CHAPTER

10

TO PREDATE

JIEYUAN

—∞—

It was Meiyao who’d whipped her hand out, a signal sure as any for them to stop, and there’d been something so sharp about the motion that Jieyuan reacted immediately, soul-stilling as he snapped into a stance.

Then she’d pointed to the left, and Jieyuan had seen it.

Half-hidden behind a pair of trees, some fifty feet away, was a wolf. One made out of jagged shards of blackish crystals, and taking distance into account, looking about Jieyuan’s height as it stood on all fours. On its head, embedded in its crystal coat were eyes like orange moons, glowing faintly and fixed on them. It stood there, staring, dead still as the statue it could’ve well been.

Jieyuan placed it immediately. He’d seen a beast that looked almost exactly the same in the sect’s vivarium. An onyx gleam wolf. He recalled the elder who’d been showing them around mentioning how it was one of the fiercest, meanest third-sign gleam beasts. It also had quite the nasty beast-skill—the chromal beast equivalent of realmskills, except beasts were born with theirs and so didn’t have to go through the trouble of making one or getting their hands on one—called Onyx Blind Flash.

And now here they were, the three of them with weapons drawn, locked in soundless staring with the hulking lupine beast looming across from them.

The wolf took a slow, deliberate step forward, slightly lowering its body forward as it did. A stream of sunlight caught on the wolf’s back, lighting it up with a grayish glow. The beast bared sharp, pearly teeth, and a low, deep growl rumbled out of its mouth. Its orange eyes flashed, and the shards of gleamstone it had instead of fur moved on their own, one and all, standing on end, bristling, rattling. Vibrating. The sound of it melded into the rumbling growl in a sharp, strident cacophony that filled the air. Soul-stilling had almost wholly done away with the soft background chime of the wind, and now the only sounds were those coming from the wolf.

“It’s trying to frighten us,” Meiyao said, whisper-soft. She had her finesaber out, one-edged blade facing forward, held in front of her, ready. Not a tremble to her voice, the delivery smooth, steely, analytical. “Unsettle us, throw us off balance. Make us easier prey.”

Jieyuan gripped his own spear tighter. He had both hands on the shaft, holding the spear steady by his side and across his front, the short, triangular blade making up the head pointing directly at the wolf. Legs bent in a half-crouch, spaced. Feet firmly planted on the ground, aura-lashed.

This was a bad idea. Even if their plan had been to make straight for the Inner Forest, for the Third Ring, an onyx gleam wolf was definitely not the kind of target they should start with. But his heart was ramming against his rib cage like it was trying to burst out, and his blood was rushing, pumping, thumping in his ears.

There was no cool pit of dread settling in his stomach. No. Far from that. He was afire, incandescent, flames roaring in his chest, searing heat coursing through his veins. Goosebumps prickled his body, running up and down his arms and legs and back, and what brought them on was a hot, crazed hunger. Hunger for battle. A Firesoul’s burning, undeniable need to let loose and wreak havoc, strong as it’d ever been. The need to be like fire and scorch the earth.

This was a bad idea—a terrible one—but you couldn’t dangle a challenge in front of a Firesoul and expect them not to take the bait. All his previous wariness and apprehension were gone, burned away. There was no longer some unseen enemy prowling the shadows, no possibility of a sudden ambush hanging over his thoughts. The enemy was there, in plain sight. This was a battle, and battles were what Firesouls were born for, what they lived for.

His eyes roved the wolf’s body. Thin gray lines cut across its crystal coat. Gaps in its armor, where there was no crystal, exposing rough, gray skin. Unlike gleamstone plants, gleam beasts weren’t made from crystal, just covered in it. One of these lines split the upper half of the beast’s face in half, branched at the muzzle and then converged back at its chest, where it ran down in a thin line through its center until it disappeared out of sight. Around the base of its neck was another one, horizontal, intersecting with the vertical line. Another two vertical rifts, one on each foreleg, running across their length. Its hind legs should be much the same, and Jieyuan remembered there being another thin vertical breach spanning the entire back of the onyx gleam wolf he’d seen in the sect’s vivarium.

Plenty of weak points for him to target. Not to mention the eyes. The problem was getting his blade into them when the beast could summon time-warped space like the stilled-space cultivators cast by stilling their imbued chroma. And with a time-warp higher than theirs by half, at that. The dizzying light show the forest was putting on definitely didn’t help, either.

“We’re doing this, then?” The words came out slowly, charged with heavy expectation, dripping with it. He kept his eyes trained, unblinking, on the crouching, still-growling wolf. They hadn’t a chance to work out anything even resembling a battle plan, and he doubted the beast would wait for them to come up with one. They’d have to wing it.

Meiyao didn’t get a chance to respond.

The wolf went suddenly silent, all sounds—growl and ringing—ceasing.

Immediately Jieyuan felt a spike of tension, knowing, somehow, what’d come next.

Then the beast lunged, blurring through the air, ripping across the ground and around the trees as if it were on open ground, the clashing of its paws against the crystal ground coming out as a whole, unbroken keen. It moved with speed that it shouldn’t have—time-warped speed—and in the blink of an eye it was upon them.

Jieyuan brought his spear forward, teeth clenched as he braced for impact, all in a flickering, unthinking moment.

Something sped past from behind him, and then Daojue was there, front and center, meeting the wolf’s charge head-on with his spear. There was a dull, near-deafening chime as the spear blade struck the wolf’s shoulder, its head snapping out of the way of a strike that’d have gone right through its eye.

Even though the impact must’ve sent something fierce up his arms, Daojue was already moving, spinning on his feet, bringing his spear sideways in a sweeping arc at the wolf’s head. But the beast was faster, moving unnaturally fast, crouching under the flying blade, then lunging forward with a snap of teeth. Daojue just barely stepped back in time to avoid the bite.

And then the beast was turning to the side, using its head to meet a strike from Meiyao’s saber from the left. Meiyao’s saber wailed as it met hard gleamstone, and she skipped back. Meanwhile Daojue was closing back in with another stab, and this time Jieyuan wasn’t far behind. As Daojue came from the front again, Jieyuan stole to the right side, the soles of his fullgreaves thumping the ground, eyes finding the gap in its armor. Then he let his spear loose, the blade whistling.

Just as it was about to make contact, seemingly just a hair’s breadth away, the wolf moved fractionally to the side with that same blurring speed, and his blade hit gleamstone. He felt the impact up his arm and instinctively stopped aura-lashing himself to the ground, letting it carry him back a step or two to soften the blow. His arms ached, but he was a cultivator. Pain was his philosophy.

Then the wolf was lunging at him with a snarl, and he barely had a moment to hold his spear out in front of him before meeting the wolf’s rush with its shaft. Its muzzle struck his spear, backed by the bulk of its entire body. It hit like a boulder, and his arms almost snapped, bones rattling at the sheer impact of it, enough to have sent him flying had he not resumed aura-lashing. He struggled to hold on, tapping fully into his aura, drawing its pressure-like power into the muscles of his arms, back, core, and legs, quadrupling their strength.

Up close it looked all that much bigger, its gleamstone-covered head larger than his chest, its eyes bigger than his fists. Its mouth half-open, wide enough to bite his head right off his body. A strangely pleasant scent wafted up at him from the wolf, brushing against his face. A sweet, inviting smell, rather than the heavy, cloying stench he’d have expected from a beast. His nose tingled as he breathed it in.

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Then the beast let out a low whine as it reared its head back, and the weight bearing down on him vanished. Just off to the side, Jieyuan saw Daojue removing his spear from where it’d pierced the wolf on the shoulder. At the other side was Meiyao, slashing at it from the other direction, saber singing in the air.

Jieyuan grinned as he forced his body to move again despite all the aches he’d won in just a few moments, throwing himself back into the fray. Meiyao was now the one taking on the beast from the front, Daojue coming down from the right. Thick, dark red blood bubbled from the wound Daojue had just opened in its leg, dripping down its dark crystalline armor, tainting it crimson.

Somehow, they were working together. Making it work. Not perfectly—far from it—but far better than he’d have thought possible right off the bat like this. Weaving between each other’s attacks. Making openings for the other to take. For the first time, he felt like he was in a team. And he was only too happy to do his part.

Circling the group, Jieyuan took the other side, searched for an opening—for a single brief instant of stillness, for a snap of visibility among its blurring movements—spear held ready, eager in his grip. The glow of the forest didn’t make his job any easier, the wolf’s coat catching the light from the gleamstone surrounding them and reflecting it as a darker, grayer glint. His eyes flickered back to the still-bleeding wound on the wolf’s hind leg, to the beautiful, lustrous track it left on the beast’s dark-gray shimmering coat of crystal, and the fire inside him sung.

First blood was theirs. They were winning. They could do this. They could—

The wolf’s crystal fur flashed with a dim gray light, and then Jieyuan’s vision went black. Pitch black. Everything was gone, vanished. One moment there’d been kaleidoscopic lights blasting at him from all directions, and then there was only pure, absolute darkness.

Still caught up processing his sudden blindness, Jieyuan detected with his soulsense a presence barreling towards him. Still utterly blind, submerged in darkness, he snapped his spear out instinctively, but it was batted aside as the presence drew nearer. With his soulsense he could make out the outline of a head in spirit-shadow, third-shade red, coming down at him.

Another presence—a human-shaped red outline—slammed onto him from the side, and he instinctively released his aura-lashing, letting himself be thrown to the side out of the way. His back slammed into the trunk of a crystal tree, hard. The blow knocked the air out of him, the spear out of his hands.

And all of a sudden he could see again. Meiyao was just in front of him, her back to him, saber held out in front of her, one hand on its hilt, the other hand with its metal-sheathed palm pressed against the blade. Holding the onyx gleam wolf back with the blade of her saber like Jieyuan had done earlier with the shaft of his spear. Then the wolf was turning to the side to deflect a stab from Daojue.

“Beast-skill,” Meiyao snapped at him without so much as a glance his way, before throwing herself at the wolf again.

Right. Onyx Blind Flash. The beast-skill of the onyx gleam wolf. Momentarily blinded those who were caught. He snatched his spear back from the ground and steadied his form again, mind whirling as he recalled what the elder in the vivarium had told him and what he’d read in the material the sect had provided on the Gleamstone Hunt. Only caught those who were looking at it when used. Activation preceded by its fur glowing for a moment. Flashing.

He licked his lips. His heart still hammered, blood still roaring in his ear. But he forced himself away from the fiery, unthinking haze he was in, forced his thoughts through it. Or at least as much as he could manage. Which turned out to be enough to remind him that the wolf wasn’t the only one with tricks to pull.

The only one with skills to use.

Jieyuan fought the unbearable itch to rejoin the battle, fought the burning want for thoughtless violence, as he put his mind to work. But even as he did some furious thinking, he still drew closer, unable to stay completely away, already on the lookout for another opening as Meiyao and Daojue and hacked and stabbed.

Absolute Will Command. He reached for his realmskill as he considered possibilities. But there wasn’t much room or time for complex thinking in a battle like this, and he wasn’t really in the right frame of mind for that. Simple and dirty was the best he could do right now. And so it’d have to suffice.

“Stop,” he Commanded, eyes on the wolf. A good chunk of chroma vanished from his soulprism. An intangible bond snapped into place between him and the beast, and his Command issued forth.

And his body locked up entirely as a primal, bestial NO roared back in response at him like thunder booming from the Heavens. It struck him like a physical blow that’d have staggered him back if he hadn’t been rendered completely and utterly motionless by the strain of the skill.

Jieyuan gritted his teeth, his mind screaming, breaking apart, as he stood his ground mentally and physically—and for a brief, almost insignificant moment the wolf’s movements visibly slowed. A moment that didn’t go to waste as Meiyao’s saber cut across the wolf’s neck from below, sliding sideways right through the gap at the base of it, sending crimson blood spluttering.

The wolf let out a long, booming howl, and its coat flashed. Jieyuan whipped his head to the side, looking away—and this time he didn’t go blind. He turned back to look at the wolf and saw that it had retreated a good dozen feet away. Blood dripped out of its neck, but in comparison to its size it wasn’t much—even more so since like cultivators, chromal beasts had augmented regeneration that increased with their soulsign. An onyx gleam wolf as a third-sign Redsoul beast would heal at least six times faster than a mundane wolf.

Jieyuan lost a good chunk of chroma and gotten a great deal more exhausted, all for a wound that wasn’t even serious.

Daojue and Meiyao were already advancing on the wolf, and he followed. He didn’t linger on the bitterness welling up inside him, letting the fire inside him consume it, use it as fuel. He’d have plenty of time for thinking later. A wound was a wound. The second one so far. They were holding their own. Had the lead, even. They could manage this. All they had to do was keep it up and not make any stupid mistakes.

He was right behind Meiyao when she broke her run and snapped her arms out sideways.

“STOP!” she called.

Jieyuan froze, aura-lashing himself to an instantaneous stop just a few inches away from her open arms. On her other side, Daojue similarly stilled his feet, except in his case what Meiyao had put in his way was the blade of her saber.

The onyx gleam wolf was bristling again, shard-fur chiming as it growled. But the sound was louder than before. Much louder. And there was something off about it, like it wasn’t all coming from the same direction.

And then from the trees behind it walked out two other onyx gleam wolves, one on each side.

Heavens. Heavens.

It had a pack. A Heavens-taken pack.

The sight of it was like a shock of cold, piercing through the burning, scorching fire that had been fueling him throughout the fight.

The two new other onyx gleam wolves were now standing beside the first wolf, fully on the opening, looming on either side of it. Side by side, it was clear that they were slightly smaller than the one between them, but not by much. Still a grown man’s height, closer to Meiyao’s now than his. Females? Maybe mates of the first wolf, who wasn’t even bleeding anymore. Not from its neck, not from its leg. Its crystal coat shimmered with crimson blood that was already drying.

“Retreat,” Meiyao said immediately. She lowered her arms from her sides and shifted into a more defensive stance, saber held in front. “No—no. We can’t outrun them. We need to—to get up a tree. High ground. Yes. They can’t climb.”

“Right,” Jieyuan said. He eyed the wolves, who eyed him back. In particular the one directly opposite him. He swallowed. Not all of his fire was gone, but enough of it had died out for him to see that Meiyao had the right of it. Against a single onyx gleam wolf, he’d give the three of them decent enough odds, but even then it wouldn’t be a certain thing.

Three of them? Suicide, straight and simple.

Of course, it was then that Daojue shot forward.

Toward the wolves.

Jieyuan could scarcely believe his eyes. Of all the things. Of all the Heavens-damned things Daojue could’ve done.

“Daojue!” Meiyao called. “DAOJUE!”

But Daojue didn’t pause, didn’t show a single sign of hearing. The three gleam wolves went silent, no longer rattling their shard-fur. And then Daojue was upon the first wolf, stabbing away. Snarling, the middle wolf blurred as it clawed and snapped at Daojue.

The other two wolves didn’t move. They stayed put, staring back at Jieyuan and Meiyao, both beasts statue-still. Jieyuan’s gaze was locked with that of the wolf directly across him, its bright, orange irises large and round like full moons, full of dark animal intelligence. A predator’s gaze, watchful, considering, hungry.

Jieyuan didn’t look away from it. He gripped his spear tighter. They could still run, do as Meiyao had said, get up on a tree. But then that’d be it for Daojue. Even if his teammate seemed to be holding his own so far—it was hard to tell from this far away, the fighting man and beast little more than blurs and shapes—but against three of them not even Daojue would stand any chance. And Jieyuan couldn’t let that happen. Even if he was so very, terribly tempted to let Daojue get what he deserved. Let Daojue get what he wanted, because only someone with a death wish would pull off a stunt like this. He needed Daojue for the Weave Mystery. And also because he wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to just turn around and leave his teammate to his death, anyway.

Meiyao spat something under her breath he didn’t catch but got the sentiment of all the same.

“Well, then.” Jieyuan swallowed dry. “I’ll take the left one.” He forced out a smile. And even though he didn’t feel it at first, the fire inside him—which had almost disappeared altogether with the appearance of the other two wolves—began rising.

And then the fire was roaring again, and he was feeling the smile—or rather, the grin. Feeling it with the half-mad, delirious rush of facing impossible odds. Of facing death.

He let the fire consume him again, fill him whole, and all the dread, all the apprehension, burned away.

Right at the corner of his vision—he refused to break the wolf’s stare, knew better than to give it an opening—Daojue was still fighting the gleam wolf in the center, spear snapping and spinning, blurring. Still alive, then. He still couldn’t tell how well Daojue was faring, but that he was still at it and not a mangled corpse was promising.

Jieyuan took in a deep breath, fully focusing on the wolf—his wolf—again. One-on-one against an enemy that should take the three of them together to beat. Sure. Dandy. He’d do it somehow, even if only so he could beat Daojue to within an inch of death afterward. Beat the stupid out of him. Beat it right out of him—all the rampant stupidity that no doubt Daojue was afflicted with—until his teammate was a blubbering bloody pulp. But a smart pulp, one that knew better than to do what Jieyuan could only describe as a suicidal charge.

“The right one for me,” came Meiyao’s reply.

She rushed forward.

He was but a beat behind.