Chương 43: Chapter 42: TALK AND LOOK

CHAPTER 42 TALK AND LOOK —∞—"I— There are some things—" Meiyao bit her lip, frowning.

"I've never liked keeping secrets. Not from people I care about. It always felt… wrong. Because if I keep something from someone, it means I don't trust them. And that isn't right— Because, I mean— If I care about them—" She took a deep breath and fell silent. She looked uncomfortable. Frustrated, even, like she couldn't quite line up the words. There was something else, too; a slight tension, a wariness, in the way she held herself. A sort of uncertainty. Jieyuan waited, giving her time to settle herself.

Meanwhile, he turned her words over in his head. That thing about secrets, how keeping one meant you didn't trust someone. He didn't quite share her view. He reckoned it was a matter of upbringing. She'd been raised a cultivator; he, a merchant. He could easily think of a dozen reasons to keep a secret from someone, none of which had anything to do with trust. Still, this was hardly the moment to argue philosophy.

When a minute had passed and Meiyao still hadn't spoken, though, Jieyuan figured she could use a little nudge.

"Someone you care for?" he offered, brow barely lifted, tone a touch too dry. That did the trick. She snapped right out of it and shot him a glare.

"Don't push it." But her eyes lost that pinched edge, lighting up, and her lips twitched like she was fighting back a smile. She eventually lost the fight, a smirk slipping through. She shook her head and let out a breath that could've been a laugh.

"I'm making this too complicated. Let's start over. First, tell me something." Her voice dropped low. Given the space she'd put between herself and Daojue, Jieyuan figured she didn't want him overhearing. This next part especially.

"Do you know what a chromal bloodline is?" she asked.

"I know you were close with… with—" The word caught. She stopped, swallowed. Then she set her jaw.

"With Yongyi," she finished, clipped and flat. Her expression made it clear she had no intention of talking about her half-brother.

"Did he ever tell you anything?" Chromal bloodline. Jieyuan searched his thoughts. Nothing came up. He was fairly sure he'd never heard the term before. He could hazard a guess or two, though, given the context.

"I don't think so, no." Meiyao nodded, like she'd expected it but had asked just in case.

"Then have you ever wondered why the Liangshibai look different?" she asked.

"Why they have those gemstone eyes? Why they obsess over gems, and gleamstone in particular?" There was a pause, deliberate. Then, slower now, more intent, she asked, "Why I look so different?" He had. Of course he had. You couldn't look at the Liangshibai—or at Meiyao—and not wonder what set them apart. The eyes alone were enough: bright and colored, when everyone else's were pitch-black. This wasn't Earth, where people came in all colors and shades.

It wasn't even just about eyes; Meiyao was the first person he'd met whose hair wasn't black. In the Chromajie—or at least in the Radiant Gold Province, at any rate—white skin, black eyes and black hair wasn't just the average palette, but the rule.

"It's because we have chromal bloodlines," Meiyao said before he could hazard a guess.

"They're not like mundane ones. Mundane bloodlines are just ancestry. A chromal bloodline's different; it's something you inherit, something almost tangible. Most people don't have one. I only know of two, the Linzushen and Liangshibai Bloodlines." She glanced back over her shoulder.

"Well—three. There should also be a Tianzijun one." Jieyuan followed her gaze to Daojue, still seated where they'd left him, at the entrance of the pocket. Eyes closed. Meditating. Still as stone.

"The violet eyes," Jieyuan said, more to himself than to her. He'd always wondered about their color. He couldn't help but think back to what he'd seen when he'd used Fatebloom Incarnation during the fight in front of the palace: the image that had surfaced beneath Daojue's form. A man made of blood, silver-crowned, cloaked in violet. Blood. Bloodline. Violet. Violet eyes. Not just that. He'd also gotten impressions like that—overlapping images—from the Liangshibai and from Meiyao.

But not from any of the other cultivators there.

"Yes. But there's more to it." Meiyao drew closer, leaning in.

"A chromal bloodline's made up of three things: expressions, reflections, and bloodgifts." Jieyuan had already been interested before; Meiyao was finally giving him answers to questions that had bothered him for a long time. But now his interest rose even higher, peaking.

"The Liangshibai don't talk about theirs openly. It's not a taboo, exactly; they just keep it close. But they've studied theirs thoroughly. And so did the Linzushen, before they died out. My mother passed on everything she knew about both. She inherited all the Linzushen's old records; and she was close to the Liangshibai, so she got a good look at their research, too. Both clans came to the same conclusions." She shifted slightly, brushing her fingers over her knee. Her gaze had gone distant, but not detached.

More like she was halfway in the past, threading memory alongside the present.

"Expressions," she began, "are the chromal bloodline's influence over you. How they shape you. For the Linzushen, that means beauty. Great beauty. Lush beauty. Beauty that draws the eye, whether you want it to or not. My figure… Well, you'd know. I've seen you stare." Jieyuan kept his eyes trained on her face and his mouth shut. She laughed softly under her breath.

"All Linzushen were like me. I'm said to be the mirror image of my mother, cut from the same vine. The men were much the same. Handsome. Powerfully built. Tall, too; both the men and the women. Brown hair's another trait." She touched her arm lightly through the sleeve, almost absently.

"But it goes beyond appearance. I'm much stronger, faster than I should be for my build. My body heals quicker, too." He'd noticed that. It wasn't that Meiyao was built slight, not even close. She stood more than an inch over six feet, taller than most men he knew. With how women tended to be as strong as men in the Chromajie, Meiyao would've physically outmatched him given her build, but not by as much as she actually did. Jieyuan glanced back at Daojue.

Someone else who, like Meiyao, had more power packed into his frame than made sense. The thing about Daojue was that he looked a lot taller than he actually was. He was tall, but Jieyuan figured the height gap between them was the same as with Meiyao—two, maybe three inches, give or take. It was just that Daojue had this way of towering over people. Like Meiyao, Daojue would've been naturally stronger than him; but not that much. He hit like he was eight feet tall and built to scale.

"…with the Liangshibai, it's their sharp builds, their angular features," Meiyao was saying, and Jieyuan pulled his focus back to her.

"But they've got it worse. Their bloodline also affects the mind. Aunt Wanxin told you about the Pull of the Valley, right?"

"She did." And suddenly that particular conversation he'd had with Protector Wanxin started a whole lot more sense. Meiyao nodded.

"The Linzushen Bloodline doesn't have anything like that. There are theories that ours was… Well…" She shook her head.

"That's not the point. There's something I haven't mentioned yet. The eyes. Because they aren't an expression, but a reflection. You know how the Liangshibai can turn their eyes mundane? So can I." Her eyes darkened: starting from the outside, a wave of black spreading inward, swallowing the green. Until they were entirely black. Mundane. Jieyuan blinked. He'd seen Yongyi do it, but he hadn't imagined Meiyao could do it too. Her eyes were green—a deep, vibrant green—but not unnatural.

By this world's standards, sure, but not by Earth's. In his head, he'd always put them in a different category from the Liangshibai gemstone eyes. He'd never really thought about what Meiyao would look like with mundane eyes, either. And now that he was seeing it… He had to stop himself from frowning. It looked wrong, somehow. Uncanny. Hard to explain. It was just eyes, but they didn't sit right on her face. Maybe he'd just grown too used to the green. A moment later, Meiyao's eyes turned green again.

The reverse of before: a ripple of color spreading outward from the pupil until they were back to normal. They looked brighter now, though that was probably just the contrast.

"Reflections are something you can control. They're… a representation of the chromal bloodline, in a way. A physical one. They also vary according the strength of the bloodline in someone. With the Liangshibai, it's eye color. Ruby, topaz, citrine, sapphire, emerald, amethyst. See, bloodline strength is tied to heavenly affinity. Why Yongyi has— had —" She caught herself, but her voice didn't falter.

"Never mind. You get the idea."

"I do," Jieyuan said. Then, more to keep things moving than anything else—keep her from lingering on Yongyi—he asked, "What about the Linzushen?" Meiyao didn't answer right away. Her gaze drifted slightly, like she was weighing something—then landed on him again, steady.

"Our eyes don't change. It's always this shade of green. We've got another reflection, but it's not something I can show right now." She gave him a long, unreadable look. Not guarded; more like she was weighing something.

"You might get to see it later." Her tone had gone thoughtful, like she was speaking half to herself. Then she flicked her hand, brushing the thought aside like it hadn't meant anything.

"The real heart of a chromal bloodline, though, is in the bloodgifts. They're like bondskills, but simpler. Everyone with the same bloodline is born with the same set—but which ones you can use depends on the strength of your bloodline." She paused, glancing down as she plucked a strip of bark from her sleeve. The mist curled slow and low around them, and Jieyuan couldn't help but notice how it clung to her; subtle, glowing, almost like a cloak thrown over her shoulders.

"The Linzushen bloodgifts are tied to plants and beasts," she said.

"There are five first-order ones. Ones all Linzushen have." Jieyuan sat up straighter. Everything so far had been interesting, sure; and honestly, Meiyao could've talked about the weather until the clouds rolled in, and he'd have stayed to hear what she thought of the rain. But this was the mother lode. He'd known for a while she had unusual abilities—had seen enough to be sure of that much—but they'd always come piecemeal. Scattered impressions. Now, finally, he could start putting shape to them.

Understanding where they came from, what they did, how they worked. And with any luck, he might even get a sense of what bloodgifts Daojue might have, too.

"One of the Linzushen bloodgifts enhances the body: dexterity, agility, reflexes, flexibility," Meiyao said.

"That one's called Divine Primeval Grace. Another, Divine Plant Empathy, lets us read plants on sight—how they grow, what properties they have, how to care for them. Divine Beast Empathy does the same for beasts." Divine. That gave Jieyuan a pause. Now there was a word he didn't hear every day. He only really recognized it because of the Viridian Death Cult. He'd had a lesson or two on words not to say around the cultists, and that one had made the list.

The Viridian Death Cult had a very specific idea of what divine meant (what it was supposed to refer to), and they didn't take kindly to anyone else using it. Blasphemy, supposedly. Not that divine was a word most people used, anyway. Outside of cults, Jieyuan had never really heard of gods, deities, divinities, or anything along those lines. There was only the Heavens. Only heavenly. But Jieyuan gave it some more thought, and he thought that the ledgers actually added up about right.

The Linzushen had once been to the Viridian Death Cult what the Liangshibai were to the Gleaming Stone Sect—only more so. The Liangshibai were obeyed. The Linzushen had been worshiped. They'd have been the sort to throw around words like divine, he reckoned.

"The last two—Divine Plant Intuition and Divine Beast Intuition—let us feel what plants and beasts feel," Meiyao went on.

"Their state. Physical and mental. Or at least that's how they're supposed to work." She frowned, then swept a hand through the air. The mist shifted with the motion, rolling around her fingers.

"In the Dome—and with the beasts from here—it's different. They're stronger. In here, Divine Plant and Beast Intuition don't just let me feel plants and beasts. They let me reach them, sense them through the mist. Nudge them, too. Make them feel a certain way. Command them, almost." She gazed into the thick, impenetrable curtain beyond, eyes narrowing slightly.

"The mist, too. There's a way it listens. Or maybe not listens—but responds. It's… It's hard to explain. You'd have to experience it." The mist curled softly around them—not fast, not sudden—but now… Listens, Meiyao had said. Responds. The mist had always set his nerves on edge, but her words implied more awareness than he'd have liked. She lingered there a moment, eyes still on the mist, lost in whatever thought had pulled her under. Then she blinked, catching herself.

"Those with fourth-order affinity get more bloodgifts," she said, tone steadier again.

"That green aura you've seen around me sometimes? That's one of them. Divine Nature Unison. In a forest—or anywhere thick with life—we can draw on the plants and beasts around us. Borrow their strength." She exhaled slowly. She looked down, turning her hands over in her lap, working her fingers in slow, absent motion, as if testing for something.

"There are supposedly other fourth-order bloodgifts too, but… they're not like bondskills. With a bondskill, the moment you assimilate it, you know what it does. You can feel it, too—settled at the back of your mind, like a weight. Bloodgifts aren't like that. You're born with them, but not knowing them. And if they're not something that's always in effect like Divine Primeval Grace, you don't feel them at all. Not unless you already know to look for it." Meiyao's hands stilled, and she looked back up.

"My mother was the first Linzushen in over a thousand years to be born with fourth-order affinity. By then, almost everything about our higher-order bloodgifts had been lost. All anyone remembered was they existed—and even that much was contested. She'd spend most of her time combing through the old records, trying to reclaim what we'd forgotten. The only one she managed to recover was Divine Nature Unison." She extended her arm in front of her. Jieyuan stared. Nothing happened. Then she waved it; and he caught it.

She was glowing. That same green aura he'd seen on her before was now coating her arm. Only now, it blended so cleanly with the viridian mist that it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. He only noticed because, as the mist shifted, the soft green light on her skin didn't waver with it. Even then, it was a subtle thing. You had to be paying attention. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Divine Nature Unison.

So that was the power he'd seen Meiyao use a few times already; and more importantly, the one she'd tapped into when she picked him up and just about hauled him into the Dome. The one that had taken her from borderline powerless to channeling strength she wouldn't normally have even at her peak. Sure, if he'd understood right, Meiyao's bloodgifts got a boost near the Dome. But still. Divine Nature Unison was practically a bondskill in its own right.

And then there was Divine Primeval Grace, which enhanced her body too. And her bloodline's expressions, which did something similar, just through different means. Advantage stacked on advantage. Gold on gold. And that wasn't even counting the other bloodgifts she'd mentioned. Or the ones she might not even know she had, the fourth-order ones the Linzushen had forgotten. Bloodgifts in the same tier as Divine Nature Unison, and likely just as powerful, just as useful. Just when I thought I'd closed the gap…

Jieyuan had to keep himself from laughing. He thought back to what Protector Yuyan had told him. There was that bit about a quarry that'd never run dry, about ever-moving goalposts. That was truer than ever. But more than that… You don't know half of what she's really capable of. It wasn't that he hadn't believed Protector Yuyan. He just hadn't thought she meant it literally. And he definitely hadn't considered she might be underselling it. Best of all? He knew Meiyao hadn't told him everything yet.

He was sure she had another card up her sleeve. Maybe she'd have gotten to it eventually—maybe she was even about to bring it up next—but Jieyuan couldn't keep himself from asking, "What about your bondskill?" She froze. Her arm dropped. She turned to face him with a blank look.

"What are you—" But then she stopped. Frowned. Closed her eyes. Jieyuan liked to think he was fairly good at reading others. But he had no idea what to make of that reaction.

"Meiyao?" She ignored him. Her frown deepened, the space between her eyebrows creasing tight. She stayed that way for a long moment. Then, finally, opened her eyes and turned back to him.

"I might as well tell you," she said. Just like before, he couldn't read her. This time, it wasn't just guarded; it was sealed off completely. She reminded him of Daojue, almost, the way her features went still, statue-like. Composed. Unreachable.

"The Liangshibai—those I'd been close with, at least—knew about my bloodline. My bloodgifts. But there was something I kept from them. From everyone, except my mother. Because she forbade me from telling anyone else." She drew open her holder pouch. Something red and hazy began to flow out from inside it. It gathered in the air in front of them, forming a small cloud of red over Meiyao's lap. It started out faint, barely visible, but thickened as more of it seeped into the open air, clustering together.

Even then, it wasn't any more solid than the viridian mist around them. Jieyuan recognized it: it was the same red haze he'd seen once before, back in the Gleamstone Valley, when Meiyao fought one of the Gleaming Nobles Qingshi had brought with him. It wasn't anything like a cloudcraft or even materialized chroma. This was darker. Duller. A deep, matte red: the color of rust and fallen leaves. The lack of glow, unlike just about everything else in the Dome, only made it stand out more.

To his soulsenses, it registered as a solid fourth-shade red presence, the same as Meiyao's soul. That added up; bondskill manifestations had a spirit that matched the user's step. Or lower, if the user went out of their way to suppress it. Only, bondskills manifestations were almost always temporary, even the gleamstone made by the Gleaming Stone Sect's bondskills. They only lasted as long as you kept feeding them chroma. The moment you stopped, they dissolved. Gone.

Bondskill manifestations weren't usually something you stored. If anything, you kept them active for as short a time as possible; just long enough to use them, and no longer. Anything more was a waste of chroma, and no cultivator wasted chroma if they could help it. Jieyuan only knew of one bondskill with a permanent effect: Radiant Gold Transmutation, the famous bondskill behind the Radiant Gold Skill's immense wealth, the one that let cultivators permanently convert mundane materials into brightgold.

But brightgold's main draw was that it was cheap and chromal; beyond that, it wasn't much better than standard chromal steel. He doubted Meiyao's red haze was that simple.

"Eternal Viridescence Ruin," Meiyao said quietly. She extended her hand into the haze, and the red cloud responded, spinning softly around her fingers like it had been waiting for her.

"That's my bondskill. It lets me create a Viridescence Ruin Seed, which sprouts into this. A Viridescence Ruin Cloud." Jieyuan studied the haze. He saw the Cloud part, sure. Viridescence, not so much. Viridescence was another word the Viridian Death Cult had laid claim to. As well as a word you'd normally only see the cultists using, anyway. It meant turning green. Being greenish. He frowned. If that was supposed to green, then it sure was an awfully red shade of it. And then there was Ruin.

Now that one was a stumper. But what stuck with him more than the name, more than the oddity of the terminology, was the way Meiyao had hesitated. Even after everything. Even after saying she hated keeping secrets. Not just that; her first instinct had been to shut him down. She'd also kept this from everyone around her. Everyone except her mother. He waited for Meiyao to elaborate. She didn't. He glanced at her.

There was a distant look on her face; she seemed lost in a daze as she stared at the red haze, like she was entranced with it. The red haze had stopped spinning and now pulsed gently in the air, rising and falling with a slow, steady rhythm, contracting and expanding in a way that gave Jieyuan the impression of something breathing. Jieyuan focused back on Meiyao.

"What does it do?" Meiyao blinked, like she was confused, then looked over at him.

"Sorry. I didn't… They like it here, in the Dome. They've never reacted like this before." Now it was Jieyuan's turn to blink. They? And worse— like it? First the viridian mist, and now this. What was it with Meiyao, and sentient formless substances?

"Hmmm?" Meiyao must've noticed the look on his face, because she suddenly smiled.

"Oh, right. These are spores. They're alive."

"Spores," Jieyuan said.

"As in, plant spores?"

"You're on the right track. But these are fungi spores." She paused, tilting her head.

"Actually, you probably don't know—""The difference? I do," Jieyuan said. The lessons his father had arranged for him hadn't gone that far. They had covered medicinal mushrooms, but mostly in the context of how much of a market there was for it, where to source it from, and who to sell it to. Amyas, on the other hand, had had more comprehensive biology lessons. That wasn't what he was thinking about, though. What stuck with him was the fact that Meiyao's bondskill hadn't just created something permanent.

It had created something alive.

"Oh." Meiyao gave him a curious look.

"I'd thought… Well. Mundanes are more advanced than I expected. Even the Liangshibai don't know the difference. I thought only the Linzushen knew."

"I don't know the details," Jieyuan said, brushing it off.

"But they look different enough." Then, because he didn't want to give her a chance to press further, and also because he was far more interested in the bondskill than in a possible biology lesson, he quickly asked, "What does it do?"

"Infect others," Meiyao said.

"Or… Well, one person. One target. I choose the effect when I'm nurturing a seed into a cloud. Mental, physical, or a mix of both. But only one. This one has a paralyzing property; it gradually slows the movements of whoever it infects." He recalled how, back in the Gleamstone Valley, the disciple she'd been fighting had gotten slower and slower throughout their fight. But he didn't stop to dwell on that. Something Meiyao had said caught his attention." This one?"

"I have others," Meiyao said.

"It costs chroma to create a seed, and more to nurture it, but not to keep them around. I can only have one cloud active at a time, though. If I try to sprout a different one, this one will turn back into a seed."

"What kind of effects are possible?"

"Nothing too complex, or too harmful," Meiyao said.

"Infecting someone costs chroma, and the stronger the effect, the higher the upkeep. Anything too dangerous becomes too expensive. I have four other seeds: hallucination, nausea, convulsion, and necrosis."

"That's quite the range," Jieyuan said. It really was a versatile bondskill, almost as much as Absolute Will Command. Sure, there were still plenty of practical factors to consider: what range Meiyao could control it in, how long the infection took, the exact chroma cost, and so on. But the potential was obvious. It was easily the most interesting bondskill he'd seen. After Absolute Will Command, of course. The Ruin part still didn't quite fit; but then, this was only the skill's first form.

The higher-realm versions should go further, be more powerful. Absolute Will Command wasn't exactly absolute yet, either.

"It is, isn't it?" Meiyao said. There was a lift to her voice now—something brighter, more open. Like talking about her bondskill gave her room to breathe.

"I've tried a few other effects, but these were the ones that worked best. I've mostly used them in private—on animals and chromal beasts. The only time I ever got to use one in a real fight was in the Gleamstone Valley, against that Geshihan inner disciple."

"Because it's supposed to be a secret," Jieyuan said. He hadn't meant to interrupt. Not when Meiyao finally sounded like she wanted to talk, like she was actually enjoying it. But something about it still didn't add up, and he couldn't let it go.

"Why, though?" he asked.

"I mean, it's a powerful bondskill, sure, but not to a ridiculous or unreasonable extent. I don't see why you'd need to go so far to keep it hidden. Is it some kind of Linzushen heritage, or—" He cut himself off as Meiyao's expression shifted again. Whatever brightness had been there a moment ago was gone. In its place was that distant, heavy stillness from earlier.

"I was born with it." The word left him before he could stop it.

"What?"

"I was born with it," Meiyao repeated, staring straight into his eyes.

"But that isn't the problem. The problem is that it's a Violetrealm bondskill, like your Absolute Will Command." Violetrealm. That's— Jieyuan opened his mouth, but Meiyao beat him to it.

"And the even bigger problem," she went on, her voice low and steady,"is that I wasn't born with just one skillseed. I was born with six. All of them violet." Jieyuan stared at her. Eyes wide, unblinking. Uncomprehending. The revelation hung between them. Lingered, stretching into the silence that followed as her eyes, a green so deep and bright they seemed to glow, stared fixedly into his own.

"Huh," he said, dumbly. He was still reeling from the revelation, struggling to make sense of it, when a thought popped up: No wonder she wasn't interested in Rongkai's skillseed. It had always stuck with him how easily Meiyao had passed up Rongkai's violet skillseed, all those months ago, at the end of the first mission in the Fatebloom Woods. She'd been the one to search Rongkai's corpse while both he and Daojue were out of commission, the one to find the violet skillseed.

Where most disciples would've kept it to themselves, she'd just offered it up and told him and Daojue to sort out between themselves who'd get to keep it. But he'd gotten closer to Meiyao since. Way closer. Enough to know she would've turned down anything—even a treasure like that—if she didn't think she had a right to it. She was fair like that, if not outright honorable. But even so, she should've felt something toward the skillseed, some hint of wonder or awe.

But she'd treated the Violetrealm skillseed like any old thing. No wonder, he thought again, when she already had six of them. Meiyao was still watching him attentively. He trusted her almost unconditionally. After everything they'd been through, after her speech earlier, after everything he knew about how she acted, how could he not? But he still found himself searching her expression for some hint of playfulness, of some sign she'd been jingling his coin purse. None.

She looked intent, as serious as he'd ever seen her.

"That's—" Jieyuan searched for the rest of the sentence. But it was like reaching into an empty purse; he felt like there should be something there, fumbled around for it, but nothing came up. Violetrealm was so far above him—so, so unimaginably, impossibly far above him—that he didn't even know how big of a deal this really was. He had no proper frame of reference. Heavens, he'd only barely begun to understand the Redrealm world.

He only knew of one Violetsoul: Yikongwei Beidao, the man who'd ripped his own heart out of his chest and transformed it into the Fatebloom Heart. The man who'd stood in defiance of the Heavens themselves as his body transformed into gleamstone.

"That's—" He tried again. This time he didn't come up as empty. But it wasn't that much better than nothing.

"That's… odd." Jieyuan leaned back a little, away from Meiyao. The distance—or maybe the motion—set his thoughts moving a little further, as good as grease on wheels. I wasn't born with just one skillseed. I was born with six. All of them violet. It wasn't a complex sentence, but it was a loaded one. One with lots to unpack. Jieyuan did it piecemeal. He put aside, for now, that Meiyao was born with skillseeds, and focused on the skillseeds themselves. And on the implications at hand.

One thing immediately became glaringly obvious. He glanced back, confirmed that Daojue was still there, cultivating, unperturbed, before turning back to Meiyao.

"If you're killed—""My skillseeds will probably manifest, yes," Meiyao said.

"It's not guaranteed, since I was born with them and I'm unsure whether that might change anything, but the possibility exists, and it's a likely one."

"No wonder your mother kept you from telling others," Jieyuan said.

"If others had found out—if even a whisper of it—""That's part of the reason. But not all of it." She frowned.

"I was young, when it happened. Barely five. We were in my room, just Mother and I. She'd given me a soulsenses pill. It's common practice, with clan children. Get them used to using soulsenses early on. Makes it easier to enter Heavenly Communion; and once you're a cultivator, to use actual soulsenses and soulforce." She looked off to the side but at nowhere in particular, focusing inward.

"And then I saw them. The six, violet prism-like clumps sitting inside my soul, toenail-sized. So I told Mother about it. She didn't believe me, at first. Thought Uncle Yiming, or Aunt Wanxin, or even Aunt Yuyan had put me up to it. But then… I don't know, but she must've realized I was serious. I don't remember exactly what came next, but she fell silent for what felt like ages." Meiyao paused, falling silent herself for a moment.

"That was when she told me to never tell anyone. Nobody. Ever. She didn't explain why, only made me promise; I was too young. But over the next three years she gave me soulsenses pills several more times, always in private, and she'd ask me questions to see if I could somehow figure out the violet skillseeds. What Concepts they drew on, just what they could do. And over these sessions, as I grew older, she explained just why they were so dangerous." She fixed her focus back on him.

"There's the fact others could get six violet skillseeds by killing me, yes. But she was more concerned about what could be had from me alive." She was visibly tense now.

"What Mother really feared was that she didn't know why or how this had happened. Not being born with six skillseeds, necessarily—but being born with a skillseed at all. There are no records of any such thing happening in the history of the Viridian Death Cult, or the Gleaming Stone Sect, or even the entire Radiant Gold Province. She used every connection she had, looked through all sorts of records. Nothing."

"It's not related to your chromal bloodline, then?" Jieyuan asked.

"They seem connected. Nature, plants, spores—""If it is, then I'm the first," Meiyao said.

"Chromal bloodlines give you bloodgifts, not bondskills. They do seem connected; but in a way, that only makes it worse. The Liangshibai and the Linzushen go out of their way to keep their bloodlines secret—the existence of chromal bloodlines as a whole, in fact—for a reason. We would've even gone around with our eyes always mundane, if it didn't take concentration to keep it that way." Meiyao's fingers drummed lightly against the blade of her saber, propped up across her thighs.

"Cultivators don't let things lie. Every phenomenon can be an avenue for power. If there's something we don't understand, we take it part it until we do; we dissect it—literally, sometimes." She pursed her lips.

"We're already lucky the higher-realm sects view the Linzushen and Liangshibai bloodlines as merely oddities. In a way, we hide in plain sight, and it works. But six Violetrealm skillseeds? That'd be different." She smiled then, but it was a bitter smile.

"The worst part is that Mother had been so worried about me being taken away that she never stopped to consider whether it might happen to her instead. Rumor has it she was abducted for her beauty. But I can't help but think, what if she hadn't been as careful about her research as she thought she was and ended up drawing the attention of some higher-realm cultivator? What if she'd been taken away when it was really me they were after…" Jieyuan frowned, made to draw closer, but she shook her head.

"That's beyond the point, however." She looked into his eyes again.

"That's me, all my secrets, laid bare." Jieyuan stopped, stared back at her. He caught the unspoken question, saw the expectation in her gaze.

"So it's my turn, now?"

"What do you think?" she challenged.

"Well," Jieyuan said.

"Fair's fair." He smiled. She smiled back. —∞— Jieyuan sat in silence. A soft breeze drew currents into the viridian mist filling up their pocket, tendrils of it curling intangibly against his skin. It'd been a while since his talk with Meiyao. It was still his watch. He hadn't moved away from her side. He glanced at her. She was sitting cross-legged, hands on her lap, cradling her saber. She was trembling slightly, beads of sweat pooled on her forehead. Cultivating, then. Imbuing chroma. Enduring the Pain.

He'd soon start doing that, himself; just one or two more days, and his soulprism would be close enough to full he could safely cultivate while keeping a steady reserve of chroma left over. Meiyao had been open and honest with him. More, in fact, than he reckoned she should have been. He'd responded in kind, telling her about the Heart, the Heartseat, and the Violetrealm Yikongwei Beidao and his notes. He'd also shared with her some of the more useful applications he'd found for Absolute Will Command.

He'd even told her about the darker shade of his soul, hoping she might know something about it, but as it turned out, she was just as clueless about the matter. That was it, though. He'd only told her those things. Everything else, he kept from her. His reincarnation. Earth. Maeva. It was not out of a lack of trust, though. Jieyuan watched Meiyao and tried to imagine how she'd react to those things, what shape those lines would take.

He hadn't told her those things because it would only make things more complicated. Unnecessarily so. Knowledge of his powers and abilities? That was useful. She could plan around that, take them into consideration, just like he could with hers. But telling her about this whole other universe, about how he could remember his previous life? Meiyao probably wouldn't think he was mad, but she'd likely still have a hard time wrapping her head around it all. And it was useless information.

There was nothing it changed, nothing she could do with it. Meiyao already had enough on her plate; he didn't need to add a helping of cosmic conundrum to it. He kept his gaze on her, thinking. He was still going over their talk earlier, all the things she'd told him. At a slower pace now, really turning all those revelations, all that new information, over in his head, trying to fit them together. He'd have Maeva help later, but he wanted to go over it on his own first, unbiased.

He didn't think just for the sake of thinking, though. He focused on what he could do with that knowledge, how he could make it work for him. It didn't really change much, not in the short-term. But one thing was clear. This was the first real proof he'd gotten that Meiyao wasn't like anybody else. There was her appearance (which he now knew to be a result of her chromal bloodline) but that was a clan thing, and the Liangshibai had even more distinctive looks.

Likewise, Meiyao's overwhelming talent, and some of the little oddities he'd picked up here and there—her absurd skill with raising plants, her green aura and red haze—had been suspicious, but not outright proof. Even Yikongwei Beidao's notes, where he'd caught the name of the Linzushen Clan, hadn't been definitive enough. Meiyao herself wasn't named, and there'd been other clans listed. But being born with six violet skillseeds? That was different. The realm alone spoke for itself.

Jieyuan couldn't imagine someone being born with Violetrealm bondskills not reaching Violetrealm herself. That someone like that would stop at Greenrealm, as her heavenly affinity of fourth-order would indicate. A lot of his suspicions had suddenly gotten a whole deal more solid. And that wasn't all. He looked away from Meiyao, across the clearing. At Daojue. He was cultivating, too, like Meiyao, though you had to be looking for it to see the signs.

His expression just a little tighter, the slight moistness on his brow catching the glow of the viridian mist. Daojue, who must have a bloodgift, like Meiyao. Daojue, whom Jieyuan was sure had a bondskill himself; a bondskill he avoided using, like Meiyao did with hers. Daojue, whose family, the Tianzijun Clan, had also appeared in Yikongwei Beidao's jadebooks. Daojue, who gave Jieyuan the same impression that he wouldn't stop at Greenrealm.

And then there was how Jieyuan had remembered his previous life as Amyas the moment he'd directly touched Daojue the first time. Jieyuan stared at Daojue. And he wondered just what he'd find if he were to take a peek inside Daojue's soul.