Chapter 75: BURNING BLOOD

CHAPTER

75

BURNING BLOOD

JIEYUAN

—∞—

The golden drop vanished.

The world ignited.

Power erupted out of the Fatebloom Heart—an overflowing, white-hot wave of it, engulfing him. Liquid light flooding his veins, molten gold surging through his limbs.

The world dropped away. His soulsense overloaded as his body erupted in blinding brilliance, claiming every inch of him, drowning all other sensations.

It was like he’d swallowed a star—like he’d become a star.

No sound, no feeling, no thought. Just golden, glorious radiance.

Then it ebbed. Settled. Stabilized.

And razor-sharp clarity seized him as all of his senses snapped back into focus, each and every input—physical, mental, spiritual—slamming back into him, all at once.

His soulsense was raw. His body still glowed—but in the place of that all-consuming brilliance, there was structure. Glowing, pulsing streaks of gold superimposed his aura—crown to toe, thousands upon thousands of golden veins. All of them stemming from his heart—the Fatebloom Heart—which blazed like a miniature sun in his chest, thrumming with power.

He’d experienced this once before—when he’d bonded the Fatebloom Heart. And if this was anything like last time, then those were his actual veins he was sensing—and they were physically alight with that golden glow.

But that wasn’t all his soulsense picked up on. Its range was the same, but the depth—like before it’d only skimmed the surface of things, and now it penetrated to their very essence. Just now the gleamstone band wrapped around his chest had been like any other realmskill construct, just a colored, three-dimensional outline. But now—crystalserpentcorruption.

Something radiated from it. Intent. Concept. It hit him like the sensory rush you got when focusing on a spirit-song—image, sound, meaning, all jumbled together—but even clearer, crisper. Although he knew that the gleamstone barrier was just a band of crystal—he couldn’t shake off the impression a crystalline, serpentine body, coiled around him.

But he couldn’t dwell on any one thing too long as his other senses clamored for attention, bubbling over each other into the forefront of awareness.

Physically, it wasn’t the excess, but the absence that pulled at his attention.

The hand around his throat? Still there. Still pinning him up in the air.

But where before it had choked him—digging into flesh and tendon—now it was almost gentle. Barely any pressure to it. Mildly uncomfortable at best. It wasn’t doing much more than keeping him off the ground.

Then came the understanding. No words. No voice. Just a surge of internalized knowledge.

He was still a fourth-sign redsoul. Neither his soul nor his chroma had changed.

His body was a different story.

Strength, vitality—both were tenfold higher.

To the level of a fourth-sign Orangesoul.

Except this wasn’t like the augmented strength that came from aura—it wasn’t that tangible pressure he could draw on like from a well and push into his limbs. This was true, physical strength. It wasn’t his aura that had been magnified, but his body.

But with that knowledge came one tidbit of information—the time limit he was on. How long this state would last.

Seven minutes. On the dot.

He opened his eyes.

The Fusongshi elder’s face stilled filled his vision. But it didn’t look the same.

Dark intent, cruel smile—both gone.

And in their face was disbelief. Incomprehension.

Their eyes met. The man didn’t let go of him—but he pulled his head back while stretching the arm keeping Jieyuan up further out. “What in the He—”

A presence bloomed in Jieyuan’s mind—a connection sparked back to life.

His heart had already been racing—from the situation, from using Fatebloom Sacrificing—but now it seemed to be trying to burst out of its chest.

Every beat like a thunderclap. Blood thumping between his ears like war drums.

Despite all the changes he’d just undergone, despite the absurd strength that filled him—it was this last bit that really got through Jieyuan. That got him grinning like a maniac.

The future flashed past. Full seconds squeezed into an instant. Less than an instant.

KICKLUNGETWISTSWINGPARY—CRUSH.

The vision promised. Jieyuan delivered.

His leg snapped out.

KICK.

There was impact.

A bone-deep crunch.

It all happened at once.

The grip on his neck went slack. The gleamstone barrier disappeared. The traitor folded over—his body arching, bending with the impact—and then his feet left the ground.

Just as Jieyuan’s feet touched it.

The little delay before the Fusongshi went airborne told Jieyuan that he’d been aura-lashing, but stopped—on instinct, probably—to dissipate the force.

If Jieyuan hadn’t been sure of his strength before, he was now. You didn’t stop aura-lashing unless the impact was too much to bear.

Jieyuan’s feet hadn’t even made proper contact with the ground when he pushed against it—there was a snap, a rush of air, and he shot forward.

LUNGE.

From drop to jump, not even a second passed—and so the traitor was still in the air, still rising, when Jieyuan reached him.

Fatebloom Sacrifice didn’t just increase his strength—it gave him perfect control over it.

But the Fusongshi wasn’t a tenth-sign for nothing. Surprise and shock aside—Jieyuan’s must’ve ruptured just about every organ in his stomach. But he never lost his grip on his sword, and the moment Jieyuan appeared over him, in the air, the man whipped it across his body.

If Jieyuan hadn’t known it was coming, it would’ve gotten him. Cut him clean hip to shoulder like a fillet.

As it was, he tucked his body, rotating to the side—and the blade swept past him, slicing only air.

TWIST.

Still mid-air, over the man’s body, but dropping now, falling, Jieyuan threw both his arms up.

Then he plunged both Shifting Feathers across the man’s shoulders.

Resistance—give—crunch—blood.

SWING.

They hit the ground, the traitor on the bottom, Jieyuan on top, knees on the man’s crushed stomach. Momentum dragged the Fusongshi’s back almost a feet against the cobbled ground, skidding, before he—they—jerked to a stop.

Jieyuan kept his position throughout. Knees pressed into the man’s abdomen, hands gripping the handles of the Shifting Feathers—blades half-buried in the man’s shoulder, sunk down to the clavicle, shearing flesh and bone.

The man’s body convulsed, arms spasming. A choking sound gurgled out. Blood frothed over his lips, thick and warm. The scent of it flooded Jieyuan’s nose—rich, hot, coppery.

Jieyuan tore his right-hand Shifting Feathers free from the man’s body. Blood gushed—sprayed. Splattered onto his face. Warm.

Beneath him, the traitor’s convulsions got stronger. Face entirely red, eyes bloodshot, mouth bubbling blood. And even in that state, the man brought his arm up in arc, sword swinging at Jieyuan.

Jieyuan batted it aside with his right-hand Shifting Feather—and this time, the sword was sent flying off the man’s grip.

PARRY.

Without pause, all in one movement, Jieyuan reoriented the half-glaive, and slammed it down into the man’s head.

From the top, across the middle. Crown to mouth.

Through flesh, then skull, then brain.

CRUSH.

The man went limp.

Jieyuan didn’t stop and stare. He ripped both Shifting Feathers free, then rocked back onto his feet and stepped around the corpse.

He cast a quick look around, taking stock of the situation.

It occurred to him that it was odd he hadn’t barreled into anyone—or so much as stumbled—in the fight when everyone had been so tightly packed together.

The noise hit almost at the time time as the sight. He’d been so concentrated he hadn’t noticed, but now… Before the air had already been filled with the sounds of battle. Metal ringing, crystal clinking, stone shattering, wind hissing.

All of that was still true—but there was more of it. And it came everywhere.

Qingshi’s group had shattered the Liangshibai’s line.

Chaos was in full swing as everyone—elder, disciple, ally, enemy—fought in groups, clusters, growing further apart, spreading out as the fighting grew fiercer and bodies hit the floor. Though they hadn’t managed to hold their ground, the Liangshibai elders weren’t faring too badly—a couple were even taking more than one traitor or Xiyunfeng at once.

But there was no winning this. Even if they managed to get through the battle, there was still everything else—whatever other plans the Xiyunfeng Clan and the Gleaming Nobles had put into motion.

He didn’t even have to look far to see that. The whole streets were cast in an eerie, blueish glow, framed by the walls of blue fire now spilling into the surrounding streets, over and across the buildings.

The vague, distant screams from before weren’t nearly so distant or vague anymore—now they were coming from the nearby streets. He sighted a few bodies here and there that weren’t in cultivator’s robes—but in the clothes of mundanes.

If most of Radiant Gold City hadn’t been metal and stone, there wouldn’t even be a city anymore.

He was searching for Meiyao—or Yongyi, or Daojue, or just about anyone he was familiar with—and thinking on his next move when his soulsense caught the approach of two tenth-sign redsouls from the back.

He turned immediately.

A man and a woman, halting the instant his eyes locked onto them.

The man was a Xiyunfeng. He wore a protector’s robes—or at least that was Jieyuan’s best guess. It was riddled with tears, with a particularly large—and red-stained one—across the chest. Both of his hands were on his spear, holding it out in front of him.

The woman was one of the sect’s traitors. She had on the topaz robes of an inner elder. Her left arm ended in a stump just past the biceps, the cloth around it shredded. Her other arm was full—and seemingly intact—and with her remaining held she held a sword.

Both of them were bathed in blood. Skin, clothes, and blade.

Not that Jieyuan could judge. His robe clung to his chest, soaked through, weighing wet and heavy. His face itched where drying blood clung, sticky under the warm wind.

They stared.

He stared back.

Cultivators didn’t rattle easily. Pain lent them steel. Soul-shattering, self-inflicted torture on the regular did wonders to mental fortitude.

But there was no mistaking the look on their faces for anything other than sheer shock.

Jieyuan wondered how much of the fight just now they’d seen. Wondered what he looked like right now, coated in blood, the corpse of a sect elder by his feet. And if he was right—though he had no mirror to confirm—with the blood vessels on his face glowing, golden, pulsing.

Tenth-sign redsouls. Two of them.

He set his jaw, worked the numbers.

Even in their current state, if it’d been against him from before the fighting broke out, either of them would’ve been more than enough to take him. He probably wouldn’t have even been able to put up a resistance.

But now?

In speed, they retained the absolute advantage—their stilled-space outpaced him twice over. But now that Huaxin was back—well, precognition evened it out. And in speed, he had the absolute advantage.

LIMIT.

From Huaxin came a vague feeling of urgency and strain, and the image of a burning wick—burning, brightly, but also consuming itself, running out of fuel.

Jieyuan blinked—then understood. Huaxin wasn’t back for good. Fatebloom Sacrifice had roused it, but it was a temporary thing. As soon as its effects ended, Huaxin would also fall back to dead slumber—and unless Jieyuan had missed the mark, it’d be staying that way a good while. At least a few days—maybe weeks.

And now that he knew to look for it, he noticed that Huaxin’s presence was off in his mind. Tenuous, erratic. Unstable.

Seven minutes—that was how long Fatebloom Sacrificed lasted. And, apparently, Fatebloom Intuition too.

That complicated things—but not too much. Since he’d used Fatebloom Sacrifice, only forty seconds or so had passed.

Less than a tenth of the total time—not even a full minute—and already a tenth-sign redsoul was dead.

Not taking his eyes off the pair, he scanned the corner of his vision—but still no signs of Meiyao or the others. Only Liangshibai elders, enemies, and dying disciples.

He’d have to search for them.

But first—

“See Maeva,” he whispered.

She appeared off to the side, facing him. Her expression was grave.

Jieyuan— her voice brushed against his thoughts.

Talk later, he replied, then handed control of his soulforce over to her. He didn’t hand her a Shifting Feather this time, though. He’d be best served keeping both with him, this time around. Instead…

You got it? he asked her.

Yes.

Across from him, the man and woman shifted. Hesitation flickered across their faces—sudden, stark—before resolve took hold, hard and stony.

The sequence came a breath later.

Then the tenth-signs charged.

And Jieyuan lunged to meet them.