Chapter 89: TALK OF SEEDS

CHAPTER

89

TALK OF SEEDS

JIEYUAN

—∞—

“One of them enhances the body—dexterity, agility, reflexes, flexibility,” Meiyao said. “Divine Primeval Grace. Another, Divine Plant Empathy, lets us read plants on sight—how they grow, what properties they have, how to care for them. Divine Beast Empathy does the same for beasts.”

Divine. That gave Jieyuan a pause. Now there was a word he didn’t hear every day. He only really recognized it because of the Viridian Death Cult. He’d had a lesson or two on words not to say around the cultists, and that one had made the list. The Viridian Death Cult had a very specific idea of what divine meant—what it was supposed to refer to—and they didn’t take kindly to anyone else using it. Blasphemy, supposedly.

Not that divine was a word most people used anyway. Outside of cults, gods, deities, divinities weren’t really a thing. There was only the Heavens. Only heavenly.

But the ledgers added up about right. The Linzushen had once been to the Viridian Death Cult what the Liangshibai were to the Gleaming Stone Sect—only more so. They Liangshibai were obeyed. The Linzushen had been worshiped. They’d have been the sort to throw around words like divine, he reckoned.

“The last two—Divine Plant Intuition and Divine Beast Intuition—let us feel what plants and beasts feel,” Meiyao went on. “Their state. Physical and mental. Or at least that’s how they’re supposed to work.”

She frowned, then swept a hand through the air. The mist shifted with the motion, rolling around her fingers.

“In the Dome—and with the beasts from here—it’s different. They’re stronger. The last two—they don’t just let me feel plants and beasts. They let me reach them, sense them through the mist. Nudge them, too. Make them feel a certain way. Command them, almost.”

She gazed into the thick, impenetrable curtain beyond, eyes narrowing slightly. “The mist, too. There’s a way it listens. Or maybe not listens—but responds. It’s… It’s hard to explain. You’d have to experience it.”

The mist curled softly around them—not fast, not sudden—but now...

Listens, Meiyao had said. Responds. The mist had always set his nerves on edge, but her words implied more awareness than he’d have liked.

She lingered there a moment, eyes still on the mist, lost in whatever thought had pulled her under.

Then she blinked, catching herself. “Those with fourth-order affinity get more,” she said, tone steadier again. “That green aura you’ve seen around me sometimes? That’s one of them. Divine Nature Unison. In a forest—or anywhere thick with life—we can draw on the plants and beasts around us. Borrow their strength.”

She exhaled slowly. She looked down, turning her hands over in her lap, working her fingers in slow, absent motion, as if testing for something. “There are supposedly other bloodskills too, but… they’re not like realmskills. With a realmskill, the moment you assimilate it, you know what it does. You can feel it, too—settled at the back of your mind, like a weight. Bloodskills aren’t like that. You’re born with them, but not knowing them. And if they’re not something that’s always in effect like Divine Primeval Grace, you don’t feel them at all. Not unless you already know to look for it.”

Her hands stilled, and she looked back up. “My mother was the first Linzushen in over a thousand years to be born with fourth-order affinity. By then, almost everything about our higher-order bloodskills had been lost. All anyone remembered was they existed—and even that much was contested. She’d spend most of her time combing through the old records, trying to reclaim what we’d forgotten. The only one she managed to recover was Divine Nature Unison.”

She extended her arm in front of her.

Jieyuan stared. Nothing happened.

Then she waved it—and he caught it.

She was glowing.

That same green aura he’d seen on her before was now coating her arm. Only now, it blended so cleanly with the viridian mist that it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. He only noticed because, as the mist shifted, the soft green light on her skin didn’t waver with it. Even then, it was a subtle thing. You had to be paying attention.

Divine Nature Unison.

So that was the power he’d seen Meiyao use a few times already—and more importantly, the one she’d tapped into when she picked him up and pretty much hauled him into the Dome. The one that had taken her from borderline powerless to channeling strength she wouldn’t normally have even at her peak.

Sure, if he’d understood right, Meiyao’s bloodskills got a boost near the Dome. But still. Divine Nature Unison was practically a realmskill in its own right.

And then there was Divine Primeval Grace, which enhanced her body too. And her bloodright’s expressions, which did something similar—just through different means.

Advantage stacked on advantage. Gold on gold.

And that wasn’t even counting the other bloodskills she’d mentioned. Or the ones she might not even know she had—the fourth-order ones the Linzushen had forgotten. Bloodskills in the same tier as Divine Nature Unison, and likely just as powerful, just as useful.

Just when I thought I’d closed the gap… Jieyuan had to keep himself from laughing.

He thought back to what Protector Yuyan had told him. There was that bit about a quarry that’d never run dry, about ever-moving goalposts. That was truer than ever. But more than that…

You don’t know half of what she’s really capable of.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t believed Protector Yuyan. He just hadn’t thought she meant it literally.

And he definitely hadn’t considered she might be underselling it.

Best of all? Meiyao hadn’t told him everything yet. Maybe she’d have gotten to it eventually—maybe she was even about to bring it up next—but he couldn’t keep himself from asking, “What about your realmskill?”

She froze. Her arm dropped. She turned to face him with a blank look. “What are you—”

But then she stopped. Frowned. Closed her eyes.

Jieyuan liked to think he was pretty good at reading others. But he had no idea what to make of that reaction. “Meiyao?”

She ignored him. Her frown deepened, the space between her brows creasing tight.

She stayed that way for a long moment. Then, finally, opened her eyes and turned back to him.

“I might as well tell you,” she said.

Just like before, he couldn’t read her. This time, it wasn’t just guarded—it was sealed off completely. She reminded him of Daojue, almost—the way her features went still, statue-like. Composed. Unreachable.

“The Liangshibai—those I’d been close with, at least—knew about my bloodright. My bloodskills. But there was something I kept from them. From everyone, except my mother. Because she forbade me from telling anyone else.”

She drew open her glyph-stretch pouch. Something red and hazy began to flow out from inside it.

It gathered in the air in front of them, forming a small cloud of red over Meiyao’s lap. It started out faint, barely visible, but thickened as more of it seeped into the open air, clustering together. Even then, it wasn’t any more solid than the viridian mist around them.

Jieyuan recognized it—the same red haze he’d seen once before, back in the Gleamstone Valley, when Meiyao fought one of the Gleaming Nobles Qingshi had brought with him.

It wasn’t anything like a cloudcraft, or even physicalized chroma. This was darker. Duller. A deep, matte red—the color of rust and fallen leaves. The lack of glow—unlike just about everything else in the Dome—only made it stand out more, like it had no business being here.

To his soulsense, it registered as a solid fourth-shade red presence—the same as Meiyao’s soul. That added up. Realmskill creations had a spirit-shadow that matched the user’s soulsign. Or lower, if the user went out of their way to suppress it.

What didn’t add up was how Meiyao had pulled it from her glyph-stretch pouch. Every realmskill creation he knew—even gleamstone made by the Gleaming Stone Sect’s realmskills—was temporary. They only lasted as long as you kept feeding them chroma. The moment you stopped, they dissolved. Gone.

Realmskill creations weren’t something you stored. If anything, you kept them active for as short a time as possible—just long enough to use them, and no longer. Anything more was a waste of chroma. And no one wasted chroma if they could help it.

“Eternal Viridescence Ruin,” Meiyao said quietly.

She extended her hand into the haze, and the red cloud responded—spinning softly around her fingers like it had been waiting for her.

“That’s my realmskill. It lets me create a Viridescence Ruin Seed—which sprouts into this. A Viridescence Ruin Cloud.”

Jieyuan studied the haze. He saw the Cloud part, sure. Viridescence, not so much.

Viridescence was another word the Viridian Death Cult had laid claim to. As well as a word you’d normally only see the cultists using, anyway. It meant turning green. Being greenish.

He frowned. If that was supposed to green, then it sure was an awfully red shade of it.

And then there was Ruin. Now that one was a stumper. Left him drawing blanks.

What stuck with him more than the name—more than the oddity of the terminology—was the way Meiyao had hesitated. Even after everything. Even after saying she hated keeping secrets.

Not just that—her first instinct had been to shut him down.

She’d also kept this from everyone around her. Everyone except her mother.

He waited for Meiyao to elaborate. She didn’t—and when he glanced at her, he saw the distant look on her face. She seemed lost in a daze as she stared at the red haze. Like she was entranced with it.

The red haze had stopped spinning and now pulsed gently in the air, rising and falling with a slow, steady rhythm—contracting, expanding, in a way that gave Jieyuan the impression of something breathing.

Jieyuan glanced from it to Meiyao, and decided to do something about it. “What does it do?” he asked.

Meiyao blinked, like she was confused, then looked over at him. “Sorry. I didn’t— They like it here, in the Dome. They’ve never reacted like this before.”

Now it was Jieyuan’s turn to blink. They? And worse—like it?

First the viridian mist, and now this. What was it with Meiyao, and sentient formless substances?

“Hmmm?” Meiyao must’ve noticed the look on his face, because she suddenly smiled. “Oh, right. These are spores. They’re alive.”

“Spores,” Jieyuan said. “Like—plant spores?”

“You’re on the right track. But these are fungi spores.” She paused, tilting her head. “Actually, you probably don’t know—”

“The difference? I do,” Jieyuan said.

The lessons his father had arranged for him hadn’t gone that far. They had covered medicinal mushrooms, but mostly in the context of how much of a market there was for it, where to source it from, and who to sell it to. Amyas, on the other hand, had had more comprehension biology lessons.

That wasn’t what he was thinking about, though. What stuck with him was the fact that Meiyao’s realmskill hadn’t just created something permanent. It had created something alive.

“Oh.” Meiyao gave him a curious look. “I’d thought—well. Mundanes are more advanced than I expected. Even the Liangshibai don’t know the difference. I thought only the Linzushen knew.”

“I don’t know the details,” Jieyuan said, brushing it off. “But they look different enough.”

Then, because he didn’t want to give her a chance to press further—and because he was far more interested in the realmskill than in a possible biology lesson—he quickly asked, “What does it do?”

“Infect others,” Meiyao said. “Or—well, one person. One target. I choose the effect when I’m nurturing a Seed into a Cloud. Mental, physical, or a mix of both. But only one. This one has a paralyzing property—it gradually slows the movements of whoever it infects.”

He recalled how, back in the Gleamstone Valley, the disciple she’d been fighting had gotten slower and slower throughout their fight. But he didn’t stop to dwell on that. Something Meiyao had said caught his attention. “This one?”

“I have others,” Meiyao said. “It costs chroma to create a Seed, and more to nurture it—but not to keep them around. I can only have one Cloud active at a time, though. If I try to sprout a different one, this one will turn back into a Seed.”

So he was right. They were permanent. But more importantly… “What kind of effects are possible?”

“Nothing too complex, or too harmful,” Meiyao said. “Infecting someone costs chroma, and the stronger the effect, the higher the upkeep. Anything too dangerous becomes too expensive. I have four other Seeds—hallucination, nausea, convulsion, and necrosis.”

“That’s quite the range,” Jieyuan said.

It really was a versatile realmskill, almost as much as Absolute Will Command. There were still plenty of practical factors to consider. What range Meiyao could control it in, how long the infection took, the exact chroma cost, and so on. But the potential was obvious. It was easily the most interesting realmskill he’d seen—after Absolute Will Command, of course.

The Ruin part still didn’t quite fit—but then, this was only the skill’s first form. The higher-realm versions would go further. Absolute Will Command wasn’t exactly absolute yet, either.

“It is, isn’t it?” Meiyao said. There was a lift to her voice now—something brighter, more open. Like talking about her realmskill gave her room to breathe. “I’ve tried a few other effects, but these were the ones that worked best. I’ve mostly used them in private—on animals and chromal beasts. The only time I ever got to use one in a real fight was in the Gleamstone Valley, against that Geshihan inner disciple.”

“Because it’s supposed to be a secret,” Jieyuan said.

He hadn’t meant to interrupt. Not when Meiyao finally sounded like she wanted to talk—like she was actually enjoying it. But something about it still didn’t add up, and he couldn’t let it go.

“Why, though?” he asked. “I mean, it’s a powerful realmskill, sure, but not to a ridiculous or unreasonable extent. I don’t see why you’d need to go so far to keep it hidden. Is it some kind of Linzushen heritage, or—”

He cut himself off as Meiyao’s expression shifted again. Whatever brightness had been there a moment ago was gone. In its place was that distant, heavy stillness from earlier.

“I was born with it.”

The word left him before he could stop it. “What?”

“I was born with it,” Meiyao repeated, staring straight into his eyes. “But that isn’t the problem. The problem is that it’s a Violetsoul realmskill, like your Absolute Will Command.”

Violetsoul. That’s—

Jieyuan opened his mouth—

“And the even bigger problem,” Meiyao went on, her voice low and steady, “is that I wasn’t born with just one skill-seed. I was born with six. All of them violet.”