Chapter 77: DEEP WITHIN

CHAPTER

77

DEEP WITHIN

JIEYUAN

—∞—

What stood where Daojue had been was not human.

It wore the shape of a man, vaguely—tall, upright, familiar—but filled not with muscle or bone. Just a slow, roiling current of BLOOD. Deep, gleaming crimson, thick as melted rubies, flowing with impossible weight.

And all around it—MIGHT. A violet shimmer, radiating like unbearable heat. Warping the air around it—if not space itself. Waves of power rolled off it—so dense, so absolute, Jieyuan felt it even from a distance, bearing down on him. Pressing him toward the ground. Turning his limbs to lead. Stealing the air from his lungs.

But worst of all was the silver crown sitting on the blood-man’s brow. Not forged, but manifested—something conceptual, symbolic, true. It shone with cold supremacy. The authority to command, to crush, to be obeyed without question.

DOMINATION.

Jieyuan’s knees buckled as the pressure multiplied. It took all he had to lock his spine into place, plant his feet, keep himself upright.

The words didn’t come in language. They came like instinct, branding themselves across his mind. Starker and clearer than anything he’d ever gotten through his soulsense.

BLOOD.

MIGHT.

DOMINATION.

“Jieyuan.”

Daojue’s voice sliced through the vision—sharp, stone-cold—and the blood-man faded away.

Jieyuan staggered back a step. His heart skipped a beat, then kicked straight into thunderous drumming. Sweat broke across his skin in an instant. He blinked hard. Something brushed the edges of his mind—Huaxin. Trying to reach him. Trying to cut through the noise. But right now, there was too much of it.

Daojue stood as he had before. Normal again. Robes torn, eyes shadowed, weapon bloodied—but human.

Jieyuan exhaled, sharp and shallow. But then he looked again. Reached—not with eyes, but with his soulsense...

BLOOD. MIGHT. DOMINATION.

And there it was. Still there. Just beneath the surface. As his vision began to warp again, as the blood-man bled through, Jieyuan dug deeper, locking onto the signature of Daojue’s spirit-song.

He caught a glimpse—sound and sight collapsing together. A cold, high melody echoing across a steel-gray peak. Stark. Lofty. Icy.

Familiar.

It matched. It was Daojue.

But he could still pick up the other set of impressions bleeding off Daojue—of the man made of blood, wreathed in violet light, crowned in silver.

Heavens forbid and forfend. Jieyuan pulled away from it, and his heart was just settling when his soulsense picked up something else, faint as a whisper—

—crystal blood corruption—

—and his gaze snapped to Gleaming End. The shrouded Gleaming End. It had no presence to his soulsense—the only presence was that of the gear-shroud wrapped around it. And yet the whisper grew louder as he focused, and the space around the spear began to warp, the image of it twisting, stretching, elongating… slowly, languidly...

He broke off the connection, thoughts racing. Whatever Fatebloom Sacrifice had done to his soulsense, it could now not only pierce a gear-shroud, but also sense things beyond his realm.

Neither of which should’ve been possible. But clearly, reason and sense had taken leave.

Jieyuan turned his attention back to Daojue.

Daojue stared right back at him, expressionless. Stared with those violet eyes—violet like the blood-man’s shimmering aura, but shaded deeper, darker.

Then he glanced down at Jieyuan’s feet—in that way he always did. Not like he was looking away, but like he’d already moved on. Then past him, just over his shoulder. Then again, a little farther.

Jieyuan didn’t need to look to know what he was seeing. The three dead tenth-signs.

Daojue’s eyes fell on the cloudcraft hovering by Jieyuan’s waist. Then back to Jieyuan.

If he was shocked by any of it—by what Jieyuan had done or what he looked like—he didn’t show it.

“We must leave,” Daojue said, simply. Not quite a command. More like a fact. Then again, Daojue always sounded that way.

Jieyuan forced himself to ignore the way his soulsense kicked up a fuss as Daojue stepped closer. He could puzzle over that later. Right now... “Meiyao and Yongyi first.”

He turned away to scan the battlefield, not giving Daojue a chance to argue. He didn’t know if Daojue would have, but better not risk it. No time to waste.

Meiyao, at least, shouldn’t be hard to spot. And there was no way she’d been taken down already. Not Meiyao.

Huaxin—any help—anything at all—

“Follow,” Daojue said.

Jieyuan looked over. Daojue was already rushing off the way he’d come. Jieyuan followed, Maeva still summoned, in control of the cloudcraft.

Just ahead, a Liangshibai protector—blue-robed—was locked in combat with a Xiyunfeng man.

A whirlwind of gleamstone weapons—daggers, shortswords, spinning blades—circled the woman as she lunged at the man. Some shot out as she attacked, even as more blinked into existence around her. The Xiyunfeng twisted through them, met her head-on—and a wave of wind surged from him, scattering her blades, knocking her back.

Daojue ran straight past. Jieyuan kept on his heels.

His soulsense caught some of the gleamstone weapons. Like with before, it reached deeper than it should’ve, and he got blasted by a sense of—crystalserpentcorruption.

Not as loud as it’d been with Daojue, but clearer than the whisper he’d gotten from Gleaming End.

Then he felt that twist in his soulsense, the gleamstone weapons shimmering…

He tore his focus away. Grounded himself hard. One heartbeat more, and he’d have been buried under a rain of slithering crystal snakes.

They were almost past when the Xiyunfeng man broke away and lunged at them—but the Liangshibai woman was faster, blurring between them, blocking off the man.

And it struck Jieyuan, hard—

—CRYSTAL SERPENT CORRUPTION—

—coming from the woman this time.

Not happening. Jieyuan shoved it away. Kept running. The two tenth-signs fell behind.

And then he and Daojue were in the thick of it. Where the street was the most clustered.

More than a dozen fights overlapping—shouts, screams, the crunch of weapons meeting flesh, the air thick with blood and death. Redsouls streaked everywhere, turning into bursts of clarity and solid color amid the chaos when they clashed.

They’d barely taken a few steps when a gleamstone blade shot toward them.

Daojue didn’t flinch. Didn’t even glance. Just struck it down with Gleaming End, split it in two mid-run.

A flicker of brown hair—and his breath caught. Relief hit him heavier than gold.

But then he took in her state.

Took it all in.

The orange of her outer robe was mostly gone. Just scraps over her white inner robe—also torn and bloodied. Bleeding cuts everywhere. Dozens. One massive gash across her side, over her hip—ruined flesh, bone visible.

Across her was a blue-robed man. Another traitor. They were fighting. Despite the gap in soulsigns, and the state Meiyao was in, they seemed evenly matched—because the man was even worse off.

Arm gone past the shoulder. Gashes through his gut. Another across his face.

The Xiyunfeng woman who’d ambushed Jieyuan earlier was nowhere in sight. But there was a black-robed body not far off. And lying not too far away, a blue-robed one.

Jieyuan was charging in, mid-stride, when the sequence hit, cutting through his thoughts with painful clarity.

He stopped, blinked. Wait a beat.

Then flung his right arm out.

A Shifting Feather shot forward so fast it vanished—before reappearing, with its blade lodged in the back of the traitor’s skull.

The man slumped, and as he ran over, Maeva drew on his soulforce, pulling the short-glaive free and back into his hand.

As he drew closer, he braced himself—

And sure enough, the moment Meiyao fell within range of his soulsense, it came.

BEAST. LIFE. DIVINITY.

It was as strong as it’d been with Daojue. No— Stronger.

Already he felt the pull on his soulsense, like it was being stretched, twisted.

The space around Meiyao warped—her form growing vague. Vast. Lengthening. Becoming—

A rippling visage of white and green. Long, curving horns—

NO. Jieyuan bit his tongue, dug in his mental heels, and blinked the vision away.

Leaving Meiyao there again—normal, human, and not whatever the Heavens that had been.

Here and now was not the time and place to fall into a daze. And if the brief glimpse he’d caught was anything to go by, she’d have been even worse than Daojue’s blood-man.

“Jieyuan? What—” Meiyao stared at him, wide eyes fixed on his face.

“Not the time,” Jieyuan said. He stepped in, eyeing her hip. The wound looked like something had tried to carve her in half. Flesh shredded down to the bone. So much for Qingshi’s order to keep her unharmed. “How are you—”

Meiyao grimaced, shook her head. “I’ll hold on.” She reached into her glyph-stretch pouch, fished out a small red pill, took it.

Jieyuan didn’t like it, but Meiyao was a cultivator. She’d know herself best. “Then we need to—”

DANGER.

Huaxin’s warning had barely hit when Daojue yanked Jieyuan aside—and a gleamstone dagger whistled through where his head had been.

From behind.

He glanced back—and saw another traitor advancing on them, but a Liangshibai elder swept in from the other side and engaged the man.

Right. They really needed to get out of there.

“Let’s find Yongyi and go,” Jieyuan said.

“Yunzhu too,” Meiyao said.

Jieyuan gritted his teeth. He cared not one whit for the psychotic girl, but now wasn’t the time to argue. “Yongyi first. Do you know—”

“No,” Meiyao cut in. “I—”

This time the attack came from the side, and Jieyuan caught it in time—the crystalline glint—and leaned away, letting it fly past him. A quick glance told him it’d been a stray.

“I lost sight of him,” Meiyao said.

Jieyuan sent his soulsense inward, focused on the Fatebloom Heart.

Three minutes left.

They’d become prime targets once they took to the air. He’d need at least a minute of Fatebloom Intuition just to get them out. Meaning he only had two more minutes to spare—and the earlier they left, the better. His chroma was also close to running out, and he’d need some to fuel the cloudcraft.

Huaxin? Jieyuan sent. He wasn’t sure if Fatebloom Intuition could be used for something like this, but there was no harm trying.

A second, two… Then he felt their connection flaring, deepening, like it did whenever Huaxin sent him a sequence.

He almost grinned. He would’ve—but then the sequence flashed past.

He was moving immediately, rushing past Meiyao.

He could sense Meiyao and Daojue following, but his attention was ahead, beyond a packed cluster in which several tenth-signs fought… He went past them without stopping, moving as the sequence dictated, dodging stray attacks—

And there, up ahead, he saw Yongyi—standing directly across, front to him, half-obscured by the encroaching smoke.

Exactly as the sequence had shown him.

Which was the problem—because it hadn’t painted a pretty picture.

Yongyi had one of his arms clutching a limp, bloodied form to his chest—Liangshibai Feiyuan, probably. His other hand clutched a sword.

He wasn’t fighting. There was a Liangshibai elder in front of him, facing a woman from the Xiyunfeng Clan.

Not that Yongyi was in any position to fight—he was drenched in blood, barely holding himself up.

About half his face was as much of a wreck as Meiyao’s waist—a deep, bone-showing gash across it, forehead to jaw, over where an eye should’ve been. His other eye—yellow, burning—darted around wildly.

The sequence had already ended.

Jieyuan kept on running, closer, the fighting tenth-signs within range of his soulsense now, Yongyi not even thirty feet away. Huaxin—

There was movement behind Yongyi—and then something wit and sharp burst out of his chest. A shrouded spearhead.

“NO!” Meiyao screamed.

Yongyi’s body flung aside, revealing another Xiyunfeng elder, who rushed toward where his clansman was fighting the Liangshibai.

Yongyi disappeared in the chaos. Jieyuan kept running. Maybe—just maybe—

Then the air split beside him—something ripped past. Fast. Barely visible—blink and it was gone.

And his soulsense screamed at him.

BLOODCRYSTALBLOODCRYSTALBLOODCRYSTAL.

Jieyuan stopped cold, throwing an arm out to catch Meiyao.

More tenth-sign redsouls appeared up ahead, swarming in, joining the fray.

Jieyuan scanned them frantically, heart hammering, searching for whatever he’d just sensed—but all he saw were churning tides of tenth-signs, clashing and shifting, blurring together, merging with the gathering smoke.

“Jieyuan!” Meiyao snapped at him, trying to push past his arm. But he kept his hold on her tight. “Let—”

“No.” Jieyuan pulled her in, against him, fully wrapping his arm around her, keeping her from getting away. “We’re leaving.”

They weren’t getting to Yongyi—not through all that. Not in the middle of that swarm of tenth-signs redsouls.

And that thing he’d sensed…

Just the thought of it—the echo of what he’d sensed—made his skin crawl. Daojue’s blood-man had nearly brought him to his knees. But that presence… Just that snap-second glimpse had seized his heart in a frigid grip—chilled him so deeply the cold still clung to him, like his spine had turned to ice.

They needed to get out. Now.

Meiyao fought his hold, but it was no contest. He barely had to make an effort to hold her back.

Maeva hovered just behind him, riding his cloudcraft. He jumped onto it, hauling Meiyao along with him. Daojue leaped on just behind.

Meiyao was screaming at him, still struggling. He ignored her.

All his focus was on the battle below—shrinking beneath them as Maeva flew them up into the blue-lit, flame-licked night sky.