CHAPTER

20

TO ACCUSE

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Confused though he was, Jieyuan still took quick stock of the situation. Qingshi was a mostly known element—blind, sword user, very skilled, no realmskill—but the two inner disciples beside were pure unknowns.

Both men. Black-haired and black-eyed, so probably not Liangshibai, unless they were doing whatever it was the Liangshibai did to make their eyes look normal. Neither had their weapons unsheathed, though they were both wearing fullgauntlets. The one to Qingshi’s left was only carrying a single sheath, one with a thin body, so either a sword- or a saber-user. The one to Qingshi’s right, on the other hand, had two long sheathes on either side of his waist, and jutting out from them were thin, cylindrical pieces of steel. A polearm user, then. Likely a spear user. Other polearms were significantly rarer, in Jieyuan’s experience.

“Meiyao, Jieyuan,” Qingshi said as he approached in a slow but easy stride. Like the two inner disciples with him, he had his weapon sheathed. But while his two friends had hard looks on their faces, Qingshi looked perfectly at ease. Jieyuan was once more surprised by how expressive the prime disciple could be with the blindfold covering so much of his face.

“Daojue,” Qingshi added as he turned his head to nod at Jieyuan’s teammate. Qingshi spoke the name slowly and heavily, his voice charged with intention Jieyuan couldn’t place but that still set him further on edge.

Jieyuan walked up so that he was beside Meiyao. On Meiyao’s other side, Daojue did the same. Meiyao stayed where she was, glaring at Qingshi and his group, her finesaber still held in front of her.

“Qingshi,” Meiyao said, and she packed almost as much power and intent into the name as Qingshi had done earlier with Daojue’s. “What are you doing here?” Before Qingshi could answer, she took two quick looks at the two inner disciples. “You two… Geshihan Liangjie and Fusongshi Sunqiu, right?”

Jieyuan gripped his spear tighter.

Another Geshihan. And Fusongshi was the Gleaming Stone Sect’s other noble clan. Somehow, that revelation answered some questions at the same time as it raised new ones. After Weiming had seemed genuinely unaware of Qingshi’s involvement in whatever conspiracy she was part of, he’d assumed that maybe Qingshi’s matter with Daojue was a separate issue. To start with, all that he’d had against Qingshi was Daojue’s throwaway statement that the prime disciple had been behind Rongkai’s assassination attempt. Daojue hadn’t elaborated on the matter since, so to say that details were scarce would’ve been a significant understatement.

But now Qingshi had found them in the Inner Forest, long past after the Inner Hunt was over and he should’ve been back in the sect, accompanied by two nobles. Jieyuan didn’t believe in coincidences overmuch. The question, though, was that if Qingshi was working with the same folks that had sent Weiming over, what in the Heavens were they thinking, sending three disciples after them when an elder hadn’t sufficed?

Qingshi halted his steps still well beyond the range of Jieyuan’s soulsense, the two inner disciples with him—Liangjie and Sunqiu—likewise stopping. “Hmmm.” Around Qingshi, Jieyuan noticed that same very faint cluster of chroma he’d noticed when he’d first seen the prime disciple, back in Ruby Square, the one Qingshi’s self-developed chroma-sight technique revolved around. The very borders of it stretched almost close enough to touch him, but not close enough, meaning that Qingshi shouldn’t be able to see him and his team, at least not with chroma-sight.

Sword still sheathed, Qingshi clicked his tongue loudly, then said, “Well, Meiyao, I won’t insult your intelligence and pretend we’re here on a walk.”

“Is that so?” Meiyao had a hard smile on. “Should I insult yours, then? Because what makes you think that you will be able to do the job a tenth-sign redsoul couldn’t?”

Qingshi clicked his tongue again but still seemed utterly relaxed, Meiyao’s accusation just washing over him. The two inner disciples, Liangjie and Sunqiu, had more interesting reactions. They shifted a bit at Meiyao’s statement, looking confused, like they didn’t know what Meiyao was talking about.

“Tenth-sign redsoul?” said the one on the left to Meiyao. Jieyuan wasn’t sure which one he was, as Meiyao had named them both at the same time. It was the one with the polearm.

Meiyao glanced at the inner disciple, looking confused for a moment herself. Then her eyes widened. Then her smile followed suit, widening too. “Wait. You don’t know? Geshihan Weiming. She came after us, two weeks ago.”

“Weiming?” The other inner disciple, the one to Qingshi’s right, stepped forward. The sword- or saber-user. “Cousin Weiming?” So that one was Geshihan Liangjie.

Meiyao glanced between the two inner disciples, then focused on Qingshi. “You know, don’t you?”

Another tongue click, then a sigh from Qingshi. “Well, I guess I can’t fault you for cutting straight to it. And it’s probably my fault for keeping some details to myself. Liangjie, your cousin Weiming was sent to deal with them, about two weeks ago. I’m afraid she was unsuccessful.”

“Wait.” Liangjie took a step forward. He looked from Qingshi to Meiyao. “You’re saying, they what, killed Weiming? She was a tenth-sign redsoul.”

“Given Meiyao’s earlier comment,” Qingshi said, “I do believe they were aware of that fact.”

“I…” Liangjie turned to look fully at Meiyao. “How?”

If Meiyao felt bad in any way, shape, or form for having killed Liangjie’s cousin, she didn’t show it. She raised her saber—which was previously Weiming’s saber, now that Jieyuan thought of it—and waved it slightly. “Would you like me to show you?”

“You…” Liangjie stared at Meiyao’s finesaber for a moment, took another step forward—which, judging by the distance, would put the tip of the saber within his soulsense. “That’s a seventh-sign saber. That’s Weiming’s saber, isn’t it?”

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“Guess,” Meiyao said.

She really wasn’t in a charitable mood, was she? Jieyuan guessed that he wasn’t the only one who’d been rather stressed by the last two weeks.

In a blurring movement, Liangjie had his saber out. “You—”

“Liangjie,” Qingshi said, and the inner disciple paused. “You’ll get your time later, but I’m not quite done yet.” Qingshi said it less like a command and more like a suggestion. Reprimanding, but only lightly so, like how you might admonish a child for putting their elbows on the table.

“What? Qingshi, she— they—”

“Killed Weiming, yes. That’s been made abundantly clear. And I am sorry for your loss. But maybe before you rush into the fight, don’t you think it’d be a good idea to stop and consider for a moment how a trio of third-signs killed a tenth-sign?” Qingshi clicked his tongue again. He was doing that quite a lot, Jieyuan noted. He’d have thought it maybe was some kind of nervous tic, but Qingshi didn’t strike him as nervous in the least at the moment. “You even asked that very important question before. Just because Meiyao wasn’t forthcoming with the answer doesn’t mean you should just forget about it, yes?”

Liangjie looked just short of mutinous, but he eventually stepped back to stand beside Qingshi again. Only, he was glaring at Meiyao now. Glaring hard. Murderously so.

Jieyuan wondered how Liangjie would take it if he found out that it actually wasn’t Meiyao who’d killed his cousin, but Daojue. But he was mostly concerned about how calm Qingshi was about this whole situation, since the prime disciple clearly knew they’d killed an inner elder and understood all the implications of it. Knew that they now had the gear of a tenth-sign redsoul, and that even before they had gotten that gear, they’d still been able to kill one.

Sunqiu, the other inner disciple, looked wary now, tense, which was a more appropriate kind of reaction. He’d also unsheathed his weapon—which had turned out not to be a spear, after all, but a glaive, the blade longer and broader than a spear’s and single-edged.

“So, let’s see,” Qingshi said, still in a conversational tone that was entirely at odds with this entire situation. “I don’t think anybody here harbors any doubt that this won’t come to a fight. I also don’t think there’s any of us interested in solving this peacefully, not that such an outcome was ever in the cards. But before we all get on with the inevitable, would you mind satisfying a curiosity of mine?”

Something in Qingshi’s posture shifted. He stood taller—almost bigger—and there was a different air about him. A dangerous one. “How did you find the cave?”

Jieyuan gritted his teeth, feeling all of a sudden very tense. So Qingshi knew about the cave. Maybe he’d somehow tracked the location of Weiming’s body, or even checked up on their last known location. Behind Qingshi, Sunqiu and Liangjie looked a bit confused. So only Qingshi had gone to the cave, for some reason. That made sense—if Liangjie and Sunqiu had been to it, they’d have known about Weiming.

He said nothing. Nor did Daojue, which was par for the course. And Meiyao, for once, also remained quiet. She shifted her stance slightly, like she was getting prepared for an attack. Or to make an attack. Both were equally valid.

“What? Nothing?” Qingshi said. He still had that rolling intensity to him. “Well, all right. Allow me a guess, then.” And then Qingshi oriented his head straight in Daojue’s direction. “It was Daojue, wasn’t it? He was the one who found it.”

Narrowing his eyes, Jieyuan tried to think of how Qingshi could’ve made that assumption. Qingshi probably had some grasp on Meiyao, and it was common knowledge that Jieyuan was a mundane-born. Daojue was the only one here with a mysterious background—so it wasn’t too much of a stretch that if something odd were to happen, it had to do with him. But it’d still be a bit of a stretch, and Qingshi had spoken it with too much conviction for it just to be some partially educated guess.

Again, none of them answered.

“More silence, I see. Well, I’ll be taking that as a yes.” Qingshi still hadn’t turned his head away from Daojue. He was still clicking his tongue. More often now, even. “Then just one last thing. That’s an interesting spear you have there, Daojue. Does it have a name?”

That… That wasn’t right. Jieyuan immediately focused on the faint haze of chroma around Qingshi, but it was still there, not touching them. So how had Qingshi known about the spear? Even if he could somehow sense it some other way, though, Gleaming End was wrapped in a gear-shroud.

“More silence? That seems like another yes to me. Let me guess, you’re wondering how I know. Now, I’ve been to the cave, and I can guess who the statue there is and what she was supposed to have with her. Based on that, I could’ve said that between the three of you, the one most likely to claim that spear was Daojue.”

Qingshi took a step forward. His sword was still sheathed. “And, honestly, I could have very well done all of that. But I’ll be nice and let you three in on a little secret. See, I’ve been using Chromasight ever since I became a cultivator, but I went blind a couple of years before that. And you see, I was always the ingenuous sort, so I came up with my technique to see despite my blindness. A mundane technique.” Qingshi clicked his tongue in quick succession. “Tell me, have you three ever heard of bats?”

The tongue clicks… “You see through sound?” That came straight from Amyas’s memories. All he had on bats from his current life was they were borderline blind, silly little critters who sometimes his family servants would chase off the property.

Qingshi froze, then turned to face him, tongue still clicking. “I actually wasn’t expecting any of you to know that. But… Well, I guess it makes sense it was you. You’re the Haoyujin scion, aren’t you? I’d heard rumors that your father was both a scholarly and a thorough man. A fearsome combination. He’d have ensured you’d get a pretty comprehensive education, yes. You’d have had plenty of tutors, in all areas.” Qingshi slowly shook his head. “You know, this really is a pity. I think we’d have gotten along, the two of us, if the situation were different.”

Jieyuan wet his lips. He almost said he felt the same, but he reckoned Meiyao and Daojue wouldn’t really appreciate that.

“But anyway. Yes. I can also see through sounds. That’s actually what inspired me to come up with chroma-sight. And crystal, to me, sounds very different from metal.” And now Qingshi drew his finesword, sliding it slowly, almost gently, out of its sheathe. It was a plain steel blade, unadorned, utilitarian. “Now, Daojue, I hope you were paying attention, because most of what I’ve said so far has been to your benefit. I wanted to make sure you knew perfectly well what you were up against.”

Qingshi smiled, sharply, fiercely. “And if that wasn’t clear enough for you, allow me to be direct. Please don’t underestimate me, yes I’ve been looking forward to this for a while now, and I’d hate for it to be over too soon.”

A chill gripped Jieyuan by the spine. He’d been prepared for tenth-sign redsouls. That was what he’d spent the last two weeks watching out for. A prime disciple and two inner disciples were nothing compared to that. But there was just something about Qingshi that somehow got him even more alarmed than even Weiming had. And Qingshi’s confidence didn’t help—because the prime disciple had to know what kind of chromal gears they had, what they were capable of, but was still acting this way. And even though there was no way Qingshi could know Gleaming End was now at Orangesoul, that just meant he’d be under the impression it was at tenth-sign Redsoul. Last he’d checked, Qingshi was a fifth-sign redsoul, and at that soulsign, a tenth-sign Redsoul weapon was about as deadly as an Orangesoul one.

“Liangjie, Meiyao’s yours,” Qingshi said. He still sounded casual, but his voice was firmer now. “As you already know, she has your cousin’s saber, so watch out for that, yes? Now, Sunqiu, that leaves you Jieyuan. I imagine he got Weiming’s armor. He might have even gotten her realmskill. So don’t underestimate him just because he’s a third-sign, yes? I want both of you to take this seriously.”

Both inner disciples nodded. Jieyuan found himself locking eyes with Sunqiu, who was already directly opposite him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Liangjie moving slightly to the side, while Meiyao glared at Qingshi for a moment, then glanced at Daojue, before following. Daojue stood where he was.

Qingshi then pointed his sword forward, at Daojue. “And that leaves the two of us. Seems fitting, doesn’t it? A mute for all effects and purposes, and a blind man.” Qingshi gave another wicked smile. “Let’s have a good fight, shall we?”

Then Qingshi lunged at Daojue.