Chapter 106: BLOOD REVEALED

CHAPTER

106

BLOOD REVEALED

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Jieyuan had grown used to Meiyao’s looks, but he didn’t think he’d ever grow numb to it. At least now he knew her beauty was unnatural—that the Linzushen Bloodright was behind it. That didn’t detract from it any, though. If anything, it only emphasized the otherworldly nature of it.

“I need you to tell me exactly what happened, with the Sacred Source,” Meiyao said. “All I know is that one moment I’d turned to look at it—and the next moment the whole Viridian Cradle had come alive, and you were carrying me up the steps, and my robes were ruined. What you told me at the time was a bit lacking in the details.”

“That wasn’t exactly a situation for long explanations. But what I said back then is basically it, though. You fell into a trance and started walking toward the Sacred Source. I tried to pull you, but then you launched me—”

“I what?”

“You launched me,” Jieyuan repeated.

She looked at him in disbelief.

“If you are surprised, how do you think I felt?” Jieyuan shrugged. “You were using Divine Nature Unison, I think—and I don’t think it’s ever been that strong. Your green aura was like a blaze. You moved like a tenth-sign redsoul, picked me up, and sent me flying. Daojue was the one who caught me, actually, and—no, that doesn’t matter.”

He decided against telling her about Daojue’s warning, that Meiyao would’ve killed him if he got any closer. He wasn’t sure what had made Daojue think that, in the first place.

“Anyway, when I looked at you again, I saw that you were… different. And getting more different by the second. Changing.”

Meiyao leaned forward. “Yes?”

No doubt about it—this was the part she was really interested. Her transformation. Jieyuan would’ve just summed it up, but seeing that this was what she wanted to know, he recalled the scene, and properly put it into words.

“You were getting bigger. Taller, and wider too. Your hair was also growing longer. The color of your skin was also darkening, turning the same shade of brown as the Sacred Source. By the time you reached it, you were over eight feet tall. Over nine, maybe, though not ten feet. Your shoulders had also broadened to the point you’d make Daojue’s look narrow.”

Meiyao said nothing, just kept looking at him expectantly, and he went over the scene again in his head, looking for anything he might’ve missed.

“Your waist had also thickened,” he said. “It’d become—well, trunk-like. Your hair was at your thighs, too, and flaring to the sides, turning bushy. And…”

As he summoned the scene again he noticed something he hadn’t really paid much attention to at the time. He saw it again in his mind’s eye, Meiyao standing there, towering, wholly inhuman. More plant—more tree—than person.

“I think your hair might’ve been turning green, too. Or at least greenish.” Nothing else came to mind. That seemed to be it. “Anyway, that was when you touched the tree, and the Dome came alive. I tried to grab you again then, and this time you didn’t resist. Then you started shrinking and just seconds later you were back to normal. So I picked you up and set off running. The rest you already know.”

Meiyao nodded. “Hmmm.”

She didn’t say anything, though, so Jieyuan asked, “Does that— Do you know what happened, then? Because it didn’t look like the same thing that happened to the other Linzushen there. Those had ones had trees grown around them. You were turning into a tree, which is a bit different.”

“I don’t… I don’t think I was turning into a tree.”

Jieyuan wasn’t sure if she’d said those words to him or to herself. Meiyao had the look of someone only half paying attention to the conversation. Of someone busy concentrating on their thoughts.

“Really?” Jieyuan asked. “Because that’s what it looked like, to me.”

“I was becoming like a tree,” Meiyao said, slowly. Tentatively, like she was still working through it in her head. “But not a tree.”

She turned toward the tree beside them. The trunk wasn’t even a foot away from them, and she reached out, pressing a hand against the bark.

She closed her eyes. “I think… Maybe…”

Jieyuan had a bad feeling about this even though Huaxin didn’t bring up anything.

That feeling only got worse when Meiyao began to change.

It happened just like in the Dome.

Her skin began to darken, and she started growing—upward and sideways.

Except it was much faster now than back then.

Jieyuan had barely blinked and her skin was already a deep, dark brown, she was sitting over a foot taller than he was, and her hair was turning a deep green. Her eyebrows, too.

Jieyuan lunged, reaching forward. But as he grabbed to pull her away he found he couldn’t move her. She wouldn’t budge even an inch.

And then Meiyao, with that kind of gentle strength only someone vastly stronger than you could wield, effortlessly broke his hold, pushing him off softly with her arm.

Her eyes were open again. And they were glowing, vibrantly green. Her hair, fanning out behind her in great curls all the way to the ground, was glowing green the exact same way. Her skin was glowing too, but brown.

“Not a tree,” Meiyao said, in a low, deep rumble. Her body had expanded to the point of bulging against her robes in virtually every way, but not to the point of tearing it. “Like a tree.”

Jieyuan stared at her, wide-eyed. “What in the Heavens?”

A sound like rolling stones came out of Meiyao’s mouth. Only after a moment that Jieyuan realized it was supposed to be a chuckle.

There was a wooden quality to her face now, her skin almost bark-like, but she still managed to give him a teasing look.

The glowing eyebrows gave it a rather unsettling—though borderline comical—flair.

Then Meiyao shrunk down, her skin lightening, her hair pulling back in. As quickly as she’d transformed, she turned normal again. Her expression remained the same, though.

“What do you think?” she said.

“What do I think?” Jieyuan repeated.

His heart raced in his chest, but that was all his own doing. All Huaxin was sending him was AMUSEMENT.

He was about to follow up with some words of his own—and not particularly gracious ones, at that–but then he stopped and actually thought.

“It’s a bloodskill, isn’t it?”

Meiyao beamed at him, wide and bright and impossibly lovely. “A fourth-order one. One that the Linzushen lost.”

“It… It turns you into a tree?” Jieyuan asked, then he remembered the distinction she’d insisted on earlier. “Or, well, like a tree?”

But the moment the words left his mouth, Jieyuan realized that wasn’t quite right. Because the transformation just now was different from back then.

Meiyao hadn’t glowed when she’d transformed back inside the Cradle, and she’d also gotten much taller. Her skin had also turned a lighter, more pale shade of brown, matching the Sacred Source’s trunk.

What did match he shade of brown Meiyao had turned into just now, though, was the tree right beside them. This tree was also glowing the same way Meiyao had just now, trunk and leaves. And it was much smaller than the Sacred Source.

“Divine Nature Resonance.” Meiyao was still smiling widely. Jieyuan doubted he’d ever seen her this happy, this excited. “Now that I know about it, it’s like I’ve unlocked it. I know its name and what it does. It grants me the properties of what I resonate with. So it does make me like a tree—if I’m resonating with one.”

Divine Nature Resonance. Nature. “You can… resonate with other things. Other plants…”

Her smile got wider, her eyes expectant.

Nature.

“Not just plants,” Jieyuan corrected himself. But then the realization really set in. “You mean—chromal beasts?”

“Yes.”

Jieyuan had thought Meiyao’s other fourth-order bloodskill, Divine Nature Unison, was already stupidly powerful. But if he’d understood correctly what Divine Nature Resonance did…

“When you say it gives you the properties of what you resonate with,” Jieyuan said, “you mean…?”

“All of it,” Meiyao said. She rapped her knuckle against the trunk of the tree. “With this tree, it was strength, and weight, and durability. But if I were to resonate with a chromal beast? That’d also include any spiritskills it might have. They wouldn’t be quite the same, the same way I didn’t turn completely into a tree, but a diminished version, I think.”

“That’s…” Jieyuan searched for a word that’d fit, even as he thought of the possibilities.

The Heavens really didn’t play fair, did they?

Meiyao laughed. “It’s not all blooms and blossoms, mind you. I get the properties good and bad. Resonating with this tree would also slow me down considerably. So greater strength and durability, but slower speed.”

“I don’t think there’d be as many drawbacks with a chromal beast, though,” Jieyuan said.

“It’d depend on the beast, but you’re right. Probably not.” Meiyao smirked. “It’s not all good, but it’s still very good.”

Jieyuan was feeling all sorts of things, then. Envy and surprise, sure, but happiness too. Because Meiyao being stronger increased all their chances of survival. And he found he was happy for her too, for becoming stronger, and even for unraveling more of her heritage, considering how much that clearly meant to her.

But he put all that aside for now, and let reason take hold.

They couldn’t count on Gleaming End’s gear-skills—but they could count on Meiyao’s new bloodskill. Now they needed to figure out exactly how it worked, so they could properly account for it.

“You said you can tell its name and what it does,” Jieyuan said. “It’s like when you bond a realmskill, then? How good a grasp do you have on its mechanics? Does it use chroma? Can the target of the resonance resist it? What about range? The sooner we figure out exactly how it works, the better, I think.”

As he spoke, Meiyao’s expression had turned more and more serious, and by the end of it she was nodding.

“Right,” she said. “It’s like bonding realmskill, yes. I only have a general sense for how it works. But when I tried with the tree, I got a better idea. Let’s see… It doesn’t cost any chroma. And I think there is a range limit—I must be within some distance of what I’m resonating with—but I’m not sure how high it is. As for resistance… I don’t think so, but I’d have to try it with a chromal beast to know for sure.”

“That’s a start,” Jieyuan said. Already he was coming up with ways to fill in the gaps, and other questions to be answered. He’d be calling up Maeva later, too. She was the scientist, this kind of stuff would be well in her realm of business. “What about realm limitations? Does it work like a realmskill, and you can’t use it on a target at a higher realm?”

The tree beside them was at tenth-sign Redsoul. The fact that Meiyao could resonate with it, despite being only a fourth-sign, was already promising. No realmskill he knew would work across that difference in soulsigns.

“Wait— No,” Jieyuan said before Meiyao could answer, recalling the first thing she had used her bloodskill on, even if at the time he hadn’t known what she was doing—nor had she, for that matter. “You used it on the Sacred Source… which is at Orangesoul.”

Meiyao’s eyes widened, and Jieyuan realized that probably hadn’t occurred to her yet.

“I think there’s a limit,” Meiyao said. “I get the sense that there should be one, but it’s like with my other bloodskills. They’re more powerful inside the Dome, and on the Dome’s plants and beasts. Even then, Orangesoul should be the limit.”

Jieyuan was pretty sure their chances of survival had just shot up considerably. Depending on the extent of the resonance with Orangesoul plants and beasts… Up until now, the only thing they had that could do an Orangesoul any damage was Gleaming End, which was at Orangesoul itself. But that might not be the case anymore.

Their brief and terribly unfortunate trip into the Viridian Death City hadn’t been for nothing, after all.

They kept at it. Jieyuan thought of other questions, and Meiyao answered to the best of her ability. She came up with some questions herself, and Jieyuan started making a list of all the things they’d have to test. They built up a fairly long list before both of them ran out of ideas.

“That’s about it, then,” Jieyuan said. He glanced over at Daojue, who hadn’t moved an inch from the last time Jieyuan had looked his way, then said to Meiyao, “I can take first watch.”

It was half offer, half asking for permission. Meiyao closed her eyes for a moment, then nodded, “Sure. I’m feeling rather tired, too. I think… I think Divine Nature Resonance doesn’t use chroma, but it does drain my stamina.”

“Good to know,” Jieyuan said. He then shifted his body around, turning to rest his back against the tree to give Meiyao some space.

He was more than a little surprised when Meiyao followed suit, leaning back against the tree beside him, close enough that their shoulders brushed each other’s. He didn’t say anything, though, and Meiyao closed her eyes.

The biggest surprise came a few moments later, when he felt a weight—a soft, warm weight—settle on his shoulder. And he looked over to see Meiyao’s head resting on his shoulder, her long, flowing hair falling across his chest and ribs.

This close he could smell a soft, floral scent coming from her, piercing through the forest’s moist, earthy smell of intermingled growth and rot.

He went still, then focused on her breathing. It was the even, rhythmic one of someone asleep.

But this was Meiyao. There was no way this wasn’t intentional. She wouldn’t have done this if she wasn’t comfortable enough with him.

Jieyuan just sat there, basking in both her warmth and the warmth blooming in his own chest.