Chapter 58: NOT MUNDANE

CHAPTER

58

NOT MUNDANE

JIEYUAN

—∞—

“What is it with you,” Meiyao said, as Jieyuan reached her side on the viewing floor, “and throwing yourself into stab attacks?”

Jieyuan leaned against the railing. The stage below was empty. There’d be a break before the next duel, an hour or so.

He was in clean, pristine robes, the cuts he’d suffered tended to. A pair of elders had been waiting for them in the corridor on the lower floor, with new robes, healing pills, and a quick-hardening paste to spread over their wounds. By tomorrow, he and Yongyi would be as brand new as their new robes.

Jieyuan turned to face Meiyao. “Say what you want, but that particular strategy has earned me two wins so far.”

“Strategy,” Meiyao repeated, dryly. “What an odd way to refer to what’s clearly a latent death wish.”

Jieyuan looked over at Yongyi, who’d just settled down on his other side. The core disciple had stopped for a while near where the elders were to talk with his family. “Did you hear that, Yongyi? Apparently, that’s how I won. Me and my glorious latent death wish.”

Yongyi glanced over briefly at Meiyao, then back at Jieyuan. He seemed more steady now than he’d been earlier, right after the duel. More composed, closer to his usual, temperate self. Whatever he’d talked with his family must’ve calmed him down some. “Is that so? I guess I must start working on developing mine, then. Any advice?”

“Hmmm.” Jieyuan adopted a pensive look. He glanced back down to the lower floor. “Heights are a staple, I think. And since the floor is made of brightgold, jumping from this far up should do us some damage. If we jump heads down… It might just work. Want to have a go? I’ll do it if you do.”

Meiyao scoffed at him. “You are impossible.” She sent her brother a glare. “And you—don’t feed into his nonsense.”

Yongyi put both hands up in mock surrender. But there was no missing the subtle smile on his face.

Meiyao’s glare intensified. She rounded back on Jieyuan. “But, seriously. You don’t actually have a death wish, do you? Because if you’d been just a moment too late, Yongyi’s sword would be tangible again, and in that angle the result wouldn’t have been some lucky side wound—it’d have gone straight to your chest.”

“I was confident in my timing,” Jieyuan said. He considered it for a moment, then added, “And I’m sure Yongyi would’ve pulled the stab—or even made the sword intangible again—if it’d actually gone through. Right?”

The first part was true enough. He had been confident in his timing. So much so that what might happen to him if he missed the moment hadn’t even occurred to him.

“Sure, feel free to tell yourself that if it lets you…” Yongyi shut his mouth as Meiyao turned back to him. “I mean, of course I’d have. I wouldn’t dream of having done otherwise.”

“Great. Jieyuan, you’ve corrupted my brother. Ruined him. Change him back. Immediately.”

Jieyuan offered her a helpless little shrug. “I don’t do refunds.”

Groaning, Meiyao looked away. But she was smiling too.

They spent the next good while discussing the duel, going it over. And it seemed like Meiyao had finally decided to mend things with Yongyi properly, because she didn’t hesitate to engage him in the conversation. She’d been warming up to her brother over the last few days, but there had still been a clear sense of distance between the two. Jieyuan couldn’t see any signs of it anymore.

Neither Meiyao nor Yongyi acknowledged the change, but Yongyi’s lips were constantly quirking back up into a smile the entire time, like he just couldn’t stop himself from doing so.

And then it came. Jieyuan was the first to notice as the proctor got back onto the center stage, and he motioned the other two to look down.

“Tianzijun Daojue and Liangshibai Yunzhu, from the Gleaming Stone Sect.”

Jieyuan looked over to where Daojue was standing. In his lonesome still, little more than a statue made man. As for Yunzhu, Jieyuan found her further in the back, beside her mother as she’d been throughout the entire tournament.

And wouldn’t you know—she was giving Daojue that creepy stare of hers, black eyes unfathomable.

This was one duel that Jieyuan wasn’t all that sure how it’d turn out. He wouldn’t hesitate to bet on Daojue winning—it was Daojue—but there was something… off about Yunzhu. No, not off. Just plain wrong, really, and he was no closer to figuring out what to make of it or what it meant than he had been when he first saw her.

When Daojue was involved, she somehow managed to out-creep the Viridian Death Cultists. No mean feat, that. The way she acted perfectly normal when Daojue wasn’t around didn’t help any, either. If anything, the contrast only made her more unsettling.

“This should be an interesting one,” Yongyi said.

Jieyuan could agree with him on that. All of today’s duels either were or were set to be. Xianjun against Houliao, the day’s first duel, hadn’t been without its uncertainties. The two had been about evenly matched, as the premier disciples of their delegations. And then there were his duel with Yongyi. Now Yunzhu against Daojue, and after that, Meiyao against Dayang.

He was fairly confident Daojue and Meiyao would win, but Yunzhu and Dayang had gotten this far for a reason, and in both cases, there was history between the pair. How that history would influence the outcome he wasn’t sure.

“Either that,” Jieyuan said, “or a really boring one. What Daojue will do is easy enough to predict. But Yunzhu? I can’t tell you whether she’ll give up on the spot, or if she’ll do her utmost to kill him. She’s your cousin. What do you think?”

“I was never particularly close to her. That dubious honor goes to Meiyao. Yunzhu never sat right with me. The way she’d look at Meiyao sometimes…”

That wasn’t something Jieyuan had heard about before.

“She wasn’t that bad.” Meiyao frowned. “Or at least not as bad as she is with Daojue. I got my fair share of unsettling stares, but she’d stop when I focused on her. And she pretty much ceased them altogether around the time we were… eight, I think. After I started talking with my family again, after the… that day. But we haven’t been all that in touch these last few years, with Qingshi coming into the picture, and Yunzhu become a cultivator two years ago.”

Daojue started making his way to the stairway. Yunzhu lingered by her Protector Wanxin’s side, then fell in step with Daojue as he walked past the mother and daughter.

Jieyuan glanced across the viewing floor, and saw the unmistakable figure of Envoy Guodan, with her deep blue, purplish robes, eying Daojue like a hawk.

The envoy‘s interest in Daojue didn’t seem to have faded any over the course of the tournament, even though as far as Jieyuan knew she hadn’t approached Daojue again for a talk. Actually, their lack of interaction probably helped, because Jieyuan doubted she’d remain enchanted like this long once she realized just what Daojue was really like.

Unless Envoy Guodan had a thing for emotionally unavailable younger men. Very, very, very unavailable, so much so that referring to Daojue as emotional in any capacity was a stretch and a half.

Yongyi didn’t seem to have taken notice of the orangesoul, because he continued, “I met that particular pair often. Yunzhu and Qingshi. And at first, she used to act around Qingshi exactly like she acted around you. Like she’s around Daojue, now. Except Qingshi didn’t seem to mind—and she started doing it less often with time.”

As Yunzhu and Daojue disappeared down the stairs, Yongyi turned to Jieyuan. “We Liangshibai… we’re predisposed to obsession. It comes with being Crystalsouls. But Yunzhu’s nothing but obsession. And she’s always been a curious case, even for a Liangshibai, with her mundane eyes. We never really knew what to make of her. Honestly? I’ve always had my doubts about that, in particular.”

“Not this again,” Meiyao murmured, scowling.

The yellow bled out of Yongyi’s eyes. Jieyuan watched it happen, fascinated. The change was fast—the yellow faded inward, disappearing into the black of the pupils, until Yongyi’s eyes were entirely black. It wasn’t just the color that was gone. So was the faceted, gemstone pattern on them, leaving the eyes looking mundane. Jieyuan had heard that the Liangshibai had control over their eyes, but he’d never seen it happen.

“As you can see, we can control the color of our eyes easily enough. It’s not something all that difficult, either. Most Liangshibai get the hang of it even before we can walk. It’s quite common to see our children playing around with their eyes, going from gemstone to mundane and back. We can even change it to a lower color.”

As if to prove his point, Yongyi’s eyes bloomed a vibrant red, the gemstone pattern returning, irises like rubies seen from above. Then orange spread out from his pupils, replacing the red. Topaz. And then they were yellow again, bright and burning. Citrine.

“Now, Yunzhu’s a true-blood Liangshibai—her mother’s Wanxin, there’s no questioning that—but there’s never been a Liangshibai without the gemstone eyes. What do you think is more likely? That she’s the sole exception in a lineage that has been around for thousands of years, or that she’s just doing what I just did, making her eyes mundane, except all the time—”

“No,” Meiyao cut in. “We’re not having that conversation. Not again. For Heavens’ sake, Yongyi, we’ve been over this more times than I can count. Wanxin was there when Yunzhu was born—obviously—as well as a dozen nursemaids. Your mother was there. And they all vouch for Yunzhu having been born with mundane eyes.”

“But—”

“No,” she said, and turned to Jieyuan. “If you knew how many times I heard that same inane theory growing up, you’d understand where I’m coming from. He’d come to me with it almost every week, trying to convince me to stay away from Yunzhu.”

“That girl is not right—” Yongyi tried.

“That girl is your blood cousin,” Meiyao snapped back at her brother. “And that girl—Yunzhu—is harmless. A bit… unsettling, sure, but that’s all. Do you have any idea how many times she came to me, asking what she’d done to make you avoid her like you do? On the verge of crying, sometimes, even.”

Meiyao suddenly frowned. “And where’s this even coming from, anyway? I thought you had gotten over your issues with Yunzhu. You didn’t seem to have any issues with her these last few days.”

“That was only because Aunt Wanxin was always nearby,” Yongyi protested. “And Yunzhu was no longer fixated with you. And…” Yongyi seemed like he wanted to say more to Meiyao, but he shut his mouth and then addressed Jieyuan, “What I meant to say is—and I’m sure you know this already—that you should be careful around Yunzhu. Or at least be more sensible than my sister—”

“Sensible? Jieyuan?” Meiyao barked a harsh laugh. “Heavens, brother, but now you’ve strayed fully into delusional territory now. Jieyuan wouldn’t know sensibility even if it stabbed him dead. And in light of recent events, I mean that wholly and literally.”

“All right,” Jieyuan said, putting a hand up between the half siblings. “Let’s tone it down. We’re drawing attention.” He nodded to a trio of disciples standing nearby, discreetly looking over.

Meiyao whipped her head in that direction, glowering, and the group of core disciples immediately looked away.

Yongyi, for his part, was smirking. “See? Sensible, like I said.”

Apparently, now that Meiyao wasn’t avoiding him anymore, Yongyi had fully taken up the role of an older brother. Trying to make up for lost time, even, from the looks of it. It reminded Jieyuan of how Maeva’s husband, Qiyun, had been with him, in his previous life, back when he went by Amyas. The man-child’s favorite pastime had been riling him up.

Jieyuan was torn between sympathizing with Meiyao and joining Yongyi in the teasing.

He was saved from having to decide as the proctor’s voice rang out from the arena floor, calling the match.

The three of them immediately turned around, squabbling forgotten.

And it was just in time to see Daojue bound across the stage, rushing towards Yunzhu, Gleaming End held firm in front of him.

Somebody sure wasn’t wasting time.

Yunzhu had her sword up in front of her, ready, in a defensive stance.

Reaching Yunzhu, Daojue didn’t stop for even a beat, thrusting Gleaming End at her chest. Yunzhu parried the blow off to the side with her sword, shifting her footing as she did. Daojue snapped his spear back into position and thrust it out again. Yunzhu parried it just as well as she had the first one.

If Daojue had wanted to, the battle could’ve ended then. Gleaming End could’ve gone through her sword as if it weren’t there, and then through Yunzhu’s chest. But as unreasonable as Daojue could be at times, he seemed to understand that revealing he had an Orangesoul weapon wasn’t the brightest idea, because so far he’d been limiting Gleaming End’s chromal weight so that it only expressed itself defensively.

No Redsoul weapon or attack would be doing it any damage anytime soon, but Gleaming End itself wouldn’t be doing any damage, either, not in that state. Daojue had won most of his battles so far within moments of the match being called by knocking his opponents off their feet or their weapons off their hands and holding Gleaming End to their throat.

Daojue was unceasing, relentless. Thrusting, stabbing, cutting, moving faster than a fourth-sign Redsoul had any right to. Not as fast as Jieyuan knew Daojue to be capable of, but still tapping far more into his inhuman speed than he’d had in any of his duels so far.

Yunzhu parried each and every strike, constantly shifting the position of her feet to better redirect the blow, but without moving from her place. From what Jieyuan had seen so far, Yunzhu’s specialty was defense.

The Gleaming Stone Sect’s martial arts encouraged constant defense and exacting offense, but Yunzhu took it a step further. She’d fought and won five duels so far. Which was the same number of times she’d made an attack—because every time she went on the offensive, the duel would end.

She’d spend a good while just defending, feeling out her opponent—much more than Yongyi and anyone else from the Gleaming Stone Sect had done so far—but when she did attack, she didn’t miss. She’d completely pierce through her opponent’s defenses, and stop her sword just as it was about to stab through her opponent’s chest or neck. And that’d be the end of it. Much like Daojue, Yunzhu hadn’t shed a single drop of blood yet. Not her own, not her opponent’s.

“They seem evenly matched, so far,” Yongyi said, leaning closer, over the balustrade. “She… She’s faring better than I thought.”

That sentence summed up just about everything you needed to know about Daojue. He was a fourth-sign against a sixth-sign, and what surprised others was the fact that the sixth-sign was hanging on.

“She hasn’t used her realmskill yet,” Meiyao noted. “Or her sword’s prime gear-skill.”

“Actually,” Jieyuan said, “that’s something I’ve been meaning to ask. Yunzhu’s realmskill—which one is it?” Out of all the sixth-signs to have made it to the sixth round, Yunzhu was the only one whose abilities remained a mystery to Jieyuan. It wasn’t that Yunzhu hadn’t used her own or her sword’s powers yet in this match—she hadn’t used them at all, not since the tournament began.

He did know her sword’s prime skill because she’d also gotten it from the Radiant Light Atelier, but her realmskill was a mystery to him—though it was almost definitely one of the Gleaming Stone Sect’s two signature ones.

Before Meiyao could answer, Daojue exploded in a burst of speed, moving even faster than before after managing to throw Yunzhu off-balance after she’d parried his last attack. But Gleaming End wasn’t even halfway to Yunzhu’s neck when a gleamstone sword appeared between Yunzhu and Daojue, floating in the air, and blocked Daojue’s next strike. Not a gleamstone barrier, but clearly a sword, a weapon.

And not immobile, either, like gleamstone barriers were. The sword remained floating in front of Yunzhu, but as Daojue attacked again, the gleamstone sword followed, parrying the blow just as it’d blocked the previous one. Daojue didn’t let up, attacking fiercely, but now Yunzhu and her floating sword were taking turns parrying Daojue’s attacks and seemingly doing a good enough job of it.

Gleaming Stone Protection. Jieyuan wasn’t nearly as familiar with the realmskill as he’d grown with Gleaming Stone Containment over this last month, but he knew the basics. Despite its name, the realmskill was oriented towards offense. Or at least its first form, Gleaming Stone Incursion, was.

It summoned gleamstone weapons—a weapon, necessarily, there not being much leeway when it came to the form or functionality of what the realmskill could summon—that the user could either wield or control with their mind. No limit to how many weapons could be summoned, but each weapon cost a certain amount of quantity per second for each second they remained in existence. As far as Jieyuan knew, the realmskill didn’t have nearly as much room for creativity as its twin, Gleaming Stone Containment, did, but its basic functions appealed to him more.

For all that Yunzhu had shown herself to be Yongyi’s equal, if not superior, when it came to martial arts, though, it appeared she wasn’t nearly as skilled when it came to using her realmskill.

After summoning the gleamstone sword, Yunzhu kept on using it strictly to defend against Daojue’s attacks, having it step in when she wasn’t fast enough to defend herself. The ridiculousness of the whole situation aside—Yunzhu, a highly skilled and talented sixth-sign, struggling to defend against a fourth-sign who Jieyuan knew wasn’t even going all out—Jieyuan could see so many other ways Yunzhu could be putting her realmskill to better use.

Gleaming Stone Protection should have been a very powerful offensive skill—Jieyuan could just see several different gleamstone weapons floating around, attacking his opponent in synchrony—but Yunzhu apparently took its name, Protection, way too seriously, because that was all she was using it for.

Jieyuan contented himself with the knowledge that once he was a few soulsigns higher, his soulsense would be strong enough to lift and move around weapons, and he’d be able to replicate the effects of the realmskill, even if only with artifacts he bonded and to a more limited extent.

Catching movement in the corner of his eye, Jieyuan glanced in that direction. Protector Wanxin had gotten closer to the railing, and was staring intently at the ongoing duel with her sapphire eyes. Visibly tense.

Jieyuan recalled, then, what Palace Head Yiming had told Yunzhu, on their first day in the palace. How he wanted her to take it easy, and avoid getting hurt at all costs. Because if something happened to her, her mother would act out, and that wouldn’t turn out well for anyone involved.

If Yunzhu ended up maimed or killed in this duel, Jieyuan didn’t think Wanxin would hesitate to jump down there and unleash her fury upon Daojue. Daojue, whom Envoy Guodan seemed awfully taken with.

Looking over to the Radiant Gold Sect’s side of the viewing floor, he confirmed that the envoy was indeed concentrated fully on the fight, looking far more attentive and invested than she’d been in any fight so far.

Envoy Guodan was an Orangesoul, and Wanxin a Redsoul. There was only one way a clash between them could go. But there was more to that potential clash than just power. Supposedly the Yellowsoul sect that ruled the island, the Incandescent Serenity Sect, had never given up on recruiting Wanxin. So if Envoy Guodan killed her in front of everyone? All bets were off.

Down below, the fight seemed to be showing no signs of stopping. Daojue could go even faster—and probably would start doing so, any time now—but Yunzhu hadn’t played her entire hand yet.

Normally that’d have been a good thing, as far as Jieyuan was concerned, as it’d force both competitors to reveal more of their abilities, but now that he’d realized just what was at stake here, he hoped it would end soon, and that neither Daojue nor Yunzhu would see fit to choose this fight, out of all of them, to break their bloodless streak.

Just moments later, Yunzhu’s voice suddenly rang out, bright and clear. “I concede.”

Stunned, Jieyuan watched as Daojue abruptly stilled his movements mid-stab. Yunzhu, for her part, dispelled her gleamstone sword. The protector quickly joined the pair on the stage, and then announced, “Winner, Tianzijun Daojue of the Gleaming Stone Sect.”

Now, Jieyuan had heard of the theory that the Heavens listened to you when you Communed. But he wasn’t Communing right now, and this might have just been the clearest example yet of having his prayers answered. Summarily and quickly so, at that. If this was the Heavens at work, they sure could work efficiently when they felt like it.

Daojue headed down the stage, and Yunzhu followed along, trailing just behind him. Wanxin was still standing over the railing, watching as her daughter and Daojue crossed the arena floor, no longer tense.

“That was…” Meiyao seemed to be at a loss for words. “She just gave up. Just like that. What is she thinking?”

Yongyi just shrugged. “Whatever goes on in Yunzhu’s head, I’m perfectly happy to stay unaware of.” Despite his words, though, he wore a thoughtful look.

“I’m with Yongyi on this one,” Jieyuan said.

That impression was only reinforced as Yunzhu and Daojue appeared on the viewing floor, stepping out from the stairwell.

Immediately, Jieyuan noticed that, for once, Yunzhu wasn’t giving Daojue her trademark stare. Instead, she wore a cryptic little smile, like she knew something nobody else did, some private joke.

Daojue, on the other hand, looked the same as ever—wait, no…

Jieyuan narrowed his eyes. Daojue was stiffer than usual—both his face and his movements. Like he was restraining himself, keeping his temper in check. Jieyuan knew the signs of that all too well—he often found himself having to do the same.

Daojue was tense. As tense as Jieyuan had ever seen the man.

Did something happen during the duel? Had Yunzhu said something to him—in the stairwell, maybe?

Jieyuan glanced back at Yunzhu. Somehow he found this new smile just as unnerving as her stares. Chances were that nothing in particular had happened between them. Yunzhu didn’t need much to make Daojue—anyone, really—tense.

Of course, it could also be that Daojue just wasn’t satisfied with how the fight had turned out. Turning back to Daojue, Jieyuan noted how he was walking faster than usual—like he was in a hurry to put some distance between himself and her. And another idea occurred to him.

Maybe Daojue had meant to kill Yunzhu in their duel. She got under Daojue’s skin in a way nobody else did—and Daojue didn’t seem like the sort of man who needed that much reason to kill.

Not that Jieyuan could fault him for that. He reckoned he wouldn’t have fared much better if he were also constantly subjected to Yunzhu’s stares.

Yunzhu broke off from Daojue to return to her mother’s side—Wanxin had moved back to where the other elders were standing—whereas Daojue continued on to his usual spot.

Figuring that was the end of it, Jieyuan was about to look away. But then he caught movement from the Xiyunfeng Clan’s side.

Xianjun, Sovereign Zhihao’s son, was walking over. And he was looking at Daojue.