Chapter 94: BEATING HEART

CHAPTER

94

BEATING HEART

JIEYUAN

—∞—

When Jieyuan had first glimpsed the city beyond the gate, he’d thought he was looking at ancient ruins, half-swallowed by the wild. Vines and strings, stems and shoots in every shade of green that had ever been spat out by the forests of the world. The buildings themselves looked chewed up and spat back out, twisted and warped, nothing straight or clean left. Broken, decrepit, crumbling.

But Meiyao had said the city had been grown. Not just the walls—the city itself. That was a pretty important distinction.

And as he stepped through the gateway, he saw it for himself.

Nothing was broken. Nothing was crumbling or decrepit. It was the opposite.

On either side of the main avenue rose rows of buildings, half-shrouded in a thick layer of foliage. And beneath that, more plants. Every last building had been grown, not built—no stone, no brick, no chisels or saws. Just living wood, the same deep, dark kind that encircled the city, coaxed and bent to order. Twisted into columns and walls, thresholds and eaves, roofs and balconies.

But after two thousand years of neglect, it wasn’t just the plants that had taken over. The buildings themselves had kept on growing, pushing and twisting past any shape they were meant to hold.

He stopped in his tracks at the entrance, giving himself a heartbeat to take it all in—the whole wild mess.

It looked nothing like Radiant Gold City. It wasn’t even the choice of building material—and you’d be hard-pressed to find two things more opposite than metal and wood. Radiant Gold City was orderly, geometrical, planned to perfection. Maybe Viridian Death City had looked like that too, once, when it’d been populated. Maybe it’d had its own geometry, each wooden wall carefully grown under a watchful eye.

But with its keepers gone for so long, the city had gone wild. Grown wild. Raw, unchecked.

To his left, near the wall, monstrous, man-sized roots cracked through the earth, bunching up against a squat little garrison and raising its ground floor several feet into the air. The first two stories of the building were still blocky enough to appear man-made, but above that, it had swelled into something grotesque—spirals and bulges twisted together, no two lines the same, no hint of order left.

In front of it, a thin, spindly tree twisted skyward, a bright green bulb swelling in its middle like some swollen, ingrown fruit. Maybe it had once served as the city’s own version of a lamppost, like the brightgold posts back in Radiant Gold City. But its top had since erupted into an inverted crown of fluorescent leaves and branches, warped and snarled into almost whippy tendrils that reached far up and out, swaying faintly with the breeze.

Across the street, opposite the garrison, stood a tall wooden tower. Once, it might’ve been a watchtower, though one meant to watch the city rather than the outside of it, as the outer walls dwarfed it by almost double its length. Now, though, it had become a gnarled spire. Its upper floors had split apart into jagged peaks like broken fingers clawing at the sky, twisted and reaching for something that wasn’t there.

Other structures, along with more of those living lampposts, lined both sides of the street, grown and twisted so wildly that you could only loosely call them buildings. Some were tall and thin, others squat and wide, but all were warped and bent in unsettling ways, spaced haphazardly along the avenue.

Farther ahead, the buildings thinned out, and the avenue began to split in several directions. The main street carried on, disappearing into the curtain of mist beyond, but some of the side paths ended in thick, warped tangles of wood that stretched over broad swaths of green. It took Jieyuan a moment to realize those had once been bridges, and that the thick clumps beneath them had once been dips or hollows, maybe even streams or ponds.

Jieyuan looked down, letting his eyes roam over the street itself. There were hints of what it used to be. It was wooden like the buildings, though of an even deeper color. Solid, under his feet, just like stone. It’d have been smooth, back then. He could still see some smooth, clear patches—but they were few. Most of the avenue had been swallowed by sprawls of intertwined roots and vines extending from the nearby buildings, rising and falling in irregular humps, like frozen ripples.

He looked back up. His lungs swelled with the scent of the Dome, rich and heavy—life and decay all tangled together. It was wet, too. He hadn’t seen a drop of rain since he’d arrived, but the air was always humid, every inch of ground they’d walked on had held a steady dampness. Here in the city, the moisture was even thicker, weighing down on them.

And all of it—smell, moisture, air—wrapped up in the viridian mist. A deep green that pooled in hollows and licked at the root-ridden doorways, dulling every color, even as it lit the twisted growths in a sickly, otherworldly glow. Most of the original city didn’t glow—the plants growing over it did, but not the wood itself. But on some of the buildings, there were swollen, tumor-like bulges that pulsed with a faint, emerald gleam, like veins beneath the bark.

He shot a look at Meiyao. She was staring, wide-eyed with awe—maybe at the place itself, maybe at what it represented, or maybe just at the sheer, wild state of it all. She was a Linzushen, even if she hadn’t bought into the whole Viridian Death Faith. Her bloodright alone would probably have her seeing this monstrous, overgrown city in a very different light.

Beneath the soft rhythm of their breaths, he caught the faintest of sounds—a low, unending creak and crackle. The city itself, he realized, shifting and settling, like old bones—still growing.

And there was more. A sense of something around them, crowding them. The city wasn’t just alive—it was aware, in a way he couldn’t quite pin down. Like it had been watching them all along, since the moment they’d stepped through the gate.

If it felt like the air was weighing down, before, now it was pressing in on them, from all direction, the mist thick and still and ominous.

“Meiyao?” He kept his voice low. She’d said the area was safe, earlier, beasts-free, but he’d rather not test his luck. He knew for a fact that it wasn’t just the beasts of the Dome that were dangerous. A tumble into the wrong bramble, and if you didn’t die outright you’d wish you had.

He could see some thorny patches over the buildings, bushes here and there. It wasn’t just the thorns that were the issue here, though. A bramble didn’t come to you—it was no threat unless you fell into it. He didn’t think the danger the city presented was nearly as passive. Again, he just couldn’t shake off this sense, this impression, of some encompassing awareness, of some vague, looming danger.

The only consolation was that he could at least sense the spirit-shadow of the streets—of the city itself, in fact. Tenth-sign Redsoul. Not ideal, not when he wasn’t even at fifth-sign yet—but better than not being able to sense it at all.

But even then, the feeling of danger kept coming, echoing in every dark, ominous beat of his heart…

Jieyuan went still. That was an awfully specific, suspiciously meaningful way his heart was beating.

Meiyao didn’t answer—she didn’t even seem to hear his question. Her gaze was elsewhere, fixed on things he couldn’t see. But he didn’t really care. He sent his focus inward, down into his mind—into his bond with the Fatebloom Heart.

Huaxin?

The reply was immediate. AFFIRMATION.

Now his heart was beating even faster, but for completely different reasons. Through their bond, he could feel Huaxin’s presence bright and warm, golden and vibrant.

He’d been on such a dry spell of good news that for a moment he forgot how to even react to it. But then the smile came through, wide enough to hurt, the sort that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a madman’s face.

Finally.

He didn’t care if Meiyao or Daojue noticed. Meiyao already knew about Huaxin, and explaining it to her would be easy enough—not that he’d even need to, as she was still absorbed with the surroundings. Daojue might catch it, but Jieyuan doubted he’d give one scrap of copper about it.

How are you feeling, buddy?

The response couldn’t be captured in any one word. It came in a brief flash of vague impressions and feelings, half-formed images and sensations. But even after not speaking with Huaxin for so long Jieyuan hadn’t forgotten how to process its messages. In a way, they were even more effective than words. Faster, and more thorough.

Huaxin was awake—for good, now. It wasn’t a full strength yet, so he’d have to dial back a bit on Fatebloom Intuition, but it was eager to be of help again in any way he could.

Trust your heart was a common enough piece of advice, but Jieyuan didn’t reckon there were many others beside himself that could take it literally.

All right, Jieyuan sent back. You’re up to date on the situation?

There was a pause. Jieyuan felt Huaxin’s presence deepen in his mind, spreading out, searching. It only lasted a couple seconds. Then, AFFIRMATION.

Great. First things first, how well is Fatebloom Intuition working? Is the mist a problem?

That vague, pervasive sense of danger he’d sensed earlier must’ve been Fatebloom Intuition at work, but there were different levels to it. Huaxin had used it in that broader, more general sense regularly before it’d revealed it could also be narrowed down, focused on the immediate future. And it was this latter application of it that Jieyuan was most interested in, right now.

The response was as much AFFIRMATION as it was NEGATION, with a healthy helping of FRUSTRATION.

Jieyuan frowned as he parsed it. So it works, but limited? Too limited for sequences?

AFFIRMATION. More FRUSTRATION, too.

Well, it’s better than nothing. He didn’t know how limited it was yet, but any advantage would be a leg-up. It wasn’t like he’d done much fighting as of late, either, so it wasn’t as if those precise, step-by-step sequences would’ve been of that much help anyway. A targeted danger sense would already go a very long way in this kind of place.

Huaxin sent him an image, then—of a nearly formed, golden droplet. It took Jieyuan a moment to place it. Heartblood?

Then he recalled. It’d been a while since they’d entered the Dome. They were maybe a week or so away from a full month. And the Fatebloom Heart produced one drop of Heartblood per month. It could only hold a single one, too—and since he’d burned the previous one to use Fatebloom Sacrifice…

In just a week or so, he’d be able to use it again. The same power that had let him quickly dispatch three tenth-sign redsouls. Granted, Fatebloom Intuition had played as important a role in those fights, but, again—every advantage was a leg-up, and Fatebloom Sacrifice was a major one.

It’d have been better to have it at hand right now, to be sure—but he’d take it.

“Jieyuan?”

He focused on Meiyao. She wasn’t staring off in a daze anymore—she was looking right at him.

And he realized that this time, he might’ve been the one to drift off, caught up in his conversation with Huaxin

He glanced at Daojue, shrugged, then tapped his chest. Meiyao narrowed her eyes, but then he saw recognition flicker across her face. She nodded.

“Let’s go,” she said, and resumed walking. This time, Jieyuan kept to her side.

She wasn’t looking around anymore—just staring straight ahead, jaw set, like she was bracing herself for something.

“Any particular place we’re going?” he asked.

She nodded. “I think it’s better we find out what that thing is that I’m sensing, before anything else.”

“The big, vague, plant-ish thing?”

He stared off into the thick curtain of mist ahead. It cut off the avenue far ahead, slicing through street and buildings alike, a wall of green that curved way up overhead, forming a dome of its own. Hard to say for sure, but he figured they could see about a quarter of the city at most. The rest lay on the other side, hidden behind that wall of deep, glowing green.

“Just the one,” Meiyao said.

“Sounds like a plan.”

He’d have suggested it himself, in fact. Rather than wander around looking for loot—or sightseeing and exploring, which were probably more Meiyao’s priorities—and risk letting the danger sneak up on them, they were better off dealing with it first. Better to be braced for it than to be blindsided—meet it head-on rather than with their backs turned.

And if they were charging head-first to their deaths… Well, it wasn’t like they’d live to regret it.