Chương 21: Chapter 20: TO BE RID

" Meiyao had her eyes narrowed, looking him up and down. Arms crossed over her chest, standing by the door.

"Hmmm. You look whole." Jieyuan was in the doorway, facing her. On his way back to the sect, he'd thought his next few steps through. What he wanted was to head straight back home and take his sweet time figuring out just what the Fatebloom Heart could do. But he'd decided he needed to check in with Meiyao first: hand her back her saber, field her questions.

"So I am." He tipped his head forward.

"Mind if I come inside?" Meiyao stepped away from the door, and he strode in. The blinds over her living room windows were half-open, letting in some sunlight. Meiyao closed the door, not taking her eyes off him.

"You got your matter done, then?"

"I did."

"But something happened?" Meiyao was still by the door, scrutinizing him. He studied her back, though he'd have liked to think he was a bit less obvious about it. He'd wondered if she—if others —would be able to notice his quite literal change of heart. The Fatebloom Heart was technically inside his soul, so nobody should be able to reach it with their soulsenses, but he'd needed to be sure. As far as he could tell, her scrutiny seemed to be of the normal sort.

He reckoned she'd have had a bit more of a reaction if she could see the Heart, beating away in his chest.

"That's one way of putting it," Jieyuan said. He hesitated for just a moment, then added, "I… might have gone and killed a core disciple." He imagined Meiyao would soon be hearing about the deaths of the two Fusongshi and where they'd died. With him having left the sect at around that time, it wouldn't take much for her to connect the dots. So he figured he might as well be upfront about it and earn himself some points for honesty and openness. He'd be cashing in on them soon. Meiyao stood up straighter." What?"

"I might have also killed a protector." He gave her a sheepish smile.

"You sure weren't kidding when you said Radiant Light Blast talismans packed a punch, were you?" Meiyao blinked once, twice, thrice, eyes wide. Then she took a deep breath and said, "Start at the beginning."

"I went to the Fatebloom Woods," Jieyuan began; Meiyao blinked owlishly at him, clearly caught by surprise.

"I had some… business to handle there. The core disciple turned out to have been tracking me. I managed to get the jump on her. Killed her with your saber. The protector arrived a little while later. For him, I had to use the Radiant Light Blast talisman. And on that note…" He unbuckled the sheathed saber from his belt and held it out to her.

"Here you go." Meiyao gave him a long look, then took her weapon back. She unsheathed the blade and gave it a quick look-over before sliding it back into the scabbard, which she attached to her belt. She turned her attention back to him.

"What were you even doing in the Fatebloom Woods?"

"Remember our little talk on secrets?" Jieyuan asked. On his way here he'd struggled with whether to tell her about the Fatebloom Heart. On the one hand, he felt he had a fairly good grasp of Meiyao's character. She wasn't the greedy sort. That she hadn't taken Rongkai's violet skillseed for herself back in the aftermath of their mission in the Fatebloom Woods was already rather telling. And he'd like to think a camaraderie of sorts had developed between them during their time in the Fatebloom Woods.

But he still didn't have much of a clue what the Fatebloom Heart even was. Until he had a better grasp on things, he felt he was better off keeping its existence to himself. Meiyao also had plenty of secrets of herself. Maybe keeping quiet about his own might get her to open up about some of hers. It might be what it took for her to take the initiative. Part of him also wanted to be the mysterious one for once. Meiyao frowned, and she worked her jaw, opened her mouth, closed it, then pursed her lips, and sighed.

"That's fair," she said, at last, and Jieyuan couldn't deny the little stab of disappointment he felt. Guess her opening up is still off the table. Meiyao walked over to the table in the middle of the living room and sat down on a chair.

"Anyway. You haven't told anyone what happened, right? Did anyone know you'd be leaving the sect?" Jieyuan sat across from her.

"I haven't told anybody what happened, obviously. You're the first. As for my leaving the sect… Daojue knows I was planning on heading out. But not any details. And I don't think he'll be telling anyone, either."

"Good." Meiyao looked thoughtful.

"A core disciple. And a protector. Any idea who they were?"

"Not specifically, but the core disciple was a Fusongshi. She said Sunqiu was her cousin. The protector said she was his granddaughter."

"I think I know who she was. There's a Fusongshi protector who apprenticed his granddaughter. Did she look around our age, a little shorter than me, oval face, sharp eyes?"

"Yeah. And the protector seemed middle-aged. Severe-looking."

"It's indeed those two, then," Meiyao said.

"I can see it. She was the ambitious sort, and not all that subtle about it. Ambitious and curious. She was always quite interested in me, in my hair and eyes. I think she wouldn't have thought twice about dissecting me if it meant she could figure out why I looked this way."

"That's about right," Jieyuan said.

"She seemed awfully interested in how I'd managed to kill Sunqiu and in what I was doing in the Fatebloom Woods."

"That's her, all right," Meiyao said.

"And there wasn't anybody else? Just her, and then, later, her grandfather?"

"As far as I know. She was rather talkative—she told me how she'd followed me in secret, how nobody else knew we were there. But then the elder appeared, so I'm not so sure."

"No, she was probably telling the truth," Meiyao said.

"Did you find a tenth-step artifact on her? A ring, probably."

"A ring… Oh." Jieyuan unhooked his holder pouch from his belt, drew it open, stuck his right arm inside it, up to the elbow, and rummaged inside a bit before pulling out the tenth-step Redrealm ring he'd found on the core disciple. The one he wasn't sure what it did. He tossed it to Meiyao.

"You mean this?" She caught it and barely glanced at it before nodding.

"Precisely. That's a death-caller."

"What does it do?"

"On its own, nothing. But when it's paired to another, the moment its owner dies, it alerts the other death-caller it's paired to of its owner's time of death and the location. It's standard practice for protectors to give their apprentice one. Her grandfather should have had its pair. You didn't find another one?"

"No. The Radiant Light Blast just about erased his whole upper body and everything on it." He narrowed his eyes at the ring Meiyao was still holding. The death-caller.

"Well, at least that explains how I was tracked, this time. Is there any danger in holding onto it? Anything else it can do?"

"Not really. If it's as you said, then its pair should've been destroyed, and unless it's paired again, it serves no purpose. It also needs a bond-master to do anything, and it's currently unbonded." She tossed it back to him.

"But if you're found with it—well, people will be asking questions. I'd get rid of it, if I were you."

"Got it."

"You should be in the clear, then. If either of them had told others where they were going or who they were after, I doubt you'd have been able to make it back—at least not without killing a few other Fusongshi. I'm assuming you got a cloudcraft from the core disciple and got back on it? Tell me nobody saw you."

"I'm not an idiot. I stayed well out of sight, flying through clouds. Only… the woman, she mentioned she'd had people watching us. Watching me. That's how she knew I'd left the sect."

"Watchers, you say?" Meiyao pursed her lips, looking thoughtful.

"Considering nobody else went after you, and how the sect's not on high alert… Chances are she probably silenced whoever it was she had watching you. It'd fit what I know of her; she wasn't the type to leave loose ends." She gave a careless shrug.

"Anyway, if anyone levels any accusations at you, I'll vouch for you, and that'll be it. They can't prove you left; it'll be my word against theirs, and that's not a battle they're winning." She shot him a sharp smile; he couldn't help but smile back.

"Still, don't use your cloudcraft unless it's an emergency," Meiyao said.

"And should anyone come asking whether you know about the two Fusongshi, claim you know nothing. You probably won't get in any trouble—the Liangshibai are determined to see you presented to the Howling Lightning Sect envoy at the Summit—but others might get curious about what you were doing in the Fatebloom Woods, and I suspect that's not something you want to be aired out."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Jieyuan said.

"There's something else. The disciple, she mentioned something about a Revolution. The Gleaming Nobles' Revolution. And also how she didn't need me dead, just gone. I'm not sure how honest she was being about that last part, but the revolution business at least didn't seem to be a lie."

"The Gleaming Nobles' Revolution?" Meiyao frowned.

"That'd mean... That'd imply all the noble clans are in on it."

"Yes," Jieyuan said.

"She also mentioned Qingshi was part of it." Meiyao gave a slow nod, a troubled look on her face.

"That explains some things, actually. That elder that went after us in the valley, if she was part of the revolution, acting on orders... There's also those inner disciples Qingshi had with him. They were all nobles."

"Exactly," Jieyuan said.

"Anyway, you're close with the Liangshibai, so you should probably warn them about it. Just keep my trip to the Fatebloom Woods out of it." Meiyao nodded distractedly, clearly lost in thought.

"Yes, yes, of course."

"There's one last thing," Jieyuan said, catching her attention again.

"I talked with Daojue earlier, yesterday, and he mentioned Gleaming End was alive. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"Alive?" Meiyao looked confused.

"What do you mean, alive?"

"As in, sentient. I asked to borrow it, and he said Gleaming End refused."

"That sounds like an excuse to me," Meiyao said, eyes narrowed, like she was angry on his behalf.

"A very poor one."

"I'd normally agree with you, but it's Daojue. He'd sooner ignore me or outright refuse me." Meiyao looked away, frowning.

"I see your point." She was silent for a few seconds.

"I've never heard anything about Gleaming End being alive in any way. Granted, I haven't heard all that much about it. The Liangshibai don't like talking about it all that much. Partially because it has to do with gleamstone, and they like to keep any matters related to it to themselves. But also because they lost it, supposedly stolen away by their missing protector, and they don't like being reminded of that."

"But what about sentient artifacts as a whole?" That was the crux of the matter. What he was really after. It wasn't really Gleaming End he was concerned about, but the Fatebloom Heart.

"It's the first time I'm hearing of something like that." Meiyao shook her head.

"Artifacts are dead, as far as I'm aware. You can't refine or inscribe something that's alive. That's just not how it works. And as for inscribed artifacts, they're just mundane materials with inscripts on them; they're even further from being alive."

"Hmmm. It might have to do with however it was that Gleaming End advanced to Orangerealm, then." He'd expected that Meiyao wouldn't know much about sentient artifacts, but he'd hoped she might have at least heard some rumors. Daojue would probably know more (at the very least, he had a sentient artifact on his own), but Jieyuan couldn't really see Daojue just giving him a lesson on sentient artifacts at his request. There was a chance that Daojue would also wonder why he was asking about them now.

And while he didn't think Daojue was the greedy sort, either, he didn't have nearly as good a read on him as he had on Meiyao. For the time being, Jieyuan would be better off figuring out the Fatebloom Heart on his own; Maeva was technically a part of him, after all. Jieyuan left a short while later, with Meiyao promising to keep him updated if anything came out of the matter of the two Fusongshi he'd killed. Returning to his residence, he made straight for his bedroom.

Once there, closed the door and blinds, lit the oil lamps, and summoned Maeva. The hallucination of his sister glided out from behind him. As usual, she wore her yellow sundress with a lab coat over it. He didn't go for an unconscious hallucination this time, but a conscious one, as he'd be needing to use his body fairly soon. Maeva came to a stop in front of him. She stared at him, silent, ponderous, her gaze on his chest. Inside him, he felt his heart pick up the pace a bit. She sighed softly.

"I see you had quite the adventure." She sounded oddly resigned.

"That's one way of putting it." Maeva began pacing slowly around the room, her gaze never straying away from his chest. The Fatebloom Heart kept beating at a faster rate.

"You almost died. You should have died. The Silver Stream was just an instant away from pulling you in. Was it worth it?" The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"That's what we're about to find out, isn't it?" Jieyuan said. With Maeva, when she got in a serious mood like that, your best bet was to be casual, irreverent, if not outright flippant. More often than not, it broke her composure, evened her out. Her husband, Qiyun, was even better at it than he was—Maeva could've been anywhere from dejected to furious, but he could have her trying her hardest not to smile, not to give in, in a matter of moments.

Through his bond with Huaxin, Jieyuan felt a strong surge of confusion. Jieyuan wondered what it made of him using his bondskill to hallucinate his sister from his previous life. Wondered how much of what was happening the Heart even understood. Huaxin was clearly intelligent, but how intelligent was it really? The impression he got from it was rather childlike. Maeva stopped pacing, back in front of him. She gave another long, heavy sigh—and then fixed him with a look that was just as long and heavy.

Then she shook her head and resumed pacing.

"What do you want to start with?" Again sounding resigned.

"I was thinking the third spiritskill. Regeneration." After all, he'd already gotten a trial run of it.

"I figured. Regeneration…" She spoke the word as if it put something foul in her mouth.

"There's really only one way of testing it." She looked distinctly unhappy about that. Jieyuan reached into his holder pouch and took out his spear. He held it out in front of him. The steel edge caught the lamplight, shimmering with it. Maeva had stopped pacing. She looked from the blade to him, then back to the blade, frowning even more deeply.

"I don't like this."

"You've seen my memories. I've done worse to myself." He recalled the lengths he'd gone to get himself used to pain, after the old man had refused to get him another dose of Cultivator's Agony.

"And don't forget I'm a cultivator now. No physical pain comes close to the Pains. There's nothing I can do to myself with a blade that'll rate much higher than a tickle in comparison."

"Say what you want." She crossed her arms.

"You're still not the one watching her little brother cut himself up." Jieyuan set the spear down for a moment and took off his robes, outer and inner, leaving his whole upper body bare. He then picked up the spear again, and held his forearm.

"Ready?" He didn't wait for her answer. He set blade to skin, then slid the blade along the length of his forearm. A shallow, superficial cut, at least to start things off. Blood welled up, the line thickening with red. He felt the pain, clearly, even more clearly than a mundane would have, but handled it about as well as a mundane could tolerate someone poking them a bit hard with their finger.

"Now we count," he said. Across him, Maeva looked on, grudgingly. But she was attentive, fully concentrated on the wound. But as the seconds passed, nothing happened; the blood clotted, and it scabbed over quickly, but he was a third-step Redsoul; his regeneration was already six times that of a mundane. This speed wasn't anything special; it certainly didn't measure up to regrowing a whole heart in instants. Jieyuan glared at his hand. I should've known it wouldn't be this easy. He wasn't discouraged, though.

He nodded at Maeva. It looked like more experimenting was in order. —∞— Early the following morning, Jieyuan got an alert from the inscribed field around his residence of the approach of three people. The next thing he knew, Daojue was batting his thrust aside, and stabbing his spear through his gut. Jieyuan felt the spear dig into him, saw it sink into his stomach. Wet warmth bloomed around it, and the cloth of his robe where the spear disappeared into his body was quickly darkening.

Daojue then pulled his spear back, effortlessly, and Jieyuan felt the blade scrape his insides as it left his body. Gritting his teeth, Jieyuan cut off the command. Daojue immediately vanished, and so did the pain. His robes were also suddenly pristine, with no signs of blood or the tears that Daojue—or rather, the illusion of Daojue—had just inflicted on him. Jieyuan gave himself a moment to wash off the shock, then turned around, striding out of his yard and back into the house.

He'd spent much of the previous day figuring out Huaxin's abilities with Maeva. Huaxin had cooperated for the most part, and they'd managed to figure out the names of the three skills, as well as what two of them—Fatebloom Incarnation and Fatebloom Renewal—did, even though he didn't actually use either. The remaining spiritskill, Fatebloom Intuition, was still mostly unknown; Huaxin had struggled to convey what it was, and his and Maeva's experiments regarding it hadn't produced much result.

Still, just Fatebloom Incarnation and Renewal made Jieyuan's trip to the Fatebloom Woods more than worth it in his opinion. He still wasn't perfectly clear on how they worked (he'd have to use them first, and he was saving them for now) but from what he'd managed to put together, they could both be considered his biggest trump cards. Especially Fatebloom Incarnation. He'd spent the rest of yesterday harvesting and imbuing chroma to top up his reserves before turning in for the night.

This morning, he'd figured he'd get some sparring in; since there was nobody around, he'd summoned an hallucination of Daojue to fight with instead of simulating combat inside his head. Be it fighting inside his head or against a hallucination, though, Jieyuan found the result was the same; he'd spent the entire morning being killed over and over by the hallucination of his teammate. I still have a long way to go, Jieyuan thought wrily, shaking his head as he crossed his living room.

Reaching the entranceway, he set the matter of his hallucinated duels aside for now and opened the door. On the other side, he found a woman in a white coat and the emerald robes of a protector. Standing behind her were Meiyao and Daojue—the real Daojue. Meiyao closer, Daojue farther away. Daojue had Gleaming End in hand, shrouded. Jieyuan recognized the woman. He'd seen her once before, at the entrance of the Gleamstone Valley, right before the start of the Gleamstone Hunt.

Tall, slender, fine-featured, with burning orange eyes. Topaz eyes. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. Liangshibai Yuyan. The wife of the chief elder of the sect, and Meiyao's stepmother. The woman smiled at him, extending her hand.

"I've heard much about you, Jieyuan. It's nice to finally meet you. I'm Yuyan." Her smile seemed genuine. Jieyuan shook her hand. Her grip was firm, strong—and rough. He couldn't help but notice how calloused her hands were, more so than that of many cultivators he'd met.

"Likewise." The protector drew her hand back and stepped to the side, nodding back to Meiyao and Daojue.

"I'll be taking you three to Topaz Square, in the inner court. That's where the sect's delegation for the Radiant Gold Summit is gathering. Also." She reached into her robe and produced a second-step holder pouch. She handed it to him.

"Your rewards for the Outer Hunt. A thousand prisms. Congratulations on first place." Jieyuan deposited the pouch inside his own.

"Thank you."

"I'm just doing my job. And if you find more than just prisms there… Say, a talisman or two… Well, resource allocation is a rather challenging task, and sometimes people make mistakes." She gave him a rather obvious (and clearly deliberately so) wink. Behind her, Meiyao rolled her eyes. But she had her lips just slightly quirked up in a smile that she seemed to be fighting back.

"I come from a family of merchants. Trust me, I perfectly understand." Jieyuan winked back, for good measure. Protector Yuyan gave him a knowing nod, looking satisfied. Then, taking another step back, she extended her arm, and a cloudcraft billowed out of her sleeves, taking form in front of her.

"Hop on." Jieyuan jumped up onto it, taking a position near the back, beside Daojue. Meiyao was a little further ahead, and Yuyan took position at the front. The cloudcraft then began rising. Jieyuan braced himself for the sudden acceleration, but it didn't come. Once they were high enough, a couple of hundred feet above the ground, Yuyan flew the cloudcraft forward, but not nearly as fast as it could've been. Only barely faster than the massive cloudcraft that had taken them to the Gleamstone Valley had moved.

He glanced down at the ground, watching as they left the houses of the residential area behind and delved deeper into the outer court. He could clearly make out everything below, no signs of blurring. If he were to run at full speed while using his haster ring, he might even be able to match their current speed, though at a much higher chroma cost. Protector Yuyan clearly wasn't in much of a hurry. While she was facing ahead most of the time, every once in a while she'd sneak a glance back at Meiyao.

For her part, Meiyao seemed to be trying her hand at a Daojue impression and ignoring her stepmother. Protector Yuyan didn't say anything, though it was clear that she was holding herself back. Ruby Arch appeared in the distance, and Yuyan even lowered their cloud a little so that they crossed it from inside. They overflew Ruby Square before flying through Topaz Arch, putting them in the inner court. Jieyuan took the opportunity to look around.

All the previous times he'd overflown the inner court, he'd been traveling either too fast or too high to make any details out. Immediately around Topaz Arch, there wasn't much to be seen, just some rolling plains of grass. Further ahead, they overflew a sprawling group of white buildings, but after that, they were back to hills and grasslands. Looking to the sides, observing the surrounding mountains, he noticed a couple in the distance that seemed to have buildings, but they were few and far between.

Some time later, he sighted a massive white blotch peeking out from a group of mountains. The tower, from the Justice Hall. It soon went out of sight as another mountain blocked it from sight. Further away, he sighted a massive, topaz-colored archway, and further beyond it, an even bigger, green-colored one. The Inner Topaz Arch, marking the end of the inner court, and the Outer Emerald Arch, marking the start of the core court.

As they passed through this second Topaz Arch (which, as far as Jieyuan could tell, was identical to the one at the boundary with the outer court) Jieyuan saw Topaz Square, sister to the outer court's Ruby Square but even larger, and made from gleaming orange tiles. There were people spread out on it, most of them wearing topaz or emerald robes. About one in four had an elder's coat on. Inner and core disciples and elders.

At the center of the square, surrounded by a circle of protectors, was a man in citrine robes. Yellow, the chief elder's color. There were two other unique colors in that group: blue and violet. Four wore sapphire robes: two men and two women, all of whom bore topaz Liangshibai eyes save for one of the female high protectors. Those would be the high protectors, the ones with privileged status and seniority in the core court. But even more special was the violet-robed man standing next to the chief elder.

Amethyst robes in the Gleaming Stone Sect marked the station of sovereign protector. The chief elder handled the day-to-day matters of the sect, letting the sovereign protector focus on the really critical business. Protector Yuyan lowered both their speed and altitude as they overflew Topaz Square, and she seemed to be heading straight to that group at the center. Jieyuan caught a sharp inhale from Meiyao, followed by a grumble he couldn't make out.

Protector Yuyan shot a quick glance back at her, frowning, but didn't steer the cloudcraft away. They landed right at the center of the square, in front of the chief elder, near the white-robed woman.

"Yuyan." The citrine-robed man—the chief elder, Liangshibai Junjie—was at the front. Jieyuan had seen him twice before, once when he was inducted into the sect, and again before the Hunt, on Ruby Square. The man was tall, as cultivators tended to be. Rather handsome, too, but in a cold, detached way, thin lips set in a hard, straight line. The man looked past Protector Yuyan—his wife—and his gaze landed on Meiyao. Something tightened in his expression, and he looked past her, to Jieyuan and Daojue.

He gave them both brisk nods.

"Good. You're all here." Smiling widely, Protector Yuyan jumped off from the cloud and approached the man in two quick steps. Latching onto her husband's arm, she leaned closer to him, whispering something in his ear. The man leaned toward her, but he remained impassive otherwise. Jieyuan couldn't hear what they were saying, but after a short while, the man shook his head, and Protector Yuyan turned to look back at Meiyao—who was pointedly looking away—before slumping, dejected.

Another man, this one in emerald robes and without an elder's coat—a core disciple—approached, putting a hand on Yuyan's shoulder. Another Liangshibai, except his eyes weren't red or orange like that of most Liangshibai, but yellow, citrine. This man was looking at Meiyao, hard, like he was trying to catch her eye. Jieyuan remembered him. It was the core disciple he'd noticed Meiyao looking at in Ruby Square, after their encounter with Qingshi and Yunzhu.

Jieyuan was fairly sure he knew who he was: Liangshibai Yongyi, Chief Junjie's son with Protector Yuyan. Meiyao's half-brother. Meiyao was the first to get off the cloudcraft. And as soon as her feet were on the ground, she shot a baleful look her father's, stepmother's, and half-brother's way before spinning on her feet and storming off without a word. Daojue and Jieyuan got off just a beat after her. Now on the square, Daojue just stood there, silent: as usual, doing his best impression of a statue.

Jieyuan hesitated, frowning, as he glanced from the central group to Meiyao, who'd gone to a mostly isolated spot of Topaz Square, her back to them. Protector Yuyan and Yongyi were both also looking at Meiyao. As for Chief Junjie, he'd resumed talking with one of the sapphire-robed high protectors. Someone else was also looking in Meiyao's direction, though: the amethyst-robed man, standing on the chief elder's other side.

The sovereign protector of the Gleaming Stone Sect was an older man, visibly middle-aged, with citrine eyes just like Yongyi's. Though Jieyuan had never met him before, he knew his name: Liangshibai Zhaoyong, the father of Protector Yuyan, making him Chief Junjie's father-in-law and Yongyi's grandfather.

"Daojue!" a voice called. Bright, cheery, not the kind of voice you'd expect from a cultivator. A shiver crawled down Jieyuan's spine. And sure enough, emerald-robed, ruby-adorned Yunzhu stepped out from the group, beaming, waving, eyes locked on Daojue. Daojue stared at the approaching Yunzhu, stone-faced, tense—then he turned around and strode away, toward where Meiyao was standing. Yunzhu's smile slipped off her face, but the next moment it returned, even stronger.

Her black eyes seemed to gleam as she made to go after Daojue—and she would have done so, if someone hadn't grabbed her shoulder and held her back. A woman in white robes. Diamond robes.

"Yunzhu," the white-robed woman called, chidingly. Yunzhu blinked, as if she was snapping out of a daze, and turned to look at the woman.

"Mother," she said, a bit sheepish. The white-robed woman shook her head, then turned her eyes to him. Her sapphire eyes.

"Ah, Jieyuan," she said, stepping forward, smiling widely.

"It's good to see you again."

"Oh! Jieyuan," Yunzhu said, turning to him as if she'd only just noticed him.

"Hi there." Jieyuan nodded to Yunzhu—with Daojue away, she was normal enough—and then smiled back at the white-robed woman.

"Protector Wanxin, it's been a while." Protector Wanxin. This was the woman who'd served as his proctor during the entrance trials. The woman who'd been by his side as he was transformed into a cultivator. White-robed, sapphire-eyed. Even back then he'd known she was special, someone important; it hadn't taken him long after joining the sect to learn how much he'd underestimated her status, though.

Jieyuan clearly recalled the things he'd read on the subject, even though it'd been months since he'd looked into Protector Wanxin's station. What he'd discovered of her status had left a deep impression on him. The chief elder was in charge of the inner and outer courts of the sect, of the outer and inner disciples and elders. The sovereign protector mainly controlled the core court, the core disciples and protectors, though he could also command the chief elder as he pleased.

Usually, that was as high as sect hierarchies went. But sometimes, there came along someone talented far beyond the norm. Such people were normally scouted by a higher-realm sect. But sometimes they stuck around for whatever reason, and when they did, they were granted a special position. That of a heavenly protector. And around a heavenly protector, even the sovereign protector had to tread lightly. Liangshibai Wanxin was the Gleaming Stone Sect's sole heavenly protector.

Her eyes were the color of sapphire because the color of a Liangshibai's eyes was determined by their heavenly affinity, and hers was fifth-order, an order above even Jieyuan's, Daojue's, and Meiyao's. Jieyuan couldn't help but stare a little at the woman. Even though he'd already known these things for a while, now that he was meeting her again he couldn't help but look at her in a different light.

Protector Wanxin had chosen to remain in the Gleaming Stone Sect as a mere Redrealm, but if she changed her mind, if she chose to transfer to a higher-realm sect? She'd be snatched up by the Incandescent Serenity Sect—the Yellowrealm sect that ruled over the island—on the spot. After that, it would only be a matter of a couple of years before she became the most powerful cultivator on the island. Chances were that she'd go on to leave it, too. Join a Greenrealm sect, even a Bluerealm one.

Protector Wanxin looked him up and down.

"You look well. I knew you would take to a cultivator's life." Her smile broadened.

"I've heard you've gotten in quite a bit of trouble as of late, too. Somehow I'm not too surprised." Jieyuan broke out of his daze, gathering himself.

"In my defense, I didn't go looking for it. It found me." Except that's not really true, is it? He had made the choice of sticking around Meiyao and Daojue, and he'd had an idea of what that'd entail.

"That's not usually how it goes with Firesouls," Protector Wanxin said, "but in this case, at least, I guess it's indeed not your fault. Qingshi… I always knew there was more to him, but I hadn't expected something—""Excuse me," Yunzhu said, suddenly, still cheery, but something about it seemed forced. Without waiting for a reply, she walked back toward where she'd come from, where Meiyao's family was standing. At least she hadn't gone after Daojue. Protector Wanxin watched her daughter go, shaking her head softly.

"That girl. She's still struggling to process what happened with Qingshi, I think. She'd seemed rather taken with your teammate, Daojue, as of late, but she and Qingshi have always been… close." She gave him a meaningful look, at that last word. Jieyuan said nothing. As far as he was concerned, all he needed to know about Yunzhu was where she was, so he could make sure to be elsewhere. Normal as she acted when Daojue wasn't around, he didn't feel like taking chances. He was glad to see her leave.

"Anyway," Protector Wanxin said.

"This is it. Today should be your last day here in the Gleaming Stone Sect. You probably won't be returning after the summit. How are you feeling?" Jieyuan looked around. From Topaz Arch to Emerald Arc, and then past Emerald Arc, deeper into the Gleaming Stone Mountains, where the Gleamstone Valley lay. And at the center of it, the entrance to the Gleamstone Depths, which had brought down even Yikongwei Beidao, a tenth-step Violetsoul.

And then he considered the sect itself, with the Geshihan and the Fusongshi Clans, and their conspiracy he was somehow caught up in, and their mysterious method of tracking his team. He thought of Yunzhu and her unsettling behavior and obsession with Daojue. And of Qingshi, hiding his true step. And of Elder Taishou, and how the man very likely was up to no good. He considered, briefly, telling Protector Wanxin these things.

But he didn't know where to begin, especially considering how both the woman's daughter and husband were involved. And Meiyao was aware of it all and also much closer to the Liangshibai, so she should have that covered. More than anything else, Jieyuan found that he was just very, very glad to be getting away from all this mess. Good riddance, he thought. And he smirked at Protector Wanxin and said, "I'm feeling ready."