Chapter 91: IN THE BUSH

CHAPTER

91

IN THE BUSH

JIEYUAN

—∞—

People often spoke of heavenly matches. Matches by the Heavens. When two people, or things, fit together perfectly.

Jieyuan reckoned he’d found one such match.

Death—and the Dome.

He stood still as a statue, halfway through a clearing, his eyes fixed on Meiyao.

She was up ahead, standing at the edge of the pocket.

In front of her, peeking out of the misty curtain, was the head of some massive beast. Feline, with a triangular head. It had white fur, patterned with glowing streaks of deep green. Its green-tipped snout alone was already bigger than Meiyao’s head.

The rest of the beast’s body was hidden in the denser mist. At ground level, Jieyuan could see just the tips of two massive paws by either side of Meiyao’s feet. The claws were retracted, but he could still see them—pearly green shards as big as his hand, slotted into the flesh and fur.

It came as little surprise to Jieyuan that he couldn’t sense the creature’s spirit-shadow.

Still, he found he wasn’t too worried. He kept a tight grip on the Shifting Feathers, just in case he needed to make some last stand, but that was all. A few weeks in the Dome could turn any optimist into a fatalist—and Jieyuan had always been the pragmatic type. Either Meiyao would pacify the beast, as she’d done every time since, or she wouldn’t, and they’d all die. Not much in between.

His lack of say in the matter—over his own survival—had bothered him at first. But it had been ten days or so since their close brush with that vulture-like beast.

He’d thought that once they were away from the crest, they’d be safer. And he’d been right. They were safer—from flying beasts.

He had to hold back a smile—a rueful one, the kind that crept on your face when the odds were so bad you might as well laugh at yourself—as he observed the chromal tiger towering over Meiyao.

Not straight-on, of course. A couple days ago, after they’d come across a bear that was grisly, rather than grizzly, Meiyao had warned him and Daojue never to look directly at any beast they came across. They might take it as a challenge, and I have a hard enough time already without you two picking fights, she’d said—with a smirk sent his way, and a glare Daojue’s. Observe them from the side, if you must. Out of the corner of the eye. Which was what Jieyuan did right now.

Five days ago, the downward slope they’d been on had flattened, giving way to what looked like a valley. A valley teeming with beasts.

On the way down, their trek had been as smooth as polished gold. But they’d barely stepped into the valley when they came across their first one, a surprisingly small wolf that barely came up to Jieyuan’s waist but was still of indeterminate realm. Since then, they’d had another seventeen encounters. Some had been with Redsoul beasts, which they could’ve taken—even a tenth-sign one, probably—but a fight according to Meiyao was likely to draw over beasts they couldn’t take, and so it had been touch-and-go all the same.

The average so far was over three a day—and more than half of those encounters had occurred in the last two days. Jieyuan saw the trend, how the deeper into the valley, the more beasts they found. And he didn’t like it any.

This tiger was the eighteenth overall, and the fourth today. That was already above the average. And they weren’t even halfway through the day yet. They tried to make about fifteen hours of progress every day, and they were still on the seventh.

Jieyuan shifted his gaze down to its paw again. This was the first feline beast they’d come across. He might be wrong, but chances were he was looking at the beast that had left those massive prints they’d seen before the vulture. Or at least one of the same race. Then again, there might very well be other races of huge cats roaming the area.

According to Meiyao—he was finding that, these days, more and more of his thoughts started with those words—chromal beasts weren’t like mundane ones. That was obvious enough in all sorts of way, of course. But one thing that really set them apart was that they didn’t need to eat.

Chromal beasts could get by on chroma alone. Some still hunted and foraged for the pleasure of it, but not out of necessity. That meant there wasn’t as much competition for resources, which made coexistence easier. Most of them—especially the big, predator types—were territorial, but as long as boundaries were respected, they normally didn’t mind sharing space with very similar beasts.

That was the kind of tidbit Meiyao had taken to sharing with him almost daily now. Jieyuan wasn’t too interested in beasts and plants—or in nature as a whole, really—but Meiyao was nothing short of passionate about it all. And when she spoke, it didn’t matter he wasn’t interested in the subject matter. It was Meiyao speaking. That was enough to get him to pay attention.

Jieyuan focused back on Meiyao as he caught movement—the tiger had lowered its head, angling it down. Meiyao then reached out with her hand, and pressed it at the bridge of its snout, just under its eyes.

Jieyuan didn’t tense. Rather, he relaxed some. This was a good sign. It happened more often not when it came across a beast, and signified that Meiyao had won it over.

The tiger let out a low, rumbling sound it took Jieyuan a moment to realize was a purr, before it drew back into the mist.

Meiyao didn’t move, and neither did Jieyuan as he waited for her lead. But then she glanced back, nodded, and then moved on to of clear mist. Jieyuan followed, and Maeva took back control of his mouth to resume chanting the attuning hymn for him.

After stepping into the next pocket—and a quick scan for danger—Jieyuan briefly sent his focus inward, checking on his soulprism. Meiyao was attuning chroma right now, pooling unattuned chroma at the bottom of his soul center, so he could get a good look at it.

And there it was. A red, solid, softly spinning prism-shaped mass, already larger than one of his fists. Over three-quarters full. He’d have been even closer to topping out if he hadn’t resumed cultivating—imbuing chroma, enduring the Pain—about a week ago. He’d been at around the halfway mark, then, and he’d decided he had enough chroma to safely resume cultivation while still having a tidy reserve left-over for emergencies.

Jieyuan got a spring in his step—and it was testament to how much better he’d gotten at treading on the forest floor, when that didn’t have him making any more noise—just thinking about his cultivation. Meiyao and Daojue had broken through to fourth-sign Redsoul several days earlier than he’d had, and they’d resumed cultivating more than two weeks ago, as they hadn’t run out of chroma like he had, but based on what he knew of Meiyao’s progress—they talked often, these days, about all sorts of things—he was catching up.

Meiyao—and Daojue—still needed to dedicate time to refilling chroma spent during imbuing. But Jieyuan didn’t, since he was already doing so all day long through Absolute Will Command. During their rests, they’d dedicate about an hour to rest and five to cultivation, each. Jieyuan could spend all those five hours imbuing, whereas they’d also need to harvest and attune chroma.

He probably wouldn’t beat them to fifth-sign. But sixth-sign? It was possible. Seventh-sign? All but guaranteed. They might still have their bloodrights—and unless he was off his mark, multiple Violetsoul realmskill—but he had the Fatebloom Heart and Absolute Will Command, and he didn’t think he came too shabby. Absolute Will Command might as well be the best realmskill in the world, as far as he was concerned. Not necessarily powerful—not against opponents at a higher realm, at any rate—but he was pretty sure it was unrivaled in utility.

And on the topic of good news…

Jieyuan passed through into another pocket—still no signs of trouble—as this time he focused on his mind. He could fill Absolute Will Command, active. He could also feel each and every of the artifacts he’d bonded. And, among them, the Fatebloom Heart. Huaxin.

Their connection was there. Strong. Not as strong as it used to be, when Huaxin was active, but it was getting stronger with each day that passed, and it was nearly back to full strength. If that wasn’t a sign Huaxin was about to awaken, he didn’t know what was. And with Huaxin would come Fatebloom Intuition—which might come really, really handy in the Dome, depending on how it mixed with the viridian mist.

Barely five clearings later, though, Meiyao went still again.

Already? Jieyuan settled back, resigned for their next chance at a passing acquaintance with death.

But then Meiyao broke into a run.

The rope binding them tugged at him, giving Jieyuan no choice but to start running too.

He hadn’t been all that concerned up to this point, not even with the tiger nearby—but this? Meiyao had never run. Never. And she was making more noise than usual—still barely more than a whisper—but enough to notice.

They crossed into the next pocket, then another, then another. Their surroundings turned into glowing green blurs as they carved a path through the mist.

Jieyuan felt the rope extending behind him tug briefly before slackening—meaning Daojue had started running too. Meiyao didn’t look back, didn’t offer any explanation. He didn’t know what to think. If she was making this much noise, there shouldn’t be danger—but it could be that it didn’t matter how much noise she made, because danger was coming anyway.

But that didn’t seem right. Something about the way she ran gave him the impression she wasn’t running from something, but toward something.

After she passed into another pocket, the rope suddenly slackened a little—and when Jieyuan crossed over, he found Meiyao standing still to the side of the pocket, in front of a tall, sprawling thicket. Nothing else caught his eye, and he focused back on her. She was just standing there, unmoving, staring now at the mists around them, as she usually did when she went still, but into the bright-green shrubs.

Jieyuan walked over to Meiyao. Slowly at first, intentionally making more noise than usual. When Meiyao didn’t turn around or warn him off or anything, he continued on at a more normal pace. Behind them, Daojue stepped into the clearing but stopped at the entrance.

Meiyao didn’t react as he stopped beside her. She was staring fixedly down at the shrub. He followed her gaze down. At first he didn’t see anything, just a sprawl of bright, glowing stalks and leaves, about chest-high. All that he really noticed was the lack of thorns, which was always welcome. But then he stepped to the side, closer to Meiyao, and the angle changed—and he saw it.

At the bottom, near the ground, a flash of white. It wasn’t the white of plants—the bush was all green—but the warm, smooth white of human skin.

"He stepped even closer to Meiyao and leaned over to get a better look—and he got it.

It was human skin, all right. On a human body, lying at the bottom of the thicket. A man’s—Jieyuan was staring down straight at his naked chest. He glanced down, and confirmed he could see the rest of the man’s body through the shrub, also naked. And then up—at the man’s face, the eyes closed, the shrub growing around—

Not around, Jieyuan realized, but out of him. Stems extended from under the man’s closed eyes and brow, through the skin and out. Jieyuan couldn’t get a good look—he could only barely see the man’s face—but there was none of that sickly pallor all corpses eventually developed, as blood stopped flowing. The man’s skin was bright, vibrant. If it weren’t for the plants growing out of him, he looked like he could’ve been asleep.

But Jieyuan couldn’t sense his soul. Normally, that’d mean someone was dead or mundane. Mundane was very unlikely, here in the Dome, and given the circumstances dead seemed far more likely anyway. But there was a third reason that could explain why he couldn’t sense the man’s soul.

Maeva returned full control to him, and he said, very softly, very quietly, as he took a step back, “Meiyao? What am I looking at here?”