Chương 46: Chapter 45: SACRED SOURCE

The curtain formed by the weeping, flowing leaves ended just ten feet or so above the ground, leaving only a fraction of the trunk exposed. Its bark was a light, vivid brown. Pillar-like, with whorls and knots, ridges and swirls, spiraling across its entire length. There was a face on it, too. Not like the human faces on the smaller trees.

This one was formed from deep creases and folds in the bark, broad and ancient, in the vague likeness of a woman's face. Massive, too: several times larger than any human's. It was the sort of thing that would've been hard to see from above, half-hidden by the layers of leaves. But down here, up close, there was no mistaking it. Yet another thing to the ever-growing list of things Jieyuan didn't like about this whole business. Meiyao didn't pause; she just kept walking after stepping off the stairway.

But to Jieyuan's surprise, she didn't head straight for the viridian oakwillow. Instead, she angled off toward the small, diminutive oak that stood at the edge of the pit, close to the stairway. Jieyuan followed her, though he made sure to always keep the oakwillow in the corner of his vision. Not that it took much effort, when it was that size. It dominated everything here, even when he tried not to look at it directly. Meiyao stopped in front of the smaller oak, and Jieyuan stepped up beside her.

This time, Daojue didn't hang back. He came over too, though he kept a few feet of distance like always. There was a corpse in the trunk, same as with all the other trees they'd passed along the way. Another woman. The Linzushen traits (enforced by their bloodline, as he now knew) were so strong he could barely tell her apart from the other treefied Linzushen women they'd seen so far. Pale skin, fine but full features, half-swallowed by the twisting wood.

Almost peaceful-looking, in a way that felt more than a little wrong.

"She was a Sacred One," Meiyao said.

"They were the only ones who could meditate or cultivate here, at the bottom, beside the Sacred Source."

"What exactly do you think happened?" Jieyuan nodded at the dead Sacred One, then at the galleries above.

"Once the Dome took over, I mean. Did they just stay here, meditating like that until they died?"

"I'm not sure." Meiyao narrowed her eyes, thoughtful.

"These trees growing over them—they're not of a type I recognize. They're something from the Dome, I think, even if they don't look like it. I can feel its touch on them, and it's very strong. And…" She turned around, eyes fixed straight ahead—at the Sacred Source.

"They're all connected to it. The Source has been changed, too. It's…" She fell quiet, closing her eyes like she was focusing in on something only she could sense. Jieyuan waited, patient. He let her do her thing, but he didn't take his eyes off the huge tree in front of them. That massive face carved into the trunk, rough but clear—it set his teeth on edge. But then he caught movement from the side—Meiyao was moving again, stepping forward. She still had her eyes closed.

"Meiyao?" he called. She didn't answer. She kept walking, slow and deliberate. It was only then that he realized she was glowing. Green. Glowing green, just like the mist around them. The exact same shade. A green aura. Her bloodgift. Divine Nature Unison. But why was she using it all of a sudden? Jieyuan took a step after her, his hand shooting out to grab her arm—just as Huaxin screamed through their bond. There was a blur of movement, and then everything was a blur as the world went sideway.

And then he was airborne, launched into the air with bone-jarring force. Barely a moment later, something caught at him, pulling him steady before he could hit the ground. The impact rattled him, but a hand was already holding him up, keeping him on his feet. Daojue. Jieyuan blinked, took a quick breath, and forced his mind to focus, to work through what had just happened. Meiyao. She'd thrown him back, moving faster than he'd ever seen. Fast like a tenth-step.

When he turned his eyes back to her, he saw she was still walking forward, slow and steady. Her green aura, which before had been almost invisible against the glow of the mist, was very much clear now. A blazing, vibrant cloak of green, wrapped tight around her like a second skin. But there was more than that. She was walking at the same slow pace, but her steps sounded louder. Like she was getting heavier. And taller. No, not like. She was growing taller, Jieyuan realized.

He watched, wide-eyed, as the distance between the top of her head and the curtain of dangling leaves shrunk by the second. Her hair was getting longer, too. Just moments ago it stopped just past her upper back, but now it was spilling down to her waist, thick and bushy, fanning out behind her like a living cloak. Huaxin kept shouting at him to get out, but Jieyuan shut it out. Then he pushed Daojue's hand off his shoulder and shot forward, haster ring activated.

"Meiyao! Stop!" He reached her in moments; despite the speed she'd shown earlier, she was still moving no faster than a mundane right now. He was about to grab her arm again when he finally got a good look at her face. Her skin had turned brown. A vivid, wooden light brown. Jieyuan's eyes flicked from her to the Sacred Source. Its trunk was the exact same shade. What the—"MEIYAO!" he shouted, right up close. But she didn't even flinch. No reaction at all; she just kept on walking.

And she was towering over him now, over a full foot taller. Her shoulders had broadened too, the fabric of her robes stretching and tearing under the added bulk. She was growing taller. Broader. Her skin had taken on that same vivid wooden brown as the Sacred Source itself. It all added up to one thing. She was turning into a tree. Or at least it sure as gold looked that way. And she was almost there. Almost at the Sacred Source.

Given all this was already happening when she was only on her way to it, Jieyuan couldn't imagine anything good taking place when she reached it. He gritted his teeth and reached for her again, but a hand caught his shoulder, pulling him back. He shot a glance at Daojue, who was standing right beside him, and who wasn't letting go.

"What are you doing?" Jieyuan snapped.

"I need to—""You will die," Daojue said.

"Wait."" Die? What are you— No, wait?" Jieyuan stared at him disbelief.

"What do you mean, wait? She's almost at the—" Meiyao reached the Sacred Source, stopping right in front of it. She'd stopped growing, but by now she stood well over eight feet tall and had a build that made even Daojue look slight. Her outer robes had already torn open, and her inner robes weren't faring much better. Jieyuan tried to shrug off Daojue's hand again, but his grip was like steel. Up ahead, Meiyao extended a hand broad enough to wrap around Jieyuan's whole head and pressed it flat against the trunk.

Right over the face on the tree. And then it wasn't just Meiyao and the mist that were glowing. Where her hand touched the wood, bright green lines flared to life: thick but vein-like, pulsing with light that was even stronger than the glow of her aura. They shone so bright they looked like they'd been burned into the bark itself, like the tree was bleeding light. The lines spread through the trunk, slow at first, but then faster by the second. They climbed higher and higher, reaching up into the canopy.

Soon the leaves above started to glow too, turning from that dull, dead green to a blazing, almost blinding radiance. But they didn't stop there. The lines crawled down the roots sprawling out from the base of the Sacred Source, then along the roots that climbed the walls and wove up through the galleries. And into the treefied cultivators themselves. Within moments, the entire Viridian Cradle was lit up. Every inch of it streaked with those vivid green lines.

And every single one of the tens of thousands of other trees was glowing too, their trunks shot through with green veins, their leaves turned into flickering dots of bright green light. Jieyuan wasn't sure how much of the hammering in his chest was his own, and how much was Huaxin's doing. All he knew was that it felt like it was about to burst right out of him. He focused back on Meiyao. The face on the tree was glowing now, perfectly outlined in that bright green light.

Then, with an unnatural smoothness, it opened its eyes, bits of bark drawing back like eyelids, revealing two bright green orbs. Then its mouth split open, the wood carving in like lips pulled apart.

"VIRIDIAN," it said. The sound was deafening. It came from everywhere, all directions at once. And when Jieyuan glanced up, he saw that the human faces on the trees above—the dead human faces—had changed. Their eyes were open now. He could just barely see the pinpricks of green light in the nearest trees, up at the edge of the first level. Their mouths were open, too, and they were chanting.

"VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN." Tens of thousands of voices— dead voices—blended into one. A chant that rolled through the air like a physical force, so loud Jieyuan's teeth were rattling in his skull. And there was Meiyao, right at the center of it all. The face on the Sacred Source moved under her palm, chanting along with the rest.

Its voice was somehow distinct, cutting through the deafening drone: a woman's voice, warm and melodious, so close to Meiyao's own it made his skin crawl on top of everything else. Rot this. Jieyuan didn't know what was happening. But he knew that he had to do something about it. He leaned down and forward, bracing himself. Daojue adjusted his grip to hold him steady. Jieyuan drove his elbow back into Daojue's stomach.

Daojue dodged; but Jieyuan had been counting on that, and Daojue's grip slackened just enough for Jieyuan to shrug him off. He sprinted, reached the freakishly enlarged Meiyao in just a moment. He hooked an arm around her waist—more than three times thicker than his own—and put everything he had into pulling her away. He was probably the most surprised of anyone when he met almost no resistance. His momentum drove both of them to the ground.

He recovered fast, though, snapping back up to his feet and hauling Meiyao further back with him. As he did, he saw her eyes open, blinking wildly. Under his half-carry, he felt her body shrinking against his side, like she was deflating. About a second later, and she was back to her normal size, the shredded remains of her robes barely clinging to her. That was the good news. The bad news was that it hadn't stopped whatever she'd set off.

The glowing lines were still there, blazing brighter than ever, and the deafening chant kept rolling on. If anything, it was getting even louder.

"VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN." The only thing louder was Huaxin's desperation, hammering at the back of his mind in a wordless, urgent roar. LEAVE. LEAVE. LEAVE. LEAVE. Without a second thought, Jieyuan picked Meiyao up, slung her across his shoulder, and broke into a full run. She folded limply against his back and front. He could feel her stirring, but she was still clearly out of it. They were about halfway to the stairway—Daojue right beside him—when the tremor came.

A deep one, rumbling up from the pit and shivering through the entire structure. And then something shifted under his feet. It was slow, almost gentle, but right now all his senses were so raw and sharp he would've noticed even a feather landing on his shoulder. He glanced down without breaking his stride. The roots under their feet were moving. The whole tangled mat of them, squirming and shifting, soft at first, then harder, until they were writhing and twisting like a nest of worms.

And then they started reaching up. Curling around his greaves, clawing at his ankles, trying to drag him down. That sense of danger, which had settled in his gut the moment he'd seen the city walls and had only built up with every step—it had followed them all the way down here. And now it had caught up. Jieyuan ran faster—pushed harder—feeling each step sink into the roots underfoot and crush them flat. He did it with prejudice, driving his greaves down like he meant to splinter the entire floor.

The roots gave with a wet snap, splattering something green and viscous across his greaves. A thick, sweet tang rose up, almost cloying in its sudden strength, filling his nose and throat as more of the roots burst apart. But that didn't discourage the nasty things any. Didn't slow them down. They clawed at his ankles, tried to wrap around his greaves, pulling and dragging. They weren't just a tangle anymore—they were a living snare, one bent on bringing him down. Maeva, change of plans.

She'd been harvesting and attuning chroma for him all this while, a steady trickle in the back of his mind. Now he needed something else from her. He'd have little use for chroma dead. Mind taking care of the feet?

"Leave it to me." Her voice came as if she were right beside him, somehow perfectly clear despite all the noise, whispering in his ear. And then he felt it: his legs moving with an ease that wasn't his. Maeva was in full control, steps smoother, strides longer. The roots underfoot kept squirming, snagging at him, but now he didn't have to go out of his way to crush them. Maeva adjusted the angle and strength of each footfall perfectly, and the next moment he was practically gliding over the whole writhing mess.

He'd thought it once already, and now he couldn't help but think it again. Maeva somehow took his skills, his abilities, and elevated them to a whole other level. But he didn't have the luxury to marvel at that. Not right now. This was a welcome surprise, anyway—and he could sure use some of those right now. They reached the stairway just as the entire Cradle seemed to exhale.

The roots on the steps pulled away slightly, almost as if they were letting them pass; but then, as his feet and Daojue's touched down on the first step, they surged back with vengeance. Green light pulsed beneath the wooden steps, vein-like lines tracing along the grain. It was a sickly, living glow, crawling along the walls and floors, painting everything around them in flickering viridian, seeping into the air until it felt like he was breathing it in.

Jieyuan kept his gaze down for a while longer, checking if Maeva was handling this intensified assault. But he needn't have worried; under her control, his feet barely touched the steps, climbing them so easily might have as well have been running on level ground. There was a flash of motion to the side, and Daojue overtook him, lean and relentless, moving just as easily as he was; faster, even. But he didn't keep it up. Instead, he matched his pace to Jieyuan's, keeping just a few steps' distance between them.

Daojue was taking the lead, playing vanguard. Jieyuan had already suspected as much for a while, but there really was more to Daojue than the metal in his soul. Not that Jieyuan had time to dwell on that now. The entire place seemed to be writhing, uncountable roots creaking and rustling no matter where he looked. He could barely hear anything besides the deafening chant of "VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN." It filled his head, rang in his teeth, drowned out all other sounds.

Jieyuan didn't hear, only felt the crack of the roots and the rattling of the trembling structure. His feet taken care of, Jieyuan adjusted his right arm's hold on Meiyao. With his left hand, he drew one of the Shifting Sisters. Then he spread his senses out, kept watch for danger, focusing on the first gallery looming ahead. They reached it moments later. Jieyuan quickly scanned the trees along the edges.

The dead entombed in them were covered in glowing green veins like the trees themselves, eyes open and burning like green coals, mouths moving in perfect unison as they droned the words, "VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN." But that was all. The treefied corpses didn't move beyond that, only chanted endlessly as they ran past. About a second and a dozen steps later, they left the first level behind, and Jieyuan shifted his focus to the second one.

They were making good time, and within moments they were already closing in on the second gallery. The green glow around them intensified, flickering across the walls like blood pulsing through veins. The lines ran up the walls and coiled around the columns, splitting and merging. Then Jieyuan felt Meiyao jerk in his hold, twisting against his shoulder and chest. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"Jieyuan?" she cried out, her voice thin and muffled under the roar of the chant. She clawed at his arm, trying to push herself up, break his hold.

"What's—" His decision to leave Maeva in charge of the climbing was suddenly looking like the wisest thing he'd ever done. His feet didn't falter or slow for even a moment as he tightened his grip on Meiyao.

"We're running!" he shouted at her over the noise. Even then, he could only just barely hear his own voice. Meiyao froze, went still, but he could feel the tension in her, taut against his body. Then her head snapped up, scanning left and right, but without fighting against him, only moving as much as she had to. Jieyuan glanced down and saw her eyes go wide, a glassy cast to them under the light of the viridian glow. But they were alert and focused.

"The plants—Heavens!" she gasped. She twisted further in his grip, looking up and locking eyes with him. Her lips moved in a murmur he couldn't catch. Then she shouted, "Let me down! I'm good now!" Jieyuan didn't need to be told twice. He relaxed his hold, letting his arm go slack, and that was it for his part. Meiyao slipped free of him like water, landing at his side with both feet in a dead run, flowing into step beside him.

The roots grabbed at her just as they did at him and Daojue, but she didn't pause for even a moment, barely seemed to notice as she tread effortlessly over them. Maeva readjusted his steps immediately now that he didn't have Meiyao weighing him down, and he picked up the pace slightly. And even with everything happening around them, with all the chaos, Jieyuan couldn't help but notice how Meiyao and Daojue also increased their speed to keep up with him.

Even with Maeva running for him—and doing a better job of it than he could have—he was still the slow one, the one dragging their group back. Meiyao and Daojue didn't just have better balance and dexterity. They were faster, too. Jieyuan had never thought that the Heavens were fair. He'd have to be a fool to think so, when they'd never pretended to be. But this whole chromal bloodlines business was starting to look like a touch too far. But again— not the time. With his right arm now free, Jieyuan drew Ruby.

He felt the cool weight of the splitfang settle against the palm of his gauntlet, adjusted his stance to hold both Shifting Sisters up and in front of him. He hadn't had cause to use them yet, but he'd rather not be caught off guard if that changed. When that changed, rather, because he doubted they'd be getting out of this mess without a fight. Meiyao's saber flashed out beside him, viridian light tracing along its edge. The three of them tore past the second gallery, breath burning in their chests.

The scent of churned roots was thicker now: a cloying, sickeningly sweet rot that stung the nose. But it wasn't from roots crushed underfoot; he'd stopped when Maeva took over, and both Daojue and Meiyao were climbing the steps the same way, their greaves barely brushing the squirming roots below. No, the damage came from roots pierced and twisted by other roots in their frenzy to get at them.

The sole saving grace in all this was that the roots' attacks were less a coordinated effort and more of a mad, wild rampage. The roots got in each other's way as much as they tried to get at the three of them. And in the background of it all: "VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN. VIRIDIAN."

"What happened?" Meiyao yelled over the chant, her eyes snapping from the walls to the writhing roots underfoot and back again.

"I was hoping you'd answer that!" Jieyuan shot back, his teeth gritted. His whole body felt like it was vibrating, the air itself shivering with the weight of the noise and the endless, echoing chant. Meiyao shot him a look, confusion and concern tangled together. The shaking was getting worse, the whole building visibly vibrating now. Worse, he could see the thicker, sinuous roots lining the walls of the Cradle starting to sway, thick cables splitting away from the wood like muscle tearing from bone.

That's not good. He gripped the Shifting Sisters tighter. Not good at all. Jieyuan watched it all, even as he tried to think of a way to describe the events that had led to this utter mess.

"You fell into a trance! Started turning into a tree! Launched me into the air! Touched the Sacred Source! And then—this!" Meiyao's expression, if anything, only grew more confused.

"What—""I'll give you the blow-by-blow later!" Jieyuan snapped.

"Just tell me—can you stop this?" They hit the third gallery. Now the roots on the far walls weren't just detaching themselves; they were angling themselves toward the stairway, reaching forward, questing for them. The massive, tentacle-like wooden limbs were still a ways off and moved slowly, though, giving them a little breathing room for now. But not forever. The three of them blazed past the third floor. Jieyuan glanced at Meiyao. Her lips were pressed into a tight, thin line.

Then her eyes closed—and somehow her steps kept steady, never faltering. She stayed that way for a beat, two, three—then she opened her eyes again, shook her head, and looked distinctly alarmed now.

"I can't! The Sacred Source—it's the one doing it!" She didn't look outright scared. But her expression wasn't that far from it, either. It was at least halfway there. Great. Perfect. Just golden. Jieyuan glanced away, ensuring the way was still clear, then shouted at her, "Why's it trying to kill us?" Depending on what exactly it was, maybe they could—"It's trying to kill you! You and Daojue! Me, it wants to keep!" Ah. Of course.

It turned out the huge, creepy, murderous tree's goals weren't that different from the Xiyunfeng's and the Gleaming Nobles'. Kill Jieyuan and Daojue, capture Meiyao. They reached the fourth floor. The roots on the walls moved slow, ponderous, but they were already halfway across, reaching for them. They hadn't had any trouble yet besides the roots underfoot, but he reckoned they'd be in for something on the way out on the fifth floor.

They surged up past the fourth floor, and now only the fifth one stood between them and the way out. But as they drew closer to it, Jieyuan caught sight of the entrance, sitting directly ahead at the end of the stairway. It wasn't the entrance itself that he focused on, though, but the things gathered around it. In that moment, he knew there was some animal cunning to the Sacred Source, or whatever was driving this.

Because even as multitudes of massive roots on the walls kept moving toward them, slow and steady, a cluster of those same trunk-thick roots had gathered right by the entrance. Waiting for them. Jieyuan braced himself but didn't slow. Neither did Meiyao or Daojue. They crossed into the fifth floor—and the giant roots extending from the walls were on them instantly. Gone was the earlier slowness, the steady approach. Now the huge wooden tentacles snapped forward like whips, lashing out at them from all directions.

Oh, it's cunning, all right. Maeva, I'll take this.

"All yours," his sister's voice rang in his mind. Jieyuan took back control of his legs, pushed off against the step he was on and jumped, only just barely evading the barrage. These roots were at Redrealm (and thank the Heavens for that) but they were at tenth-step Redrealm, and he doubted he'd be able to do much more than scratch them.

Below, Meiyao and Daojue met the attack head-on, cutting the roots down; Daojue with Gleaming End and Meiyao with her saber, Radiant Blaze, which was glowing so bright it hurt to look at. Gravity dragged Jieyuan back down to the ground; Daojue and Meiyao stood drenched in the green, viscous sap that had splattered from the cut-down branches as he landed right between them. They kept moving. Between Daojue and Meiyao, every root that came at them was cut down.

When they reached the entrance, the ones that had been lying in ambush struck; but Daojue stepped forward, swept Gleaming End in a wide arc, and sliced them all apart in one motion. And just like that, they were out of the Cradle. They kept running. Out of the corner of his vision, Jieyuan saw the roots outside the Cradle moving too: no longer slow, but as fast as the ones inside had been when attacking them. But the three of them were faster.

They crossed the distance to the boundary of the pocket and rushed through it, barreling out the other side, leaving the Cradle's roots behind. The sound of the chanting faded immediately. They didn't stop running, but even after a few steps he didn't catch anything coming at him from behind with his soulsenses; looking back, he saw the roots of the Cradle were nowhere in sight. Their pace slowed, and Jieyuan took a moment to scan the pocket.

it was the same one they had passed through on the way to the Cradle it turned out Meiyao had been right after all about the centerward-pull of the Dome not applying inside Viridian Death City. Finally some good news. That meant they could head straight back toward the entrance of the city. The air was thick with the sweet, cloying smell of decay: pungent and syrupy, like the aftermath of overripe fruit left to fester under the sun. It stuck to the back of Jieyuan's throat, coating his tongue like a film.

Jieyuan caught sight of his own hands: still smeared in patches of drying ichor, flecked with bits of grit and crushed root. And that was the least of it. Thick, viscous viridian slime covered him in splatters, head to toes. He'd come off light, though. He'd only caught some of the splashes; Meiyao and Daojue were the ones who'd done all the cutting, the ones who'd led the offensive back in the Viridian Dome, and they were just about coated in it.

Meiyao was by far the worst off: there was probably more slime than cloth on her. Probably less than a third of her robes still clung to her body, and precariously at that. Even now he could see torn strips of cloth sliding off her. Just as Jieyuan was about to use his cleanser artifact on himself he noticed something. The ground was still trembling, even though they were outside the Cradle. Fainter, but getting stronger.

And though the chanting was gone, there wasn't silence; there was another sound filling the air. A loud, deep creak and rustle, almost like a groan. He turned toward it. The Sacred Garden started about halfway through the pocket and extended almost all the way to the boundary they were currently standing in front of. Just a few feet from them. And that was a problem, because the trees of the garden were, at the moment, swaying.

It took Jieyuan a moment to understand what was happening: at the the base of the trees, roots were snapping up, breaking through the surface, bunching around them. And then the viridian oakwillows—the Orangerealm trees—started to rise. Off the ground, uprooting themselves. Those weren't the only roots moving, either. The ones underfoot were starting to squirm. Further out, he could hear more distant, fainter noises. See other bent, twisted shapes moving, shifting, coming to life and motion.

It was just like with the Viridian Cradle. Except now it was the whole Viridian Death City.

"Rot," Meiyao murmured next to him.

"Rot," Jieyuan echoed. The word tasted bitter on his tongue. As one, the three of them surged forward again, dead-on full throttle. Around them, the Sacred Garden's boundary had dissolved into chaos. The viridian oakwillows—the Orangerealm trees—had fully come loose now and were now advancing, lurching out from their original lines, dragging themselves across the garden paths. Their roots rolled beneath them like coiled limbs, snapping forward, plunging into the ground, then pulling the weight of the trunk behind.

Rinse and repeat, drag and crawl. The nearest ones had already reached the walls of the gardens, their canopies rustling in agitation as they scaled upward, roots bunching and regripping for leverage. Mist-thick air slapped against his face: sharp, cold, wet with the lingering bite of Cradle-tainted humidity. His blood thundered in his ears, doing almost as good a job as the thunderous chanting inside the Cradle. Any louder and it'd drown out the dull, groaning rustle behind them.

Jieyuan gritted his teeth and forced himself forward, doing his best to get to the other end of the pocket before the trees could reach them. But that was to no avail. Focusing on the path ahead, Jieyuan saw that trees farther into the distance were already climbing over the ornamental garden walls, spilling out into the root-covered avenue, trunks bent low with motion, branches quivering, leaves shaking like ruffled feathers. And then the trees started advancing on them in that root-surfing half-glide, half-crawl.

It was also then that living, writhing carpet of roots covering the streets finished stirring and started attacking. They whipped and coiled, snaking up like thrown ropes, surging from below, lashing and clawing for feet, ankles, anything they could catch, trying to drag and trip and restrain. Jieyuan tried to run over the roots as Maeva had earlier, but he'd barely managed three steps when one snagged at him, and he started stomping on reflex. No. This won't work.

He crushed the next few without breaking stride, started to call Maeva on—but then he had an idea, and gathered his strength and then shot forward in a burst, half-stride, half-skip. He did it three more times, quickly covering ground. All right, I think this is working— The ropes coiling around his body tugged at him, almost at the same time, both lines of cloth pulled taut. Jieyuan looked up. Meiyao and Daojue had pulled ahead.

He was faster than before—skipping had stomping solidly beat—but their effortlessly, gliding run was faster still. Or not. Fine. Maeva, you're up again. No answer; but he didn't need one. His legs surged forward; and then he was gliding, skimming over the roots like Meiyao and Daojue, barely making sound, barely even touching down. In moments he made up for lost ground—though Meiyao and Daojue seemed to have slowed a bit to let him catch up—and together the three of them charged on.

He kept a shred of awareness over his body, over all the things Maeva was doing with it. He was surging forward, faster than before, possibly even faster than Daojue and Meiyao. The ropes connecting him to the two had started out taut, but already they were merely tight. And now he could feel—could see—them slackening further as he narrowed the distance between himself and the other two. The air warped with motion.

Roots scraped and lashed behind and under them, but he barely noticed anymore; he was more concerned with what lay in front. Right ahead, a group of the Orangerealm trees was closing in. And it was one thing to see them from far off, mist-wreathed shapes, distant menaces. But up close, charging straight toward you? This was something else. The trees blotted off the way ahead. Their canopies shook, leaves thrashing in violent fits.

The roots beneath it undulated, pushing and releasing, pushing and releasing, dragging the whole mass forward. They weren't as smooth as they'd been back in the garden—their roots seemed to be having troubles with the ones over their streets—and instead moved in short, bucking throws. Jieyuan's first instinct was to swerve to the side, slip past; he didn't know just what the trees could do, and he wasn't keen on finding out. But Daojue was at the lead. And he seemed to have other ideas.

Daojue shot straight forward, Gleaming End leveled for a full thrust. Jieyuan's eyes went wide. What in the Heavens? Gleaming End was strong. No question about that. It could cut through anything Redrealm like wheat, by virtue of its Law alone. But these trees were Orangerealm, and as small as viridian oakwillows (these ones, at any rate) were compared to all the other trees of the Viridian Dome, they were still twice Daojue's size. Trunk thicker than his whole body twice over.

A spear thrust would hardly put one out of commission. What did Daojue possibly think— Right at the tip of the spearhead, a bright white dot began to swell. A bead of light. Pure, tight, sharp. It flared, erupting into a broad, blinding beam of multicolored light that shot straight forward, piercing straight through the first of the trees, stopping it dead. Daojue swung Gleaming End, and the beam scythed through the space ahead, cleaving through all the other trees in front of them.

The beam was even brighter than a Radiant Light Blast; it left Jieyuan blinking away dark blotches from his vision. Maeva kept him running; she seemed to have the situation well in hand for the moment, so Jieyuan allowed himself a glance at Daojue's back. And, more importantly, at the brief, glistening glimpses of Gleaming End as it swept out ahead, again and again, mowing down trees.

Back in Gleamstone Valley, in the long-dead protector's crystallized tomb of a cave, Jieyuan had wondered what sort of spiritskills Gleaming End might have. He'd kept wondering over the next few days—but as time passed, and Daojue never once used it, the question had dulled and faded. Either it didn't have any, or Daojue couldn't use them. It should've already been impossible for Daojue to bond with it, being only a Redsoul. Well. It looked like both his theories had been wrong.

Gleaming End did have spiritskills—at least one. And Daojue could use it. Why Daojue had waited until now, Jieyuan didn't know. Going from what he'd seen just now, it was like a Radiant Light Blast, but with a much wider range—and probably even stronger, given it was fired by an Orangerealm weapon. Something like that could've turned the tide back during their escape. Might have been enough to turn the tables on the Xiyunfeng clansmen and the traitorous Gleaming Stone Sect elders.

But Daojue was using it now—and might have just saved them—so that'd have to do. The beam faded away, and Jieyuan got a clear look at the results of Gleaming End's rampage: all the trees rushing towards them had been reduced to stumps; they'd been cut through the middle, their crowned top halves falling to the ground.

Their bottom halves had halted their advance and were swaying in place over the undulating roots under them, before toppling over; just when Jieyuan thought they'd topple over, they abruptly straightened up—and then the roots crowding the street rushed over up the stumps like a swarm of eel, covering them. Jieyuan tensed. What's happening— A storm of wooden tendrils exploded from where the trunks had been; they surged high into the air before falling upon them like a tidal wave. Rot.

Jieyuan braced himself as the flurry of tendrils surged. They breached the edge of his soulsenses, and the relief he felt when he realized they were tenth-step Redrealm was palpable. But the relief died the very next instant; because even if the tendrils weren't Orangerealm, there was no way he could deal with this many—"Give me full control!" Maeva shouted as if from right next to him.

"Now!" Jieyuan didn't hesitate; he surrendered full control over his body to Maeva just as the tendrils struck and his surroundings became a rush of brown. He didn't fall; his body became a whirlwind, his arms swinging the Shifting Sisters swinging so fast he could barely keep track of his own moments, parrying each and every tendril. He hadn't stopped his advance, either; somehow, Maeva kept him running even while fending off the tendrils.

What— How— Jieyuan had already known Maeva could control his body better than he could, but this was absurd; Maeva was having his body do a thousand things at once right, each and every moment perfectly calculated, all parts of him working in perfect, impossible tandem. There were so many tendrils it was like he was swimming in them, but somehow Maeva was keeping them at bay.

Ahead, he caught glimpses through the rushing tendrils of Meiyao and Daojue handling themselves with the same kind of ease—spinning, weaving, scything their way through the flurry of whipping tendrils while rushing through the treacherous terrain. Jieyuan wasn't sure which was the hardest to believe, that Maeva could do all this with his body, or that Meiyao and Daojue were managing it on their own, without some bondskill-empowered hallucination helping them.

Jieyuan would've liked to think that on stable ground, with Fatebloom Instinct active, he could've pulled this off too. Probably. Maybe. But envy had always only served to push him forward rather than bring him low. He threw every ounce of focus he had into his own body's movements. Immersed himself in them, did his best to absorb the way Maeva had him move, all the intricacies of it.

Because through skill alone she was somehow bridging the gap between him and Meiyao and Daojue—the gap between mundane heritage and chromal bloodline. And it was still his body that Maeva was using—Maeva herself was, in fact, part of him. So whatever she could do through him, so could he. They kept of them kept advancing through the barrage of tendrils until suddenly the space ahead of him opened up—and they were through.

Before them was the open avenue, leading to a wall of mist; the viridian oakwillows were behind them. They'd made it through. Alive. Something shifted inside him, senses reconnected, awareness amplified. And he could feel his body again, sharp and whole, except for his legs and feet. Those were still Maeva's. And it came as a relief. Irrational relief, because he was clearly better off with Maeva in control. What had happened just now had more than proved that.

And Maeva was him, technically—or at least a part of him. But he couldn't help it. Letting her run his legs, that was one thing. But giving her full control like that? Even if he could learn something from it, from tracking her actions, it still didn't sit right with him.

"I don't like taking over control any more than necessary, either," Maeva whispered, voice cool against his ear.

"This is your body, Amyas." Agreed, Jieyuan sent back, not bothering to hide the tension still knotted in him. But on that note—you've been holding out on me. Big time. I knew you were good, but not this good. You need to teach me—well, everything. It was one thing to walk silently, or even to glide over the roots. He could do both of those on his own if he really focused, even if only to the exclusion of everything else. But what Maeva had pulled against that barrage of tendrils… that was something else entirely.

It was closer to the times he had her join him in a fight using his soulforce and a Shifting Sister, when she'd move much more fluidly and with much greater skill than he did. He'd questioned her about that when he'd been preparing for his duel with Daojue, after he'd seen her wield Shifting Edge during their practice. She'd told him she could draw on all his memories, replicate any move he'd ever seen. But she'd made it sound like it was only possible because she didn't have a real body.

That explanation didn't hold up anymore. Not after she'd taken over his body and moved like that.

"I only know what you know," Maeva said, airy, but with a thin edge of amusement that she didn't bother to hide. Then apparently I know a lot more than I thought I did, Jieyuan shot back. Is this a subconscious thing? You're externalizing—or, I don't know, surfacing—everything I've ever internalized and just… putting it into action?

"Amyas," Maeva said, her tone turning warm and scolding all at once, "I know you've got a better grasp of basic psychology than that." Then, more softly: "But—yes. Something like that. And once this is all over, I'll help you train. Of course." Much appreciated, Jieyuan answered, letting just enough sincerity bleed through to make the point. Whatever this was—some buried kinesthetic knowledge, some instinctual reflex Maeva could tap but he couldn't—Jieyuan wanted it. Badly.

Maeva's incomprehensible abilities aside, Jieyuan had never been one to pass up an avenue to power. As far as he was concerned, as long as Maeva could pass her skill onto him, the more skilled she was, the better. And until he'd gotten the hang of it, he had to admit it was good to know he could call on her to handle matters—he might not like the idea of it much, but he could keep on disliking it while he was alive. The city flashed past them, restless and aggressive.

The buildings on this side pressed closer to the streets than they had on the far bank, their forms looming, shaking, shifting in slow, uneven jolts, swaying under their own weight as roots snapped up around them. The streets remained a living, seething thing, unrelenting beneath their feet. But Maeva was enough for that for now. She kept him moving, kept him gliding over the squirming terrain.

Walls sloped forward, frames bent at impossible joints, the wood pulsing faintly at the edges of his senses, as more and more colossal roots wormed out of the ground and advanced in on them. But it was all too far away to pose any threat, at least for now; the roots coming in from the flanks weren't close enough to matter yet. That didn't mean, though, they were safe. They wouldn't be, not while inside Viridian Death City. Meiyao and Daojue were just further ahead; he'd just about caught up to them.

But then he noticed something: the rope that had been binding them was gone, torn apart by the tendrils.

"Jieyuan!" Meiyao called; his eyes focused on her just in time to see her throwing something his way. Jieyuan grabbed it out of the air. It was a thick string of fabrics; a makeshift rope made from robes. Right. He'd helped Meiyao make a few spare ropes, just in case. Jieyuan sheathed the Shifting Sisters and wrapped the robes around himself before drawing the splitfangs out again. Up ahead, he saw Daojue doing the same; Meiyao had also tossed him one.

They were at the very edge of the pocket now; a solid wall of viridian mist loomed before them. Thick, opaque, like a curtain pulled tight across the street. Meiyao reached it first and went through without pause. Jieyuan and Daojue followed close behind, on her heels.