Chapter 50: FOUNDING CLAN

CHAPTER

50

FOUNDING CLAN

JIEYUAN

—∞—

From the second floor, Jieyuan watched the first couple of duels closely. Watched how the competitors fought, what powers they used. Each cabal had its own schools of martial arts for each weapon, as well as its own set of signature realmskills. Jieyuan was really only familiar with the Gleaming Stone Sect’s. This was the time to get acquainted with everyone else’s.

Something that became clear pretty early on was that he also had to watch out for the artifacts at play, particularly the weapons and their prime skills. The tournament, as Palace Head Yiming had put it days ago, served as a proxy for war. The competitors represented the strength of the cabal they belonged to, meaning there were no limitations on the use of chromal gears and concoctions. Their cabal’s wealth and resources mattered just as much, if not more so, than the participant’s talent and aptitude for martial arts.

Despite that, though, it was generally only artifacts that were used, because using other kinds of resources would encourage others to do the same. And that could lead to a lot of deaths—particularly if tenth-sign talismans started being thrown around.

All five stages were being used, multiple duels taking place simultaneously, each one overseen by an elder of the Radiant Gold Palace. That meant Jieyuan had to pick which duel to focus on, but it wasn’t like he would be missing that much, given the number of duels taking place today. One hundred and twenty-eight.

The tournament followed a single-elimination format. Everyone would participate in one duel the first day, with the winners of the previous round once again fighting one duel the next. So there’d be sixty-four duels tomorrow, thirty-two duels the third day, sixteen the fourth day, and so on, with the eighth day holding only one duel, between the two remaining undefeated contestants. The ninth and last day of the tournament was reserved for settling any specific ranking ties.

Right now there were three duels taking place down on the fighting floor, the middle stage plus two others in use, with contestants being called down to the remaining two.

Jieyuan wasn’t that invested in them, though, only barely paying attention as a Radiant Gold Palace disciple faced an opponent from the Xiyunfeng Clan in the center stage. Both fifth-signs, judging by their speed. The fight had already been going on for a couple of minutes now—the two duelists were just about evenly matched, and the duel would only end when one of the contests was incapacitated or admitted defeat—and Jieyuan had already seen most of what there was to see.

No, at the moment, Jieyuan was more concerned with the Viridian Death Cult. Or, more precisely, how High Priest Tangqiao kept on looking over. The man had been doing so for a while now, only looking down to observe the fights when someone from the Viridian Death Cult was fighting. The elderly man was as subtle about it as Yunzhu staring at Daojue.

Jieyuan and Meiyao were standing beside each other, right in front of the railing, surrounded by the other Gleaming Stone Sect disciples, the elders a little further back. Neither he nor she had been called down yet. Neither had Yongyi nor Daojue, though Yunzhu had already had her duel a while ago, against a sixth-sign from the Xiyunfeng Clan, which she’d won with relative ease.

He’d been waiting for Meiyao to bring up the matter on her own, but so far she hadn’t taken her eyes off the fighting floor yet, and Jieyuan decided he’d waited long enough. Meiyao had said they weren’t a problem, but Jieyuan wasn’t about to just take her word for it. He had little intention to end up dead because he overlooked the one group from Radiant Gold District known for their deranged fanaticism.

“So,” he said, softly. They were both leaning against the railing—an ornate balustrade, standing just slightly lower than his chest, made from brightgold as with just about everything else in sight—and he nudged her with his elbow. “What’s the deal with you and the cultists?”

Meiyao glanced up, briefly meeting the gaze of the highest priest, before turning her head to face him. She then glanced about, at the disciples next to them.

She pursed her lips. “Give me a moment.” Frowning, she looked away, seemingly at nowhere in particular.

It was over a minute later that she nodded, the frown still on her face.

“All right,” she said, her voice soft, barely more than a whisper. “The first thing you need to know is that there used to be a Linzushen Clan—and that they founded the Viridian Death Cult.”

Jieyuan would admit to some surprise, though not a lot of it. He’d been expecting something along those lines. “So the Linzushen was its royal clan?”

“Not just that,” Meiyao said. “They… we… were worshiped, in a way. Not just for founding the cult. There’s also the way we look—especially our eyes—as well as our… affinity with chromal plants. In these last few centuries, however, less and less Linzushen started being born. Nobody knows why. And by my mother’s generation, only she and her father—my grandfather—remained. And then my grandfather died while she was still a child, leaving only her. The Last Linzushen.”

The Last Linzushen. She spoke it like a title.

“As I said earlier, the Linzushen were worshiped from the start. But with my mother, it was many, many times worse. The cult was obsessed with her. From the moment she was born, she was under constant supervision, to ensure nothing would happen to her. Then, shortly after she turned eighteen, days before she was set to become a cultivator, she decided she’d had enough of it. So she left.”

Meiyao smiled, then. “More than anything else, the cult was concerned over her safety. Over her life. So my mother figured out early on that she could get the cultists to do just about anything by holding that hostage.”

“You mean she’d threaten to kill herself?”

“Exactly,” Meiyao said, sounding oddly amused. “She did so when she commanded her guards to take her out of the sect to Radiant Gold City. There, hair dyed and eyes turned mundane, she registered for the Gleaming Stone Sect’s entrance trials under a different name. Near the end of the trials, the Viridian Death Cult came knocking, demanding her back, and it was then that the Gleaming Stone Sect learned who she was. My mother had fourth-sign heavenly affinity, just like us, but that wasn’t worth going to war with the Viridian Death Cult over, so the sect was happy to hand her back.

“But then my mother threatened to kill herself if the Viridian Death Cult forced her to return. And then, when the Gleaming Stone Sect refused to accept her now that they knew who she was, she did it again to force the Viridian Death Cult into pressuring the Gleaming Stone Sect to take her in. So the situation was now the opposite—the Gleaming Stone Sect not taking her in would cause a war, because if they didn’t she’d kill herself, and Viridian Death Cult couldn’t let that happen. In the end, the matter was settled by Zhaoyong taking her in as her apprentice.”

Jieyuan stared at Meiyao, trying to look for any signs she was having him on. He found none. “You’re serious?” he asked, anyway.

“Fully.”

Jieyuan turned to look over at the Viridian Death Cult’s delegation. It wasn’t Meiyao’s mother’s actions that he found hard to believe in Meiyao’s story, but the cult’s.

If Radiant Gold City didn’t lack one thing, it was rumors about the Viridian Death Cult’s insanity. How their older members, reaching the end of their lifespan, would head into the Viridian Dome, never to return. How they’d sacrifice both their own and abducted mundanes—particularly children—to the Viridian Death Forest. How even other cultivators tread lightly around them, afraid of setting one of them off for disrespecting some obscure custom of theirs.

Despite all of that, though, he hadn’t thought it possible for an entire cabal to be at the mercy of a single person’s whims like that.

Jieyuan frowned, turning all of what Meiyao had just said over in his head, thinking of what that could mean for him and for their current situation. The first thing that occurred to him was that if Meiyao’s family was connected to the Viridian Death Forest, it was far more likely that they’d somehow get involved with it. This was one of those times that Jieyuan really hated being proven right.

There was something else, too. He lowered his voice, leaning in closer. “Back in the Gleamstone Valley, didn’t the nobles have orders to capture you alive? Do you think—”

“The cult’s not involved,” Meiyao cut in. “Trust me.”

“But don’t they want you back?”

“Oh, they do. More than anything else. But they can’t force me back, just as they couldn’t force my mother. They know I won’t hesitate to do the same thing she did if they try anything.”

She could probably tell from his expression he wasn’t convinced, because she seemed to hesitate for a moment before continuing, “I already did it, once. When… When my mother was … taken. When they found out, they came to the sect, trying to get me to come back with them. I almost did, just to spite my father, but in the end, I decided to stay.”

Jieyuan tried to imagine what that’d have been like. An eight-year-old Meiyao, standing up to the elders from the Viridian Death Cult—probably the high priest himself—and threatening to kill herself if they took her away.

“Liangshibai Yongyi, from the Gleaming Stone Sect,” one of the Radiant Gold Palace overseers below suddenly called out.

Looking down, Jieyuan found that the duel in the center stage was long over, with the proctor standing in the middle of it, looking up at the viewing level.

Yongyi was nearby, over to his left. The core disciple pushed off the railing, then looked over at them.

“Good luck,” Jieyuan said.

“Thanks,” Yongyi said. He didn’t move though, and Jieyuan realized that he was waiting on Meiyao. The two remained estranged. They’d been that way for a long time now, best as Jieyuan could tell, from way before they came to Radiant Gold City, and it’d only gotten worse since the sect leader’s words in the Gleaming Stone Palace’s underground conference room.

Much as Jieyuan expected, Meiyao said nothing, but she did tip her head forward by a fraction. For Yongyi, that seemed to be plenty, because the core disciple smiled, nodding back, before walking off, away from the railing. There was an entranceway on the wall behind them, off to the side, leading down to the lower level.

Envoy Guodan, Jieyuan noticed, currently had her attention on the arena floor for once, eyes on the center stage. The envoy had arrived just before the first duel, joining the Radiant Gold Sect’s delegation—though the only one standing even remotely close to her was Sovereign Aoxin, everyone else a healthy distance from the orangesoul.

There probably wasn’t anyone who’d failed to notice how Envoy Guodan’s hair was now flowing down her neck, no longer bound up in a bun, or how her lips were now painted a subtle red. Jieyuan also reckoned nobody had missed how she’d been paying far more attention to Daojue than to the fights below.

Or rather, there might be one person who didn’t take notice of any of that. And that’d be the object of the envoy’s attention, Daojue himself, who’d kept his eye on the arena floor from the moment the first duel began.

Daojue was standing further over to Jieyuan’s left, and much like with the envoy, a bubble of empty space surrounded him. Probably because of how often the envoy looked that way, as nothing good could come from her attention, in most cases. Even Yunzhu wasn’t sticking around him for once, instead standing with the elders, beside her mother, even if she spent most of her time staring at Daojue.

Clearly, both Daojue and Envoy Guodan had their priorities straight. And it was just as clear that their priorities didn’t intersect in any way.

Jieyuan could’ve pitied the woman. But then he’d recall how she could very well kill him with a sneeze, and he reckoned that he wasn’t in any position to be pitying an orangesoul.

Yongyi appeared on the arena floor, walking toward the middle stage. From the opposite side walked out a woman from the Viridian Death Cult. They both got on the stage, and the proctor briefly went over the rules—or at least he thought that was what she was doing, as she was too far away for him to hear her words clearly. 

The proctor then called the match. Both Yongyi and his opponent had their weapons out and drawn and shrouded. Both of them sword-users. Two out of three three disciples were, from what Jieyuan had seen so far. The Gleaming Stone Sect, as it turned out, was an anomaly in terms of how many saber and spear users it had. Jieyuan would only need two hands to count the number of non-swordsmen he’d seen from the other three cabals, combined.

The moment the proctor stepped off the stage, the Viridian Death Cultist launched herself forward—and Jieyuan knew at once she was a sixth-sign. The center stage was the biggest of the five—standing on opposite ends of it had put well over two hundred feet between them—but the woman crossed that distance in moments.

And then she was swinging her sword at Yongyi, swinging it hard.

Yongyi parried the strike, and the next dozen ones that followed in barely the span of a breath. The meeting of blades sounded surprisingly dull, not at all like metal striking metal, but Jieyuan was too focused on the moves themselves to dwell on that. Even soul-stilling, Jieyuan had to strain to keep track of the woman’s movements.

The best way to describe the martial arts of the Gleaming Stone Sect would be incisive. For the most part, it boiled down to keeping on the defensive while studying the opponent’s style, and then finding flaws and acting on it. It was similar to a jeweler working on a gemstone with a chisel, targeting its flaws. The Viridian Death Cult’s, by contrast, was a more wild, almost feral thing, meant to overwhelm the opponent through sheer ferocity. That made for a rather random, unpredictable style. One riddled with flaws.

Flaws that Yongyi didn’t hesitate to take advantage of. He endured the barrage of attacks stoically—and then struck out, once, and his blade cut a line in the woman’s dark green robes. It didn’t draw blood, but he’d still accomplished more with a single move than the woman had with thirty.

The woman leaped back by more than a dozen yards. Yongyi didn’t give chase, staying put.

Jieyuan had an idea of what was about to come, even if he hadn’t expected it to happen this early into the duel. So far, most disciples had tried their best to win without relying on realmskills or gear-skills. They’d be fighting further matches, and in a battle between cultivators, keeping your powers hidden was a significant advantage.

The woman’s body started radiating a green glow. One that Jieyuan immediately recognized. One he’d seen twice before, though it’d been a couple of shades deeper then. Jieyuan had gotten a rundown on the signature skills of each of the district’s cabals, and when he’d heard of how one of the Viridian Death Cult’s realmskills caused them to radiate a green glow, he’d already made the connection, but it was his first time seeing it in action, and it left little room for doubt.

Just as he was about to turn to Meiyao, the gear-shroud over the Viridian Death Cult disciple’s sword came undone, falling to the floor, revealing a brown, wooden blade. Then both the woman’s fullgauntlets dropped to the floor, baring her hands.

Why she’d done so became clear just the next moment as something brown appeared over and around the woman’s arms. Squinting his eye, Jieyuan realized they were roots, extending out from the sword’s hilt. The wooden sword then began to pulse, throbbing-like, before growing longer, larger. At the same time, the green glow around the woman’s body grew thicker, a deeper shade of green, closer to what Meiyao’s had looked like in the Gleamstone Valley.

Jieyuan blinked, and then the woman was upon Yongyi, striking at him much, much faster than before. And with much greater strength, Jieyuan suspected.

Yongyi managed to parry the first couple of strikes with his sword, but each one forced him back. But then what met the woman’s next strike wasn’t Yongyi’s sword, but a gleamstone barrier. The woman clearly hadn’t been expecting it, the sudden, hard parry throwing her off balance, and Yongyi got a stab in, his sword snapping in and out of the woman’s side.

That didn’t seem to slow the woman in the slightest—rather, it only seemed to make her faster, her blows more frenzied. Yongyi, though, took full advantage of that. He used the very same move again, parrying a strike with a gleamstone barrier, and again that gave him an opening. Except with this one, he managed to stab the woman in the shoulder.

Yongyi could’ve gone for a killing blow, but murder was heavily discouraged. It’d count as a win, but there’d be severe penalties for the murderer’s cabal should that happen. And as it turned out, Yongyi didn’t need to go that far, because he managed to repeat that another three times.

Jieyuan had a suspicion that the sword’s gear-skill impacted the woman’s ability to reason, though he wouldn’t be all that surprised if it was just the Viridian Death Cultist being a Viridian Death Cultist.

The woman collapsed at Yongyi’s feet, multiple bloodied spots on her body. None of them lethal on their own, but if she didn’t get treatment soon she might very well bleed out, even with a sixth-sign’s regeneration. Yongyi, for his part, looked ruffled but otherwise unharmed.

And he’d pulled it off without using his new sword’s prime skill—one that Jieyuan knew could easily decide a fight. And only making use of the most basic, straightforward application of Gleaming Stone Impediment, too.

The proctor called the match. Two elders from the Viridian Death Cult headed down, picked up the woman and her artifacts, and carried her away, all without a word. There was no clapping or cheering from the viewing floor, no thunderous applause—this was, after all, meant to replace war.

As Yongyi stepped off the stage, the proctor stepped back onto the stage and called out, “Haoyujin Jieyuan, of the Gleaming Stone Sect.”