Chapter 85: A NEW USE

CHAPTER

85

A NEW USE

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Meiyao vanished into the mist, leaving behind only the taut rope that linked them.

Jieyuan tensed—but only briefly. He forced himself to move forward, stepping into the denser stretch of mist.

He found his suspicions confirmed. The mist did work on a kind of threshold.

The moment he was through, the space around him opened up more than a dozen feet ahead and across.

Much like the previous area, it had a single tree. Except this tree was halfway through the boundary ahead, split straight down the middle. A cluster of low shrubs crowded its base, with other patches sprinkling the rest of the area.

Everything else was the same. Soft earth coated thick with glowing grass and scattered leaves, all of it submerged in a sea of faint viridian mist, rolling and curling intangibly.

Standing in the middle was Meiyao, turned back, toward him. Relief crossed her face, gone in a flash. She gave him a nod, turned away again, and kept walking.

It occurred to Jieyuan, then, that she might not have been all that sure about whether using a rope would’ve worked.

And he’d thought he was the gambler.

Then again, it’d been his idea to enter the Dome in the first place. Couldn’t call someone a sucker at the auction when you’d been the first to place a bid.

He glanced back. His rope disappeared into an opaque curtain of mist. No sign of Daojue, but he’d gotten through just fine, and the rope was taut.

He pressed on.

Ahead, Meiyao walked with the steady, measured gait of someone who knew exactly where they were going.

Which she did, apparently. The center. What was there, though, was anyone’s guess.

Maeva was beside him, keeping pace as she eyed the surroundings.

Caught anything? he sent her, though he didn’t expect much.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Daojue emerge behind them.

So far, so good.

Maeva shook her head. “Nothing.”

He sighed and cut off Absolute Will Command. Maeva flickered out. If she couldn’t help here, no use wasting chroma.

Ahead, Meiyao passed beyond the zone of clarity and disappeared once more. Jieyuan followed.

And so it went, one pocket of clarity to the next. Each time, the mist thinned ahead to allow for sight, even as it closed behind them like a curtain. Soundless, soft, and more importantly—final. Because if he’d understood correctly how the mist worked, there was no turning back.

He liked to think the only way was forward. The problem was that the mist took that to heart—and, worse, put it into practice.

He’d have appreciated the irony if he weren’t the punchline.

It was maybe an hour later that, after passing into another zone, Jieyuan found that Meiyao wasn’t walking, but standing still again.

“Mei—”

She whirled around to him. “Shhh.”

Oh. Jieyuan shut his mouth and kept still.

Feeling the rope slacken behind him, he stepped to the side so Daojue could come through. Seeing them there, standing still, Daojue also came to a stop. At least they didn’t need to warn him not to speak.

Meiyao turned back forward. Jieyuan scanned the area around them, then the denser mist beyond, unease prickling at his skin.

She hadn’t offered any explanation, and nothing looked off—but if he was reading her right, then she’d sensed something. Something lurking just beyond the edge of the clear zone, veiled by the thicker circle of mist around them. Probably a beast.

Hopefully a beast, in fact—because anything else was likely worse.

For over a minute, Meiyao didn’t move an inch. Neither did he or Daojue. The air hung frozen, suspended. The world reduced to breath and heartbeat—and not a sound more.

Then Meiyao gave a short nod and turned slightly, her voice low. “From now on, only speak when I do.”

She glanced at his feet.

“And move quietly.”

It was only after she said it that Jieyuan realized just how silent she moved when she set off again. She wore greaves just like he did, stepped into the same sprawling undergrowth, and yet he barely heard so much as a crunch, even with a cultivator’s hearing—just the suggestion of movement, soft as breath, gone before it registered.

Jieyuan resumed walking, being more careful about where he stepped this time. As he did, he focused, briefly, on Daojue’s footsteps—and found they weren’t much different from his own.

So it wasn’t some special clan-born talent, but rather a Meiyao thing. Good to know.

They kept on walking.

Zone to zone. On and on. Each zone varied slightly in appearance, but not much.

A tree. Two trees. No trees. Shrubs in rings. Shrubs in piles. No shrubs at all. Every area the same, and never quite.

Every so often, Meiyao would call another stop, but so far they’d managed to avoid any beasts.

The tension slowly drained away, whittled down by repetition and monotony. Several hours later, when Meiyao froze for the twenty-seventh time so far, Jieyuan readied the Shifting Feathers just in case—but didn’t feel particularly tense, otherwise. Ready for a fight, sure, but otherwise cool.

Like every time so far, Meiyao resumed walking after a while, and they continued on.

Jieyuan focused on his steps, splitting his attention between the ground and the surroundings, but by this point he was already getting the hang of it. He wasn’t as quiet as Meiyao—not nearly—but he barely had to pay attention anymore as he stepped around branches, finding quieter footing. He’d always been quick to pick up new skills. That much, at least, hadn’t changed.

Around them, the mist ebbed and flowed to unseen currents, as intangible as ever.

At the rate they were going, it’d probably take the better part of a decade to reach the center. There was nothing to be done about it—rushing wasn’t an option, not when it was clear that even Meiyao had to tread carefully here—but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He’d never been good at waiting.

He was better off than your average Firesoul—something he had his old man to thank for. But a decade was a long time.

Though maybe that was his mundane background working against him.

To a cultivator, a decade wasn’t nearly so bad. Redsouls had twice a mundane lifespan, in theory—three hundred years—but that was only a mundane’s theoretical life expectancy. The most they could ever hope to reach. Most mundanes would be lucky to make it past eighty. Even the rich ones didn’t tend to make it to a hundred.

Meanwhile, redsouls spent their three hundreds in perfect health, down to their very last breath. They got more mileage out of their lifespan. A lot more.

Still. A decade.

It wasn’t just the passing of time. It was the wasting of it. Wasted walking. Just walking.

Back in the Gleamstone Valley, it hadn’t been as bad. He’d known it would all come to a head in a month’s time—for better or worse. And back then, he’d been new to the whole cultivation business. It had been his first real outing. His first time facing chromal beasts. His first time living on the razor’s edge, day by day, death around every turn.

He’d been tenser then, jumpier. There’d been hardly any room in him for boredom.

He was hardly a veteran now. But he wasn’t some newly minted coin, either. He’d taken some beatings. Picked up a few chips.

Now? Now he could afford to be bored.

It was a luxury he’d rather have done without, though.

Heavens be good. A decade of this. That was what he had to look forward to—and that was the best-case scenario.

If only he could be doing something else at the same time…

Jieyuan blinked, then mulled over the thought. An idea came to him—or the beginning of one, at any rate.

When they stopped for the day, they’d be resting—and either recovering their chroma or cultivating. Now, cultivation—imbuing chroma into his soul—wasn’t even worth considering. He handled the pain better than most, but it still took all he had just to keep himself still.

Reforming his soulprism, though? Filling back up his chroma reserves?

Jieyuan turned the idea over in his head.

The thing about chroma harvesting and attuning was that you had to concentrate on it. Concentrate on the presence of the Heavens filling your head, keep it from slipping away—all the while chanting the hymns.

It didn’t take up all your attention, though. He’d kept watch earlier while doing it. But pulling it of while treading carefully like this, having to abruptly stop every once in a while as danger came and went… Well, that was a different story.

But maybe…

He reached for Absolute Will Command, and whispered to himself, “See Maeva.”

Maeva appeared right beside him, wearing her white lab coat, yellow sundress, and a thoughtful look.

“It won’t work if you do it and leave me to keep an eye out,” she said, without preamble. “If something happens, there’ll be a delay as I return control to you. It’d be too risky.”

Oh. He didn’t think he’d ever had an idea shut down that fast. Then—

“But it might work if I do the chanting, and you keep an eye out,” Maeva said. “I’ll need control over your body, however.”

Jieyuan wasn’t sure what she had in mind, but it couldn’t hurt to try. You have it.

“Take out a prism, then.”

Without breaking pace, he joined the two Shifting Feathers together and left his left hand holding the complete amphis. His right one went into his glyph-stretch pouch and pulled out a prism. He considered it for a moment.

“Put it inside your robe, in the fold,” Maeva said. “It should work.”

He nodded and tucked it just above the sash binding the front of his robes. Then he split Shifting Feather again.

All yours. Do your thing.

Maeva nodded. Then she walked toward him—and then into him, vanishing.

He didn’t feel any different—but then his mouth moved, on its own, “Flaming.” The words were barely more than a breath, more mouthed than said. As quiet as one could speak, softer even than Meiyao’s steps.

And though he didn’t feel any different, his soulsense caught it as chroma broke off from the prism and flowed up into his soul.

Oh. Oh.

His mouth kept on moving, chanting, and chroma kept on flowing. But he still didn’t feel any different—his focus seemed whole, and there was none of the excess awareness that accompanied Heavenly Communion.

It worked. Heavens take it, but it worked.

He could’ve laughed—but his mouth kept chanting steadily, like it wasn’t his own, “Flaming.”

Ahead, Meiyao stopped and glanced back at him. “Jieyuan?” she said, frowning. “What are you—”

He felt a shift inside him as he regained control over his mouth. The flow of chroma ceased. “Don’t worry,” he told Meiyao. “I know what I’m doing.”

Her frown didn’t ease up, and she gave him a long, measured look. But then she nodded and resumed walking.

Immediately afterward, his mouth moved again on his own, “Flaming.”

Right then and there, he might’ve asked Maeva to marry him—if she weren’t his sister, or a hallucination. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

Earlier, he’d worried about how long it would take to restore his chroma reserves. Three hundred hours. At four hours a day—probably the most he’d get to spend on chroma-gathering, given the priority was covering ground—it’d take nearly three months.

Now, though? Absolute Will Command took chroma to keep running, sure, but barely any.

Give him ten days or so, and he’d be topped up again.

He grinned—or would have, if Maeva wasn’t using his mouth to chant.

The monotony dragged on. But at least now he was getting work done. Or well, part of him was—but he’d take it.

It helped, too, that having more chroma on hand might just mean the difference between dying with nothing to show for it—and living long enough to make it count.

And to settle some scores.