Chapter 105: SAFE AT LAST

CHAPTER

105

SAFE AT LAST

JIEYUAN

—∞—

They didn’t stop.

As they rushed into the next much, much smaller pocket of mist—about two dozen feet across, instead of over a mile—Jieyuan barely had time to register that the forest wasn’t animated and actively trying to kill them like Viridian Death City before they were on the opposite side, breaking into the next one.

And they kept going, not stopping, into the second pocket. Then the third.

On the fourth, Meiyao stopped very briefly midway, then veered sharply to the right and crossed into the next one from the side. It wasn’t the first time Meiyao did something like that, but it was rare—most of the time, she’d stop and wait before taking them through the front to the next.

Jieyuan and Daojue followed. The next few pockets they crossed straight through. Then Meiyao did another side-entry, and then three turns more—left, left, right—back to back, before she had them going forward again.

They’d never gone so fast through the pockets before—today was the first time they’d run at all in almost a month—but this time they kept it for a good few minutes. Jieyuan kept his attention as much on their surroundings as on Meiyao.

Though she didn’t stop, she was constantly looking around. Her head and eyes whipped frantically in just about every direction, moving about as rapidly as her feet.

This time around, he made sure to track exactly through where she was stepping into the next pocket. At this speed he couldn’t check for brambles or any immediate dangers on the other side when crossing, so he could only follow her trail exactly. Or rather, so Maeva could—she was still in charge of the running.

More than twenty pockets later, and with Meiyao still not stopping, Jieyuan checked in with Huaxin. It’d long since stopped sending feelings of imminent doom—as good a sign as any—but he wanted to be sure.

How are things looking, bud?

SAFE, Huaxin threw back. But there was so much uncertainty packed into it—plus a great deal of frustration, which Jieyuan was coming to realize was about par for the course where viridian mist was involved—that he wasn’t all that reassured.

The possibility of danger was better than the certainty of it, though, so he’d take it.

And the forest still wasn’t trying to kill them, which was even better news. Nor had they run into any beasts yet.

They went through five more pockets before Meiyao stopped, raising a hand into the air, her back to them.

Maeva ground his feet into an immediate stop, and as Daojue came through just moments later he also came to a sudden halt.

Meiyao stood still in the middle of the pocket—this one was a clearing proper, with just half of a tree peeking out from the curtain of mist in the corner—only her head moving as she turned in just about every direction. She kept that up for a while before she turned back around and nodded at them.

“We’re good,” she said.

Jieyuan had already expected as much, but a rush of relief still washed over him, the tension draining out of him.

There was shimmer around Meiyao, and then the thick coat of green goo over her body vanished. For a moment Jieyuan caught flashes of skin—a great deal of skin—before he looked away, turning his attention to himself.

Partly out of respect, partly because he didn’t need the distraction, partly because he needed some cleaning himself.

He pumped some chroma into his cleansing ring, and then the sap on him also vanished. Unlike Meiyao, at no point in the past hour had he grown several feet between shrinking back down, so his robes were mostly intact, even if pretty ruffled. He patted them down, smoothing out the creases.

Looking back up, he found that Meiyao had already put on new robes—green, like the ruined ones, but in a lighter shade, with slightly different patterns—and was running her hands through her hair. In just a few passes, it was perfectly styled again, leaving her looking as fresh as it gets.

Then she bent down, picked up the length of makeshift rope that had dropped by her feet—probably when she was changing–and started tying it around his waist.

While she did that, Jieyuan sent his attention inward.

Maeva, I’ll take it from here.

Maeva stepped out of his body, and his awareness over his lower body returned to full strength.

The image of his sister took a few more steps, turned around, coming to a stop just in front, her yellow sundress and lab coat fluttering to the breeze. “You’ll stay safe, Amyas?”

Sure will, he thought at her. Like my life depends on it, really.

She gave him that half-reproachful, half-fond smile of hers, and he let the Command go. She vanished.

Turning back to Meiyao, he saw that she was looking at him. And the look on her face wasn’t one that he’d ever seen before, not on her. Grave, taunt, eyes downcast, frowning.

He moved closer to her. “Meiyao?”

She took a step in his direction. If anything, she only looked more contrite. She wrung her hands together, then let them drop, like she didn’t know what to do with them. Like she didn’t know what to do with herself. “I— I’m sorry.”

Ah. That.

Jieyuan hadn’t thought about what would happen once they were out of the danger—he’d been far more concerned with the getting out of the danger than with what came after. But now that he thought about it, he reckoned he had a pretty good idea of just what was going through Meiyao’s head right now.

And sure enough, she went on, saying, “I should’ve listened to you about—”

“Don’t,” he said.

She gave him a startled look. “What?”

“You were the one who wanted to head inside. It was your idea, sure. But it was our decision. We all chose to go inside—and if I’d really pressed the issue, I could’ve probably convinced you otherwise. Except I didn’t.”

Meiyao’s frown deepened, but it was more out of confusion now, that sad, guilty look fading, slipping away. “But—”

“The only reason we’re alive so far is because of you,” Jieyuan cut her off again. “Daojue and I, by ourselves, would’ve probably died long ago. And as dangerous as what happened was, we still got out just about unscathed. So your balance with us is still well in the positive.”

He paused. “Of course, I can’t speak for Daojue, but…”

He glanced over at Daojue, who hadn’t moved from the entrance of the pocket but had also cleansed up.

Daojue wasn’t looking at them. Instead, he was holding Gleaming End out in front of him and staring at it intently.

“I figured as much,” Jieyuan said, looking back at Meiyao. “Just one thing, though.”

“Yes?”

Meiyao was still frowning, but not as strongly. She looked more unsure now than anything else, like she didn’t know what to make of all this.

Jieyuan wouldn’t be surprised if Meiyao hadn’t done much apologizing in her life. She struck him more as the type to just move past any mistakes she made and pretend they didn’t happen and expect everyone else to do the same.

He could empathize. He wasn’t much different. Owning up like that and apologizing—well, it wasn’t quite on the level of the Pains, but for proud folk like them, it was its own sort of agony.

“Next time, if I get a bad feeling about something? We trust my instincts, not yours.” Jieyuan gave her a pointed look, then tapped his chest. “Your bloodskill works wonders—there’s no denying that—but clearly you’ve got a few blind spots yourself.”

“Agreed,” Meiyao said, and Jieyuan realized she really was hung up over this, to put up no resistance whatsoever.

Her gaze moved to his chest. “It’s really awakened, then? You brought it up earlier, but…”

“It is,” Jieyuan said. “But the mist’s screwing up Fatebloom Intuition. As it is, it can’t predict anything with any level of precision, but as long as something is in the same pocket, it can still get a general sense for it, I think.”

Meiyao nodded. She worked her jaw for a bit, pursed her lips. “Well, that aside, there’s still some things we should talk about. About what happened.”

She cocked her head toward the side of the clearing, where the tree was.

“Sit over there? Sure,” Jieyuan said. “I’ve got some questions myself. But before that, there’s something else to address. Daojue?”

Daojue looked up from his inspection of his spear—or whatever it was he’d been doing—and fixed his violet eyes on Jieyuan.

Jieyuan nodded at Gleaming End. “Earlier, those two powers you used. That beam of light and that crystallizing touch. Those were gear-skills, right?”

Daojue didn’t answer.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Is there any reason why you only used them now?” Jieyuan asked. He kept his tone neutral. “Not that I’m not grateful, but I think they’d have come in handy back during the ambush at the palace entrance.”

“I did not use them.”

Honestly, Jieyuan had expected Daojue to stay silent, in true Daojue fashion. Given the answer he got, though, he reckoned silence might’ve actually been better.

“What do you mean, you didn’t use them?”

Daojue looked back down at Gleaming End.

Jieyuan followed Daojue’s gaze. Then he glanced back at Daojue. Then back at the spear. He recalled how Daojue had been staring at it, earlier. And he recalled how Daojue had said Gleaming End was alive, and how Daojue shouldn’t have been able to bond with it in the first place, being a redsoul.

And though Daojue didn’t say anything else, an answer came to Jieyuan’s mind all the same.

“It was Gleaming End who used them?” Jieyuan asked. “Not you, but Gleaming End?”

Daojue’s gaze shifted back to him.

Jieyuan waited a beat, but Daojue remained silent.

That was all the answer he needed, though.

“I see,” Jieyuan said. “Well, that’s— That’s that, then.”

He shrugged, gave Gleaming End a longer, more thoughtful look. Daojue had really lucked out with it. Then again, he couldn’t think of anybody else that’d be more worthy of it, Daojue being the best spearman he knew by a long shot. Jieyuan didn’t know if that was what Gleaming End had based its choice on, but even if it wasn’t? Daojue had everyone Jieyuan knew beat in just about every regard.

“Can you make it use them?” Jieyuan asked, just to get a better idea of the situation.

“No,” Daojue said.

So they shouldn’t be making any plans around Gleaming End’s gear-skills. They were a last resort, and even that was a stretch.

“And has it got any other gear-skills?”

“No.”

“All right,” Jieyuan said. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Daojue sat down where he was, propping Gleaming End on his lap, and closed his eyes.

Jieyuan then nodded to Meiyao, who looked away from Gleaming End. They walked over to the opposite side of the pocket. Jieyuan eyed the tree warily as they approached—it should be safe, and neither Meiyao nor Huaxin were raising any alarms, but he didn’t reckon he’d ever look at a tree the same way again.

It was an oak, too, which didn’t make it any better. Jieyuan had had enough of oaks and willows—and Heavens forbid, oakwillows—for a lifetime.

The tree did nothing, just stood there like the tree it was—like a tree was supposed to do, in a sensible world—with half its body hidden by the mist.

They settled down next to each other under its canopy, right by the trunk. Or at least that was Jieyuan’s idea, but as they were sitting Meiyao turned to fully face him. He did likewise.

“You first,” Jieyuan said.

It was hardly his first time seeing with Meiyao like this—they did it more often than not lately when they stopped for the day. Having Meiyao’s full attention on him like this—her green eyes boring into his black ones—was intense.