Chương 10: Chapter 9: NOT TO FIGHT

CHAPTER 9 NOT TO FIGHT —∞— Meiyao spun on her feet and stalked off, feet slamming hard and loud against the crystal ground. Jieyuan, still tense, glanced at Daojue. His teammate stared back at him, violet eyes fathomless pools. Whatever apprehension he'd felt at Meiyao attacking came nowhere to what he felt now, locking gazes with Daojue. But all Daojue did was strap his spear back on his back and turn back around to regard the corpse of the onyxgleam wolf by his feet.

Like that was the end of it and Jieyuan wasn't even there. It was a very good thing Jieyuan hadn't stopped powering the command just yet. Beneath the layer of calm, he could still faintly feel the rage bubbling. No matter what he said, he still wanted more than anything to lay into Daojue himself, even if he did believe—even if he did know —that it wouldn't do anyone any good. Anger and reason were seldom bedfellows.

He still wanted to do something about it, didn't want to just let the matter go, but nothing came to mind. Even his command-sharpened mind couldn't come up with something that wouldn't end up causing more problems than it would solve. Ultimately, he just couldn't risk outright alienating Daojue or Meiyao. Not when he might very well need one of them—if not both of them—to get to the bottom of the mystery of Amyas's memories. Paying Daojue no further mind, Jieyuan looked over at Meiyao.

She'd returned to the place where she'd killed her onyxgleam wolf. Presently, she was taking tools out of her holder pouch. Scalpels, chisels, even hammers. Meiyao laid them out on the gleamstone floor beside her, in front of the corpse of the beast she'd killed. He kept watching as she picked up one of the scalpels, bent over, and pried the wolf's mouth open. Moments later, she was pulling her hand away, a thick, long, red thing in her grip. A tongue. Refiner, he reminded himself.

The body parts of chromal beasts were as much an ingredient in refining formulas as chromal plants were. Seeing Meiyao work also reminded him he'd yet to collect his own hunt token from his own quarry. His proof of hunt. And it occurred to him he hadn't thought to bring any slaughtering tools. Then again, it wasn't like he knew how to use them anyway. He glanced down at his spear. It'd have to do. With a tired, heavy sigh, Jieyuan trudged back across the trees to the wolf he'd killed.

He found it just as he'd left it, lying slumped on the ground in a pool of its own blood. The dust beacon had started dissipating, but only barely. It'd linger for a while still. Holding his breath again, Jieyuan crossed into the threshold of the beacon dust cloud and came to a stop by the wolf's corpse. Then he released the command. It took all his effort to keep himself still as the command-imposed calm left him.

He took a deep breath, then another, then three—then he noted the sweet scent filling his lungs, remembered where exactly he was, what exactly he was breathing in, and stopped himself midway through a fourth breath. He could've laughed. Almost did. Some of the anger bled away, the edge of it wearing out.

He'd killed a third-step Redrealm beast—had done it as a second-step—and here he was, not celebrating but troubled over his teammates and now hoping he hadn't just breathed in enough poison to send himself into wretched, burning agony. Biting his lip, Jieyuan forced himself to focus on the wolf, on the corpse. Before anything else, he needed to get the carcass somewhere he could breathe.

Drawing on his mantle to augment his strength to the limit, he dragged the corpse out of the beacon zone, leaving behind a trail of thick, dark blood on the gleaming, crystalline forest floor. Standing in poison-free air now, breathing again, Jieyuan eyed the gap running along its back. He wondered whether he could use that, but he ultimately decided against it.

After a moment's consideration, he grabbed onto the corpse again, and with his strength still augmented by his aura, pulled up, turning the wolf onto its side. The hulking corpse swayed as it lingered for a moment lying with just one side on the ground, before tipping back in the other direction, back against the floor and its stomach to the skies. Jieyuan ran his eyes over the corpse's underside, studying the gaps in its armor. The one cutting the entire length of the beast's underside seemed the most promising.

He wasn't sure how to go about this, hadn't done anything even remotely similar to it before. He was a merchant's son, not a butcher's. But he reckoned he could figure it out. He hopped onto the beast's stomach; it was so big he could actually stand on top of it properly. Gleam beasts all had a gleam core—a roughly sphere-shaped core of gleamstone—inside them. That was the hunt token they were supposed to retrieve from the beasts they'd killed during the Gleamstone Hunt.

He'd read the location of the gleam cores varied from race to race of gleam beasts, but they tended to be near the chest. Near the heart. His soulsenses proved just as ineffective as his eyes at finding it, though. Spiritual bodies were as opaque as souls; the wolf's spirit extended to every part of its physical body, and its surface did as good a job at hiding anything inside from sight as its fur did. No way around it, then. He'd have to open it up and look for the core.

Jieyuan shifted his hold on his spear, slipped the blade right into the fleshy line over the corpse's chest, and then threw his weight into it. The tip of the blade sunk out of sight. Jieyuan put pressure on it until he couldn't see most of the blade anymore, then squaring his shoulders began pulling the shaft towards himself. Blood bubbled out of the cut as he widened it. Though the spear was at the same step as the beast, this wasn't nearly as easy as he'd thought it'd be.

The exposed, fleshy skin down the chest gap was way thicker and harder than it'd been around the neck. He'd really made the right choice to go for the neck. Jieyuan persevered, though, gritting his teeth. Probably there was some easier way of going about this, but this would have to do. Midway through the beast's stomach, he reckoned that was enough, and pulled the spearhead out with a wet sound and another little spurt of blood.

He waved the spear away from him in a quick, snappy arc, to get rid of the blood on it, before strapping it back onto his back. Next, he knelt down on top of the beast, grabbed onto its gleamstone coat on either side of the cut he'd made on its chest, and started pulling in opposite directions. It gave with surprising ease, but only up to a point. He stared down at the larger gap he'd torn open, looking like a gruesome crystal window into its body. Thick dark meat coated the beast's rib cage.

The rib cage, which was very much so in his way, and with much thicker ribs than he'd expected. Now there was the question of how to get to the gleam core. Hack away at the ribs? The gaps between them didn't seem big enough to stick his arms inside.

"You should have cut it open from the back. The gaps between the bones are wider there." Jieyuan turned around. Meiyao was standing just outside the threshold of the lingering beacon dust, leaning against the trunk of a crystal tree, arms crossed over her chest. Her sleeves, he couldn't help but notice, were pulled back, revealing toned arms. Arms that were also spotlessly clean.

Jieyuan didn't see a drop of blood on her, even though the last time he'd seen her she'd been getting quite intimate with an onyxgleam wolf's insides. She must've cleaned her arms up somehow (she'd probably brought with her something to do it with, considering she wouldn't be able to use an all-cleanser yet) but the fact she hadn't gotten any blood on her robes told him she really knew her way around a corpse.

Then again, that was no surprise considering all the tools she'd brought with her, and the way she'd so easily and expertly cut off the wolf's tongue earlier. Meiyao nodded to the large, bloodied gash on the base of the wolf's neck.

"That's how you did it? Stab on the neck?"

"Yeah," Jieyuan said, feeling a little unsure. Why was Meiyao talking to him like this? Last he'd seen her, she'd been awfully pissed off. If Meiyao took notice of his confusion, she didn't show it.

"Not bad. And that's Rongkai's dust beacon you used, right?" She was looking behind him now, where he'd dragged the wolf from.

"The one infused with Cultivator's Agony?"

"Just the one." Jieyuan considered Meiyao for a moment. He wasn't so sure what had changed, why she was in such a better mood all of a sudden, but he wasn't about to waste this opportunity.

"Say, earlier, when you were fighting, I saw…" Meiyao took on a guarded expression, narrowing her eyes at him, and Jieyuan cut himself off. To press, or not to press the subject? He didn't take long to decide, letting the remaining words die in his throat. It would be nice to know what Meiyao's glowing green aura and that red haze from earlier were, both to understand her situation better and so he could account for it in future battles, but it wasn't worth risking this olive branch she was offering him.

Though her reticence on the subject was a mystery all of its own.

"Never mind," Jieyuan said.

"Hmmm." Meiyao's gaze lingered on him for a few moments longer, undecipherable, before she looked away and stuck an arm into a hidden pocket of her robes. Seeing her arm disappear all the way to the elbow, Jieyuan realized she was digging inside a holder pouch. When she pulled her arm out, she was holding a long, metal bar, curved at the tip. A crowbar? Curious tool in hand, Meiyao pushed herself off the tree she'd been leaning on and walked over.

Jieyuan watched wordlessly as she approached, confused and just a mite wary. She didn't look as incensed, but she didn't look exactly friendly, either. Just… stony. Closed-off. Daojue-like. Meiyao jumped onto the gleam wolf, effortlessly and gracefully finding her footing right upon landing. Jieyuan stumbled back to make a little space for her and almost fell off in the process; ignoring him, she eyed the gash he'd been working on.

"Watch," was all Meiyao said before she stuck her crowbar into the gash between the beast's ribs, at an angle. Then, she pulled the crowbar toward her, like a level—and the metal bar in turn pushed the rib away, opening a gap. Jieyuan saw a little more of the beast's insides then, but he couldn't tell much of what was what among the mounds of flesh and viscera and blood.

One arm still pressed against the crowbar, Meiyao stuck her other arm inside the gap she'd widened between the ribs, sinking it a little past the elbow, just shy of her rolled-up sleeves. No hesitation whatsoever as she put it in. Barely a moment passed before she was pulling her arm back, now soaked in blood. In her hand was a small, round piece of gleamstone, about the size of a fingernail.

Like the hand holding it, the stone was thoroughly bloodied, but there were a couple of blood-free spots on it that revealed a glistening, dark gray surface exactly like the onyx crystal coat of the onyx gleam wolf. She tossed it to him, then pointed down at the wolf with the blood-soaked arm that had just been elbow-deep in gore.

"Mind if I take some parts?" Jieyuan wiped the gleam core on his robe, checked it wasn't all bloody anymore, and put it away in his holder pouch.

"Have at it." Meiyao nodded, hopped off the wolf, and made her way around over to its head. Jieyuan jumped off after her and stood a little to the side. She first pulled a fabric off her pouch with her clean arm, wiped it, and then laid out a bunch of tools on the ground, the same ones he'd seen her prepare before she'd worked on her wolf. Then she got to work. Jieyuan watched her go at it. Meiyao was all precise movements. There was little doubt that she knew what she was doing.

He'd briefly watched her extract parts from the wolf she'd killed from a distance earlier, and now that he had a front-seat view of the action, it only looked all the more impressive. The crystalline backdrop here only deepened the impression. As much as he was a cultivator now, the wonder he'd always felt for the chromal world had hardly faded, and the Gleamstone Valley was easily the highlight, good and bad, of the chromal world so far.

Meiyao made quick work of the corpse, collecting the beast's eyes, tongue, nails, and some other parts Jieyuan didn't have names for. Once she was done, they returned to the center of the clearing together. They found Daojue meditating close to where they'd left him, legs crossed and eyes closed under a tree near the corpse of that first wolf. Meiyao sent a glare Daojue's way, then huffed, gave Jieyuan a curt nod, and stalked off.

She came to a stop under another tree, one a good distance from Daojue's but still well within sight of it. For his part, Jieyuan avoided dwelling too much on Daojue as he headed to a spot about halfway between his two teammates. Somehow he had ended up as the reasonable one of his team, and wasn't that a thought? Him, the Firesoul, playing peacemaker. He was halfway to the spot he'd picked out when he stopped, recalling something. Hadn't Meiyao said they'd have someone watching over them during the Hunt?

She'd even said it might be a sect protector. Frowning, he looked around searchingly, scanning the trees around them. He failed to detect the presence of anyone around, but that didn't mean much. The range of his soulsenses was pathetic, and he doubted there existed a single tenth-step Redrealm who wouldn't be able to hide from a mere second-step. Still, he couldn't help but wonder: Did this watcher of theirs not intervene because they thought the three of them had it handled?

If so, that was an awful lot of faith the elder had in them. Jieyuan certainly wouldn't have taken the risk in their place. It would've been one thing if the three of them were all facing one enemy, but they'd been fighting separately. All sect elders were at tenth-step Redrealm by rule, but even though a tenth-step Redsoul should've been able to take down an onyx gleamstone wolf in seconds, they couldn't be in multiple places at the same time. A tenth-step Redsoul's hastespace was only so strong.

Jieyuan glanced over at Meiyao, wondering if he should bring up the subject with her. But when he saw her meditating under her tree, eyes closed, cool and closed-off, he decided to set the matter aside for now. Give her some time to cool down a bit more on the Daojue business. She had warmed up to him quickly enough just now, and Woodsouls weren't known for holding grudges. Granted, if Jieyuan hadn't heard about Meiyao's alignment from the sect's rumor mill, there was no way he'd have guessed Woodsoul.

Rather, he'd have bet on either Fire or Water. Seems that just like with me, the usual stereotypes aren't worth much with her, he thought, somewhat amused. Ignoring Meiyao's matter for now, he squinted his eyes up past the shimmering ceiling of crystal branches and leaves above, taking in the sun's position. They were already late into the afternoon, just two or so hours short of nightfall. He reckoned he'd only be fresh again by tomorrow morning. He brought his gaze back down and glanced between his teammates.

They'd also have to discuss their arrangements for setting up camp. They couldn't stay here, near the corpses, much longer. He eyed the corpses of the chromal wolves they'd killed, recalling something from over a month ago—a lesson one of the elders in charge of the sect's vivariums had given him, Meiyao, and Daojue during their mission there. When a cultivator's died, their soul left their body, and together with the departure of their soul, all the advantages provided by their mantle.

A cultivator's body was fundamentally mundane; only their soul was infused with chroma. It was different with beasts; their spirit and life were separate things, and upon a chromal beast's death, their chroma-filled spirit lingered in their carcass. Problem was, the corpses of chromal beasts, spirit-infused or not, would still rot. Much more slowly than their mundane counterparts, to be sure, but their bodies still broke down after death. Chromal microorganisms existed.

Jieyuan wasn't sure how it worked with gleam beasts specifically here in the Gleamstone Valley—whether they were integrated into the crystal ground or something—but their decomposition should still draw over other chromal beasts. Jieyuan frowned, thoughtful. They were still in the Second Ring and were unlikely to come across more third-step beasts like the onyxgleam wolves, but second-step beasts in enough numbers would still pose a threat to the three of them.

They should probably be safe for a few hours, but this wasn't a good place to stay overnight. Jieyuan glanced at Meiyao again. She was clearly experienced with this kind of thing; she'd probably bring it up soon. He'd give it an hour or two; if she still kept her silence, he'd take the initiative. He resumed walking.

Reaching the tree he'd picked, he plopped down onto the ground under its shade (if he could even call it a shade, considering there wasn't a proper shadow under it with how both the tree and the ground were glowing), leaning his back against the trunk. Feeling a faint rumble of hunger, Jieyuan took a fasting pill, then a cleansing one. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. That done, Jieyuan closed his eyes and went over his plans.

Some harvesting and attuning chroma was in order; he'd put a dent in his chroma reserves. He'd also have to make some time to talk to Maeva later and go over some of her ideas for Absolute Will Command. They'd already tested a few of her ideas before the hunt, back in his residence. One of the first things they'd done was experiment with the Pains, both suppressing it and simulating it.

Neither had worked; Maeva's theory was that the Pains were spiritual in nature and so couldn't be reproduced by the unconscious like mundane pain could. Jieyuan needed more of that. More experiments, to understand Absolute Will Command better. Its limitations and applications both. His bondskill had done him more harm than good in his first real fight.

Sacrificing almost a tenth of a prismful of chroma was in no way worth the brief second he'd managed to slow the onyx gleam wolf for and the insignificant wound it'd received. He hardly cared for a repeat of that. He'd gotten what should have been an amazing bondskill, and he wasn't about to let what might just be his only leg-up over Daojue and Meiyao go to waste. —∞— The fight had barely begun, and already Jieyuan was losing.

He was on his back foot, literally and figuratively, as Daojue's spear stabbed at his neck. Jieyuan managed to lift his own spear to bat it aside in time, but that barely gave Daojue a pause, the taller man taking a step forward and doing something with his arm and upper body that Jieyuan didn't manage to catch. What he did catch was the result of it, the blade of Daojue's spear piercing through his left shoulder. Dead center, through bone and meat and nerve and all. Ruining it.

A beat later, Daojue drew back his spear, drawing a spurt of blood together with it. Teeth gritted, Jieyuan used his right arm—his left arm having fallen limp, useless—to deliver a halfhearted arcing strike to Daojue's chest even as he pulled back, feet shuffling as he tried to make a retreat.

But Daojue pressed forward, twisting his body to the side just enough to avoid the attack, before he did another one of those shifting moves Jieyuan couldn't catch, and before Jieyuan could even begin reacting, the golden blade of Daojue's spear was a yellow line he could only just see at the edge of his vision, coming down from the side.

Then something hit his neck, something sharp and fast and unstoppable, and then he was falling, eyes wide, even as his body somehow remained standing, the gleamstone approaching, coming closer— Stop. Rewind. And they were back, the two of them, standing in a small clearing surrounded by crystal trees, facing each other, spears bared. And there was also another Jieyuan, to the side. The real one.

Jieyuan took a moment to gather himself, to overcome the shock of his death—he was getting better at it already, and wasn't that quite the thing to get used to—before focusing on his copy and Daojue.

"Go," he said. All of it happened again, except it was Jieyuan's copy taking his place: Daojue's first stab, copy-Jieyuan's rushed parry, Daojue's spear stabbing into copy-Jieyuan's shoulder, Jieyuan's follow-up strike and Daojue's final swing, Again. Slower. The scene reset itself: copy-Jieyuan and Daojue reappeared in their initial positions, facing each other. Again that same sequence of events played out, but this time much more slowly. Jieyuan approached, eyes glued onto Daojue, tracking his every action.

This time, when Daojue killed his copy, Jieyuan nodded to himself, satisfied. Rewind. Jieyuan's surroundings blurred—and then he was standing in the middle of the gleamstone plane, facing Daojue again. This time there was no copy of him. He nodded at his stony-faced teammate.

"Go." That was all the invitation Daojue needed. In three strides Daojue closed the distance between them, his spear already engaged in another lethal move, this one aimed lower, at Jieyuan's chest. Jieyuan stepped to the side and forward, trying to reproduce what Daojue had done earlier, drawing an arc with his spear level with Daojue's neck. But then the blade of Daojue's spear was just a golden point right in the center of his vision, having come from seemingly nowhere.

It struck him right between his eyes, piercing skin, then skull, then brain, and this time death came instantaneously. Rewind. This time Jieyuan appeared to the side, and Daojue faced a copy of him. It all played out again. Once he was satisfied, Jieyuan took his copy's place. Daojue attacked. Jieyuan reacted, fighting back. Daojue killed him. Rewind. Back to analysis. Copy-Jieyuan and Daojue fought over and over. Then back to combat. Rewind. Analysis. Rewind. Combat. Rewind. Analysis. Rewind. Combat. Rewind.

Daojue lunged. Jieyuan died in the first exchange. Rewind. Jieyuan held off the first two strikes, but then Daojue stabbed him through the ribs and followed up immediately afterward with a spearhead jab to the neck. Rewind. Rewind. Rewind. Rewind. And again and again and again.

It was in the fifty-seventh clash, after Daojue sunk the head of his spear in Jieyuan's heart for the thirteenth time, that Jieyuan decided to call it, cutting off the flow of the chroma powering Absolute Will Command Jieyuan's perspective shifted. He was no longer standing—or falling dead, as it were—but sitting. The crystal floor hard and rough underneath him, the trunk of a gleamstone tree just as hard and rough behind him. Legs crossed, eyes closed. Spear lying sideways on his lap, hands resting on its shaft.

He opened his eyes. At night, the Gleamstone Forest managed to be even more stunning than in the daytime. Its glow was softer, now fueled only by the little sunlight caught during that day that still lingered in its crystal bodies and by the much weaker light of the stars and the moon, but made all that much more striking by the nighttime gloom. The different-colored hues from the many different plants, only barely distinguishable in daylight, were now a stark, clear thing.

The flora of the Inner Valley was also noticeably more diverse than that of the Outer Valley. The tree Jieyuan was under glowed in soft tones of red. Right to his side were two trees almost glued together, one radiating a soft blue light and the other a shifting swirl of yellow and orange. Beneath those twinned trees was Meiyao, sitting cross-legged on the ground much like he was. On the other side of him was Daojue, near a large violet tree. Both of them looked nothing short of pristine.

There was barely a ruffle in their robes or a stray hair in place; they seemed as fresh as it got. In comparison … Jieyuan glanced down at himself. His ruby outer robes were torn all over; there were tears even in his black inner robe. There were also bloodstains on it. Nevertheless, he was determined to make his robes last; harvesting tools weren't the only things he had forgotten to bring to the hunt. He only had with him one spare set of robes, something he normally carried anyway, and he was saving it for now.

There was one big reason for this difference in states between him and his teammates, and it wasn't just the fact that both of them had already gone through multiple sets of robes. Both his teammates were close enough that Jieyuan could see them with his soulsenses. Two human outlines in third-shade red, their mantle, with a denser orb of proper third-shade red in their center, their souls. Daojue had been the first to break through to third-step Redrealm; he'd done it eight days ago, on the third of Yellowfull.

Meiyao had advanced just two days later. And today, in just a couple of hours, it would be Jieyuan's turn. And it really couldn't come fast enough. These last few days his thoughts had never strayed from his incoming breakthrough. Daojue acting out in their first fight had proved to be the exception, not the rule; nine days ago, Meiyao had tentatively suggested a plan for their second fight, and Daojue had followed it without issue. He had then gone on to cooperate with every plan thereafter.

Daojue had yet to apologize for his behavior during their first fight and Jieyuan doubted Meiyao would forgive him until he did, but with Daojue playing nice, an uneasy truce had settled between them. Problem was, ever since both Meiyao and Daojue had reached third-step, the weak link in their team had become Jieyuan. Not because he wouldn't cooperate, but because of how weak he was compared to them now. These last few days, his contributions to fights had been minimal, and he was very much sick of feeling useless.

Jieyuan took a deep breath, steadying himself. Just thinking about it had him wanting to go for his breakthrough there and then, but he stopped himself. He'd had his last cultivation session not long ago, leaving his mind a little raw; he had to wait until he was fully recovered from his last encounter with the First Pain. Rushing a breakthrough just wasn't worth the risk. He'd heard of cultivators dying because of it.

If you weren't ready for it, the Second Pain could shatter your mind; your body would give up right after, and the Silver Stream would come in, plucking your helpless, mindless soul into its silvery grasp. Advancing a step wasn't done lightly. The Second Pain. Jieyuan had to keep himself from wincing just at the thought of it. There were three Pains. The First Pain, the pain of imbuing. The Second Pain, the pain of the soul-flare. And the Third Pain, the pain of the soul-shift.

Each one magnitudes worse than the last. Soul-flaring happened when you advanced to the next step, when the imbued chroma in your soul reached a specific density level and fully stabilized, becoming not just imbued chroma, but stabilized chroma. He'd experienced the Second Pain once before, when he advanced to second-step Redrealm. And even though it'd only lasted ten seconds from start to end, it'd made all his imbuing sessions before and since seem almost pleasant in comparison.

Jieyuan turned his attention inwardly, probing at his mind. It was like touching a scabbed wound: he got a solid but rough feeling from it. Just a little while more, he decided. Waiting was so rotting hard, though. He glanced down at his lap, eyed his right hand—more specifically, the golden ring circling his index finger. It was a recent addition, and the most precious thing on his person currently. To his soulsenses, it was a tenth-shade red band.

He'd had it on him for a while now, but he still looked at it with wonder. The ring was a space-hasting artifact. An artifact that allowed any Redsoul, regardless of step, to replicate the tenth-step Redtalent: Hastespace manifestation. The power to speed up the flow of time in the space immediately around them. Not to the same extent as a tenth-step Redsoul could—it was proportional to their step—but even at third-step, that was already a sixfold heightening.

Jieyuan glanced at Meiyao, at her hands cradled on her lap; his gaze fell on her hands, cradled on her lap. Scale-plated armor covered them (cultivator's gauntlets, something she and Daojue had taken to wearing ever since advancing to third-step), but he knew that under the armor, in one of her hands was a golden ring identical to his.

Six days ago, after Meiyao had broken through to third-step Redsoul, she'd produced three haster rings and handed one to Daojue (though she'd looked rather sour while doing it) and another to Jieyuan.

They were a loan, she'd told them, and she'd be expecting them back later. No doubt she'd gotten them from her family; haster rings were rare even in the inner court. Regardless of their origin, though, one thing was clear: Jieyuan couldn't wait to use them. Just breaking through to third-step Redrealm gave Meiyao and Daojue the ability to manipulate chroma, letting them bond artifacts. That was a massive advantage all of its own, even without the haster rings.

But the rings all but ensured Jieyuan couldn't hold a candle to his teammates; they were the main reasons why Jieyuan couldn't contribute in their fights anymore, why he was so useless now compared to Meiyao and Daojue. Soon, he promised himself. Very, very soon. And it's not as if I haven't been getting stronger in other ways. Closing his eyes, breathing in the chill night air, Jieyuan thought back to his simulated duels with Daojue just now. Combat simulation had been one of Maeva's recent ideas.

She'd suggested that since he was capable of using Absolute Will Command to create a seemingly perfect copy of her as a hallucination, he might be able to take it a step further and use it as a way to train himself through simulated combat.

It might have been better to do so with a conscious hallucination like Maeva usually was, one that he interacted with physically, but since he didn't want to have to explain to his teammates why he was fighting empty air, he'd gone for a more dreamlike approach, having all of it happen entirely in his head. It was not as effective as fighting a hallucination consciously (a lot of combat was muscle memory, and simulated fights didn't help with that), but it was better than nothing.

And after it had occurred to him he could replay and slow down his simulated matches with Daojue, he'd started making good progress. Especially since Meiyao and Daojue started using haster rings, Jieyuan thought, wryly amused. He might have gotten sidelined as a result, sure, but as rotten as that made him feel, it had turned out there was one advantage to standing to the side while Daojue and Meiyao fought: it let him observe his teammates in combat. That was why his combat simulations were so accurate.

Combat simulation hadn't been Maeva's only idea for Absolute Will Command, either. He'd taken the time to test all sorts of other things, too. And again I have getting sidelined to thank for it. Again that wry amusement. Standing to the side during fights had also left Jieyuan free to experiment with his bondskill on the beasts Meiyao and Daojue fought. He'd also approached Meiyao for a few more practice sessions with his bondskill these last few days.

One thing he'd quickly found was that commands didn't seem to work that well on gleam beasts; the onyxgleam wolf hadn't been an exception. He'd had the chance to use Absolute Will Command on second-step Redrealm gleam beasts, and they put up even more resistance than Meiyao had when he'd tested his bondskill on her. He just wasn't sure whether all chromal beasts could put up such a strong resistance or whether gleam beasts had particularly strong wills.

Still, he'd manage to find out a few things, especially with Meiyao's cooperation. One discovery was that the target didn't need to understand or even hear the command; as long as it was spoken aloud, even if whispered, it'd take. He'd also found that though he could only keep up one command at a time, he could target multiple individuals with it; the only problem was that he'd have to split his willpower to suppress their resistance.

Something else he'd found the target's ability to resist had to do with their willpower, but also their step. Or rather, the gap between his step and the target's. But that wasn't anything unusual; he'd learned from Meiyao that step gaps factored in the effectiveness of most if not all bondskills. Like a lesser form of the realm gap between Laws.

His greatest finding, though, was that if the target didn't know they were under the effect of a command, there'd normally be no resistance—unless the command would directly incapacitate or kill it, in which case their mind would unconsciously put up monumental resistance. Since this discovery, Jieyuan had spent a great deal of time with Maeva thinking up subtle commands that wouldn't be noticed or resisted and how to use them.

These last ten days Jieyuan's step might not have risen, and he might still be getting butchered by Daojue every time he ran a combat simulation—but he was getting stronger, closing the gap between him and his teammates. And I'm about to close that gap even further. Jieyuan checked on his mind again. And sure enough, he found that there was still the barest hint of soreness. Not yet, then. Keeping his anxiety in check, eyes still closed, Jieyuan sent his soulsenses inward.

Seeing his soul again, a red sphere far darker than it should've been, Jieyuan forced himself not to dwell too long on its colors (a mystery he hadn't gotten any closer to solving) and checked on his soulprism. It was mostly whole, as he'd been topping it up every night, but not completely. Something to do while he waited for his mind to fully recover. Shifting his focus away from his soulsenses, Jieyuan reached inside his holder pouch and took out a chroma prism.

Holding the crystal in his grasp, he entered Heavenly Communion; feeling the Heavens' attention on him, he began to chant the harvesting hymn he'd chosen for himself from the sect's library." Flaming," he chanted. Immediately the harvesting ritual began, his control over his soul surrendered to the Heavens. Cultivators could only directly use their soulforce on chroma they'd harvested and attuned.

Only through the heavenly rituals could they interact with ambient chroma—loose or materialized—and draw into themselves. The chroma comprising the prism began to break down, unmaterializing and flowing into his body, floating up through the mantle suffusing the same space as his arms—which would've normally repelled off ambient chroma—unimpeded, then into his chest, into his soul." Flaming."

In a trickle flow, the chroma from the prism entered his soul through the fourteen, minuscule, vent-like openings on the soul shell that led straight to the center—and began pooling down under his floating soulprism. Harvested, inside his soul, but unattuned. The influx of chroma was slow, just about a hundredth of a prismful per hour. If he'd been using loose ambient chroma directly, it'd have been less than half that rate, given his fourth-order heavenly affinity.

Jieyuan kept it up for a while, until he decided he had harvested just about enough, before he stopped chanting. The flow of chroma into his soul ceased, the harvesting ritual interrupted. He returned what remained of the prism to his holder pouch, then began chanting the attuning hymn." Ablaze," he said, and with his soulsenses directed inward, he could feel—see it, or at least the soulsenses equivalent of it—as his soulprism began spinning.

Slowly at first, but faster by the second, until it was almost spherical, its edges and hard lines smoothed out by the speed. The harvested but unattuned chroma that he'd absorbed floated up seemingly on its own to join the spinning soulprism, all of it melding into one, rotating, red blur. Jieyuan found it a meditative experience, watching his soulprism spin under the hold of the attuning ritual.

He barely noticed it as his mouth kept repeating the attuning hymn, " Ablaze," over and over again, lost in the movement, in the feel of his attuned chroma moving and increasing, as the chroma he'd harvested earlier gradually merged with his soulprism, though not all of it. What chroma he did end up attuning was a small fraction of the unattuned chroma in his soul hollow, the rest of it being sacrificed by the attuning ritual itself, which unlike the harvesting and imbuing rituals, was sacrificial.

"Jieyuan." Meiyao's voice. Breaking out of the trance, Jieyuan stopped his chant. In his chest, his soulprism stopped spinning, minutely bigger than before, and the bit of harvested chroma that remained unattuned and unsacrificed sunk to the bottom of the hollow. Opening his eyes, Jieyuan found Meiyao standing over him, bright green eyes looking him over, studying him. Jieyuan watched her back.

"You're about to advance, right?" she finally said.

"I am." He kept his cool, or at least tried to. Then, awkward in the way only Meiyao had ever made him feel, he added, rather lamely,"Wish me luck." Meiyao quirked up an eyebrow.

"You won't need it." She smirked at him.

"But good luck all the same, Jieyuan." Without another word, Meiyao turned around and walked past him, toward Daojue. Jieyuan watched her go, suddenly unable to take his eyes off her. Something bright, light, and airy fluttered in his stomach, the phantom image of her smirk lingering in his mind. Meiyao stopped in front of Daojue and wordlessly extended her arm; just as wordlessly, eyes closed, Daojue picked up the silver plate that had been resting on his lap and handed it to Meiyao.

So it's already time to change shifts, Jieyuan realized. He hadn't really been keeping track of time. They'd come up with a system of sorts for setting up camp. Or at least what went for camping to cultivators. Fasting pills ensured they needed no food or water, and cleansing pills also eliminated the need for relieving themselves. They didn't need any protection from the elements, either. Their Law ensured that no mundane chill could affect them. So camping to them was just calling it a day and sitting down.

All they needed to do was keep watch. And even that was made that much simpler. Meiyao had brought a surveillance field-focus with her—a chromal artifact that, different from your standard transmuted artifact, whose properties were altered by their inscripts, instead had an inscribed field anchored onto them. The silver plate Daojue had just handed Meiyao. Jieyuan could barely just sense the inscribed field with his soulsenses, covering him and his teammates. Fifth-shade red but faint, like a mantle.

It extended even farther than his soulsenses, about a hundred feet in every direction, and would alert its bond-master of the presence of any moving spirit-bearing beings. Meiyao walked back, the silver plate now in her grasp. Jieyuan barely caught it as she whispered something quietly under her breath. The next moment Jieyuan felt the field around them tremble, very briefly. That must've been Meiyao bonding it, then. The silver plate changing masters.

Whoever was keeping watch would bond the silver plate while the other two would be free to sleep or cultivate. Currently only Meiyao and Daojue had shifts, as Jieyuan couldn't bond artifacts yet. Daojue had, thankfully, agreed to this arrangement, though the first few times he kept watch, Jieyuan (and Meiyao too, he was sure) had secretly kept an eye on him, just to make sure.

It was the fact that Daojue did go along with at least some things that stopped their team from falling apart altogether—that, and Jieyuan's begrudging efforts. No doubt Daojue's cooperation, even though circumstantial, had factored in Meiyao's decision to lend Daojue a haster ring despite all their disagreements and conflicts. Meiyao stopped briefly just as she passed by Jieyuan, glancing at him, and caught him staring at her.

But all she did was shoot him another smile, a knowing look in her eyes, before returning to her tree and sitting back down. Focus, Jieyuan reminded himself, prying his eyes off Meiyao. Turning his attention inward, he probed his mind again. And this time he found not a hint of soreness or tenderness. His mind was whole again. Whole and ready for his breakthrough. It was time. Time for the Second Pain.

Right now he had two prismfuls of stable red chroma imbuing in his soul, filling up the soul shell, and very close to a prismful of unstable imbued chroma. How close he wasn't sure, but he was on the brink of it: when he started imbuing, it could happen at any moment. That unstable chroma would stabilize. And with that would come agony. Pure agony. The First Pain, but magnified, compressed into ten seconds. Pain so powerful not even cultivators could reproduce it through concoctions.

The Heavens let cultivators recreate the First Pain through Cultivator's Agony easily enough, but not the Second and Third. Those, the Heavens jealously monopolized. Jieyuan entered Heavenly Communion. His heart began to beat faster. Apprehension brewed in his stomach. But that wasn't all he felt. There was also a fire in him, blazing brighter and brighter. Because as terrifying as the Second Pain was, it was also worth it. Breaking through to third-step would be like being born anew.

It wasn't as much of a raw improvement as that from first-step to second-step—never mind mundane to chromal—but he'd still become better in just about every way by half. And considering he'd unlock the ability to use artifacts, and that he had a haster ring just waiting to be used… Let's go. Jieyuan grinned. Without leaving himself any space for hesitation, as anticipation and apprehension waged war within him, he chanted,"Ravenous." And so it began.