes staring down at him, one of them much bigger than the other.

Meiyao. Leaning forward, hanging over him. Fingers trailed over his scalp, gently prodding at the tangles in his hair. The viridian mist swayed and shifted softly between them, licking at their skin, casting Meiyao’s face in its dim green glow.

A furred, white-green shape—Xiaohu—jumped from Meiyao’s shoulders, landing as softly as a feather on his body. The little beast then curled up on his chest, making herself at home.

The tension drained from Jieyuan as he realized just where he was. And whom he was with.

His head was propped up on Meiyao’s lap, cradled between her thighs. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there. He searched his mind, thinking back.

They’d put away the wildshape fox’s body, then Meiyao had gone to pick up the saber the fox had thrown away—she could travel the mist much better now, and he’d tied a rope between them again, just to be safe. Next he’d spent some time telling Meiyao of what he and Daojue had gone through these last few months. He’d kept it short, briefly going through the more challenging encounters they’d had.

The highlight of it all had been their discovery of the greenseeker jackal’s cave. Meiyao had been very interested in knowing just where the Orangesoul saber from before had come from. She’d also been curious about ego artifacts and the cannibalization ritual. Both had been news to her.

And then… And then he’d gone and done some refining, to show her how much he’d improved, how he’d kept practicing the craft in her absence. But at some point—his recollection got vague, there—Meiyao had cleared up some space, then had him lie down, guiding his head into her lap, and…

And sleep had taken over. Wholly and thoroughly, from one moment to the next. Like his body was making him pay back—with cutthroat interest—the weeks he’d spent without a semblance of proper rest.

“Rather jumpy, aren’t you?” Meiyao said, softly.

She kept moving her fingers through his hair. Jieyuan wouldn’t have believed it if anyone had told him how good something so simple could feel.

“I guess,” Jieyuan murmured.

He wasn’t tired anymore—now that both the shock and confusion had worn off, he felt perfectly awake, rested, nothing short of energized—but he didn’t make any attempt to move away or sit up.

Part of him was still a little dazed, though. Struck dumb with the realization Meiyao was really here. And that she was holding him like this.

Now that he wasn’t running on fumes anymore, it really struck him just what Meiyao being back meant.

His and Daojue’s days of just barely surviving were over. The sleep he’d had just now was all the proof he needed. A day ago, he couldn’t have imagined falling asleep and letting down his guard like that.

Jieyuan didn’t mind fighting. If anything, he loved it. Loved the challenge, the thrill of victory. But there were limits to that. And he… He’d probably been nearing his.

If Meiyao hadn’t appeared, he wouldn’t have stopped fighting. He’d have kept at it until his very last breath, and he’d have made damn sure to take down whatever beast it was that finally did him in.

But he’d have died all the same. Not necessarily tomorrow, or even a week from now. A month later, maybe. The when didn’t matter, though. One way or another, he’d been on the fast-track to death, and each day that passed was another line carved into his funeral urn.

Meiyao bent low and kissed him softly on the lips. She barely moved her head away, just stared into his eyes from barely an inch away, while her fingers worked away at his temples, brushing his hair back.

“This rotting forest has sunk its roots into you, hasn’t it?” she whispered. “Don’t worry. Whatever it’s done, I’ll undo. You’re fine now, Jieyuan. I’m here. And I’m not going away.”

Jieyuan felt something stuck in his throat. He clenched his teeth, his fists, feeling something hot and bitter rush through him.

He wasn’t—

He wasn’t something to be protected. Something fragile, something broken.

He was— He was—

“You’re mine.” Meiyao took his lips again, keeping him from voicing thoughts he was still struggling to put into words. “And I’m yours.”

She pressed her forehead down against his, and he felt her warmth bleeding into him.

“And one day,” she promised, “the world will be ours.”