Chapter 104: THE LAST STRETCH

CHAPTER

104

THE LAST STRETCH

JIEYUAN

—∞—

The first thing Jieyuan did as he came through was cast a quick look around.

The avenue stretched wide and crooked in front of them, same as before. Same warped street, same swollen, twisting buildings looming on either side—walls heaving in slow, uneven pulses like something half-asleep and restless. The roots underfoot hadn’t stopped moving just because they’d crossed into a new zone. They churned and writhed beneath his greaves, forcing him to keep his focus split—half on his footing, half on their surroundings as they advanced. The only difference now was the absence of the tunnel.

But the quick glance was enough to confirm it—this was the same pocket they’d passed through on the way in. The buildings, even in their current agitated state, were the same ones they’d crossed earlier. Given how the Dome worked, that hadn’t been a sure thing, even with Meiyao leading.

The biggest proof, though, lay far ahead—the city walls. But Jieyuan barely managed a glance at them before catching sight of thick roots slamming down onto the avenue behind them.

The roots below weren’t the only ones still active. As the nearby buildings rocked and swayed on their foundations, pale, trunk-thick limbs stretched from sidewalks and doorways, lunging, recoiling, then snapping forward again in wet, cracking bursts of motion.

By his side, Daojue didn’t slow—still swinging Gleaming End in brutal, methodical arcs, shearing through any root that reached too close. Each strike landed with a heavy crack, green sap spraying in violent bursts.

Seeing that Daojue still had it handled, Jieyuan dragged his gaze back toward the distance.

Far ahead, visible past the shifting bodies of wood and mist, the city’s outer wall rose—massive, towering, the same twisted barricade of living wood they’d entered through. Behind them, farther out, the green curtain of mist marked the edge of this pocket.

But what really drew his eye was the city’s entranceway—a huge gap carved into the wall, well over a hundred feet tall, standing directly ahead. The avenue led straight for it, a clean, unbroken path. And beyond the entrance, the forest. The area outside the city.

That was what mattered.

Just this last stretch left—though stretch was optimistic, given the size of the pocket—and they’d be out.

Jieyuan didn’t let himself dwell on what it’d be like once they were through. Whether the city’s influence really stopped at its walls—or if it stretched farther out. Whether Meiyao’s stunt had set not just Viridian Death City, but the whole Viridian Dome against them. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than what was behind them now. They’d be better off trying their luck outside.

A sharp yank at his ankle broke his focus. A root—slick and fast—curled tight around his greave mid-step. Jieyuan’s balance tipped hard. He caught himself with a twist and stomped free before it could pull him down.

The next instant, the ropes at his waist snapped taut. Meiyao and Daojue had surged ahead, both already shifting back toward the avenue’s center—away from the buildings and their massive, reaching roots.

Jieyuan forced his focus fully downward again as he pushed forward to catch up—watching his footing, weaving between the frenzied street roots. Once he found his rhythm again, he loosened the hold of the Command on himself—just a little at first, testing. A few steps… no surge of noise from behind. He loosened it more. Nothing.

He cut the Command’s connection to himself completely—and still no trace of the tunnel’s clamor bleeding through.

For once, the viridian mist—or at least the sound-proofing of the pockets—had worked in their favor.

He let the rest of the Command drop—the mental threads still connecting him to Daojue and Meiyao snapping clean.

Neither of them reacted much. Daojue twitched mid-step. Meiyao sent him a quick glance back over her shoulder, followed by an even briefer nod.

Jieyuan didn’t waste a second.

“See Maeva,” he said—low, fast.

A flicker of blond hair, yellow dress, and white coat flashed just in front of him—Maeva manifesting mid-stride. He barely had time to register her before he plowed straight into her image, shoulder first.

And then she was gone—inside him again. In the same breath, he handed control of his lower body back to her.

Just like that, his legs and feet started moving on their own. His stride smoothed out mid-step, and by the second step he was already gaining speed, making up for lost ground—his movements suddenly more fluid, more effortless. Borderline graceful. Even with most of his focus still locked on his footing, even drawing on all the muscle memory he’d picked up from her before, Jieyuan wasn’t anywhere close to matching Maeva’s control.

But he wasn’t complaining. With the running handled again, his mind was free for everything else.

He fixed his gaze farther ahead, scanning for any new signs of danger. They were already back at the center of the avenue now, out of reach of the massive roots still stretching for them from either side. There shouldn’t be any big trouble—no more singular death traps like the tunnel, the bridge, and the Sacred Garden, just the city’s more common dangers—but he wasn’t about to take anything for granted.

Huaxin had quieted some now that the tunnel was behind them, but it still pulsed sharp and fast inside his chest, making it perfectly clear through their bond that they needed to get out of here as fast as possible.

Trust me, buddy, Jieyuan thought, you’re preaching to the choir.

They kept running—Meiyao in the lead, Jieyuan and Daojue just behind, almost side by side. Soon they reached the spot where the avenue split, the same intersection that led off toward the smaller, deformed bridges and growth-choked rivers they’d passed on their way in.

Things—long and thick, green and brown, slick and feathered—stretched out from those mounds as they passed, grasping toward them. But the three of them were faster, and that particular little burst of trouble amounted to nothing.

Now the entrance stood fully in sight, dominating the far end of the avenue. Already Jieyuan could make out the tall, gnarled spire with those finger-like protrusions on one side of it, and the squat, blocky garrison on the other. Rows of living lampposts lining the streets.

Not even a minute of running. That was all that stood between them and—not exactly freedom, no. The forests of the Dome still waited on the other side. But freedom from Viridian Death City at least.

That was, of course, when Viridian Death City kicked it up a notch and proved the death in its name was more than well deserved.

It started with the garrison.

It had been shaking before—every inch of it trembling like all the other buildings around—but then, with one great lurch, the building tore free from its foundation in a spray of dirt, sap, and shattered roots. It pitched forward, ripping itself fully upright, thick waves of roots flailing beneath it like the legs of some massive centipede.

The ground trembled beneath their feet as it crashed forward in a lurching, tentacled sprint—plowing straight down the avenue after them, riding the current of roots already surging underneath. Like the ambulant viridian oakwillows from earlier, but on a completely different scale.

Jieyuan didn’t need Huaxin to scream at him for this one. But the three of them didn’t retreat—there was no retreat, not while inside the city—and instead charged at it head-on. Other clusters of roots swung from either side of the building like vestigial arms, and as it drew closer, those roots shot forward toward them.

But it was nothing they hadn’t faced so far. Almost as one, they dodged the barrage of roots. Meiyao jumped on top of one and started scaling the wooden lengths, and Jieyuan was about to do the same—when movement came from the other buildings.

They didn’t rise off the ground, not like the garrison. But the viridian bulges he’d noticed before, on the way in—tumor-like swellings dotting their structures, now just barely discernible amid all the vibration—burst all at once. Hundreds of them.

Each explosion came with a wet pop and a billow of green dust. Clouds of fine, drifting green flakes fanned outward with the mist, pushed by the churned air stirred up by the garrison’s charge, straight toward them.

Worse were the ones that came from the garrison itself, bursting right in their faces.

“DON’T TOUCH!” Meiyao shouted as she kicked off the root, jumping back toward them, away from the garrison. They did the same, drawing back. And where the flakes—soft, almost harmless-looking—settled on the ground and on the garrison’s roots, the area began to bubble.

But it wasn’t like with the corrosive petals from before, burning through the wood of the bridge. These bubbles were green like the flakes, and from them sprouted pale green tendrils—worm-thin, crawling, stretching outward, and growing fast.

Daojue moved first—faster than Jieyuan could track—putting himself at the front. A burst of rainbow radiance bloomed from the tip of Gleaming End, splitting the air ahead of them and sweeping through the thickest parts of the cloud. The green powder burned away on contact—scattered to ash in the wake of the blast.

And with it, most of the garrison—only its lower level and roots remained, and those crashed down a moment later.

The three of them didn’t waste a second. They resumed their run. But then, a fresh gust—too well-timed to be natural—came rolling in, shoving a new rush of powder straight toward them. Jieyuan ducked low, waving the Shifting Feathers in front of him, trying to fan it away, but it didn’t stop all of it. He felt the dust cling wet and cold to the hem of his robes—just a light scatter at first, then more.

The fabric started to writhe.

A sick, prickling cold chased along his leg. Not physical, but felt with his soulsense—blooming spirit-shadows at the edges of his clothes. And spreading. Growing. Fast.

Jieyuan didn’t think—he grabbed the hem, ripped it free, and hurled the whole strip of fabric aside. It hit the roots across the street with a wet slap, already crawling with small, twisting threads of green.

But then he found himself with a bigger problem at hand—a much bigger one.

That jagged, broken-fingered spire by the wall was joining the fray.

The entire upper half bent, slow but deliberate, its broken peaks curling inward like clawed fingers closing into a fist. Then the whole structure dipped forward on a creaking, cracking joint that hadn’t existed a moment before.

Like some massive arm, it wasn’t reaching for the sky anymore—it was reaching for them.

The three of them jumped almost in unison—they couldn’t have done it better if they’d rehearsed it—as the massive, warped wooden hand slammed down where they’d been. They touched down on the other side of the spire and broke into a dead run forward. Behind them, the spire was already drawing back, moving again, but too slow—

Jieyuan threw himself off to the side—or rather, Maeva threw him off—as one of the living lampposts just ahead suddenly came to life, snapping toward him with lightning-fast lashes of branches and vines, long, thin limbs cracking down across the avenue like whips.

Right afterward, Maeva put him back on track, and Daojue and Meiyao cut down the next surge of glowing tendrils snapping toward them. Jieyuan joined in, Shifting Feathers swinging and singing.

But then he noticed more movement further ahead—at the entrance—and risked a glance toward it.

The entrance was closer than ever—barely a hundred feet left now—but from the looks of things, it wouldn’t stay an entrance much longer.

Jieyuan’s stomach dropped as he saw the roots rising from the ground at the base of the gate. Thick ones. Thousands. Twining fast—an interlocking weave shooting upward to seal the exit shut.

Not just fast, but stupidly fast—within a second, almost a third of it was covered.

They didn’t stop running, though. As they closed in—the living lampposts already left behind—Daojue angled Gleaming End forward. Another bright beam of spectral, prismatic light surged, ripping a hole in the rapidly forming wall wide enough for them to see the outside again. But already, new growth was surging in to fill the gap. Too fast. A blink later, and it was closed again. At the same time, the roots finished sealing the rest of the entrance at the top.

But Daojue kept moving. As they closed the last few yards, Jieyuan wondered if Daojue would go for another blast. The the walls were thick, though, and the passageway was a short tunnel in its own right. If they tried to squeeze through after another blast from Gleaming End, they’d be caught halfway, the way these roots regenerated.

Climbing, then? Jieyuan glanced up at the several hundred feet of wall in front of them. That didn’t look like a good idea—but it seemed like their only one.

Unless… maybe if they used Radiant Light Blasts, together with Gleaming End’s beams—

They reached the wall, and Daojue still didn’t stop—he charged forward, and thrust Gleaming End into it.

There was no blast—but where the spearhead pierced the wall, crystal formed.

Gleamstone. A sheet of it, spreading outwards quickly, like blood dropped on water. A second later, and several dozen feet of root-wall had crystallized—and then, starting back where Gleaming End had struck, the crystal began to crumble. Even as the wave of crystallization spread outward, so did the crumbling—like a second wave—opening a new path in the wall.

One that didn’t regenerate.

Another gear-skill, Jieyuan realized—but there was no time to think on it.

Daojue went through the growing gap, and Jieyuan and Meiyao did the same. Rushing into the hole, Jieyuan saw that the crystallization wasn’t just superficial—the entire inside of the wall had turned to Gleamstone, and even as they passed through, it was crumbling into fine, gleaming powder.

They came out the other side, feet touching the forest floor. And they didn’t stop running—Meiyao taking the lead again as they charged straight into the curtain of mist ahead, into the next pocket.