Chapter 73: WHY, HELLO

CHAPTER

73

WHY, HELLO

JIEYUAN

—∞—

“It’s a good thing you looked away,” Protector Wanxin said the moment he turned back to her. She smiled slyly, giving him a knowing look. “I know my daughter’s stunning, but if you’d kept it up, I’d have to tattle to Meiyao.”

Jieyuan froze. “That’s…” He knew where the protector was coming from. From what he’d gathered so far, the woman was wholly blind to her daughter’s knack for making skin crawl. As far as he was concerned, he’d probably just been smitten by her daughter’s looks. But the sheer absurdity of what she was implying stumped him. Him, interested in Yunzhu? Heavens forbid and forfend. “That—no.”

He tried to come up with a polite enough way to tell Protector Wanxin that her daughter set his nerves on edge like nothing else. That he’d sooner jump headfirst down the railing and get his head cracked open like an egg before he got involved with Liangshibai Yunzhu.

He came up short. Some things just defied language. Polite language, at any rate. He settled, lamely, for, “That wasn’t it.”

Protector Wanxin smirked, wearing obliviousness like a second skin. “Good. Not that you’d stand a chance, mind you—my girl’s all smitten with that Daojue boy.” Her smirk gave way to a frown. “Although that’s not happening, either. Yunzhu will be heartbroken when he’s gone. And then there’s that chipped mess with Qingshi not too long ago…”

The protector sighed deeply, shaking her head. “My poor baby girl. She has the worst luck in love.”

Yunzhu’s love life—or the lack thereof—wasn’t quite the last thing in the world Jieyuan wanted to talk about.

But it was right up there.

He didn’t know what she’d stayed behind to talk to him about, but he sure hoped it wasn’t about Yunzhu. Of the three Liangshibai siblings—Wanxin, Yuyan, and Yiming—she might be the one he was closest to. He’d probably spent the most time around Palace Head Yiming, but Protector Wanxin was the one who had initiated him as a cultivator all those months ago, at the end of the Gleaming Stone Sect’s entrance trials.

He couldn’t be more relieved when Protector Wanxin’s face cleared, and she said, “Well, enough of that. I noticed my sister had a talk with you yesterday. I happened to overhear a little of what she said. Don’t… Look, I wouldn’t take her words too seriously. I love my sister, but Yuyan can be rather… extreme. And she’s terribly protective of Meiyao.”

Jieyuan nodded politely—even though, for the most part, he agreed with Protector Yuyan’s words. He just didn’t really see the point in having a discussion with Protector Wanxin over the merits of envy—or over that whole there is no peace, only power business. Some things you either understood, or you didn’t.

“Hmmm.” Protector Wanxin gave him a thoughtful once-over, then nodded approvingly. She really wasn’t the most perceptive of people. “Anyway, that was quite the show you put on today. I’d known you were good, but that… That was just something else. It also seems like you’ve got quite a few secrets of your own.”

Apparently she didn’t think the expectation dripping off her voice would get the message across on its own, because she gave her eyebrows a little wiggle for good measure.

That settled it. Protector Wanxin was definitely Palace Head Yiming’s sister.

Jieyuan found himself smiling. “Don’t we all?”

He wouldn’t have minded telling her the cover story he and Maeva had thought up, but the opportunity to get back at her for her earlier teasing was too good to pass up.

Protector Wanxin pouted, and the expression looked so natural on her that Jieyuan wasn’t sure it was just pretend.

It was so easy to forget how old she really was. Even though he’d been a cultivator—and lived with cultivators—for a while now, he was still wrapping his head around how much younger cultivators looked than their actual age. It wasn’t just their lengthened lifespan—even accounting for that, time and age treated them much more kindly than it did mundanes.

He knew, from Meiyao, that Protector Wanxin had turned seventy-two last year. Given a redsoul’s lifespan was twice that of a mundane, that would’ve put her at around thirty-six, in practice—physically and mentally. And yet she didn’t look—or act—a day over twenty.

Not to mention that when they did show signs of aging—wrinkles, graying hair—it’d all be cosmetic. Cultivators stayed in their prime until their last breath.

“You’re no fun at all.” Protector Wanxin glared at him, but there was no heat in it. “Fine, keep your mysterious little secrets. See if I care.” Then she giggled and tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m just chipping your gem, kid. You’re right—we all have our secrets. But you know what you’re doing, right?” She jerked her head sideways, just a little.

Jieyuan didn’t need to look over to know it was Envoy Guodan she’d pointed to.

Huh. Meiyao and Wanxin might not share any blood, but they sure were family. “I’ve got that covered.”

The protector cocked her head. “What’s with that smile?”

“No, it’s just—Meiyao pretty much asked me the same question just now.”

No sapphire, no matter how pure or well-cut, could match the way Protector Wanxin’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, she’d have,” she said, that sly smile making its way back to her face. “You should’ve seen her before… Well, before what happened with Lanhua. Just this tiny, bossy thing, tottering around trying to mother everyone in sight, whether you wanted it or not.”

She let out a breath, eyes going soft, lost in remembrance. “Lanhua was much the same way. Consummate Woodsouls, the both of them. Mother and daughter. Always fussing, always fretting. They couldn’t not care. I’m glad she’s warming up to it again. Seems like you’ve been good for her, kid.”

“Huh. Glad to hear it,” Jieyuan said, more out of reflex than anything else.

He couldn’t really see Meiyao fussing or fretting, as Protector Wanxin had put it. Meiyao had always struck him more as another Firesoul, rather than a Woodsoul. But he’d take the protector’s word for it.

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about,” Protector Wanxin said. “I wanted to check with you—how you’re feeling about what’s coming next. About the Howling Lightning Sect. I know you haven’t got anyone to talk with about this, and—well, I was there when you became a cultivator. I figured if anyone was having this talk with you, it should be me.”

“I—” Jieyuan frowned. He was flattered, sure, but Protector Wanxin’s concern—touched, even—but… He didn’t really see the point. “I guess—”

“You’re a Firesoul, all right,” she cut him off. “It never crossed your mind to refuse, did it? I remember our talk back in the entrance trials—from the start, you only really saw my sect as a stepping stone.”

She lifted a hand. “Don’t worry. I’m not offended. It’s just… You’re mundaneborn. I wanted to be sure you knew what you’re getting into. Higher sects, higher realm… It all sounds so great, so grand, but… You have to think of yourself whether it’s worth it. Redsoul sects are as tame as it gets.

“When you climb up the ladder… In theory, your lifespan gets higher with your realm, but life expectancy actually goes down. The higher you climb, the more danger you get involved in. And that’s not to mention the pain, the struggle. Power isn’t everything. Sometimes, you’re better off…”

She narrowed her eyes at him, studying him for a long while. Then she sighed. “Never mind. Not a single word I’m saying is getting through to you, is it?”

He could only give her a wry smile. “I am a Firesoul.”

“Oh, you definitely are.” Protector Wanxin smiled back—though hers was rueful. “Well, I tried.”

He turned her words over in the quiet that followed. There was something he’d always wondered about, since he’d found out about who Wanxin really was. “Is that why you decided to stay in the Gleaming Stone Sect? Because you felt that it was enough?”

She was the Liangshibai born with the greatest potential in recent history, her sapphire eyes as proof of that. Her heavenly affinity was fifth-order. She could’ve gone as far as Bluesoul—the second-last realm of cultivator. And yet she chose to stay a Redsoul.

“Hmmm? That’s part of the reason, I guess,” she said. “My husband also played a part in it. And of course, there’s my daughter now. But mainly…”

She paused, mulling over her words. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors—about how no trueblood Liangshibai has ever left the sect. There have been other sapphire-eyes in the past—even amethyst-eyes, who could’ve made it to Violetsoul. Gems and stones, you don’t need to look much farther than my nephew, Qingshi. He’s a citrine-eyes—he could’ve made it to Yellowsoul. Yet he’s staying behind. Just like all the Liangshibai before him.”

“I’m aware,” he said—and if he was curious Protector Wanxin’s reasons before, now he was properly interested.

The Liangshibai and all their peculiarities—their gemstone eyes, their obsession with crystals, that strange alignment all their own, Crystalsoul—had always intrigued him. That sentiment had only grown after he found out that the Violetsoul who’d created the Fatebloom Heart, Yikongwei Beidao, had apparently been studying them before he ended up converted into gleamstone.

“We call it the Pull,” Protector Wanxin said. “The Pull of the Valley. It’s… Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. We’re drawn to gleamstone. To the Valley. To the Depths. We feel it in our blood. It doesn’t matter how far we go—we know where it is. Always. It’s always there, calling to us, pulling us.

“And we can’t stay away from it too long. That’s why we have that gleamstone room in the palace. We grow restless, antsy, away from it. Even the little ones feel it—worse, actually, because they can’t resist it at all. It’s common practice to keep our babes locked up at night, to stop them from crawling towards it.”

Her gaze drifted past Jieyuan’s shoulder, slow and unfocused, like something had tugged at her from the corner of her eye.

He didn’t need a map to know where she was looking.

“The higher your heavenly affinity, the worse it gets,” she went on. “Ruby-eyes already have a hard time staying away. Can’t spend even a week outside the sect without getting twitchy. Me? A sapphire-eyes? When I’m in the palace, I have to spend all my nights in the gleamstone room just to stay sane. And even then I can feel it, calling, stronger each day.”

Her voice had gone quiet. “You should’ve seen me as a girl. I’d space out for hours, just… staring. Staring towards the Valley. More than once, I made it over halfway to the Gleamstone Twins, walking all the way there in a daze, before someone noticed I was gone and went searching for me.”

Jieyuan watched her warily. She seemed like she was going into one of those dazes right now, in fact. But before he had to intervene, her gaze suddenly cleared, and she focused back on him.

There was a tense moment of silence.

Then she let out a soft, breathy laugh. “So, yes, you could say I’ve got more reasons than most for staying behind.”

Jieyuan laughed in response—but he had to force it. Force the laugh, and force down the chill that had come over him.

Because just now, the way she’d looked—staring off in the direction of the Gleamstone Valley—

It wasn’t all that different from how Yunzhu looked at Daojue.

—∞—

Night was falling by the time they left the Radiant Gold Palace. Palace Head Yiming and some of the other elders—all of them Liangshibai—were leading the way back. The remaining elders had remained behind to take part in the first round of post-tournament negotiations and arrange tomorrow’s tie-breaker match-ups.

Jieyuan and the other disciples walked in the middle, the elders around them. The standard formation for when they were outside the palace. Meiyao and Yongyi were at his sides. Daojue was a little further ahead and resolutely ignoring Yunzhu, who—with her mother absent—was back to doing her best impression of Daojue’s shadow.

Jieyuan hadn’t had the chance to confirm yet if Palace Head Yiming had approached Envoy Guodan yet. The envoy didn’t really strike him as the subtlest of people, so the fact she hadn’t gone on a rampage against the Xiyunfeng Clan would imply she didn’t know yet.

Granted, he didn’t have the best impression of the woman. It could be that she’d already been alerted, and she was making her own preparations. He hoped that was the case. There wasn’t much time left until the end of the Summit.

Jieyuan had just sighted the Gleaming Stone Palace up ahead—its silhouette against the skyline—when the world went white.

A blinding flash tore through everything, and a split-second later came the sound: a deafening, bone-shaking, ear-rattling rumble, consuming all sounds.

He staggered back, disoriented. His balance gone, ears screaming, vision washed out. A hand clamped onto his shoulder—steadying him.

Meiyao. Her lips were moving, fast, but he couldn’t hear a thing.

Everything was too bright. The shadows were wrong. He looked around wildly—then whirled on his feet. And he saw it.

Blue fire. Licking at the sky.

A wall of it.

An ocean of flame had risen where buildings had been moments ago. Rolling, rising, swallowing half the horizon.

Around him, disciples reeled. Some clutched their heads. Some seemed to be speaking, but Jieyuan couldn’t make out anything.

Then a voice cut through the ringing, cracking like thunder. “TO THE PALACE!”

Palace Head Yiming.

That got everyone moving.

Say what you will about cultivators, but they knew discipline.

As he ran, Jieyuan slid the Shifting Feathers free of their sheaths, bringing them up in front of him. The explosion had rattled him hard—knocked him off balance. But he wasn’t one to stay down for long.

The ringing in his ears had already faded. In its place came distant screams—thin, ragged things carried on the wind. Mundanes, most likely, as their city burned around them.

The Gleaming Stone Palace was just up ahead—less than a minute’s sprint. But as the group surged forward, the front line staggered.

Came to a dead halt.

Jieyuan saw why.

By the entrance, in front of the open palace gates, were bodies.

Several dozen of them, piled up haphazardly on the floor. All of them in Gleaming Stone Sect colors. Where there wasn’t a body on the floor, there was blood. Sprays and splashes and pools of it, gleaming in the light of the nearby brightgold posts and the blueish glow of the flames consuming the city.

Behind and around the piles stood about twenty men and women—half in Gleaming Stone Sect robes, the rest in the black of the Xiyunfeng Clan. All of them were armed.

But it was the man standing at the front that really caught Jieyuan’s attention. Caught and held it.

The man was tall, draped in a prime disciple’s yellow robes. Neat, tidy, crisp. In his right hand was a plain, slender sword, which he let hang loose at his side. The blade was almost entirely red from the hilt down. Blood dripped from it in a slow trickle.

On his face was a thick white blindfold, wrapped around the eyes.

While everyone stood frozen, Palace Head Yiming stepped forward. “You— Qingshi?”

Dajinzhi Qingshi. The man who’d tried to kill them in the Gleamstone Valley. The man Yunzhu had obsessed over before Daojue. The man whose master, Elder Taishou, should’ve sentenced to death.

“Why, hello there,” Qingshi said. His voice had a breathless, giddy lilt, like he couldn’t quite hold it all in. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Father?”

He smiled. “Thought it might be time for a little family reunion. ”

And then he reached up and ripped off the blindfold.