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Chapter 42: THROUGH THE HEART
🕑 Added 2024-10-21 02:36:04 +0000 UTCCHAPTER
42
THROUGH THE HEART
JIEYUAN
—∞—
“And you’re dead.” The smugness in Meiyao’s voice was just short of palpable.
The tip of Meiyao’s saber hung just in front of Jieyuan’s right eye, like a blurry little dot. Close enough that if he blinked, his eyelashes might brush against it. He was on the floor, half-sitting, half-sprawled, Meiyao having knocked him back during her most recent onslaught.
Jieyuan sighed. “So I am.”
Meiyao pulled her saber back and extended her hand out. He grasped it, and she pulled him up to his feet. Both their hands were uncovered. There was no point in wearing armor while sparing with first-sign weapons.
“You’re getting better,” Meiyao said. “You almost got me there, near the end.”
He could clearly recall that moment—the blade of his spear had been just inches away from Meiyao’s stomach when she’d suddenly dodged and brought her saber down, deflecting it. What came next was a flurry of strikes that had, quite literally, swept him off his feet.
“Almost.” Jieyuan tried not to sound bitter. He really did. But he’d had way too much of almost as of late. “I almost got you a dozen times already—but that’s where it always ends at. Almost.”
Meiyao smirked. “Who said I wasn’t getting better too?”
And wasn’t that just the thing? Jieyuan looked away from Meiyao, casting his gaze around the training room. They were in the middle stage, and two of the other stages were currently occupied. Yongyi was on the platform over to his right, fighting with another core disciple.
They’d been at Radiant Gold City for ten days already, and he’d sparred with Yongyi almost every day so far, with the core disciple only restraining himself to fifth-sign. Still that first day, after Yiming had left and he and Yongyi had their talk, Yongyi had released his aura to fourth-sign, and they’d sparred again. Jieyuan had won, even if just barely. So Yongyi had gone for fifth-sign, and Jieyuan had been soundly beaten. For their following spars, Yongyi had stayed at fifth-sign—at Jieyuan’s request—and now, ten days later, though Jieyuan hadn’t managed to win yet, he was lasting longer and longer against the core disciple.
Returning his attention to Meiyao, Jieyuan saw that she’d turned slightly to the side, looking in Yongyi’s direction. Her eyes were narrowed, lips drawn into a straight, thin line.
On their third day here, Meiyao had banged on his door, revealed she’d gotten wind of his sparring sessions with her brother, and that she wanted in on it—though she made a point they would be without her brother. In their first session, she beat him. Same for the next one. Same for all the ones that followed. Against Yongyi, Jieyuan was clearly making progress. Faced with Meiyao, he seemed to be going absolutely nowhere.
It was just as Meiyao had said. She improved as much with their sparring sessions—if not even more so. As far as he knew, he was the only one she sparred with, whereas he had his spars with Yongyi and his simulations against Daojue. She was still avoiding her family, Yongyi included, and so far Jieyuan hadn’t seen her so much as talk with anyone else here. Effectively, he was chasing a goalpost that moved away as fast as he advanced on it.
As he looked at Meiyao now, it wasn’t the shape of her that he focused on. Rather, he recalled the way she moved, the way she fought—the way she overwhelmed him. And it boggled his mind how Meiyao kept beating him. It wasn’t just a matter of skill and instinct like it was between him and Yongyi.
He replayed in his mind’s eye the last few moments of their spars, how her saber had turned into little more than whirring streaks of silver. Meiyao did have him beat skill-wise, but not enough to explain the difference between them. Rather, she was just plain faster, plain stronger, even though they were at the same soulsign. In fact, if he didn’t know any better, if he didn’t have his soulsense, he’d have been surprised to learn that she wasn’t at fourth-sign.
He had known for a while now that Meiyao was something else—since the day she’d soundly beaten him, months ago, in the sect’s entrance trials—but sparring with her like this over the last few days had really driven the point home. Meiyao was borderline inhuman.
And then Jieyuan was thinking back to Daojue’s fight against fifth-sign Qingshi back in the Gleamstone Valley. If Meiyao verged on a fourth-sign’s parameters, Daojue was firmly in fifth-sign territory. Meiyao might be borderline inhuman, but Daojue was outright inhuman.
Jieyuan had entertained the possibility that the two had a realmskill that augmented their physical attributes further, but that struck him as too simple, too underwhelming a realmskill for them to have. Even more so in Meiyao’s case, as what he’d seen so far hinted at a power that caused her to radiate a green glow and another that had to do with that red haze—though that last one might be some unusual kind of artifact, considering how he’d seen her storing the red haze away in her glyph-stretch pouch after she’d dealt with that inner disciple at the end of the Gleamstone Hunt.
No, it wasn’t a realmskill. Either there was something about their aura—their soul—that augmented their body further than should be possible, or there was something about their body that made them naturally far stronger and faster than what should have been possible for a human.
Meiyao turned back to him. “We’re done for today?”
Jieyuan felt around his mind, pushing forward the idea of an imbuing session. He felt just the slightest bit of apprehension at the thought—meaning he’d be ready for one in just a couple of minutes. Ready for another lovely little dose of mortal, mind-breaking pain. He had little time to waste. At his current rate, he should make it to fourth-sign Redsoul nine days from now, on the nineteenth, right before the start of the Summit tournament.
“Done,” he said.
“I’ll put them away.” Meiyao extended her hand, and he handed her his sparring spear. She hopped off the stage and made her way over to the rack at the end of the sparring room. He watched her go. Now that he was paying attention, he found that even the way Meiyao walked stood out. She glided across the floor effortlessly, stalk-like, purposeful.
She walked past Yongyi’s stage without a glance her brother’s way, replaced their sparring weapons on the rack, then made her way back. Jieyuan got off the stage. Meiyao reached him, and they made their way out of the training room together. They walked back to their rooms in companionable silence. They passed a couple of disciples on their way back, core disciples and inner disciples alike.
He really only left his room to spar with Meiyao and Yongyi, and he only did so when taking breaks from imbuing. From his talks with Yongyi, though, he’d found that the same couldn’t be said for the other disciples. Everyone else, Yongyi included, had to push themselves to spend over an hour of imbuing per day. In fact, they’d often go for several days without imbuing. And all the disciples gathered here in the palace were the best, most dedicated disciples the sect had taken in the last five years.
He’d run the numbers, so he’d known that others didn’t spend nearly as much time imbuing as he did. That was why he was nearing on fourth-sign after having been a cultivator for just a couple of months, whereas other disciples—even the best the sect had to offer—took years to reach that point. But it hadn’t really sunk in how much others struggled with the First Pain. Yongyi himself had admitted it took him weeks after reaching the end of a stratum to prepare for his breakthrough to the next one—to prepare for the Second Pain.
Of course, he wasn’t the sole exception to that. Jieyuan looked at Meiyao out of the corner of his eye. She was just as much of an anomaly as he was in that regard, if not more so. She hadn’t broken through to fourth-sign yet, but she’d told him just earlier today she’d likely be going for it tomorrow. He was a little behind her, but only by a couple of days. And there was Daojue. Jieyuan hadn’t seen even a shadow of the man since they’d arrived at the palace—apparently, he hadn’t stepped out of his room even once—but Jieyuan wouldn’t have been surprised at all if he’d already broken through.
Just another way Meiyao and Daojue were ahead of him. Though, thankfully, the chasm between them in that sense wasn’t nearly as great as it was when it came to combat.
Reaching the residential wing of the palace where the disciples were housed, they went up the flight of stairs until they were in the corridor with their apartments. They reached the door to Meiyao’s rooms first, and Jieyuan halted his steps for a moment. Normally she’d give him a brief nod, and he’d nod back. She’d walk in, and he’d continue on to his room, just a door down from hers.
Coming to a stop in front of her door, instead of nodding, Meiyao gave him a considering look. But then she shook her head, and said, “Same time tomorrow?”
Slightly confused, Jieyuan nodded. “Sure.”
Without another word, she entered her apartment, closing the door behind her.
Jieyuan stood staring at her door for a few moments longer. What had that been about? Nothing came to mind, and he continued on to his room. He made straight for his meditation room, the leftmost door—sharing a wall with Meiyao’s apartments.
Though all that mattered in the room was the plush cushion in the middle of it, it still managed to be extravagant, with thick, elaborate curtains over the large set of windows, shelves on the wall filled with jade books on Concept pursuit and Heavenly Communion that he’d briefly skimmed through before, as well as a small, altar-like cabinet in which all sorts of gemstones, as well as gleamstone, were on display. Some Liangshibai thing, he imagined. The faint, warm scent of sandalwood filled the room.
The windows were all covered, and the gemstone light on the ceiling was unlit. The only source of light came from his bedroom, across it, which had its windows open.
Jieyuan plopped down on the meditation cushion, closing his eyes, entering Heavenly Communion. He got right to it, leaving himself no space for hesitation. The time spent on their walk back had been enough to get him in the right shape for imbuing again.
“Ravenous.”
And it began. His soulprism falling apart, his imbued chroma spreading like a cloud throughout the center of his soul, and then penetrating the walls of his soul. Pinpricks of pain, growing into stabs, growing into sears, growing into glorious, blazing agony.
It spoke to how unimaginably great the pain was that, some time later—it could’ve been seconds, it could’ve been hours, it was impossible to tell while imbuing—that it took Huaxin’s cry of pain, cutting through his own, burning agony, to make him snap back into reality, stopping the chant, breaking up the imbuing ritual.
His senses returning to him, Jieyuan looked down—and in the dim lighting, he saw the sword peeking out of his chest. His mind was still so scrambled by the First Pain—granted, the sheer, stumbling confusion he was in and Huaxin’s formless cries of agony didn’t help any—that for a moment he just stared down, uncomprehending. Stared at his chest, stared at the half a foot of metal sticking out from the center of it, stared at the darkening cloth around it.
More awareness bled through, and he realized that there was a fullgauntleted hand around his mouth, the metal cold around his lips, and that there was someone behind him, their body pressed against his. And with his soulsense, he saw that someone’s soul and aura—both tenth-shade red. A tenth-sign redsoul.
Jieyuan immediately whipped his head back, throwing his body out, but the tenth-sign redsoul had their other arm firmly wrapped around him, keeping him firmly in place. Keeping him in place as their sword remained stuck inside his chest, bleeding him out—and stopping the Fatebloom Heart from doing its thing and regenerating.
Jieyuan kept on struggling as his mind raced. He was fully aware now. As aware as he’d ever been in his life. He blocked out Huaxin’s agony and ignored the pain coming from his chest. As he’d just gotten off the First Pain, it barely registered anyway.
A tenth-sign redsoul was trying to kill him—and doing a pretty good job of it, from the looks of it. He immediately discarded thoughts of why and how. He focused on the what now. Fatebloom Sacrifice immediately came to mind.
Just as he was about to use the Fatebloom Heart’s first gear-skill—and hope it’d suffice—there came a loud, crashing sound, and dust filled up the room.
“Jieyuan!” Meiyao’s voice.
The sword slid out of his chest, sickeningly smooth, and the hand over his mouth and arm over his shoulders moved away—and so did the presence of the tenth-sign redsoul.
Slumping forward, Jieyuan turned his head back and saw a dark-robed figure standing right in front of him, their entire body, from head to toe, wrapped in form-fitting black cloth. Their sword, crimson-slick with Jieyuan’s blood, was held out in front of them.
Across the figure was Meiyao, her saber locked with the tenth-sign’s sword, a feral snarl on her face, blazing green eyes wide, wild. Past Meiyao was a large hole in the wall, opening up to what looked like Meiyao’s bedroom.
Huaxin? Jieyuan thought, focusing on his connection to it, fighting back against his feeling of diminishing awareness. No longer blocking their bond, he could feel the Heart’s agony. Blood was gushing out of his chest in great rivers. His vision was darkening at the edges. If… If you could get on with your regeneration thing, I’d really, really appreciate it.
And just like in the Fatebloom Woods, Huaxin’s agony faded for a moment, and in their place came a single, overwhelming idea.
REFUSAL.
Jieyuan jerked back, and the lightheadedness vanished, his vision sharpening up into crisp clarity. His heart hammered in his chest. His healed heart in his healed chest.
He didn’t waste a moment. Meiyao and his would-be assassin were still battling, the black-robed figure overwhelming Meiyao with their attacks to the point she could only just barely hold on through impossible skill, cuts piling up on her body. Even as he kept his eyes on them, he stuck his left arm into his glyph-stretch pouch, pulled up one of his fullgauntlets with his soulforce, and had it slid right into his right arm.
He channeled chroma into the armor as he pulled his right arm out of the pouch, activating it, the armor taking on the outline of his arm and hand. And then he was on his feet, launching himself toward the black-robed figure, right fist pulled back.
The figure immediately turned around, blocking his fist with their sword and pushing him back. That gave Meiyao all the opportunity she needed to sink her sword into their side, edge-first. The figure whirled around, snapping their sword toward Meiyao in a blur, but Jieyuan had already steadied himself, and he struck again.
As Meiyao leaned out of the way of the strike, the blade missing her by a hair’s breadth, Jieyuan’s fist landed on the figure’s head with all his strength.
He felt a satisfying, solid crunch as his metal-covered fist met the assassin’s head. The figure stumbled away, and Meiyao pulled her saber back, before slashing it out in a fine arc, through the assassin’s neck. The blade cut through cleanly, and the black-wrapped head dropped to the floor, followed right afterward by the black-robed body, falling between Jieyuan and Meiyao.
Heart racing, Jieyuan stared at Meiyao. She was panting, the arms and sides of her topaz robes torn, baring bleeding gashes. Her face was still warped in a wild scowl, teeth bared, eyes a piercing green, as if alight, fixed on the fallen figure. But then she looked up, her eyes landing on his chest. She blinked, her scowl vanishing.
“You—” Meiyao took in a deep breath. She straightened her back, her eyes clearing up. She glanced back in the direction of her room, then back to him, shaking her head. “Change your robes. Quick.”
Jieyuan followed her gaze down to his chest—to the torn, bloodied gash on his robes, and the bloodied but unbroken skin it showed. He quickly produced another set of outer robes from his pouch, took off his current one, vanished the blood on him with a pulse from his cleansing ring, and hurriedly put on his clean outer robe, stuffing his torn one in his pouch.
Meiyao, meanwhile, had kept her sword up, looking around warily. He noticed, through the hole in the wall, another black-robed figure on the ground, slumped in Meiyao’s room.
Before he could ask what was going on, there came another loud, crashing sound, and Yuyan rushed into Meiyao’s room, ramming through its door, sword out, looking murderous—only to stop dead at the sight of them, staring at them from across the hole in the wall. Just behind Yuyan were a pair of sapphire-robed core elders.
Barely a moment later, two more senior protectors barreled into his room from the other side, tearing through the door frame, weapons out as well. Just like Yuyan, they came to a sudden stop upon seeing him and Meiyao.
Meiyao let out a long breath, letting her saber drop down, as her stepmother rushed over to them.
Comments
LunarEcho
TYFTC
lenkite
Uggh..he needs some sort of summoned golem or something to watch over him as his next realm skill.
