Chapter 103: TO COMMAND

CHAPTER

103

TO COMMAND

JIEYUAN

—∞—

For all the ways the city had twisted, shifted, and come alive around them—stirring like something half-woken and hungry—the tree tunnel ahead looked almost exactly the same as before.

That was little comfort, though, given that it had looked like bad news from the start.

Now they were approaching it from the opposite direction, and it didn’t look any better from this angle.

The towering chromal oaks still stood in their eerie formation—thick trunks rising on two parallel lines cutting through the middle of the avenue, their bushy, green-glowing crowns meshing high above to form a roof.

The viridian mist clung to the tunnel’s interior like before, glowing, but giving way to a dense, unnatural dark just a few steps inside. The canopy still quivered with that faint, breathless vibration—branches rustling when there was no wind at all. The low thrum from the trees was still there too, steady and wrong.

And with the squirming roots of the streets, writhing under the entrance, between the foremost trees forming the entranceway, that impression Jieyuan had had earlier, of a gaping maw, was only reinforced.

Meiyao had pulled ahead of Daojue again, claiming the lead with her green aura flaring around her. And already she was veering to the side, giving the tunnel’s entrance as wide a berth as she could manage. She didn’t need to say anything, didn’t need to explain—Jieyuan and Daojue followed close behind.

This time there wasn’t as much room to maneuver, though. Buildings crowded the street edges on both sides, their walls leaning too close, more and more roots coming loose at their base, eager for a piece of them much like the rest of this whole cursed city.

Huaxin pulsed harder now, throwing waves of warning through his chest. It’d been doing this all this while—from the moment they’d entered the city, with occasional spikes, with occasional spikes, until it had gone full throttle the moment Meiyao had activated the Viridian Source—or whatever had happened back then. But Jieyuan hadn’t been paying it much mind. He could already see the danger perfectly well.

Now, though, Huaxin was ramping further, kicking up a proper frenzy, even stronger than before, stronger than ever. It seemed to think they were better off turning around altogether than trying their luck anywhere near the tunnel. And if that was any indication, the tunnel might just be the worst of the dangers so far.

Golden.

The problem with taking any other direction was that at least with this one, they knew what to expect. Every other path was an unknown—and in a situation like this, unknowns were a surefire recipe for gruesome death.

But there was a second problem, too—the knowns weren’t looking particularly promising either.

They kept as far from the tunnel as circumstances allowed—sticking to the narrow strip of open ground between its entrance and the looming, hungry-looking buildings pressing in from the opposite side. Not much breathing room, but it was the best they could manage.

And then, just as they passed the tunnel’s mouth—

The low thrum that had been hovering at the edge of hearing exploded outward.

An ear-splitting rumble tore through the air, deep and grinding, loud enough to punch straight through Jieyuan’s chest. His balance wavered, knees almost buckling—not from any physical blow, just from the sheer force of the sound alone.

The viridian mist recoiled, trembling and roiling in violent bursts. It scattered in uneven waves, thrown into a frenzy by the noise.

To his left and ahead, the entire tunnel blurred—its lines shaking so fast the green of the leaves and the brown of the trunks smeared together, turning into rough, broken shapes that barely held together as trees.

The ground vibrated with it, too. A sharp, teeth-rattling pulse carried up through the roots underfoot, making every step feel suddenly twice as heavy.

The chanting back in the Cradle had been loud—borderline deafening—but compared to this, it might as well have been a whisper.

This noise wasn’t just sound. It was a physical thing, saturating the air, pushing against him like pressure. And then the viridian mist—turbulent, frenzied—started to deepen, turning deeper, more solid in its agitation. Fast.

Visibility was cut down from one second to another. One moment he could see the vague outlines of Meiyao and Daojue ahead, the warped lines of the tunnel to his left. The next, all of it vanished behind a wall of churning green. Now he only had his soulsense to tell him they were there, moving ahead.

Maeva’s control over his lower body didn’t slacken, but all the same, he could feel his body, feel the forces acting on it. It wasn’t just the roots pulling at him now—the mist itself seemed to have gained weight, physical presence, and was dragging at him too, the air turning to sludge.

Jieyuan knew it, then, mist wasn’t thickening from the turbulence like waters under a storm. Something else was at play here. He’d never been able to feel the mist before. He could see it, sure—but that was it, as far as his senses were concerned. It had always seemed more like an illusion than anything else. But now it was a physical thing—and that didn’t add up.

And just as he thought so, his mind latched onto something else—the noise. He could barely hear his thoughts above it, but he focused fully inward, and caught onto the oddity.

His ears rang sharp and hot, like his eardrums were just on the verge of rupturing. But they didn’t—even though they should’ve. The chanting at the Dome had been just shy of that, and this horrific clamor was many times louder.

Then he felt his soulsense going out too, its range diminishing by the second.

And he was sure of it now. Maeva, the sound’s—

He didn’t get to complete the thought as it all stopped.

The sound, gone.

The mist, still swirling, still frantic—but now he could see again. The shapes of Meiyao and Daojue came back into focus just ahead, both still moving but much slower now, tense. Jieyuan caught the grimace twisting Meiyao’s face, her whole body stiff as if bracing for a hit.

It was the silence, though, that held his attention. On the opposite side was the Dome, still vibrating so fast it blurred, but now he couldn’t hear it. He could hear the footsteps, Meiyao’s and Daojue’s too, the squirming roots underneath, his heartbeat, and all those smaller, fainter sounds. But of the tunnel, nothing.

“The noise was affecting your senses. It’s a spirit-skill, I think.” Maeva’s voice, low and close, a whisper curling right against his ear. He’d have been able to hear even through all that noise—through any noise, really—but in this quiet her voice sounded even clearer. “But I can stop your senses too—and stop you from hearing it.”

There was a small, unmistakable edge of satisfaction in her tone. A quiet sort of pride. “And it looks like it worked.”

Jieyuan was about to answer when something flickering at the corner of his vision cut him off.

The roots.

Not the thin, grasping tendrils at ground level, but the massive ones extending from the nearby buildings, pale and heavy, trunk-like.

They hadn’t stopped—rather, they’d sped up. It was just like inside Cradle, all over again.

The massive roots writhed and lunged forward from the sides in sudden bursts, stretching farther with each snap of motion, dragging toward them with a speed that felt out of place for something that size. Nearly on them now—and gaining fast.

Jieyuan’s gaze snapped back to Meiyao and Daojue.

They were still moving forward—but their steps were slow, halting. Still trapped under the tunnel’s hold. Still dulled and half-blind to what was happening around them. They hadn’t noticed the roots at all.

And at the rate those roots were coming, they wouldn’t get the chance.

Jieyuan didn’t hesitate. He sent his focus inward, narrowing to a single point—Absolute Will Command. Already at the forefront of his mind, already active, maintaining Maeva’s existence. But he had another use for it now.

What Maeva could do for him, the right Command could also do for Meiyao and Daojue.

He said, low, firm, clear, “Don’t hear the tunnel.”

He didn’t scream, didn’t shout. There was no need to. Whether Meiyao and Daojue heard him didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that he could feel them—sense them—both with his soulsense and now, finally, with his eyes again. That was all he needed to set a target for the realmskill.

As for the vocalization of the Command, that wasn’t for anyone’s ears, but for the Heavens themselves.

As soon as the words left his mouth, Jieyuan felt Maeva’s presence vanish on the spot—he could only hold one distinct Command at a time—but he’d been ready for it. Braced for it. And he didn’t so much as stumble as he regained control over his lower body—over the entirety of his body, now.

Ahead, Daojue and Meiyao faltered. Briefly.

He felt the shift as the new Command took hold—two distinct mental threads connecting him to them both. And a third one to himself, as he’d included himself among the targets.

The resistance came immediately.

Instinctive. Unconscious. A snap reflex of Meiyao’s and Daojue’s wills pushing back against external control.

Meiyao’s head snapped back toward him. He nodded. Immediately her resistance broke, her mind yielding to the Command.

Daojue’s held out longer.

For a flicker of a second, Jieyuan felt the weight of it—a sharper, deeper kind of push-back. Reflexive and unyielding, like a column of steel. That brief flash of resistance from Daojue was almost enough to break the Command on the spot. It was more resistance than Jieyuan had ever felt, from anything.

Jieyuan sent all of his own will against it in response—and even then he could feel himself losing ground, fast.

“I’M TRYING TO HELP, YOU INSUFFERABLE BASTARD!”

Those might just as well be magic words, because Daojue’s mind settled instantly, his resistance pulled back.

Jieyuan exhaled deeply.

Unlike Meiyao, Daojue didn’t look at him for confirmation. But his words had done the trick, and the absence of resistance told Jieyuan enough.

He’d ever discussed Absolute Will Command with Daojue, but Daojue had been around many of the times Jieyuan and Meiyao had talked about it. Daojue didn’t strike him as the type to listen in, but he probably had at least some idea of what it did and how it worked.

And though Jieyuan had never used Absolute Will Command on him before, Daojue had experienced it firsthand—just not from Jieyuan, but from its previous owner. Yikongwei Rongkai, who’d tried to use it to kill Daojue, back in the Fatebloom Woods, during their first mission outside the sect.

This time, though, it was being used to save his life—and thankfully Daojue seemed to understand as much.

That was that. Jieyuan shoved the thought aside and snapped his focus back to his feet—just in time to stumble clear as one of the roots below lunged high and nearly caught his ankle. Without Maeva driving his legs for him, he had to manage the running on his own now—and each step demanded his attention.

But it wasn’t as before.

He’d picked up a few things from how Maeva handled his body while she’d been in control. His footwork wasn’t perfect, but it was sharper, tighter. Enough that he could split just a sliver of his focus toward the battlefield around him, keeping track of Meiyao, Daojue, and the roiling surge of roots closing in.

Which was just as well—because that was  when the roots from the buildings finally reached them.

The first came down like a falling tree, crashing toward him in a blur of brown.

Jieyuan threw himself sideways and up, legs coiling hard, hurling himself into the air just as the root punched into the street behind him. The impact sprayed thick gouts of green sap in every direction—wet and stinking and sharp in the air.

Still airborne, Jieyuan caught one of the incoming roots veer sharply off course and swing up at him from below. A thick tentacle of wood, thicker than his whole body.

He dropped the weight on the Shifting Feathers instantly, cutting his own drag, letting his body fall low under the rising strike. As the root swept past overhead, he lowered his weapons’ weight and and slammed both blades upward, driving them into the stretch of wood flashing past with everything he had.

The shortglaives lodged deep.

The root started to recoil, pull back, dragging him along with, the Shifting Feathers still stuck onto it.

But he used his momentum, rocking his body upward, gripping the Shifting Feathers’ handles for support as he vaulted into the moving root.

Mid-swing he yanked both weapons loose, and the moment his feet touched the surface of the root in a crouch, he kicked off hard.

He shot forward and up, gaining enough height that the ropes connecting him to Daojue and Meiyao went taut for a breath.

More roots swung for him—broad, heavy arcs of wood slicing through the air—but most of them stayed low, too busy hammering at Meiyao and Daojue below.

Jieyuan rode the momentum as far as it would take him. And once he felt the climb start to stall, he poured weight back into the Shifting Feathers, dragging himself down fast, dropping like a stone toward the street below.

He landed hard, just shy of Daojue’s side, Meiyao just a few strides farther ahead.

Daojue didn’t say a word. No reaction at all. Just kept cutting—methodical and brutal—slicing through every root that came at him in great, sweeping arcs. Each strike tore through wood like it was nothing, sending up thick showers of green sap with every hit.

No roots got close to Jieyuan.

With Daojue at his side, nothing came even close to grazing him. Nothing except the splatters of sap, at any rate.

Up ahead, Meiyao was holding her own just as well. But no wide, heavy swings for her—without an Orangesoul weapon, she stuck mostly to dodging—quick, precise, weaving through gaps, letting the roots miss her by fractions.

Jieyuan kept his focus low—on his running, on the smaller roots still snaking along the ground beneath his feet, trying to trip or catch him while Daojue dealt with the larger threats.

And then—just ahead—he spotted it.

The end of the tunnel.

And just past it—a solid wall of viridian mist. Thick. Opaque. Like a curtain pulled tight across the street.

The boundary of this pocket of the city.

Meiyao reached it first and went through without pause.

Jieyuan and Daojue followed close behind, on her heels.