Chapter 113: KICK IT IN

CHAPTER

113

KICK IT IN

JIEYUAN

—∞—

He might’ve hit the ground rolling if it weren’t for Daojue’s grip on him, and the fact Maeva was still in control. As it was, Maeva had him push off Daojue as they were nearing the ground, and managed a firm landing. Then Daojue was dragging him back, further into the clearing, and Maeva let him.

“Wait—” Jieyuan said, staring intently at the curtain of mist they’d fallen out from. They were in another pocket. They’d left Meiyao behind. Where was the snake? “WAIT!”

He wrested control over his body away from Maeva, shrugged off Daojue—

But it was then that the snake came through into the clearing. It wasn’t armored anymore, its whole, massive, white-scaled body bared again.

His stomach dropped. And not because of the huge snake lunging at them, but because the direction it’d entered in—not the same one they’d just come from, but off to the side.

The viridian mist—its perception-warping effects. The length of rope connecting him to Meiyao, their anchor against those effects—which wasn’t there anymore.

“No no no no no,” Jieyuan said. “We’re going back!”

As the snake rushed toward them, this time it was him grabbing Daojue—and Daojue who went along with it as he rushed them back. The snake was about to reach them when they stepped back through the boundary of the pocket, Jieyuan’s heart hammering in his chest.

Heavens, please, Heavens, don’t you dare do this—

They came through, and what Jieyuan found on the other side was a large, mostly bare pocket, like the one they’d been fighting in.

Like it, but not the same one.

There was absolutely no sign of that zone of corrosive gas Meiyao and the green snake had been fighting inside.

Jieyuan looked around wildly, like that’d change anything.

And then the snake came through—from the opposite direction they’d come from, which only emphasized just how much the mist must’ve messed with their senses while crossing it.

Jieyuan and Daojue jumped to the sides as the snake lunged at them, him to the left and Daojue to the right. As the snake turned around, its massive yellow eyes flicked between him and Daojue. And then it made its decision.

Jieyuan watched as the beast lunged after Daojue, giving chase. Maeva was saying something, but he ignored her. He took a deep breath, gathered all his alarm, all his panic, and then crushed it, fed it all to the fires of his mind.

He forced himself to forget about Meiyao and the things he could do nothing about. And then he focused entirely on the present.

On the snake and on Daojue.

And on not only getting out of this alive but also on killing the Heavens-damned snake. Killing it good.

He was taking more scales out of his pouch when the snake, after fruitlessly trying to bite at Daojue a few more times—and getting a few more cuts for its troubles, now that it didn’t have its armor to protect it—suddenly went underground again.

Jieyuan wasn’t nearly as taken aback this time, and he got a good look at it as it disappeared into the earth. It wasn’t burrowing down—far from it. Its whole body simply sank down, as if all the earth under it had turned into water. Except there wasn’t a splash or so much as a ripple—the whole length of the snake just disappeared seamlessly into the ground, leaving only a patch of ruined, wrecked earth to mark its exit.

Daojue went still. The whole world seemed to come still, really. Jieyuan watched wide-eyed, unwilling to miss the smallest detail, as tense as he’d ever been.

Nothing seemed to change—but then Daojue jumped to the side, and the next instant the snake exploded out of it headfirst, maw wide open, where Daojue had just been.

Jieyuan watched on, keeping his distance—and this time, with the whole pocket to work with rather than just half of it, he had a much easier time. Daojue avoided the next few strikes, and not long later the snake flowed into the ground again. It went out of sight for a second, two, three…

Just like last time, Jieyuan didn’t catch anything, any sign that might hint at the snake’s current position. No swelling of the earth, nothing.

But also just like last time, Daojue dodged at the very last moment, and the snake bit at empty air as it burst off the ground like a pillar.

Jieyuan didn’t think this was just another Daojue thing, though. That this was just another one of Daojue’s unexplainable abilities—which, now that he knew more, he was pretty sure were bloodskills. No, rather, it felt like the answer was just—

He focused his soulsense on the earth at his feet. He couldn’t feel it beneath the dense undergrowth, not exactly, but he could get a rough sense for it—a grainy kind of impression. The earth itself wasn’t chromal—but it was filled with the particles of dead chromal beasts and plants, and those he could sense. He couldn’t get a clear sense of it, but he could get a sense of it, and that was what mattered.

Because when he’d been around Meiyao, he hadn’t been able to sense her earth armor. He also hadn’t been able to sense the snake’s, the times it’d come too close. He didn’t know for sure the mechanics of the white snake’s bast-skill. But if he had to guess, it turned a section of the earth on the ground chromal—and as such, Orangesoul—before manipulating it.

When it went underground, it had to be doing the same thing. And so, it had to turn the earth around it Orangesoul. Meaning that he wouldn’t be able to sense it.

So it wasn’t the presence of something they had to watch out for, Jieyuan realized, eyes narrowing as he saw the snake fade underground again. It was the lack of presence.

He couldn’t tell how deep down the snake went, but given the lack of any movement on the surface, the exact depth didn’t matter much—it had to be controlling all the earth above it. Which would explain how Daojue had enough time to dodge before the snake came through.

The snake had yet to surface. Jieyuan watched Daojue, waiting for it to surface, already thinking of how he might be able to take advantage of that.

But then Daojue’s gaze snapped to him from across the pocket, violet eyes wide, and he shouted, “DOWN!”

Jieyuan was already jumping even before the bits of matter he’d been just sensing around him on the ground blinked out of his soulsense. And then the snake’s head burst free off the ground just in front of him.

Its massive fangs were liked curved spikes, and its forked tongue flicked upwards as it rose into the air. Its yellow eyes were the size of his chest, and the massive slits of its pupils fixed themselves on him as it got off the ground. In a blur of movement, it curved its snack and launched itself at him, the rest of its body surfacing.

Jieyuan fell into a full retreat.

Maeva!

She took back control without a word, and as the snake’s blurring form reached him, she had him smoothly step to the side, and the massive bulk of the snake slithered past him in a streak of white. And then Maeva was jumping, and where he’d just been the snake’s tail-end scythed through with vengeance. His feet had just touched the ground again when the snake coiled into itself and lunged at him again. Maeva had him jump to the side, avoiding the attack by inches.

Jieyuan only just barely kept track of it all. It was one thing watching Daojue face the snake from afar—and another thing entirely when he was the one playing the world’s most dangerous game of tag.

Barely a second had passed since the snake had burst out of the ground. It was at Orangesoul, with the blurring speed to match. But just like when she’d taken control before, Maeva had him moving like she had some sort of precognition, and he got out of the barrage of attacks unscathed.

And now Jieyuan knew that it had to be precognition—because Maeva was reacting faster than he could see.

“Not quite,” Maeva suddenly said. Her voice sounded perfectly clear despite the thundering beat of his heart, the blood thumping in his ears, the snake’s incessant hissing and growling.  “Sight isn’t instantaneous. The physics of it aside, it takes some time before the brain processes what you see. Soulsense’s different. It is instantaneous, and the feedback goes straight to your mind through your soul.”

All the while she spoke Maeva didn’t stop moving his body, dodging the snake’s rapid flurry of attacks.

But you can’t sense it— Jieyuan cut off the thought midway, recalling the way he’d just figured out to track the snake’s movements.

“Exactly,” Maeva said. As she dodged another sweeping tail whip, she had him kick off the snake’s body, vaulting over the snake’s body. “I’m tracking the absence of ambient chroma.”

The list of things he needed to learn grew longer faster than he could go through it.

As the snake turned around again for another go at him, Daojue rushed in from the side, stabbing Gleaming End at its eye. It jerked its head out of the way and the attack missed, but the beast had lots its rhythm, its momentum. Maeva managed to put in more distance.

The snake didn’t give chase to Jieyuan, focusing on Daojue, and that deadly dance from earlier resumed.

“What do you want to do?” Maeva asked him. She’d already adjusted his grip on the scale shards he’d taken out earlier.

Throwing scales won’t work, not like last time. Though the snake was intent on Daojue right now, there was no doubt it hadn’t forgotten about him. No more surprise attacks.

Whatever advantages his lack of presence had offered earlier were gone. But the snake’s ability to go underground was as much of a problem as it was an opportunity. Every time the snake burst out of the ground, it did it with its mouth wide open, trying to swallow them whole.

So far, they’d been target its eyes and snout because those were its most sensitive parts—but one good strike through the mouth would do just as well, if not better.

“Daojue!” he shouted. “The next time it goes underground, before it comes out, don’t jump out of the way—stab down instead!”

Simple plans worked best. There was no guarantee that the snake would go for Daojue, though, so… Maeva, we need the bigger scales.

“Got it.”

She reached into his pouch, depositing the smaller throwing scales he’d taken out earlier, and bringing out two of the more complete scales he’d picked up.

If it comes for us, jump up and throw them straight down, hard as you—hard as I—can.

While Jieyuan had been thinking a plan, Daojue had been getting better, more skilled—adapting to the snake’s patterns. Now he was attacking back with every dodge, almost all his hits were landing—and each was deeper than the last.

None had struck the eyes yet, but one had come very close to the snout—and for the last few exchanges, Daojue had been targeting one particular wound under its mouth. Jieyuan had a feeling that if he left it alone, Daojue might’ve just won the battle of attrition, chipping the snake down little by little.

But then the snake seemed to have had enough of it, because it flowed underground again. In the half-second it took for the snake to go fully out of sight, Jieyuan felt Maeva tense his body, lower his stance, prep his legs for the jump and his arms for the throw.

The seconds passed excruciatingly slow. Jieyuan’s heart hammered against his ribcage. But then more seconds passed—and then some more, and then more still, until it’d been over a minute, and no sight yet of the snake.

Still Daojue didn’t move. Neither did Jieyuan.

Jieyuan frowned. Had it— Had it actually left? Decided to cut its losses?

Huaxin?

DANGER.

The warning wasn’t as strong as it’d been earlier, the first time the snake had gone underground—but it still packed enough of a punch to tell him that they weren’t alone in the pocket.

It’s a trap. The snake had at least some level of intelligence, and it looked like it’d realized that its straightforward approach to hunting them down wasn’t getting it anything but cuts. Jieyuan knew it had to have some way of sensing them—their position, at any rate—while it was underground. He’d bet his weight in gold and then some that the snake was still down there, waiting for them to let their guard down.

Maeva, walk around a bit slowly. Let’s see if we can bait it.

She answered by moving his body as he’d instructed. A slow step forward, then another.

Daojue immediately gave him a look.

Maeva kept his feet moving, all casual-like.

“I’m trying to draw it out,” Jieyuan said. He kept his tone level, easy. The snake couldn’t understand their words, but it might be sensitive to tone and volume. Jieyuan didn’t know if it could hear them, but it cost him nothing to play the part. “If it attacks me, throw Gleaming End—”

The ground underfoot vanished to his soulsense. Maeva pushed off, launching them straight upward, curving his body down. And underneath, the snake burst out of the ground, its gaping maw wide open, its tongue flicking out.

Maeva curved his body, drew his arms back for the throw—and then the snake’s long, forked tongue latched onto his ankle, wrapping around it.

WHAT THE—

Maeva reacted simultaneously, folding his body down and forward. Instead of throwing down the scales she swept them low, cutting toward the tongue from both sides.

They cut through the fleshy appendage, but by that point the snake’s fangs were just inches away—white and dripping with a yellowish, milky substance.

But then there was a gleaming, crystalline streak, and the snake snapped its mouth shut just before he would’ve been inside it, and jerked its head back.

But a moment too late—Gleaming End burrowed itself its right eye.

Maeva didn’t waste a moment. She let loose the two shards toward its other eye as she had him kick off his snout, propelling him away and toward the ground.

She made an easy landing, just a handful of yards away from the snake. She didn’t make him draw back, though—the snake wasn’t much of a threat right now.

As for the snake itself… It was still there, upraising, and it let out a high, pitched shriek of utter agony, its body convulsing and contorting wildly. Sticking out of its right eye was Gleaming End, and of its left one, the two scale shards. White and yellow goo and blood bled out of the eyeballs were they were punctured.

It wasn’t dead yet, though. And Jieyuan wasn’t taking any chances.

He’d enough of this earth-bending, frog-tongued over-sized worm.

I want to finish it.

Maeva gave up control without a word, and he shot forward, drawing the Shifting Feathers as he did. Daojue had started moving too, but Jieyuan closer. Just two steps, and then he kicked off the ground, into the air. The snake didn’t seem to notice it—it was too busy flailing about and shrieking.

Jieyuan controlled the Shifting Feathers’ weights to adjust his trajectory, making him level with the snake’s right eye—and then he whipped his leg out.

It was a near thing, and he almost missed with all the squirming—but his feet made contact with the spear’s butt.

There was a bit of resistance, but then he felt the give, the crack, as Gleaming End disappeared almost completely inside the snake’s head.

Jieyuan dropped back to the ground.

And, just a second later, so did the snake.