CHAPTER

1

OVERWHELM

JIEYUAN

—∞—

About two hundred feet off the ground, Jieyuan sat perched on the tallest branch of a fatebloom tree, legs swinging lazily under him. From his vantage point, the crown of all the other fatebloom trees around him spread out like a sea of crimson streaked with green and dotted with gold. Higher above, dusk bled into the sky, nighttime gloom creeping in as the sun sank out of sight.

Jieyuan wasn’t often given to contemplation. Thinking, he believed, was merely a means to an end, nothing more than a prelude to doing. When the things you were doing weren’t quite working out for you, though, that called for a bit of thinking things over to pinpoint what exactly the issue was.

It wasn’t quite time yet to meet up with the rest of the team so they set up camp for the night, and he’d already picked his quota of fatebloom blossoms, a veritable pile of them now tucked safely in the glyph-stretch pouch by his belt. He figured he’d spend what time was left until sunset getting some much-needed thinking done and trying to figure out just what it was that he was doing wrong. Because he had to be doing something wrong, otherwise things wouldn’t be as they were. It’d been eighty days since he’d become a cultivator and joined the Gleaming Stone Sect. Almost three months. By this point, he should’ve long since surpassed Meiyao and Daojue. That had been the plan. Instead, he remained—

Jieyuan’s gaze fell on a small, faint red spot in the distance. He scooted up the branch, squinting his eyes. There was definitely something there. A small patch of red peeking out of the treetops, of a distinctly lighter shade than the deep red fatebloom blossom canopy surrounding it. And with the dimming daylight as backdrop, he could clearly tell that it was glowing.

Jieyuan had never seen a dust beacon in action before, but what he was seeing right now fit the description of one. A glowing cloud of reddish dust. It wasn’t as bright as he’d thought it’d be. If the sun hadn’t been so low, he’d have likely missed it. He’d also expected it to be a deeper shade of red, the same shade as the beacon pill it came from. Still, it was definitely a dust beacon. It couldn’t be anything else, not in these circumstances. Which meant someone was in trouble. Which, in turn, meant that his little thinking session was over before it had even begun.

Jieyuan swung himself up into a crouch, cast a quick look around the crown of the tree he was in, found a branch thick enough to support him further down, and jumped down to it. Then he did it again, jumping down to a lower level. And again, and again, until he found a mostly branch-free path to the ground. A drop of a hundred feet or thereabouts.

He pushed himself off this last branch into a free fall. Wind whistled in his ears as he plunged, the golden trunk of the tree blurring. Then his fullgreaves hit the ground, and everything snapped back into place.

Recalling the path he’d taken down the tree, Jieyuan took a second to orient himself in the right direction and set off running. Without even needing to think, he used his soulforce to still the chroma imbued in his soul, and stilled-space snapped into place around him. In his perspective nothing seemed to change, but to an outsider in plain-space he’d be covering ground four times as fast.

As he ran, the edges of his vision blurring as his fullgreaves ate up ground, he thought the situation through. Who’d sent out the dust beacon? The only ones beside him in the forest were his teammates for this mission. Daojue, Meiyao, and Rongkai. The first, he dismissed outright. Daojue would sooner die than ask for help, Heavens-high pride that he had. Meiyao could’ve been the one, but Jieyuan didn’t find it likely. She’d only use a beacon pill, which was the same as admitting she needed help, if she’d exhausted all other options. Jieyuan was much the same, and like knew like.

Rongkai, though. Jieyuan could easily see their leader for this mission setting off a dust beacon. Rongkai might be an inner disciple and a soulsign above the three of them, but if Jieyuan were to bet on which of his current teammates would use a beacon pill, that’s where his gold would go. Rongkai was hardly the type to inspire confidence, at least not compared to Daojue and Meiyao.

Jieyuan skipped over a pile of fallen branches and rounded a golden behemoth of a trunk. Ahead, a fatebloom blossom lazily drifted down the air, falling so slowly its position hardly changed as he ran past it. Half of Jieyuan’s attention was on his soulsense, picking up on the spirit-shadow—the spiritual shadow cast by its physical body, overlapping it—of the fatebloom tree and fatebloom he’d just left behind, and a couple of fallen branches up ahead. At his soulsign, his soulsense only extended twelve feet around him, but depending on what lay ahead, to the sides, or behind, a twelve feet’s warning could go a long way in keeping him alive.

Jieyuan recalled the sight of the dust beacon in the distance as he’d seen it earlier, recreating the scene in his mind’s eye. Here on ground level he couldn’t see it anymore, but a cultivator’s perfect recall served him just fine. It’d looked like a cloud of dust in the distance, just barely peeking out of the flower-filled, blood-red canopy. That gave him one other insight into the situation. The dust beacon should’ve been higher. Way higher, fully above the canopy, so that it could be easily seen from a distance. Assuming Rongkai had been the one to use it, he mustn’t have timed the release properly. He must’ve somehow fumbled it, implying he’d used it in a hurry. It was safe to assume the situation was dire—even for a situation that warranted using a beacon pill.

Jieyuan moved past another tree. Still no sight of the dust beacon, but it shouldn’t be much farther ahead. He wondered what exactly the situation was. A fatebloom elk was his best guess. The beasts weren’t supposed to roam this area of the woods, so far away from the center, but one of them popping up around here was still more likely than just about anything else. No other chromal beasts were known to live in the Fatebloom Woods, and other cultivators would know better than to start something here, in the territory of the Gleaming Stone Sect.

Grim anticipation gathered inside him. Odds were he was off to help Rongkai deal with a fatebloom elk, a fifth-sign Redsoul beast. That was definitely much more than Jieyuan could handle as a puny second-sign redsoul, given the chromal weight differential between second-sign and fifth-sign. He wouldn’t even be able to scratch a beast at that soulsign, whereas all it needed to do was thump him, and he’d be dead and gone and halfway to his next life, bound for the Silver Stream. But he didn’t need to fight it, only help Rongkai escape, which should at least be feasible. Still not without its risks, but removed enough from the realm of certain death to be worth attempting.

Rounding another tree, Jieyuan caught a glimpse of the glow of the dust beacon amid the trees ahead. There we go. Without breaking his run, he reached down to both sides of his waist, grabbed onto the two halves of his spear, and slid them out of their sheaths. Then he slammed them together in front of him and used his soulforce to draw a stream of chroma from inside his soul and into the joined shaft. The two pieces locked into one.

Drawing closer, Jieyuan picked up on the aura of a third-sign redsoul with his soulsense, and he cleared one last tree to step into a large clearing. The area was almost entirely taken up with beacon dust, red and softly glowing, mist-like.

As he’d guessed, Rongkai was there, his topaz-robed back to him, finesword in hand, its sleek, straight blade half-raised. But what the inner disciple was facing wasn’t a fatebloom elk.

Daojue stood on the other end of the clearing, his spear cradled in his arm, pressing its golden blade against his own throat, a hair’s breadth away from the neck shroud he wore. His face was warped in a tight grimace of pain and effort that took on a haunting quality in the red radiance of the beacon dust around him. Daojue’s eyes, tightly narrowed, widened a bit as they met Jieyuan’s.

Rongkai must’ve noticed something was off, because he craned his head to the side just enough to sneak a glance at his back, where Jieyuan was standing. Rongkai looked about as strained as Daojue did, beads of sweat running down his forehead. But he didn’t seem to be in pain like Daojue. Growing up, Jieyuan had always been good at reading faces, and ever since becoming a cultivator he’d gotten much better, each little twitch subtly noticed, compiled, and processed. Daojue seemed almost overcome with pain, whereas Rongkai only looked strained. Terribly strained, to be sure, but just strained.

“Well,” Rongkai said hoarsely, tightly, as if speaking was a monumental ordeal. “That’s… inconvenient.”

Holding out his spear in front of him, already half into a stance and ready to snap into a full one at any moment, Jieyuan walked further into the clearing. He looked back and forth between Daojue and Rongkai. He breathed lightly—the run had hardly winded him—and felt the air, slightly thick with the beacon dust, stream into his lungs. There was a faint, sickeningly sweet scent to it. He could almost place it—would place it, if he took the time to focus on it—but he didn’t have the attention to spare for recollection.

“An explanation would be nice,” he said. He came to a stop near the middle of the clearing, off to the left, where he could keep both Daojue and Rongkai in his field of view.

Daojue’s grimace deepened. So did Rongkai’s. They were sweating up a storm. Between the two of them, they could fill up a pond. Cultivators didn’t normally feel hot—or cold, or anything beyond perfectly temperate—by virtue of their chromal weight, so since there was no chromal heat source around, that could only be the sweat of sheer, back-breaking effort.

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Rongkai, visibly straining to even speak. Daojue, holding his own spear against his neck, the blade just inches away from his neck shroud, and clearly unwillingly. Call him skeptical, but it didn’t seem all that likely to Jieyuan that Daojue had suddenly been overcome by a death wish and decided to behead himself but was then struck by an extreme case of second thoughts he was now struggling with, and that Rongkai had come over to bear solemn witness to his final moments.

Rather, as far as Jieyuan could tell, Rongkai was somehow controlling Daojue’s body. He couldn’t think of any way he could be doing that besides through a realmskill. Granted, none of the realmskills Jieyuan knew of could be used to control someone else’s body, and he didn’t know why Rongkai would want Daojue dead. But it wasn’t as if he was familiar with that many realmskills, and knowing what Daojue was like, Jieyuan couldn’t really say he was surprised that someone was trying to murder him.

Problem was, he couldn’t let Daojue die just yet. Not until Jieyuan finally surpassed him. Some scores needed settling first.

Still keeping Daojue in his field of vision, Jieyuan took a step toward Rongkai. “So? I’m waiting on that explanation.”

“Don’t… do… anything… rash,” Rongkai said to Jieyuan without taking his eyes off Daojue. He sounded even more strained than before. “You… don’t know… what you’re… getting into.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jieyuan saw the edge of Daojue’s spear bite into his neck, tearing his neck shroud. The black cloth around it took on a red tinge as blood bubbled around the cut, a red trickle running down the length of the golden blade.

“If this is all a misunderstanding, I’ll be sure to apologize later.” Jieyuan took another step forward and pointed his spear at Rongkai. “But for the time being, I’d appreciate it if you stopped doing whatever it is you’re doing to Daojue over there.”

Rongkai said nothing. All he did was sneak another glance at him.

Something exploded in Jieyuan’s chest. He staggered back, almost letting go of his spear.

A hot, fiery agony, angry and vivid, came over him, and Jieyuan crumpled, knees meeting ground as he folded down like a tower toppled. He bit back a scream as the pain surged. He was no stranger to this pain. Not anymore. He’d faced it regularly these last two months. Faced worse, even, about two weeks ago, when he advanced to second-sign. But he’d known exactly what would happen and when. He’d always had time to prepare himself beforehand, to get in the right frame of mind for suffering.

Blood boiled. Eyes melted. Viscera sizzled.

The sweet scent of the beacon dust was now heady, filling him up, head and lungs, and now he placed it, recollection sliding into the forefront of his mind like the last piece of a puzzle. Cultivator’s Agony.

Heavens take it all.

Cultivator’s Agony.

Jieyuan forced himself to stop breathing, to stop taking in any more of the beacon dust—which clearly wasn’t just beacon dust. But the point was moot. He must’ve already breathed in a full dose, and that meant the pain would last for at least half an hour even if he breathed in no more unless somebody else stopped it for him. Almost as terrible as the pain was knowing that he could’ve avoided this—cultivators didn't need to breathe except to speak. But habits died a slow death, and almost two decades as a mundane had made breathing a habit as strong as any.

In the haze of all-consuming pain, he could just barely pick out footsteps—and a flash of perception from his soulsense told him of a third-sign redsoul approaching, slowly but inevitably. He forced himself to look up, to open his eyes and focus. Rongkai was standing just ahead, his finesword aimed down at him.

Before Jieyuan could react, Rongkai blurred into movement. But the killing blow never came. Metal struck metal, and Rongkai jumped back. Then the towering form of Daojue took Rongkai’s place in front of Jieyuan. Daojue’s spear was no longer against his own neck but held ready, aimed at Rongkai.

A beat later, Daojue launched himself at Rongkai. Sword met spear—then again and again and again. By virtue of his higher soulsign, Rongkai should’ve been faster and stronger than Daojue by half, which in practical terms should’ve guaranteed victory. And if Rongkai were facing a normal second-sign redsoul, that’d have been the case. But the one he was up against was Daojue, and Daojue was as far from normal as they came. Rongkai seemed only the slightest bit faster, and the little Daojue lacked in speed and power, he made up for it with skill.

If anything, Daojue seemed to have the edge.

Jieyuan clenched his full gauntleted hands around the shaft of his spear, bit his lips until it drew blood. The little tang of pain went entirely unnoticed under the raging flames of the agony he was in.

Rongkai must’ve mixed Cultivator’s Agony into the beacon pill and done something to mute the pain before it became crippling. That was why he’d set it off so low. And he must’ve taken an antidote beforehand, too. Meaning Daojue was also under the effects of Cultivator’s Agony, in the same agony Jieyuan was in, whereas Rongkai wasn’t. And even so, with the deck stacked so grossly against him, Daojue was more than putting up a fight.

Jieyuan still didn’t have the full picture, and the dose of Cultivator’s Agony he’d breathed in wasn’t helping any. But something was perfectly clear in this utter mess. Rongkai had just tried to kill him, and Daojue had intervened. Daojue had saved him. But Jieyuan shouldn’t have needed saving. And while he couldn’t change what had already happened, he did have a say in what came next, and he had no intention of sitting back and watching like some helpless, hapless bystander.

Jieyuan took a shuddering breath. Poisonous beacon dust pooled in his lungs, but he was past caring. Breathing helped him focus, helped him gather his strength, and he needed every ounce of it he could get right now.

For almost three months now, wherever he’d go, Daojue’s shadow would loom over him, trivializing him by sheer virtue of his existence. For almost three months now, Daojue had remained hopelessly out of his reach, a goalpost moving away faster than he ran toward it. And now Daojue was at it again, doing what Jieyuan couldn’t. Being better.

And Jieyuan wasn’t having that. Heavens take and beggar him, he wasn’t having that.

Pride, envy, and indignation met each other like flint, striker, and tinder, and a different fire sparked inside him. One that empowered rather than burned. A Firesoul’s fire, hot and heady and rousing. Jieyuan threw all he had into it. It roared, and for an instant it was louder than the First Pain, filling him with its stirring, scorching strength.

Jieyuan forced himself to stand up straight, tightening his hold on his muscles until they seemed to be on the verge of collapsing onto themselves. Usually the best he could do while under the First Pain was sitting still and forcing out the imbuing hymn. He’d never tried to do much more. Never needed to. In some ways, he had it even worse now than when he took full-strength Cultivator’s Agony for the first time, because his body had grown used enough to the pain that it tried to fight it instead of just shutting down—which also meant fighting his own commands.

But Daojue was in the same boat and fighting Rongkai. And if Daojue could do it, Heavens knew that so could Jieyuan.

Jieyuan advanced by a step, then another, then another. He focused on the movement, on the fiery rush that fueled it, rather than the angry, white blooms of pain that tore at him and the sensation of every part of his body cooking in its own fluids, melting without end.

Slowly, but picking up speed as he went, Jieyuan shook off more and more of the First Pain as the fire claimed more and more ground inside him. The First Pain was still there, a white-hot haze of pure agony, running amok inside him, threatening to tear his mind apart, but it didn’t matter.

If Daojue can do it, so can I.

Heavens be my witness.

As Jieyuan drew closer, he stepped into the trees, then circled around Daojue and Rongkai, who were still clashing sword to spear. Each step was its own eternity.

But Daojue was fighting way above his soulsign under the same kind of pain. How pathetic would it be if Jieyuan couldn’t even walk?

One eternal step at a time, Jieyuan got himself into position—right behind Rongkai.

Rongkai, who had all his attention on Daojue. Rongkai, who couldn’t afford to pay attention to anything else. Rongkai, whose back was free and open and just begging to be run through with a foot of cold steel.

Jieyuan gripped his spear so hard he could feel his fullgauntlets grinding against its shaft. He reached deep inside himself, mustered all his strength.

Then he lunged, throwing everything he had into a thrust.

His spear shot forward in a gray blur and buried itself in Rongkai’s back all the way to the shaft. Dead in the center, right through the spine. For a moment, Jieyuan just stared, blankly, at the spot where the spearhead had disappeared into. Around it, orange cloth bloomed dark red.

With a jerk, Rongkai turned his head back. His eyes found Jieyuan’s. Wild, crazed, searching.

A golden arc swung out, and Rongkai’s head flew into the air, and Jieyuan found himself staring past the stump of Rongkai’s neck at Daojue, who had his spear extended out in front of him, the golden blade hovering just past the shoulder of Rongkai’s now headless body.

Blood, warm and red, splattered on his face, and a dull thump sounded as Rongkai’s head landed somewhere to the side.

Then Rongkai’s corpse crumpled to the ground, and the fire deserted Jieyuan. He let go of his spear, and it fell beside the corpse it was still attached to.

The First Pain struck with vengeance, and his body tipped over.

A gauntleted hand grabbed onto Jieyuan’s shoulder and held him up. His legs shook. It took all he had not to scream as the First Pain wreaked havoc inside him. Still, he forced himself to look up. The hand holding him was Daojue’s. Daojue was right in front of him, towering over his half-bent form. Daojue’s other hand held his spear like a pillar, its butt-end pressed firmly against the ground.

A pulse of chroma came from the hand on Jieyuan’s shoulder, and the First Pain vanished, leaving just as abruptly as the fire had fled him earlier. The relief was so great that Jieyuan’s legs gave in again, but Daojue kept his hold on him.

Merciful Heavens.

Jieyuan shuddered, then straightened up, pulling himself together. Praise the Heavens that whoever it was that created Cultivator’s Agony had had the foresight to give it a conditional vanishing property. “Thank—”

AMYASAMYASAMYAS—

Jieyuan stumbled back, then doubled over, clutching his head.

His head was killing him. Like his brain was swelling, ballooning up, while his skull stayed the same size. There was just so much—memories, thoughts, people, names, images—inside his brain now and it needed space to accommodate it all and even more things just kept flowing in and in and in and in and in and in and there was just no stop to it like a broken faucet and there was no space left and—

“Jieyuan?”

Jieyuan? Who? He looked up. Someone was looming over him. Someone massive. Who? He had no idea. Where was he anyway and wasn’t he supposed to be in his bedroom, waiting for his sister to call…

He shook his head furiously. That didn’t make sense. He didn’t have a sister.

Wait, no. What? That was silly. He did have a sister. Maeva. How could he possibly forget Maeva?

“Jieyuan?”

He blinked wildly and jerked his head up, but all he saw was a swathe of ruby-red cloth with armored feet underneath it. Bewildered, he looked back down and saw how close the ground was and how he was on his hands and knees, the same ruby-red cloth covering his body and similar armor wrapped around his hands and feet.

He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen down. He had to get up and figure out where he was and just what was going on and get something for his head because the mother of all headaches was still going on firm and strong and if anything it just kept getting worse and also he had to help Daojue too because his teammate was still under the effects of Cultivator’s Agony and then they had to find Meiyao and…

And…

And he knew no more.