Chương 49: Chapter 48: ONE OR TWO

Jieyuan crouched in front of a bushy bramble and plucked some of the little, green, berry-like fruits growing out of it. Meiyao was on the other side of the pocket, collecting some flowers from a little patch of orange lilies. Daojue stood by himself in the middle, not doing much of anything. All around the clearing, poking out from the curtains of mist, were glowing, flowering vines, a couple of which Meiyao had already picked clean.

It'd been about two weeks since they'd entered this new, more colorful stretch of the forest. Almost a month and a half since they'd entered the Dome. And if you were to ignore that hellish day they'd spent in Viridian Death City, in hindsight Jieyuan would say that things weren't nearly as bad as they could've been. They were stranded here, sure, with no way out and from the looks of it for a good while, but despite the many, many, many dangers of the Dome, Meiyao was no different from a human lucky charm.

Ignoring Viridian Death City, there'd been some close calls here and there with some beasts, but nothing had come out of any of them. Meiyao always came through, and they'd then move on. Not finding any more berries, he stood up, then turned around to watch as Meiyao finished up with her flowers. He tossed the berries into his pouch, but kept one in hand. Even from this distance he could hear the little tune she was humming. She'd sure eased up a lot, too.

Even more so compared to the way she'd been at the beginning, right after… after she'd lost just about everything. For the past two weeks she'd been doing at least some refining every day, and Jieyuan reckoned that was one of the main reasons for her lifting spirits. She adored the craft, and even after two weeks she wasn't anywhere near close to running out of things to tell him about it.

Two days ago, she'd even encouraged him to try his hand at it himself, and though he'd failed miserably Meiyao had more than enjoyed herself trying to instruct him. Meiyao stood up and walked over to him. Not a word passed between them as he passed over the berry in his hand. In turn, she handed him one of her lilies. He closed his eyes, concentrating his soulsenses on the flower's spirit, feeling out its song. Two weeks ago he wouldn't have been able to sense anything at all, but he'd been practicing.

He didn't get much at first, but he kept at it, focusing on the very faint, half-formed impressions he was getting, until he finally caught a hint of something a bit clearer. Growth … Regeneration? Opening his eyes, he found Meiyao looking at him expectantly. She'd have already long since finished examining the berry.

"Regeneration?" he ventured. She cocked an eyebrow.

"Are you asking or telling me?" Maeva giggled in his ear. These days, he had her around just about all the time. Chroma expenditure had just about stopped being an issue for him.

"Regeneration," he said, more firmly. Meiyao beamed.

"Not bad." He handed her back the flower, and she put it away.

"How many more properties does it have?" Jieyuan asked.

"Primary ones like regeneration? Only five. As for secondary ones, for compatibility crosschecking, about…" She paused, then nodded,"About a hundred and twenty, I think."

"Ah." Two weeks ago, he'd wondered at how much more impressed he would be by Meiyao's skill at refining if he actually had any idea what she was doing. He hadn't imagined he'd be getting an answer so soon.

"Being able to identify even one after two weeks is still really good," Meiyao assured him, and there wasn't a hint of irony in her tone. She'd tease him more often than not, but she was really earnest about what she considered his education.

"Even experienced refiners can only tell the general properties with a deep inspection. The specific ones take weeks, sometimes months of study, and often require multiple refiners and even nurturers working together. You've got keen soulsenses."

"Slow and steady is the way," he said, like no Firesoul in the history of the Chromajie. Meiyao must've caught the sarcasm, but she ignored it.

"Exactly." She then turned around and, taking the lead again, headed to the end of the pocket. She stopped there for just a moment, before going through, Jieyuan just behind her and Daojue a little more distant third. Over on the other side, Jieyuan found Meiyao already making her way over to a short, stout tree filled with small, bright pink flowers.

Not one they'd come across before, but his grasp on botanics had improved to such an extent he still immediately recognized it as a myrtle tree, or at least some derivative of it. There wasn't anything else to see in the pocket, though, so Jieyuan hung back while Meiyao picked the flowers. He'd have helped, but according to her, he wasn't ready for it. Each chromal plant had a very specific way it needed to be harvested in.

Each and every time all Jieyuan saw was Meiyao plucking the flowers right out, but she was the expert on the subject. And experts did have a way of making the complex look effortless, so that added up. Jieyuan glanced at Daojue, who stood by his side, staring blankly ahead. Not for the first time, Jieyuan wondered just what exactly Daojue thought about this whole situation. Not just being stranded in the Dome like this, but this recent change of pace and rhythm.

Daojue had never voiced any thoughts on the matter any way or another, though, and Jieyuan wasn't curious enough to ask questions that'd probably be ignored. Turning back to Meiyao, he found himself wondering about her thoughts too (also not for the first time). Since that one talk they'd had right at the beginning where she broke down, the topic of the Xiyunfeng Clan and the Gleaming Noble's ambush and coup hadn't come up even once.

Nowadays, when she did talk of a family member of hers in passing, she didn't get hung up on it, either, and just moved right on, business as usual. He didn't believe for a second that she was over it, but it seemed like she was trying not to linger on the subject. At any rate, if this was a front she was putting up, it was a very convincing one.

Considering their pace had reduced considerably as of late now that they were taking the time to collect ingredients, and how Meiyao was extending their resting periods so they could spend more time on refining, he reckoned that at the very least she wasn't in as much of a hurry anymore to get out. That, or she'd accepted that hurrying wouldn't make much of a difference in the long run, not with how much ground they still had to cover ahead of them.

Their destination was the center of the Dome, and given what he knew of the size of it, Jieyuan didn't reckon they were even a thousandth of the way there, judging by their current pace. They had at least a decade of walking ahead of them, and hurrying probably wouldn't shave much more than a year off it, not when they still had to take it slow because of the chromal beasts roaming the Dome. One advantage to all of this was that they were making good progress in other ways. Particularly cultivation-wise.

Daojue had broken through to fifth-step Redrealm yesterday, and Jieyuan and Meiyao weren't too far from their breakthroughs. That meant it wouldn't be long before they all unlocked the fifth-step Redtalent, Chromal Sustenance, and outgrew fasting pills. That was important; their stock wasn't running low yet, but it wouldn't last a decade, and Meiyao hadn't found the necessary ingredients to make more yet.

Meiyao suddenly jumped away from the tree, turned toward them, and jerked her hand sharply to the side before going completely still. Jieyuan stood up straighter, going alert. By his side, Daojue did the same. They hadn't worked out any specific signs, but Meiyao's meaning was clear enough. Be still and quiet. Just moments later, a small, dark shape barreled into the pocket from the left.

It didn't stop, and Jieyuan only barely picked out from the dark green blur a four-legged body, about as tall as his waist with a tapered head before it curved around the tree and disappeared into the mist curtain on the other side.

"The jackal again?" Jieyuan asked when he saw Meiyao relaxed. Though he'd only gotten that brief look at it now, he was fairly sure he recognized it. They had come across the same creature (or at least one of the same race) a couple of days ago. Except they'd gotten a clearer look at it, then. A greenseeker jackal, according to Meiyao. It looked like a cross between a fox and a wolf, with tent-like ears and a long, bushy tail. Dark green all over except on its underside, where its fur was white.

One of the few beasts they'd come across that didn't make their mundane counterparts look like miniatures. That was little comfort, though, when it was at Orangerealm.

"Yes," Meiyao said, staring in the direction it'd disappeared to.

"It probably wouldn't be aggressive; my senses tell me it's more of a scavenger type. But…"

"It's still at Orangerealm."

"It's still at Orangerealm," Meiyao echoed. They'd come across a few Orangerealm beasts since that huge vulture so far, and it always took Meiyao much more time to pacify them than with Redrealm ones. Jieyuan avoided thinking about what would happen if they came across a Yellowrealm one. Meiyao stood there for a moment longer, then nodded at them and they resumed on their way. Two pockets later, though, they came across a lake, and Meiyao froze again. This time, though, Jieyuan was more prepared for it.

It wasn't their first time coming across a body of water in the woods, and Meiyao was always especially careful around them. Chromal beasts drank water even though they didn't need to, and the likelihood of coming across them shot up by a great deal lakeside. Not to mention that the lake itself could be housing some lovely little nightmares of its own, and there was no guarantee that any such creatures would do them the favor of staying in their natural habitat.

After a good few minutes, though, Meiyao eased up, and Jieyuan did as well. There were some flowers near the lake, but Meiyao walked straight past them as she crossed to the other side of the pocket. Even if it was safe right now, it didn't mean it'd stay that way, and the less time they spent near the water, the better. As they crossed into the next pocket, Jieyuan found that the lake was gone. That was the good news. The bad news was that they'd come across a beast anyway.

And even after the several dozen (probably over a hundred, really) beasts he'd seen so far in the Dome, this one was easily the meanest-looking murder critter yet. Meiyao stood just ahead of him, Daojue to his side. And on the other side of the pocket was a snake. Except its body was as thick as his waist a few times over, it was probably longer than he was tall a few dozen times over, and it didn't have just one massive, triangular, broad head, but two of them.

Its body was bifurcated near the front end, and each part of it stretched into its own head. The head on the left was covered in bright green scales, whereas the one on the right was white. Their individual lengths leading to the main body were the same color, while the rest of the trunk was striped with the two colors. Its heads were just at the edge of his soulsenses, and of course—because the Heavens hated them—Jieyuan couldn't sense them. Meiyao took a step forward, then, and slowly raised a hand.

The snake's white head followed her movements, focusing on her, but the one on the right… It didn't look at her. Rather, its large, glowing green eyes stared fixedly at Daojue. And as Daojue very slowly moved Gleaming End in front of him, adjusting his position, the green head tilted slowly to the side. DANGER, Huaxin sent Jieyuan as his heart started racing. And together with it, his thoughts. More than once they had come across multiple beasts. Packs.

Meiyao always had a hard time with those, even though every time they'd faced a group the beasts had only been Redrealm; according to her, it weakened her bloodgift's effects when she had to split her attention. So, the question was: this two-headed serpent, did it count as one Orangerealm beast, or two? As if the menacing, unblinking, slitted stare of the green snake head wasn't bad enough, that same snake head lifted itself higher into the air, arching its upper half.

A hiss came next, and the sound of it could've frozen flame. Jieyuan snapped a glance at Meiyao. She was still standing over the white half of the snake, which, thank the Heavens, was concentrated on her. Even with Meiyao's back in the way, that only blocked the middle third of the snake's head; its two massive, burning eyes were well in sight, and fixed on Meiyao.

That was only part of the problem solved, though, and whatever Meiyao was doing right now, it didn't seem to be working on the greener, meaner half of the issue. Gritting his teeth, bracing himself, Jieyuan moved his right foot slightly to the side, and pressed it a bit into a dry branch. It started to crackle. He kept both snake heads well within sight, searching for any changes, any attention sent his way, but nothing. He drove his foot down harder, snapping the branch. Still nothing.

Neither head so much as twitched. The green head was hissing louder, but it was still completely focused on Daojue. Jieyuan decided to risk it.

"Meiyao," he said, lowly, quietly. He paused for a bit. Still neither head seemed to notice him. All right.

"Something's wrong. The green head's got some sort of problem with Daojue." He was ready to shut his mouth at a moment's notice—ready to jump straight into a fight—but there was no need. The green head was fully absorbed with Daojue, and the white one with Meiyao.

"Not Daojue," Meiyao said back, just as quietly. The white head's stare wavered slightly, and Jieyuan tensed, but it didn't react otherwise.

"It's Gleaming End. The green head… wants it, I think." Jieyuan focused on the green head, on its burning green eyes, and then back on Daojue, who shifted Gleaming End slightly to the side, probably on purpose after hearing Meiyao's words. And as Daojue did so, the snake's pitch-black slits tracked the movement. Not Daojue, Gleaming End. But why? None of the beasts they'd come so far had ever paid Gleaming End any attention. What made this snake any different— Snake.

This was the first snake they'd come across so far, Jieyuan realized. And he recalled that time he'd used Fatebloom Incarnation and how it had altered his soulsenses, letting him sense things he hadn't been able to before. Strange, unsettling impressions. In particular, he recalled the impressions he'd gotten from all the gleamstone objects, from the Liangshibai, and most of all, from Gleaming End. Crystal. Corruption. Serpent. Jieyuan frowned.

He didn't know what that meant, but he was sure that was the connection here, the reason for the snake's interest. What to do about it, though? That was the question that mattered. It wasn't like Daojue giving up Gleaming End was an option. He doubted Daojue would agree to it; and even if he did, Jieyuan wasn't sure it'd be the right move. Gleaming End was their only Orangerealm weapon, and possibly their only means of dealing with higher-realm creatures.

Meiyao hadn't gotten the chance to use Divine Nature Resonance on an Orangerealm beast yet; her control over them was too shaky for her to risk upsetting them with a sudden transformation. They knew she could use it on them—she'd used it on the Sacred Source—but they didn't know how far the resonance extended, whether it'd also increase the strength of her Law accordingly. It was one of the few doubts that remained about her bloodgift. Either way, Gleaming End was their trump card. They couldn't just give it up.

But if not that, then what? What were their options? The green head's hisses grew louder, and there was movement from the left as the white head started to turn away from Meiyao. Meiyao immediately stepped closer, and the white head snapped back to her. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Jieyuan wasn't at all reassured, though.

The green head was still making some very unkind eyes at Daojue; and worse, if what had happened just now was any indication, Meiyao's hold on the white head was slipping. Options. Come on. First off, he had to assume the snake was at Orangerealm, because if he was wrong and it was Yellowrealm, they would be doomed, no two ways about it. So he had to believe they had a chance, otherwise there was no point. Running … Jieyuan quickly discarded the idea. It would be suicide with extra steps.

The snake would be able to follow them through the pockets, and even if it was just at first-step Orangerealm, it should still be able to slither like lightning; all Orangerealm beasts could manifest hastespace. If they made a run for it, they'd also risk coming across other beasts, and as bad as the situation looked already, Jieyuan didn't doubt for a moment it could get worse. Fighting it was, then. At least in that case, there was a silver lining: this pocket was larger than normal.

Facing a beast this big in a normal-sized one would've been rotten. Jieyuan took deep breaths, adjusting his grip on the Shifting Sisters, though it wasn't like the splitfangs would be of much help here, given the Law gap. No, the only things they had that would have any effect on Orangerealm beasts were Daojue's Gleaming End and possibly Meiyao's Divine Nature Resonance. Fatebloom Incarnation? He could use it; he already had three full drops of Heartblood. But he held off.

Once spent, he'd have to wait another ten days for the next drop, and it would also mean Huaxin sinking into hibernation again, cutting him off from Fatebloom Intuition and its supercharged form, Fatebloom Instinct. The situation wasn't that dire yet, and a temporary boost in strength and physical control wouldn't change much right now. But that didn't mean he had to settle for being useless.

"Agility augmenters," Jieyuan said.

"Let's all take one." He produced a small, yellowish pill from an inner pocket in his robes. He always kept a pill of each type in his robes for easy access; Meiyao had refined over a hundred augmenters of all sorts over the last two weeks, so it wasn't like they needed to ration it. Augmenters were a last-resort, but the situation was looking dire. He popped the pill, flicking it into his mouth and swallowing it down. The effect was immediate. He felt a shift inside him; it was like manifesting hastespace.

Everything slowed: the breeze, the sounds of the forest, all of it became drawn-out as time itself seemed to crawl. This would last for about an hour. It was plenty of time; by then all this should all be over, one way or another. Daojue also took a pill, his movements quick and discreet; Meiyao was even subtler about it. Neither snake head had any reaction to it.

"Meiyao," Jieyuan said, "tell me its properties. Its spiritskills."

"It has two—" Meiyao started to speak. But then the white head jerked away from her and rose sharply into the air. And like its green twin, it fixed its eye onto Daojue. Onto Gleaming End. And then Meiyao was shouting something; and then the snake—both heads, together—lunged at them. At Daojue.

Activating his haster ring on instinct, Jieyuan threw himself out of the way barely a moment after Meiyao did, and the next instant the snake was on them, its body a white and green streak as its heads plunged down towards Daojue. Daojue jumped to the side, taking the left like Jieyuan had; mid-motion, he flicked out Gleaming End, stabbing it toward the nearest snake head—the green one. Gleaming End cut into the beast just under the massive green eye, cutting a scarlet line through its scales.

The sound of the spear shredding the scales was almost like a bell chiming, sharp and ringing. Daojue landed beside Jieyuan as both heads reared back together, reorienting towards their new position. The green head wasn't just hissing anymore, but growling, low and deep and rumbling. A bright-red line undercut its eye, bleeding, but it looked superficial. It didn't look like Daojue had done much more than annoy it. And then the white head lunged forward, mouth open.

Jieyuan barely caught a glimpse of fangs the size of arms and the color of ivory before he jumped out of the way again. Heavens, it's fast. With the agility augmenter, it was like Jieyuan had the hastespace of an eighth-step Redsoul, but the snake was still moving fast enough to blur. This time Daojue didn't move; he stood his ground and stabbed Gleaming End forward, straight toward the lunging beast's eye.

At the last moment, the snake veered off course, barreling half into the denser mist marking the boundary of the pocket. Daojue tried to adjust Gleaming End to land the blow anyway, but the snake was faster. The spearhead caught it over its eye, cutting another shallow line. But even as the white half barreled past, the green head brought up the rear, following up with another lunge.

"It's got two spiritskills!" That was Meiyao, shouting. Jieyuan glanced over at her, saw that she'd crouched down close to the floor, was hunched over.

"The green head can spew poisonous mist, and the white one can bend the earth." It can what. But Jieyuan couldn't pay Meiyao or her words any more attention as Daojue lunged over to where he was. Daojue jumped away again, and like the last two times, he tried to counterattack mid-motion, but this time he missed the mark completely, Gleaming End cutting nothing but empty air.

Daojue's feet had just touched the ground when the white head, recovered, shot forward again, crossing over the green head as it tried to get at Daojue. The snake passed right between them, slicing through the rope connecting him and Daojue. Jieyuan had bigger concerns at the moment, though.

"HEY!" Jieyuan called out as he dashed to the side, waving his arms. If he couldn't do it any damage he could at least distract it, create some opportunity for Daojue to attack; but the snake ignored him completely as it plunged down toward Daojue. Jieyuan wasn't even good for bait, apparently. He watched, uselessly, as Daojue barely avoided the strike, backing away again, this time coming dangerously close to edges of the pocket.

The green head surged in Jieyuan's direction, and he hurriedly moved out of the way; but as it turned out, he might as well have stayed put, because the snake ignored him completely, slithering right past him. Daojue meanwhile was more than busy: he ducked and dashed under the white head, then barely dodged the green one's lunge. In doing so he put some distance between himself and the edge of the pocket. One of his counterattacks succeeded, too, and the white head now had a cut near its nostril.

Come on, Jieyuan pressed himself. Daojue was holding his own, but he didn't know how long that'd last, and the cuts he was managing to land weren't bringing them any closer to bringing the beast down. And there were the two spiritskills Meiyao had mentioned— Wait, where's Meiyao? Jieyuan glanced back, following the pull of the remaining length of rope. She was still at that same spot from earlier.

He still couldn't see her clearly, with her bent-over, crouched position, but he could tell something was off about her, anyway. About her overall shape.

"What are you—" Jieyuan cut himself off as Meiyao uncoiled, her spine unfolding as she rolled back to full length and then some more. She must've grown at least a foot, but whatever she'd gained in height, she didn't gain the width to make up for it. If anything, she'd lost width. Her body was thin as a stick. Her robes simultaneously stretched tight against her length-wise as they hung loose by the sides. Her face had changed, too.

Her eyes had turned slitted, and small, thin scales had grown around them, white and green. The rest of her face—her now gaunt, long face—was scale-free, but as it caught the glow of the viridian mist, her skin shimmered faintly, revealing vague, indistinct patterns like translucent scales. If he hadn't gotten so used to Meiyao's transformations, Jieyuan might have stared.

But as it was he just took it all in before dipping his gaze lower to see Meiyao pull her right arm—her much longer right arm—out of the ground, and with it, her saber. Like most cultivators Meiyao wore a spirit-shroud over her saber, the bandage-like white cloth wrapped tightly around it, keeping it obscured from both sight and soulsenses. But now there was something else covering it. Earth.

A uniform layer of brown, seemingly paper-thin and tapering to an edge at the cutting side of the blade that looked as sharp as that on the metal. Meiyao moved. Rushing forward, she became a streak, moving soundlessly in a fluid-like, sinuous slither-run that was faster than anything Jieyuan could've managed. A blink later, and she was past him. Another, and she was surging into the air, her earth-wrapped saber swinging toward the green head just as it was raising itself back up for another strike.

The snake had ignored Jieyuan; and it looked like it was ignoring Meiyao too, but just as Meiyao was about to drive her saber home into its snout, the snake jerked its head to the side, and Meiyao ended up slashing at its mouth. The result wasn't a cut, though, but a gash; full, hand-sized scales were shorn off as the saber cut sideways into its mouth. The green head hissed sharply, recoiling; and Jieyuan noted how the white head, lunging at Daojue, didn't seem to take notice.

But then his focus was pulled back into the green head as the space under its head suddenly swelled grotesquely, before it spewed a thick, dense cloud of dark green gas at Meiyao, who was still mid-air, falling to the ground. The green gas enveloped Meiyao whole, and the snake kept spewing it until the substance was rolling off onto the ground. The gas was many shades darker than the mist, and even from where he was, Jieyuan was immediately struck by the pungent, acrid sting of acid.

Where the gas touched the undergrowth, it sizzled and fumed.

"MEIYAO!" Jieyuan had just gotten a foot forward when Daojue appeared by his side, grabbed his arm, and pulled him back. Not really thinking, running on instinct, Jieyuan tried to shake him off, but stopped as a long brown shape rushed out of the dense cloud of poisonous gas, the green fumes parting around it. Meiyao, wearing some kind of earth armor. Smooth, solid earth wrapped around her, crown to toes, open only at her face.

Her skin looked slightly reddened, like she'd spent too long under the sun, but she didn't look hurt otherwise. Near her waist, over her shoulder, around her legs, her earth coat looked rough, cracked, clay-like, but with each step she took, more earth rose from the ground, rolling up her body and replacing the damaged bits of her armor-like casing.

As that happened, Jieyuan caught flashes of bare skin—it seemed like her robes had been completely destroyed—but like her face, none of it looked ruined as you'd expect from an acid shower, just reddened and little raw. She was moving as fast as before, and the next moment she was on his other side. Jieyuan didn't take his eyes off her.

"Are you—""I'm fine," Meiyao said. There was a sibilant, hissing quality to her voice, and as she spoke her tongue, forked and inhumanly long, slipped out of her mouth for a moment, brushing against her lips.

"I'm resistant." Her emerald, slitted eyes lingered on him for a moment before she looked back to the snake.

"The white half isn't, however." Jieyuan looked back and saw what she meant. The snake hadn't followed them. The white head had reared back completely, curving so sharply that part of its body disappeared into the curtain of mist behind. A tall, wall-like mound of earth had also appeared in front of it, blocking any more of the mist from reaching it. The green head, on the other hand, was leaning forward, trying to lunge but failing as the white head pulled back. Its mouth was open, fangs bared, growling.

The ruined stretch of scales Meiyao had left on the side of its mouth bled profusely. Where the green scales touched the mass of gas the green head had spewed nothing happened. On the rows of white scales, on the other hand, Jieyuan could see some darkened, slightly molten blotches where it must've touched the gas. As for the gas itself, it'd expanded outwards and up, almost into a wall between them and the snake.

The snake would have to draw fully back to the side or go all the way around it to avoid it, but the two heads seemed to have very different ideas on what they wanted to do, leading to some bizarre stalemate. Something of an idea came to Jieyuan, there and then. He'd already noticed that the two heads didn't share much of a connection besides being joined together; when one was wounded, the other didn't seem to react. But now he had proper confirmation. And also something of a plan.

If something good had come out of any of this, it was confirmation of how Divine Nature Resonance worked on Orangerealm beasts. Meiyao's Law must've risen accordingly; otherwise, she wouldn't have survived the corrosive gas. Not just that, her earth armor didn't register to his soulsenses, and it couldn't be mundane, if it'd resisted the gas too. She'd also used her earth-coated saber to harm the snake. That meant that Gleaming End wasn't their only means against Orangerealm beasts anymore.

And between Meiyao and Daojue, plus the two-headed snake's partial weakness to its own powers, Jieyuan was fairly sure he could work out a way to get them out of this alive. But they'd be better off stacking their odds first.

"Daojue," he said, not taking his eyes off the huge snake. The white head had started hissing, and the green head, like it'd realized something was wrong, had drawn back and looked over at its twin.

"Seems like Gleaming End's what got us into this. Can it get us out of it? Its spiritskills—""It refuses."

"It— What? Why?" Daojue said nothing, which didn't surprise him. But Jieyuan noticed the tight way he was gripping onto his spear and a similar tightness to Daojue's face, around the eyes. It seemed like Daojue wasn't taking his spear's lack of cooperation any better. Gleaming End was out, then. But Jieyuan hadn't been counting on it. It'd helped them out in Viridian Death City, but did nothing during the ambush in front of the Gleaming Stone Palace.

What he had in mind wouldn't need it, even if its spiritskills would've made things far easier.

"All right," Jieyuan said.

"That doesn't matter. I've got a—" The green head suddenly lunged forward, even as the white part stayed put. It slammed down straight into the thick gas it'd spewed before sweeping its body aggressively to the side. And as the gas met its body, it was pushed in the opposite direction, away from the area. Its clearing the space from the gas so the white half isn't harmed, Jieyuan realized.

The next moment, the wall of earth collapsed, crumpling into nothingness faster than a second, and the snake—both heads—surged toward them. Again, Jieyuan couldn't do much more than throw himself to the side. Daojue and Meiyao took the opposite direction, and the beast swerved towards them. As the massive snake neared them, the green head snapped at Meiyao, while the white one lunged at Daojue.

Off to the side, Jieyuan watched as both Meiyao and Daojue managed to dodge, attacking back as they did, Daojue with Gleaming End and Meiyao with her earth-clad saber. But neither was given any rest as both heads lunged at them again in tandem—again, the green at Meiyao, and the white at Daojue. It was a complete reversal from how things had been at the beginning, with the green head intent on Daojue and the white one under Meiyao's control.

"Meiyao!" Jieyuan shouted. Neither head was paying him any mind, and he might as well use it to his advantage. As he spoke he pulled back the two limp lengths of rope he was dragging along with him—his and Daojue's had been cut early on, and his and Meiyao's when she took that acid shower—so they wouldn't get in the way.

"The snake can't understand us, right?" Meiyao flowed around another lunge. She didn't look at him as she shouted back, "It can't!"

"Good!" Jieyuan said.

"Can you do the poison thing too?"

"Yes!"

"Great! But don't use it yet!" All right. He had almost much everything he needed; there was just one last thing he needed to know. How well the white head could manipulate earth. If it could cover itself, Jieyuan imagined it'd have done so already, but he needed to be sure. Of that, and of how many barriers it could raise at the same time.

"Meiyao, Daojue," he called.

"Try to attack the white head at the same time!" If either Meiyao or Daojue listened, they gave no indication. Meiyao just kept avoiding the green head's attacks and Daojue the white head's. Right now Meiyao was even faster than Daojue, even though she was still at fourth-step Redrealm; resonating with the snake had increased her agility tremendously. Jieyuan kept his eye on them and his body well out of the way as man, woman, and beast moved all around the pocket between dashes and slithers and jumps.

Soon he saw evidence Meiyao and Daojue must've heard him; more than once Meiyao managed to sneak in an attack at the white snake, but never at the same time as Daojue. Until he had confirmation, they couldn't go forward with his plan, so there wasn't much more for Jieyuan to do. But he didn't feel right, just hanging back like that while Meiyao and Daojue did all the work, risking their lives. Without taking his eyes off the snake, he scanned the clearing again.

There had to be something else he could do, that he could be doing, some other way for him to help. Absolute Will Command wasn't an option. The snake was Orangerealm; the Law gap meant it wouldn't work at all. All of his artifacts were only Redrealm, too, so they faced the same issue. If he wanted to do something, he'd need something Orangerealm just like the snake… His gaze fell on the scales. White and green ones, shard-like, littering the ground.

There was one just to the side of him, and he skipped over to it, dropping into a crouch. He couldn't feel it with his soulsenses; they'd be at the same step as the beast it'd come from. Meaning they could also be used to harm it. There were two ripped scales within arm's reach. One white and one green. The white one was bigger, a jagged, plate-like slice of keratin. Reflective.

The green one was smaller, not much bigger than his thumb, and about the same shape, longer than it was wide, and tapering to a sharp edge at the end. He considered both for a moment, confirming that the grass the green scale was lying on top of seemed whole and largely undamaged. He sheathed the Shifting Sisters; they wouldn't be of much help here, and if he was right these scales would be significantly more useful. He risked giving the green scale a brief touch.

When the metal of his gauntlet didn't start steaming or corroding or anything like that, he grabbed onto it properly, and lifted the scale up. It was heavier than he'd thought it'd be, but nothing he couldn't easily throw. He got a feel for its weight, nodded to himself. Then he picked the white one up too, just in case. He'd just gotten back to his feet and was scanning the ground for more scale shards when it finally happened.

Like a reed rippling in the wind, Meiyao bent out of the way as the green one tried to bite her head off; and the very next moment, she swung her saber at the white head, just as it was coming down on Daojue from above. Daojue, who thrust Gleaming End at it even as he avoided the strike. The earth barrier rose so fast off the ground it practically blinked into existence and stopped Daojue's thrust dead.

The angle didn't let Jieyuan get a good read on it, but he saw only a bit of earth being chipped away as the tip of Gleaming End hit the brown mass. Meiyao, on the other hand, continued on unhindered, but the white head twisted to the side, so all she did was cut a thin line under its mouth. Meiyao disengaged immediately, just in time to avoid the green head's new assault.

Daojue, meanwhile, drew back just as the wall of earth disappeared as fast as it'd come into existence, and kept pulling back as the white head came at him again. The earth barriers themselves were as bad as Jieyuan had feared. Snap-quick and borderline unbreakable. It was a solid defense, which wasn't good for them. What was good was that it'd only put up one barrier. This wasn't enough to tell for sure whether that was its limit, but it was good enough that Jieyuan reckoned they could risk it.

"All right!" he shouted at Meiyao and Daojue.

"Here's the plan! Meiyao, focus on the green head—get it to breathe out that poison again. Annoy it, use your bloodgift to influence it, do whatever it takes!" He didn't stop moving as he spoke, picking up more of the shards he'd spotted.

"Once you do that, use that poison yourself, at the white head!" he continued.

"But from the opposite direction! And then attack its eye! Daojue, attack the white head too at the same time! Throw Gleaming End if you can't get close!" Jieyuan didn't say anything else. The idea was simple: focus on the white head and take it out first. The plan wasn't complex, but he wouldn't have trusted any other Redsouls to pull something like that; he wouldn't have trusted himself to pull that plan off, not even with Maeva helping him.

Redsouls had no business surviving Orangerealm beasts, let alone controlling the flow of battle against one the way he wanted. But Meiyao and Daojue were surviving it just fine, and if anyone could pull that off, it was them. He wasn't sure if Meiyao even counted as a Redsoul right now. Like before, neither Meiyao nor Daojue responded, but he was sure they'd heard. He continued to pick up more broken scales, prioritizing the corrosion-resistant green ones.

He was planning on making his own contribution to the plan; moreover, he could also see uses for Orangerealm scales outside this fight. Half a minute passed in hastespace time. Normally that little time would go in a blink, but to Jieyuan it felt like an eternity. And he wasn't even in the thick of it, like Meiyao and Daojue were.

By now he'd already collected several dozen scales of varying sizes (most of them went to his pouch, but he kept some of the smaller ones on hand, stacked together), while Meiyao and Daojue had managed to land a few more shallow cuts. He never took his eye off the fight, though, and that was why he was prepared when the moment came.

Meiyao and Daojue managed another collective, timed attack on the white head; and as it summoned a barrier, this time blocking Meiyao, she jumped off it and caught the green head off guard, ramming her saber into its snout. The reaction was immediate. As a great torrent of blood spurted from its nose, the green head reared back. The base of its head expanded, swelling round-like. And then it breathed out that deep green gas.

Meiyao disappeared inside it for a moment, but then she broke out of it on the other side, still mid-air—she must've jumped back off the earth wall for support—and shot past the white head from above, putting herself on the other side of it. The white head, meanwhile, was just drawing back after attacking Daojue. Still up in the air, Meiyao jerked her head back. Her cheeks puffed to an inhuman extent, like a frog, before she let out her own rushing stream of corrosive gas.

And just like that, the white head was cornered: one side the quickly expanding gas the green head had just released, and on the other side, Meiyao's. Not just that, the green head hadn't stopped moving, and was lunging where Meiyao had gone, dragging the white head along with it. Daojue, meanwhile, retreated; but as he did he launched Gleaming End toward the white head.

Jieyuan had been waiting for this; he'd drawn back his arm, a green shard in hand, and he threw it toward the white head just a beat after Daojue let his spear fly. The next moment the two clouds of gas—Meiyao's and the green head's—met, and the white head was lost in the thick of it. Meiyao's feet had barely touched the ground as she launched herself into the dense clump of gas That was it. Three different attacks, and encircled by corrosive gas on all sides.

Even if the white head survived it, it'd still be so badly damaged it'd— A small, dirt-brown shape—Meiyao in her earth armor—shot out from the gas cloud. Hot on on her tail was the green head; slithering rapidly after her. The next moment Jieyuan realized something was wrong, because the green head kept going, more and more green-scaled snake flesh slithering out of the gas, with not a hint of white on it. Right afterward, a massive brown form burst out of the gas, launching itself toward Daojue.

On its body Jieyuan caught a glimpse of white scales. Rough, half-mented, slightly darkened scales. And Jieyuan finally understood what he was seeing. The two-headed snake had split into two separate snakes. And, worse: now that it was free, the white one had conjured an earth armor just like Meiyao's.