Chapter 114: THE FOOL’S GOLD

CHAPTER

114

THE FOOL’S GOLD

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Jieyuan stared at the snake.

It had fallen barely a foot away. Within arm’s reach. He was standing directly in front of its eye—or at least what remained of it. The massive, wet globe had popped like a bubble.

He could just make out the crystalline end of Gleaming End’s shaft peeking out among the ruined mass of white, yellow, and red that had once been an eye the size of his chest.

The snake was dead.

The snake was still trembling faintly, and Jieyuan had no way to actually tell. But Huaxin’s warnings had faded. And unless the snake’s biology was completely unlike its mundane counterparts’, Jieyuan couldn’t see it surviving this kind of damage.

It was dead.

They’d done it.

Jieyuan kept staring at it. He didn’t drop his guard—not when this particular snake had managed to surprise him so many times so far. But he knew it. Knew that it was dead.

The trembling slowly died into faint twitches, which then gave way to stillness.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and he glanced back to see Daojue walking over. Wordlessly, Daojue stopped by his side, stuck his gauntleted hands inside the ruined eye, and pulled Gleaming End out.

There was a wet, plucking sound, and a little shower of goo and blood. The eye had already looked grisly before, but with Gleaming End’s abrupt exit, it didn’t even look real anymore, more like a disgusting half-formed swirl of raw color.

Daojue paid none of it any mind. He gave Gleaming End a sharp flick, and all the gore on it splattered into the ground, leaving the crystal spear blank-slate clean.

Daojue didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move away, either. Just stood there by his side, staring down at the snake.

It was dead. They’d done it. Jieyuan kept repeating the words to himself. But each time he did it, the shallower, duller they rang. And as his heart slowly settled, he felt whatever lingering thrill of victory and survival peter out.

He stared at the snake. The Orangesoul snake they’d killed. That was an accomplishment and a half, to be sure—a fourth-sign and a fifth-sign Redsoul, killing an Orangesoul beast. Sure, they had an Orangesoul weapon with them—but Jieyuan couldn’t see any other cultivator at their soulsigns doing what they’d just did.

Any other, that was—except Meiyao.

Meiyao.

There was one reason why he couldn’t win enjoy the victory, and that was its name. Meiyao.

He stared at the snake.

They’d won the fight. But they might’ve just lost everything else.

Fool’s gold, this kind of victory.

There was a thought that came to Jieyuan every day. And it was that without Meiyao, he and Daojue would’ve been dead several times over.

It appeared the snake had just given them a chance to put it to the test.

Jieyuan looked up, swept his eye across the pocket. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he didn’t find it anyway.

Enough. Jieyuan exhaled again, more slowly. Moping and languishing did nobody any good, and least of all him.

He found his center, forced himself to think things through.

What were the facts?

They’d killed the snake, but got separated from Meiyao in the process.

What were the consequences?

Their chances to survive the Dome without her didn’t look good.

And that wasn’t even mentioning that without her, they couldn’t counteract the mist’s effects, and so had no guarantee they’d be headed toward the center—toward the supposed exit of this place, according to Meiyao.

What could he do about it?

“We’ll wait,” Jieyuan said. The words slipped out just as he thought them—and he felt his heart jump as he grabbed onto this new idea.

Daojue looked at him.

“The more pockets we cross, the farther away from Meiyao we’re getting,” Jieyuan said. “We’re only two pockets so far. She might be able to find her way back to us still. So we’ll wait.”

Daojue just looked at him, but Jieyuan’s words were as much to Daojue’s benefit as they were for his own. “We made a lot of noise during out fight, so beasts might be drawn over—or they might stay away. It’s a coin toss. And if we set off, odds are we’ll run into beasts anyway. Meiyao can tell her way around the viridian mist, and even with her leading the way we’d still come across several beasts a day. So we’ll wait.”

And that was that. Jieyuan didn’t let himself ponder the possibility that Meiyao might fail to overcome the green snake she’d been left behind with. If anything, with him and Daojue gone, she might even be able to work her bloodskills on it—even if she couldn’t get it fully under control, it might be enough to give her a chance to get a killing blow in. Not to mention the two snakes had been a single one originally—maybe killing the white snake had killed its green twin, too.

Meiyao’s odds were good. Way better than theirs had been—and if they’d managed to kill the snake, so could she.

Meiyao was alive, and that was that.

Now they just had to wait for her to find them, and they’d be able to carry on their way.

“Jieyuan…” Maeva said slowly, carefully.

He knew that tone.

Glancing to the side, he saw that she’d manifested beside him at some point, and had her eyes on him, frowning.

He knew that look, too.

He didn’t care that Daojue would notice and gave her a look of his own. Don’t.

Maeva pursed her lips, slowly shook her head. “I also think her odds are good—”

Guaranteed, Jieyuan stressed.

“Guaranteed, yes,” Maeva said. “But Meiyao’s ability to navigate the viridian mist isn’t as good as—”

Waiting is still the smartest option, Jieyuan cut in. The best-case scenario is Meiyao finding us, and every other scenario is probably certain death, if not immediate than in the long run. So we need to stack the odds of that first scenario happening.

“But how long will you wait for her, then?” Maeva insisted.

As long as it takes.

He stopped the Command, and Maeva vanished.

Jieyuan put their conversation out of his mind and turned to regard the snake’s corpse again.

This time, what he got as he looked at it wasn’t the high of victory or the dread of the future—but rather, an idea.

They’d be waiting for Meiyao, that much was set in stone, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do something else in the meantime.

He moved closer to the massive corpse, to the side of the eye, and ran his head across the plate-like scales of its forehead. It wasn’t pristine, but slightly ridged, warped. Not from Daojue’s cuts, though, but from that brief acid shower the white snake had taken before it’d gotten its earth armor up. The damage seemed the worst here, at the head. That added up, as the earth coat would’ve started from the bottom.

Still, the scales were serviceable. And the ones farther down were pretty much whole, anyway.

Jieyuan was no refiner—not yet, despite Meiyao’s best efforts—and even if he was he wouldn’t be able to work on materials at a higher realm anyway. But there was always the mundane way of refining raw materials into useful things.

And even in their raw state, the scales would be plenty useful already. As they’d been in their fight.

“Daojue,” he said, turning back, nodding toward Gleaming End, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever done any skinning before?”

Jieyuan didn’t suppose he had, being clan-born and all. Jieyuan didn’t know it, either. But between them, using Gleaming End and the scales he’d already picked up, they could figure something out. And it wasn’t even skinning proper he had in mind—they just needed to pry out the scales.

Daojue said nothing, but he stepped forward, raising Gleaming End.

That was answer enough. They got straight to work.

If there was one good thing about Daojue, it was that he didn’t ask questions. He just got things done. Then again, he reckoned Daojue could also see the worth of carrying Orangesoul scales around with them.

Jieyuan spent the first few minutes figuring out the best way to do it with the scales he already had, before he realized he was being stupid, moved over to one of the cuts, and used it as a starting point. He quickly found that the warped, darkened scales that had taken the acid bath were harder, tougher than the undamaged ones, so he used those for cutting and prying.

Daojue got the hang of it much faster—just cracked a section with Gleaming End, dug the spearhead in for leverage, and then wrenched the scales out.

They’d have probably been faster if they fully threw themselves into the job, but a beast could pop up at any moment, so they kept their guards up the entire time. Still, they made good progress—a few hours later, and they had a veritable pile of it, and they weren’t even a quarter of the way through.

The snake’s head had been reduced to a bloody, wretched mound of flesh, but everything Jieyuan had seen so far as a cultivator had him taking sights like that in perfect stride

Jieyuan stepped away, nodding as he took in the several hundred scales they’d stacked together.

There was a lot he could do with Orangesoul scales. Particularly if he worked them into more useful shapes. From the obvious throwing knifes and daggers, to caltrops and makeshift shrapnel bombs.

If they ever found themselves facing Orangesoul beasts again, things would be turning out way different.

He was feeling good with this haul—though he’d have felt if Meiyao had appeared.

But she hadn’t, even though several hours had passed.

He looked up, giving the pocket a quick scan anyway. Just in case.

By now she must’ve long since finished up with her green snake—either killed it or gotten away—so she had to be looking for them.

Any moment now, Jieyuan reckoned, and she’d be coming through the denser curtain of mist, stepping inside the pocket. He could even see it, already. She’d have probably put on new robes, and she’d be looking normal again, more beautiful than anyone had any right to be.

They just had to wait.

He returned to the snake’s corpse, resumed prying off its scales. Daojue hadn’t stopped.

Several more hours passed, and they were done. Almost ten thousand scales piled up in a small mountain.

So far, no beasts had appeared. Neither had Meiyao—but she was near, Jieyuan was sure. They just had to wait a little more.

“I’ll take first watch,” Jieyuan said to Daojue.

Daojue settled down on the ground, closed his eyes. Jieyuan, meanwhile, picked up two scales—one of them acid-hardened, the other not—plopped down on the ground, and started grinding them against each other. He might as well get started with those ideas of his. He’d never done anything like this before, but he’d always been quick to pick up new skills.

More hours passed. Daojue opened his eyes. Jieyuan had managed to carve out what, if you were feeling generous, could be called a set of really rough daggers.

No sight of Meiyao.

Jieyuan would’ve liked to stay longer, but he was starting to feel the exhaustion settle in. And it wouldn’t be a bad thing, to open his eyes only to see that Meiyao had arrived at some point. He sure could use a happy surprise like that.

Jieyuan didn’t know how many hours later he opened his eyes.

But he had other concerns. He looked around, searching for that familiar brown hair, those green eyes—but all he found was Daojue’s even, violet-eyed stare.

Jieyuan felt something cold and hard and dark settle in his gut.

No. He didn’t know just what it was, exactly, that he was denying—didn’t want to know, really—but he did it with all he had. No. NO.

Meiyao was coming. Something must’ve happened—maybe something got her side-tracked. The very worst Jieyuan was willing to accept was that she’d been wounded, and that she was recovering before she set out for them.

Lying by Daojue’s side was a stacked row of scale-turned-daggers. Like his own, but much better made. They actually looked like daggers. There were also way more of them—fifty to his ten.

Jieyuan noticed, then, that Daojue was holding a scale—already halfway looking like a dagger—and that his other hand was on Gleaming End, right at the base of the spearhead.

Something about the sight of it almost had Jieyuan laughing. Maybe it was the idea of Daojue doing something mundane like this—and using a spear like Gleaming End for carving, on top of that.

“Nice work,” Jieyuan said, nodding at Daojue’s new daggers. “I think that’s enough daggers, though. I’m thinking some throwing blades, next. What do you say?”

Daojue, in fact, said nothing. But after Jieyuan picked up more scales and returned to his spot, he saw that the scale Daojue was working on was now looking flatter, smaller.

Jieyuan got back to work too.

Hours passed. Then a day.

Then another day.

Then another.

And when Meiyao didn’t appear even as the fourth day drew to a close, Jieyuan lost what little hope he’d still been holding onto.