Chapter 74: BITTER BLOOD

CHAPTER

74

BITTER BLOOD

JIEYUAN

—∞—

There was a famous story back in the sect about Qingshi. Just after he’d joined the sect, there were rumors about how he wasn’t really blind. Not too long later, Qingshi took part in an Inner Court tournament. After defeating the last contestant, he’d turned to the audience and, without a word, removed his blindfold. And proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was.

Now Jieyuan got to see that proof for himself.

Where Qingshi’s eyes should’ve been—and all the skin around them—was nothing but a strip of white, warped tissue. Savage, sunken burn scars. The worst Jieyuan had ever seen. And he would know—he’d inflicted more than one on himself.

But then Jieyuan noticed the rest of Qingshi’s face. The damage ended at the eye region. The rest was untouched.

It was a handsome face. A fine, angular cast. High cheekbones. Prominent brow. Sculpted temples. Every line razor-sharp.

It sure has been a while, Father.

If not for those words, Jieyuan might not have made the connection. But now that he knew what to look for—there was no mistaking it.

Those were a Liangshibai’s lines.

That was a Liangshibai’s face.

Some of the men and women standing behind Qingshi exchanged glances. Gleaming Stone Sect traitors. Xiyunfeng clansmen. One of the Xiyunfeng—a woman in Xiyunfeng protector robes—stepped forward.

“Boy,” she said, voice sharp like a whip crack. “What’s this—”

“Please, protector,” Qingshi said softly, never looking away from the palace head. “I’m speaking with my father.”

“You’re a Liangshibai?” the woman demanded.

“Sovereign Zhihao is aware,” Qingshi said. “And as you’ll recall, I have command of this operation. That was the agreement. So kindly—step down.”

“We don’t have time—”

“Operational command.” Qingshi’s voice was flat. Cold. “Down.”

“Qingshi,” Palace Head Yiming said. Jieyuan couldn’t see the man’s face, but he could hear the abject confusion in his voice—raw, unguarded. “What are you— I’m your what? What’s— What’s all of this?”

That was the sound of a man grasping at straws, stunned into utter, helpless disbelief.

That wasn’t the palace head Jieyuan knew.

Then Jieyuan noticed the shift in the posture of the Liangshibai elders. Some edged closer to the disciples. Others drifted forward. And near the back, sleeves twitched—and Jieyuan caught flashes of a silky, red material pooling on the ground.

Cloudcrafts.

The palace head was stalling.

All around him, the disciples who didn’t already have their weapons out were drawing them now. Quietly. Meiyao and Yongyi inched closer to him.

Jieyuan reached toward his waist, pried open his glyph-stretch pouch without loosening his grip on his weapon, and used his soulsense to extract his cloudcraft bracelet—the one he’d taken off the core disciple he’d killed in the Fatebloom Woods. So far, he’d kept its existence a secret from everyone besides Meiyao. A cloudcraft was something he had no business having, and if others found out, there’d be questions. But that didn’t matter now. He had more pressing matters to worry about.

Guiding the bracelet with his soulsense, he slipped it down to the floor beneath his robes, nestled it between his feet. And he began unraveling it.

Their side had near ninety people—three times Qingshi’s. But sixty-four of them were disciples. The highest soulsign among them was Yongyi’s sixth. He’d bet everyone on Qingshi’s side was tenth-sign. None of the disciples could match an elder—not in a straight fight.

This would come down to the tenth-signs.

And in that, they were well outnumbered.

“Oh, Father,” Qingshi drawled. “There’s so much we’ve got to catch up on. Why, I don’t even know where to begin.”

That same Xiyunfeng protector stepped forward again. “Boy, cease this—”

“Heavens take you,” Qingshi groaned, tilting his head to the sky. He sighed—loud and theatrical—and spat, “Fine, you insufferable cow.”

Then, in a tone so dry it might spark, he gave his orders.

“Capture Linzushen Meiyao and Liangshibai Yunzhu unharmed. Kill the rest—don’t let anyone escape. Daojue over there has Gleaming End—yes, the Gleaming End—and somehow it’s now at Orangesoul. Yes, Orangesoul. You’ve been warned. So if you’re stupid enough to get killed by it, I’m not attending your funeral. Finally, the palace head’s mine. Anyone who interrupts dies and gets their corpse desecrated. Now shoo.”

They moved all at once. Qingshi. The traitors. The Xiyunfeng.

About half the Liangshibai elders surged forward to meet them. The other half yanked disciples to their sides as their cloudcrafts ballooned up around them.

The front line met the charge, holding many—but more than a few of the enemy slipped through and shot straight toward the elders with the cloudcrafts. They moved in blurs, almost too fast for the eye to track.

Gleamstone flared to life all around. Gleaming Stone Protection and Gleaming Stone Containment. Gleamstone barriers around some of the disciples and elders, gleamstone weapons falling upon Qingshi’s group like crystal rain. But those same barriers appeared around the traitors—and those same weapons shot toward the Liangshibai.

One of the elders managed to get her cloudcraft in the air, a couple disciples with her, only for a gleamstone dagger to pierce into her neck from behind. The cloudcraft vanished, and the elder’s corpse dropped down, together with the disciples with her.

Jieyuan willed the cloudcraft under his feet to expand as fast as it could—up and outwards. It’d have gone much faster if he could fully focus on it. But he couldn’t, not with everything happening around it. He couldn’t risk not paying attention, not when—

He jerked his head aside, crystalline blur sliced through the air where his face had just been. He caught a brief glimpse of a Gleaming Stone Sect traitor looking at him from up ahead, before a Liangshibai elder barreled into him, and both vanished into the melee.

Beside him, Meiyao flicked a glance his way. Then she looked down. Back up. And stepped onto the growing cloudcraft. Yongyi followed. They both looked grave, but held steady as chaos took over their surroundings.

Jieyuan thought hard, searching for some way to turn things around, but nothing seemed promising. Before they left the sect, when she handed him his Outer Hunt rewards, Protector Yuyan had slipped in two talismans. A Radiant Light Haven and a Radiant Light Blast. He had them both in his pouch—but neither could be used in this kind of skirmish. The Radiant Light Heaven would get him locked in with at least one of the enemy, whereas the Blast was too likely to hit an ally.

Between the ringing clash of metal on metal came the hissing whisper of Sibilant Wind Blessing—amplified, magnified—as all the Xiyunfeng elders activated it at once.

But aside from that, there was almost no sound. The chaos was almost entirely visual. There was no screaming, no shouting. Even when someone fell—stabbed, hacked, cut down—they did it in silence, barely letting loose a whimper. Cultivators as a whole were the sort to let their weapons do the speaking for them. The only voices were the faint, distant cries drifting in from somewhere far beyond.

Beyond the streets, the flames spread. The blue fires climbed, higher and higher, encircling them, consuming the city, lighting up the night sky. Jieyuan could already feel the heat on his skin.

Then Qingshi’s voice cutting through all the noise. Clipped, sharp. “None of that. Your fight’s with me, Father.”

Through the blur of combat, just up ahead, Jieyuan spotted Qingshi driving a blade through a Xiyunfeng elder’s neck from behind. Qingshi then kicked the crumpling body aside and stepped forward—taking the dead man’s place in front of Palace Head Yiming.

Then the people around them shifted, and Jieyuan lost sight of them both.

But for one brief instant, Qingshi had stepped within range of Jieyuan’s soulsense. And what he’d felt wasn’t a sixth-sign redsoul.

It was a tenth-sign.

There was no way Qingshi had climbed four soulsigns in a month. Which meant Qingshi had been holding back, back at the Gleamstone Valley.

Jieyuan didn’t get to think about what else that could mean.

“FEIYUAN!” Yongyi’s voice tore through the clamor.

Jieyuan tried to reach for him, but Yongyi was too fast, bolting to the left. Where Jieyuan could see a Xiyunfeng elder break through the line and come down on a woman in core disciple robes.

“Yongyi!” Meiyao cried out, stepping forward.

Jieyuan snapped a Shifting Feather out, blocking her path.

He wasn’t really thinking, running entirely on instinct, trying to pay attention to everything else. “Don’t— The cloud’s almost—”

A black blur fell down upon them.

Jieyuan had barely enough time to move. He shoved himself in front of Meiyao, the Shifting Feathers up in a cross.

A sword came crashing down on the half-glaives. For a brief instant a face fully filled up his sight—a woman, wrapped in a hissing, shimmering veil of wind, entirely without expression. Eyes dead, cold—unfeeling.

Then the impact hurled him backward.

Off the cloudcraft.

Jieyuan felt like his arms were almost torn off, but he was too busy rolling backwards, trying to keep his grip on the Shifting Feathers as he came crashing onto the nearby disciples. He pushed off them, shooting back up to his feet.

The Xiyunfeng woman didn’t come for him. She was too busy fending off Meiyao, who was swinging her saber in a flurry of strikes, faster than Jieyuan had ever seen her move.

The woman was faster still, weaving through Meiyao’s strikes, untouchable. But she made no move to strike back. Because she couldn’t—Meiyao was to be captured unharmed. Meiyao clearly knew that, because she made no move to defend herself, throwing herself entirely into the offense. Enough to keep the woman occupied.

Jieyuan lunged to join them—but he’d barely taken a step forward when a gleamstone barrier appeared in front of him, blocking the way. He caught another tenth-sign redsoul on his soulsense, and turned in the direction.

It was a man, one of the of the traitors, wearing a protector’s robes. Moving through the confusion, headed for him. A disciple barreled into the man, and the man barely batted an eye as he swung his sword out. There was a surge of blood as the disciple’s head went flying.

And then the man was standing there, in front of him. A moment later, more tenth-sign redsouls registered on Jieyuan’s soulsense, drawing closer. Jieyuan wasn’t in any position to check if they were friend or foe, though. He forced himself to ignore everything else. The calculation was simple enough. He risked being struck down by all the attacks flying around, but if he didn’t pay all his attention to the man, death was just a risk, but a certainty.

Jieyuan recognized the man. He was a Gleaming Noble. A Fusongshi, if he remembered correctly. He wore the same cold, hard look as the Xiyunfeng woman from before.

Jieyuan’s thoughts raced.

The man gave him a hard stare, and when Jieyuan got the sense he was about to strike—

“Two Fusongshi died in the Fatebloom Woods,” Jieyuan said. He didn’t shout—only spoke loudly enough to be heard through the noise. “A core disciple and a protector.”

The man froze. His expressionless mask slipped. “What are you—”

“The core disciple got stabbed, through the front. The elder was blasted by a Radiant Light Blast Talisman. They were a granddaughter and a grandfather. Did you know them? I got to meet them. Only briefly, though. You look a bit like the girl. Was she a cousin? A sister, maybe?”

The man stared at him.

Jieyuan smiled brightly. “Would you care to guess where I was, when they died?”

“You—”

Jieyuan pulled with his soulforce—and his cloudcraft, which he’d been guiding around the gleamstone barrier, came barreling straight at the man’s feet. The traitor’s eyes widened. He whirled around—but too late.

A cloudcraft might’ve been one of the softest things in the world—but with enough speed behind it, anything could pack a punch.

His cloudcraft slammed into the man’s legs, sending them flying out from under him.

For an instant, Jieyuan hesitated. He’d expected the man to be aura-lashing—had only meant the cloudcraft as a distraction. But there was no time to think. He surged forward, sweeping the Shifting Feathers in a wide arc.

The man’s form blurred. Mid-air, he twisted—bunched up, rotating—then unfolded, snapping back into a full stance, feet landing firm.

Jieyuan’s instincts took over. He tried to abort the charge, veer off—but then the man blurred again.

And then he was there. Standing not even a foot away.

A hand closed around Jieyuan’s throat, lifting him clean off the ground. A band-shaped gleamstone barrier snapped into place around Jieyuan’s arms like a vice, locking them tight to his sides.

The man’s face was inches from his—and there was none of that dispassionate, cold detachment left in it. Now he stared at Jieyuan with dark, stormy eyes, his mouth twisted in a cruel smile.

“I was planning on killing you quickly,” the man said, “but I think I’ll take my time after all.”

Jieyuan didn’t hesitate.

He’d exhausted every option. All but one.

He sent his soulsense inward, toward the Fatebloom Heart. The connection was dead, Huaxin entirely unresponsive.

But he could feel something inside it—a single golden drop of blood, stored away in a fifth, central chamber.

He focused on it.

Fatebloom Sacrifice.