Chapter 83: DEBTS TO PAY

CHAPTER

83

DEBTS TO PAY

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Jieyuan shut his eyes and fought back the panic. Not just alarm, but full-blown panic—frigid, biting, and rising fast. The kind that tinted everything red, sure as blood in water.

His mind was his greatest asset. He trained his body, honed his technique, tried to get his hands on every bit of power he could find—realmskills, artifacts, and what-have-you. But all of that was only to give himself more options.

It was the mind that ran the show. Everything else was just props.

And now? He couldn’t trust his. Not fully.

Jieyuan shut his eyes tighter, trying to focus on his breathing. It wasn’t working.

He’d have taken anything over this. He’d much rather the mist had the ability to distort space, displacing those inside it. Heavens, even outright reality-warping would’ve been preferable. But no. Why go to the trouble of bending space, when you could take the simpler route and bend perception?

Why—why—why—

The panic tore through him—raw, relentless, refusing to break. Jieyuan clawed at it, struggling to hold the tide, to drive it back down.

But it wouldn’t stop. It surged on, his thoughts spiraling out of reach, his self-control slipping away.

My mind. My Heavens-taken mind—

Still, he fought to rein it in, to steer his thinking toward something useful, something rational.

And then—something shifted. A threshold gave.

And clarity carved through the frenzy like a jagged shard of glass—cold and clean and cutting.

Jieyuan latched onto it like a beggar to gold and thought. Thought hard. Thought about what had happened, and what he could do about it.

Something surfaced at once, rising to the front of his mind.

He knew of one thing that that could affect the mind like this.

Distracter fields.

He’d never been caught in one, but seen one in action. Put one into action, even, back in the Fatebloom Woods—when he’d used the field over the Heartseat to kill that Fusongshi core disciple.

Jieyuan froze. He didn’t know where that line of thought was leading him, but it was something. He chased it with all he had.

Distracter fields. Yes. What he’d experienced just now wasn’t much different from what he’d seen happen to the core disciple back then. She’d been completely at the mercy of the distracter field, staring blankly at him even though he’d stood not even a foot away. Staring straight at him without seeing, because the field had her convinced there was nothing there to see.

He’d wondered, at the time, exactly what was taking place inside her head—just how her perceptions and thoughts were being twisted around. But he’d have rather remained unaware if if he’d known he’d be getting the answer by experiencing it first-hand.

He let out a long breath, slow and even. Steady. Good and steady.

His thoughts pressed on.

So.

Either there was a distracter field stretched over the Viridian Dome, or the mist itself carried a similar effect.

That would explain the odd behavior he’d noticed—how the mist coiled and shifted in ways that didn’t quite add up, how it wavered between see-through and solid with no clear reason why.

It wasn’t the mist behaving strangely. It was his perception being bent out of shape.

Jieyuan opened his eyes. The green haze curled and churned around him, thick and pulsing with light. His heart still thundered, but something had settled beneath it.

A grip. A hold. A sliver of solid ground to plant his weight on.

The worst thing about a distracter field? You didn’t know you were in one. Even after it let you go, you didn’t know it had ever touched you. It was like the fine print of a contract—but worse. At least with the fine print, you knew you’d been had after the fact. With a distracter field, you got screwed and never even saw the ink.

That was how the Heartseat had remained untouched for so long. Anyone who got too close just turned away without realizing. None the wiser.

But that was just the thing. The grip, the foothold.

Jieyuan knew. He knew he was in a distracter field—or something near enough to pass for one.

And knowledge was leverage.

More than that—he’d been the only one affected when he tried to leave the Dome. Daojue had stayed clear-headed enough to pull him back.

Jieyuan didn’t know if the field triggered under specific conditions or if Daojue was simply immune—knowing Daojue, it wouldn’t shock Jieyuan if the field just didn’t work on him. Either way, he had something to work with. Maybe even something he could exploit with Absolute Will Command.

His mind was compromised. There was no denying that. But if he understood how it was being bent—when it twisted, where it slipped—he could compensate for it. Work around the twists and bends.

Yes. Yes. He could work around this.

He flexed his hands, open and closed, and the last of the panic drained away.

Tests were in order.

He’d figure out exactly what the mist did, when it acted, and how to counter it.

He needed to get to the bottom of this—and then scrape the bottom raw, just to be sure.

But first…

He glanced down at Meiyao, lying there—pale, corpse-still. Not quite at death’s door, but probably closer than she’d ever been.

Then he turned his focus inward, to the bone-deep exhaustion held at bay by adrenaline and sheer will.

He took stock of what was left—and found nothing. Zilch.

He was tapped out. Out of strength. Out of chroma. Out of pretty much everything. Even without the mist and the Dome twisting up his thoughts, his mind would’ve been fraying at the seams.

He needed rest. Needed to recover.

He took another look around. Assessed the situation. A thicket of mist—quiet, dense. Nothing tugging at his soulsense, no shadows shifting in the gloom. No immediate threat.

No one would be following them into the Dome, either. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, they’d already passed the point of no return—dead the moment they threw themselves into the viridian mist.

If danger came, it’d come from within—and whether they stayed here or went deeper, the odds stacked up the same. If anything, they were better off staying here, at the boundary.

He’d need Maeva with him for those tests. She was a trained scientist—the kind who dissected phenomena for a living, breaking things down until they made sense. It might not be the real Maeva, but it was her mentality he was after—her perspective—and Absolute Will Command could give him that.

He’d need Meiyao, too. She clearly had some kind of connection to this place, and the mist might treat her differently.

“Daojue,” Jieyuan said, “I think we’re better off setting up camp here. Can you take first watch?”

“Yes,” Daojue said. No hesitation. No pause to assess the silence or read the air—or whatever it was he usually did in those long moments before answering. Just a clean, immediate response, like he’d already reached the same conclusion.

Jieyuan let himself drop.

The dirt met him, glowing foliage and shadows folding over him, swallowing him whole.

And then, darkness.

—∞—

Jieyuan awoke.

He blinked, blearily, at the glowing, curling green and brown shapes cluttering the space above his eyes—and between the gaps, a screen of glowing green, though of a deeper, blueish shade.

He felt prickling sensations all over. Earth pressed against his back, dam and cool. Slick somethings clung to his arms.

And yet his head was as clear as it’d ever been. And his body so light he was surprised he wasn’t floating.

Jieyuan grinned.

They were back in business, all right.

He felt around for Meiyao’s saber, but didn’t find it.

Did it land further away? He hadn’t paid it much attention when he’d plopped down earlier. Well, no matter.

He jumped to his feet. Immediately his eyes landed on Meiyao.

His grin widened. The good news just kept on coming.

Meiyao wasn’t lying on the ground anymore. Instead, she was sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, hands on her lap. Meditating. And there, on her lap—her saber. She must’ve come over and picked it up at some point.

But then he took her in more closely, and blinked.

Gone were the tattered remains of her robes. She was wearing new ones—though they weren’t inner disciple oranges, but green, ornate, fancy. Her hair was also done-up, curling ringlets falling across her shoulders.

It was almost like her previous, battered state had been a dream. Almost. She was half-facing him, and he could see the cuts on her face—now faint, pinkish-pale lines, but there all the same.

He almost went over, but held himself back. She’d need whatever rest she could get, and they’d be able to talk soon enough anyway.

He wondered how much time had passed, though. His surroundings didn’t give him any clue. There was no hint of sunlight. As far as he could tell, none of it could get through the Dome. The only light source was the mist and the plants, and if they had any clue to give about the passage of time, he was blind to them.

Still. Considering how much better Meiyao looked—and how much better he felt—it must’ve been several hours at least.

Daojue was where Jieyuan had last seen him. But he was sitting down now, Gleaming End lying by his side. His eyes were open, and currently on Jieyuan.

Unlike Meiyao, Daojue hadn’t freshened up. His robes were still torn, and Jieyuan could see the wounds through the gaps. Most of it half-healed, but it reminded that Jieyuan that even if Daojue had come off lightly, that was only compared to him and Meiyao, and could definitely use some rest himself.

“I’ll take it from here,” Jieyuan said. When it came to Daojue, no pleasantries were needed.

He’d have asked if Meiyao had said anything, but knowing Daojue, he probably wouldn’t be getting an answer, just a stare. Also, knowing Meiyao, she probably wouldn’t have said a word to Daojue anyway.

Daojue didn’t answer, only closed his eyes.

And that was that.

Jieyuan stretched, felt and heard his bones crackle, and basked in the satisfied relief that followed. He was bursting with energy. Only now did he realize how tired he’d been before. He’d forgotten how good it was to just be.

Even the viridian mist—and the things it could do to his mind—didn’t dissuade it. What had filled him with terror earlier, he now saw as a challenge.

But first things first.

He was still out of chroma.

He plopped back down, flattening a spot among the dense undergrowth, crossed his legs, and then reached into his glyph-stretch pouch, taking out a single chroma prism. He lay the red crystal on his lap, and concentrated. The crystal stood out to his soulsense, a thick, fist-sized mass of tenth-density red chroma, deep and rich.

He left his eyes open—he was supposed to be on watch, after all—and kept half his attention on his surroundings.

The other half, he sent inward as he entered Heavenly Communion.

His senses sharpened even further, the world getting brighter, every edge razor-sharp, the glow of the mist turning borderline blinding, as he entered a state of perfect awareness.

A connection snapped into place between him and something far, far beyond—something far, far greater, incomprehensibly so—and a presence manifested in the back of his mind, airy and expansive. The Heavens themselves. Purportedly, at any rate.

“Flaming,” he chanted. The harvesting hymn hung in the air. The Heavens picked it up—and the harvesting ritual started.

He felt himself grow distant from his soul as his soulforce, guided and empowered by a higher power, reached out to the chroma in the prism, and drew it into his soul.

“Flaming,” he chanted, over and over, as his soul filled up with chroma, pooling liquid-like inside the center of his soul.

An hour later, the chroma prism on his lap was gone—while his soul was filled with a prismful of first-density red chroma.

Jieyuan changed his chant. “Ablaze.”

The pool of chroma in his soul suddenly snapped into shape, becoming a larger version of the prism that had been in his lap, before it began to spin—faster and faster until the edges were lost in the motion, smoothing out, and it became almost spherical. Little by little it grew smaller—part of it gradually sacrificed to power the ritual, while the remainder of it was compressed into higher-density as it was attuned, his soul leaving its mark on it.

And on and on Jieyuan chanted. If you used prisms, harvesting was fast enough. Regardless of heavenly affinity, all it took was an hour to absorb the prism. With attuning, though, there were no shortcuts.

The math wasn’t promising.

One hour to absorb the prism, and then twice that to attune it. Except almost all of the chroma he’d harvested would be lost, sacrificed, and he’d be left with a measly twenty-fifth of a prismful. Meaning it’d take him twenty-five prisms, and thrice as many hours of harvesting and attuning to reach a single prismful of attuned chroma. And he could hold four times that. So he was looking at a hundred prisms and three hundred hours to top out his chroma reserves again. And that was without any cultivation proper—just stockpiling chroma.

There was a reason why cultivators were thrifty with their chroma. And he was still rather well off, with his fourth-order heavenly affinity. Cultivators with lower talent had it way worse.

He sighed. There was nothing to it. It’d been either use up all his chroma or die.

Once he’d fully attuned the remaining harvested chroma—leaving him with just a tiny, miniature soulprism—he picked up another chroma and began the whole process all over again.

He was on his third prism when the back of his neck tingled. He turned to find Meiyao watching him.

His focus broke—the presence of the Heavens faded, the flow of chroma from the prism cut off. But he didn’t mind. His spirit lifted, warmth blooming in his chest.

He was about to speak when he noticed something off about Meiyao’s look.

There was no warmth in it.

Her green eyes were stone-cold. Hard. Jade-like.

“I’ll take the next watch,” she said curtly.

She didn’t wait for a reply, closing her eyes without another word.

Jieyuan just stared at her. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought she was doing a Daojue impression.

But then it hit him—and the warmth inside him died on the spot.

Right.

The ambush. The betrayal. The Xiyunfeng Clan and the Gleaming Nobles.

He hadn’t forgotten any of it, but he wasn’t one to dwell on the past, on what he couldn’t change. As far as he was concerned, the only direction that mattered was forward.

In Meiyao’s case, though… that had been her family. And it wasn’t just the ones near the palace. The rest of the Liangshibai were likely dead. The ones who’d stayed behind at the Radiant Gold Palace, and even those still back at the sect. She must’ve lost everyone.

Then there were her injuries. No matter how much better she looked now, odds were some of the damage would stay with her. And being trapped in the Viridian Dome, with no clear way out, only made a raw deal worse, the twist after the stab.

There was nothing he could do about any of that—except the mist and the Dome. That was a different business. He’d figure out how the mist worked. How to survive the Dome. How to move through it.

They’d get out. Jieyuan didn’t doubt that for a second. He’d find a way.

And once they were out?

There’d be debts to pay. With cutthroat interest.