Chapter 109: ONE OR TWO

CHAPTER

109

ONE OR TWO

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Someway, somehow, things were looking up.

Jieyuan crouched in front of a bushy bramble and plucked some of the little, green, berry-like fruits growing out of it. Meiyao was on the other side of the pocket, collecting some flowers from a little patch of orange lilies. Daojue stood by himself in the middle, not doing much of anything.

All around the clearing, poking out from the curtains of mist, were glowing, flowering vines, a couple of which Meiyao had already picked clean.

It’d been about two weeks since they’d entered this new, more colorful stretch of the forest. Almost a month and a half since they’d entered the Dome. And if you were to ignore that hellish day they’d spent in Viridian Death City, in hindsight Jieyuan would say that things weren’t nearly as bad as they could’ve been.

They were stranded here, sure, with no way out and from the looks of it for a good while, but despite the many, many, many dangers of the Dome, Meiyao could’ve been a human lucky charm. Ignoring Viridian Death City, there’d been some close calls here and there with some beasts, but nothing had come out of any of them. Meiyao always came through, and they’d then move on.

Not finding any more berries, he stood up, then turned around to watch as Meiyao finished up with her flowers. He tossed the berries into his pouch, but kept one in hand.

Even from this distance he could hear the little tune she was humming.

She’d sure eased up a lot, too. Even more so compared to the way she’d been at the beginning, right after—well, after she’d just about lost everything.

For the past two weeks she’d been doing at least some refining every day, and Jieyuan reckoned that was one of the main reasons for her lifting spirits. She adored the craft, and even after two weeks she wasn’t anywhere near close to running out of things to tell him about it.

Two days ago, she’d even encouraged him to try his hand at it himself, and though he’d failed miserably Meiyao had more than enjoyed herself trying to instruct him.

Meiyao stood up, and walked over to him.

Not a word passed between them as he passed over the berry in his hand. In turn, she handed him one of her lilies.

He closed his eyes, concentrating on his soulsense on the flower’s spirit-shadow, feeling out its song. Two weeks ago he wouldn’t have been able to sense anything at all, but he’d been practicing. He didn’t get much at first, but he kept at it, focusing on the very faint, half-formed impressions he was getting, until he finally caught a hint of something a bit clearer.

Growth… Regeneration?

Opening his eyes, he found Meiyao looking at him expectantly. She’d have already long since finished examining the berry. “Regeneration?” he ventured.

She cocked an eyebrow. “Are you asking or telling me?”

Good to know some clichés cross universes.

Maeva giggled in his ear. These days, he had her around pretty much all the time. Chroma expenditure had just about stopped being an issue for him.

“Regeneration,” he said, more firmly.

Meiyao beamed. “Not bad.”

He handed her back the flower, and she put it away.

“How many more properties does it have?” Jieyuan asked.

“Primary ones like regeneration? Only five. As for secondary ones, for compatibility crosschecking, about…” She paused, then nodded, “About a hundred and twenty, I think.”

“Ah.”

Two weeks ago, he’d wondered at how much more impressed he’d be by Meiyao’s skill at refining if he actually had any idea what she was doing. At the time, he hadn’t thought he’d be getting an answer so soon.

“Being able to identify even one after two weeks is still really good,” Meiyao assured him, and there wasn’t a hint of irony in her tone. She’d tease him more often than not, but she was really earnest about what she considered his education. “Even experienced refiners can only tell the general properties with a deep inspection. The specific ones take weeks, sometimes months of study, and often require multiple refiners and even nurturers working together.”

“Slow and steady is the way,” he said, like no Firesoul in the history of the Chromajie.

Meiyao must’ve caught the sarcasm, but she ignored it. “Exactly.”

She then turned around and, taking the lead again, made for the end of the pocket. She stopped there for just a moment, before going through, Jieyuan just behind her and Daojue a little more distant third.

Over on the other side, Jieyuan found Meiyao already walking over to a short, stout tree filled with small, bright pink flowers. Not one they’d come across before, but his grasp on botanics had improved to such an extent he still immediately recognized it as a myrtle tree, or at least some derivative of it.

There wasn’t anything else to see in the pocket, though, so Jieyuan hung back while Meiyao picked the flowers. He’d have helped, but according to her she wasn’t ready for it, yet. Each chromal plant had a very specific way it needed to be harvested in.

Each and every time all Jieyuan saw was Meiyao plucking the flowers right out, but she was the expert on the subject. And experts did have a way of making the complex look effortless, so that added up.

Jieyuan glanced at Daojue, who stood by his side, staring blankly ahead. Not for the first time, Jieyuan wondered just what exactly Daojue thought about this whole situation. Not just being stranded in the Dome like this, but this recent change of pace and rhythm. Daojue had never voiced any thoughts on the matter any way or another, though, and Jieyuan wasn’t curious enough to ask questions that’d probably be ignored.

Turning back to Meiyao, he found himself wondering about her own thoughts too, and also not for the first time. Since that one talk they’d had right at the beginning where she broke down, the topic of the Xiyunfeng Clan and the Gleaming Noble’s ambush and coup hadn’t come up even once. Nowadays, when she did talk of a family member of hers in passing, she didn’t get hung up on it, either, and just moved right on, business as usual.

He didn’t believe for a second that she was over it, but it seemed like she was trying not to linger on it. At any rate, if this was a front she was putting up, it was a very convincing one.

Considering their pace had reduced considerably as of late now that they were taking the time to collect ingredients, and how Meiyao was extending their resting periods so they could spend more time on refining, he reckoned that at the very least she wasn’t in as much of a hurry anymore to get out.

That, or she’d accepted that hurrying wouldn’t make much of a difference in the long run, not with how much ground they still had to cover ahead of them. Their destination was the center of the Dome, and given what he knew of the size of it, Jieyuan didn’t reckon they were even a thousandth of the way there, judging by their current pace.

They had at least a decade of walking ahead of them, and hurrying probably wouldn’t shave much more than a year out of it, not when they still had to take it slow because of the chromal beasts roaming the Dome.

One advantage to all of this was that they were making good progress in other ways. Particularly cultivation-wise. Daojue had broken through to fifth-sign Redsoul yesterday, and Jieyuan and Meiyao weren’t too far from theirs.

Meiyao suddenly jumped away from the tree, turned toward them, and jerked her hand sharply to the side before going completely still.

Jieyuan stood up straighter, then, going alert. By his side, Daojue did the same. They hadn’t worked out any specific signs, but Meiyao’s meaning was clear enough. Be still and quiet.

Just moments later, a small, dark shape barreled into the pocket from the left.

It didn’t stop, and Jieyuan only barely picked out from the dark green blur a four-legged body, about as tall as his waist with a tapered head before it curved around the tree and disappeared into the mist curtain on the other side.

“The jackal again?” Jieyuan asked when he saw Meiyao relaxed.

Though he’d only gotten that brief look at it now, he was pretty sure he recognized it. They had come across the same creature—or at least one of the same race—a couple days ago. Except they’d gotten a clearer look at it, then.

A greenseeker jackal, according to Meiyao. It looked like a cross between a fox and a wolf, with tent-like ears and a long, bushy tail. Dark green all over except on its underside, where its fur was white. One of the few beasts they’d come across that didn’t make their mundane counterparts look like miniatures.

That was little comfort, though, when it was at Orangesoul.

“Yes,” Meiyao said, staring in the direction it’d disappeared to. “It probably wouldn’t be aggressive—my senses tell me it’s more of a scavenger type—but…”

“It’s still at Orangesoul.”

“It’s still at Orangesoul,” Meiyao echoed.

They’d come across a few Orangesoul beasts since that huge vulture so far, and it always took Meiyao much more time to pacify them than with Redsoul ones. Jieyuan avoided thinking about what would happen if they came across a Yellowsoul one.

Meiyao stood there for a moment longer, then nodded at them and they resumed on their way. Two pockets later, though, they came across a lake, and Meiyao froze again.

This time, though, Jieyuan was more prepared for it. It wasn’t their first time coming across a body of water in the woods, and Meiyao was always especially careful around them. Chromal beasts drank water even though they didn’t need to, and the likelihood of coming across them shot up by a great deal lakeside.

Not to mention that the lake itself could be housing some lovely little nightmares of its own, and there was no guarantee that any such creatures would do them the favor of staying in their natural habitat.

After a good few minutes, though, Meiyao eased up, and Jieyuan did as well. There were some flowers near the lake, but Meiyao walked straight past them as she crossed to the other side of the pocket. Even if it was safe right now, it didn’t mean it’d stay that way, and the less time they spent near the water, the better.

Meiyao could handle any individual beast they came across, but the one time they’d run across two beasts together—a pair of Redsoul wolves—she’d been very tense, even more than when they’d come across Orangesoul creatures. Afterward she’d explained it weakened her realmskill’s effects when she had to split her attention.

As they crossed into the next pocket, Jieyuan found that the lake was gone.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that they’d come across a beast anyway.

And even after the several dozen—probably over a hundred, really—beasts he’d seen so far in the Dome, this one was easily, easily the meanest-looking murder critter yet.

Meiyao stood just ahead of him, Daojue to his side. And on the other side of the pocket was a snake. Except its body was as thick as his waist a few times over, it was probably longer than he was tall a few dozen times over, and it didn’t have just one massive, triangular, broad head, but two of them.

Its body was bifurcated near the front end, and each part of it stretched into its own head. The head on the left was covered in bright green scales, whereas the one on the right was white. Their individual lengths leading to the main body were the same color, while the rest of the trunk was striped with the two colors.

Its heads were just at the edge of his soulsense, and of course, Jieyuan couldn’t sense them. He hoped that it’d come inside just after Meiyao had, and not that it’d already been there when Meiyao had taken them into this pocket. Because if Meiyao hadn’t been able to sense them, then that probably meant it wasn’t just at Orangesoul.

Meiyao took a step forward, then, and slowly raised a hand. The snake’s white head followed her movements, focusing on her, but the one on the right…

It didn’t look at her. Rather, its large, glowing yellow eyes stared fixedly at Daojue.

And as Daojue very slowly moved Gleaming End in front of him, adjusting his position, the green head tilted slowly to the side.

DANGER, Huaxin sent Jieyuan as his heart started racing. And together with it, his thoughts.

He recalled how Meiyao had a hard time handling multiple beasts, even Redsoul ones.

And he wondered whether how it’d work with a two-headed serpent—whether it’d count as a one or a two.