Chapter 121: BAGS AND PRISMS

CHAPTER

121

BAGS AND PRISMS

JIEYUAN

—∞—

“What?” Jieyuan looked from Daojue to Gleaming End and then back to Daojue. “Why not? What about Gleaming End? You bonded it, didn’t—”

“I did not bond Gleaming End,” Daojue said, matter-of-fact. “Gleaming End bonded itself to me.”

“That’s—” Jieyuan caught himself, frowning, and stopped to think. Too many stupid questions—at least from Daojue’s perspective—would have Daojue ignoring him altogether for the rest of the day.

Jieyuan recalled their talk after their escape from the Dome. How Daojue had said it was Gleaming End that had used its gearskills and not him.

Oh.

“Is this about the whole Gleaming End being alive business?” Jieyuan asked.

Daojue said nothing.

Jieyuan glanced over at the Orangesoul swords on the ground. “And those aren’t alive, then?”

Again, no response.

Jieyuan pursed his lips.

He’d hoped it was Daojue’s bloodright that had let him bond Gleaming End. But from the looks of things, it was Gleaming End that was special, not Daojue. Or rather, both were special, because he doubted Gleaming End would’ve bonded to Daojue otherwise.

Jieyuan sighed, shaking his head. “I guess there’s nothing to be done about it.”

Wordlessly, Daojue returned to his inspection of the remaining Orangesoul artifacts.

The gauntlets and greaves, as it turned out, were plain like Redsoul ones—not that it’d have meant anything if they weren’t, as they wouldn’t have been able to use them anyway.

But then Daojue moved on to the Orangesoul accessories, and there things got more interesting.

Earlier, Jieyuan had left the Orangesoul glyph-stretch pouches for later because he’d wanted to save the best for last. But now it was looking like they were more of his last hope instead.

Jieyuan picked up one of the Orangesoul glyph-stretch pouches and took a look inside it.

It was massive. Perspective was a little skewed with all the dimensional warping at play, but improved sight also meant improved depth perception.

I can probably fit an entire house inside here. With space left over.

Like the Redsoul bags, it wasn’t empty. Inside were more Orangesoul artifacts, about a hundred orange prisms, and half a dozen jade books.

Jieyuan dumped all of it on the ground, and then moved on to the other two Orangesoul pouches. Inside them he found more of the same—higher-realm artifacts, jade books, and orange prisms—all of which also went to the ground.

Jieyuan ignored all of that, though. What he was interested in were the three Orangesoul bags themselves, not their contents. He’d already given up on all of the other Orangesoul artifacts, but the thing about glyph-stretch pouches was that they didn’t need to be bonded to be used.

The jade books were another point of interest, but he set them aside with the ones from before to look through later.

A little while later, Daojue finished going through all the higher-realm artifacts. And while Daojue hung back, Jieyuan finished sorting everything else—in one side of the patch of earth they’d cleared went all the glyph-stretch bags, the red prisms, and the jade books. On the other side, the orange prisms and all the other artifacts.

“All right,” Jieyuan said to himself, standing up, looking between the two piles. Daojue stood by his side, Gleaming End in hand again. “We can work with this.”

Twelve bags in total. Nine Redsoul, three Orangesoul. Between those and the ones Jieyuan and Daojue already had, they wouldn’t be hurting for storage space any time soon. And given they’d taken to harvesting beast parts and plants for refining, that was space they’d be putting to good use.

And then there were the prisms—something else they wouldn’t be hurting for.

The orange prisms were of as little help as the Orangesoul artifacts, but the red prisms were a different story. And now they had a whole bunch more—over a thousand—of them. It wasn’t like they’d been running low on prisms before, but given they had probably years in the Dome ahead of them, it’d have only been a matter of time before they’d have to start rationing.

A thousand prisms would tide them over for a good while. More than enough for him and Daojue to make it to tenth-sign Redsoul, with prisms left over.

Bags and prisms. Those seemed to be the only things useful out of everything. There were still the jade books to go through, but though Jieyuan had grouped them together with the bags and the red prisms, he doubted they’d be much better than paperweights.

All things considered, it wasn’t so bad. The prisms alone were worth that fight with the jackal, and the glyph-stretch bags were more than welcome. Still, Jieyuan found himself a little disappointed. That was the thing about expectations. When they weren’t met, they could make even a good deal look rotten.

And as for the biggest disappointment… Jieyuan moved over to the other pile, crouching down in front of the five higher-realm artifacts he’d set to the side. Four rings and a bracelet. The Yellowsoul artifacts he’d been so excited about—Daojue had confirmed that they were, indeed, Yellowsoul—but had no way of using.

The worst part was that they’d have been really useful.

Daojue had given him a brief description of what each of the artifacts could do, and Jieyuan was particularly interested in what Daojue had called a sealed-space ring.

Jieyuan picked up said ring, turning it over in his hand. It was a smooth black band. Or rather, a gold band—but dotting its surface were hundreds of tiny black symbols, bunched so tightly together they pretty much obscured the gold. Inscripts didn’t usually leave a mark, but these ones did. 

From what he understood of Daojue’s very succinct explanation, sealed-space rings were storage artifacts like glyph-stretch bags, except they held dozens to hundreds separate pockets of space—each one represented by that tiny mark—where you could teleport things in and out of. Sealing and unsealing. There’d been some sealed-space rings among the Orangesoul artifacts, too, but with less than a hundred marks.

Already he had ideas for how he might use something like this. Usages that went way beyond simple storage. Depending on the exact mechanics—sealing and unsealing speed, whether you could choose where something was unsealed in, just what could be sealed—he could think of so many ways something like this might be useful in combat.

And yet right now it’s just dead weight—

Out of the corner of his eye, Jieyuan saw Daojue—who for a while now had been just standing there, staring at Gleaming End for whatever reason—suddenly walk over and pick up one of the Orangesoul swords.

Holding the sword out in front of him in one hand, Gleaming End in the other, Daojue looked between the two weapons.

What’s this, now? Jieyuan didn’t ask, just watched as Daojue brought his hands together, resting the blade of the sword against Gleaming End’s shaft.

The sword suddenly shimmered, the space around it warping—and then it disappeared.

Jieyuan blinked. Wait, what?

Like it was the most natural thing in the world, Daojue knelt down and picked up another Orangesoul sword.

Jieyuan blinked again. “Daojue?”

Daojue paused, turning to look at him.

Of course, he didn’t elaborate, so Jieyuan had no choice but to ask, “What.. What was that? What are you doing?”

“The cannibalism ritual,” was Daojue’s stone-faced answer.

Now it was Jieyuan’s turn to stare blankly. The what.

“What in the—” Like with before, Jieyuan caught himself, curbing the knee-jerk reaction to Daojue’s ever-growing list of oddities and shutting his mouth.

He considered Daojue’s words while Daojue just stared at him, not doing anything. Like he was waiting for something.

There was more to it than Daojue just being Daojue—that Daojue wanted him to figure this out for himself.

It wasn’t the first time Daojue had done something like this. It’d started happening more and more lately. Sometimes it happened when Jieyuan was refining, sometimes it happened after a fight. Daojue would often offer some vague piece of advice, and remain utterly unresponsive until Jieyuan puzzled it out.

He wasn’t sure what exactly the point of it was, whether this was Daojue acting on some bizarre sense of humor or Daojue testing him for some similarly bizarre reason.

It could be a bit annoying, but he wasn’t complaining. He’d rather have scraps of information thrown his way than nothing at all. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

All right. Let’s think this through. Cannibalism’s the key word here. Cannibalism…

Two weapons, pressed together. One weapon disappearing.

Cannibalism…

“You’re sacrificing one chromal gear to another,” Jieyuan said. “It’s as if the sacrificed gear is being eaten by the other gear, hence cannibalism. Gleaming End ate the sword. And as for what this ritual does… It makes the remaining artifact stronger. It… increases the artifact’s soulsign.”

None of what Jieyuan said was phrased as a question. Everything was stated as fact. Daojue had never outright said anything along the lines of are you asking or telling? But the first time Daojue had done something like this, Jieyuan had made the mistake of asking his theories instead of telling them, and Daojue had given him a look.

Daojue didn’t reply, but his expression changed almost imperceptibly, softening ever so slightly around the eyes and mouth.

This was, as best as Jieyuan could tell, Daojue’s pleased face.

“All right,” Jieyuan said, slowly. Already his thoughts were running ahead. Being able to increase your artifacts’ soulsign was a game-changer.

He glanced down at the Shifting Feathers, kept sheathed at the sides of his waist.

They’d served him well so far, but were useless against Orangesoul beasts, and it was only a matter of time before he’d have to discard them. But if he could get them to Orangesoul?

“Can you teach me the ritual?” Jieyuan didn’t mince words.

Daojue, likewise, got straight to the point. “It can only be done with an ego artifact.”

“Oh. That’s… All right.”

A pity, but Jieyuan couldn’t say he was that surprised. He’d never heard about this ritual before, and considering how useful it was, knowledge of it would’ve spread.

And ego artifact, was it? So that was what they were called.

“Anyway, what’s Gleaming End’s soulsign now?” Jieyuan asked.

Even if he could do nothing about the Shifting Feathers, improving Gleaming End would still go a long way toward keeping them alive. So far, they’d been very lucky they’d only had to face low-sign Orangesoul beasts. Higher-sign ones would be much more durable, making Gleaming End’s effectiveness not just drop but plunge. What would gouge a low-sign beast would just nick a high-sign one.

But if they could raise Gleaming End to tenth-sign Orangesoul? That’d put them back in the running.

“First-sign Orangesoul,” Daojue said.

And, for the third time today, a single sentence was all it took to dash Jieyuan’s hopes.

“It… It didn’t change? That was a tenth-sign Orangesoul sword you sacrificed, wasn’t it?” Jieyuan said. “That seems awfully inefficient.”

Daojue didn’t answer, and Jieyuan took that as a cue to consider the matter further.

“Hmmm. Is the ritual normally this wasteful,” he said, tentatively, “or is there some sort of compatibility factor involved?”

Again he caught a glimpse of satisfaction flash across Daojue’s expression. There was no answer, but none was needed.

“They have poor compatibility, then,” Jieyuan said. Daojue didn’t correct him, and that was that.

Jieyuan glanced over at the remaining Orangesoul artifacts. “All right. It’s not like we have much use for them, so have at it. Just spare the saber and the sealed-space rings. And the bags, of course.”

The Orangesoul saber would at least come in handy when fighting Orangesoul beasts, and though the sealed-space rings were useless right now, that didn’t mean that wouldn’t change further down the line.

It was only a matter of time before they reached tenth-sign Redsoul. But Jieyuan had no intention of stopping there. To advance to Orangesoul, you needed an Orangesoul coalescence hymn. It was the only way to merge the tenth-density red chroma imbued in your soul into first-density orange chroma.

He’d looked into it back in the Gleaming Sect, and supposedly the only way to create a coalescence hymn—or any heavenly hymn, really—was if you had another one of the same realm and type to reference. You also needed to have high enough heavenly affinity. As well as lots of time—because it was supposed to take upwards of decades to create a heavenly hymn, with coalescence ones being especially difficult.

He hadn’t been able to find much on the process itself, but it also wasn’t as if he’d bothered digging too deeply. At the time, he’d been sure he’d soon be joining the Howling Lighting Sect, where he’d be handed all the Orangesoul hymns he needed.

Still, where there was a will, there was a way. And in ancient times, the cultivators of old must’ve somehow come up with the hymns they needed to advance on their own. When the time came, he was sure he and Daojue could figure something out.

But then something else occurred to Jieyuan. It wasn’t just Orangesoul artifacts they had.

“Actually, what about the Redsoul and Yellowsoul artifacts?” Jieyuan asked. “Can you sacrifice them too, or do they need to be at the same realm for the ritual?”

Daojue gave him his usual, stony stare, then wordlessly let go of the Orangesoul sword and picked up a Redsoul one and pressed them against each other. Then he just stood there for a few moments, still as a statue. The viridian mist drifted and turned lazily around them.

Nothing happened.

Jieyuan raised an eyebrow as Daojue set the sword back down.

He was testing it, Jieyuan realized. He wasn’t sure.

He didn’t know how Daojue knew all these things—while he was tight-lipped about almost everything, he was especially cagey when it came to his past and origins—but it was clear Daojue’s knowledge wasn’t comprehensive.

Daojue grabbed the Yellowsoul bracelet and stood back up. The same scene repeated. Daojue brought the two artifacts together. A few seconds passed. Again, nothing happened. But just as Daojue moved them apart, he froze.

“Daojue?” Jieyuan asked.

Daojue didn’t seem to hear him, just fixed his gaze on his right hand. He looked unusually tense. Then Daojue drove Gleaming End into the ground in front of him and let it stand on its own like a pillar, freeing up his hand. The next moment, the gauntlet over Daojue’s right arm expanded and slid off him, dropping to the ground.

Daojue kept staring at his right hand, and Jieyuan did likewise. On it was a Redsoul ring Jieyuan knew to be a mind-link artifact. But there was also a pure, red ring, embossed with odd patterns. It didn’t register to Jieyuan’s soulsense. Normally, that’d imply it was mundane. But not necessarily.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen that ring—in fact, he’d even wondered about it before. But it’d been so long since he’d seen Daojue without his gauntlets he’d forgotten about it.

It was that ring Daojue was looking at.