CHAPTER

21

TO BRING DEATH

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Over to Jieyuan’s left, Daojue and Qingshi began a battle that, by all accounts, seemed to be long-awaited on both sides. Even further over to his left, Meiyao and Liangjie got up to some bloody business of their own.

As for himself, Jieyuan tracked over to the side together with Sunqiu, like they were pairing off for a dance. Which wasn’t too far from the truth, granted, except blades would be in charge of the singing, and if either of them ended up swept off their feet, everything indicated it’d be for good, that it’d be a fall they wouldn’t be getting up from.

Jieyuan didn’t take his eyes off Sunqiu. They both observed each other as they distanced themselves from the other fights going on, and came to a stop almost at the same time by unspoken agreement.

They circled each other. Sunqiu remained just outside the range of Jieyuan’s soulsense, wary, hawk-eyed. Jieyuan could feel the inner disciple’s gaze boring into him, scrutinizing him. Often it’d flit to the armor Jieyuan had on, the fullgreaves and gauntlets he’d gotten from Weiming. Even if it hadn’t been for Qingshi’s warning earlier, Sunqiu would’ve still known about them. Jieyuan was guessing Sunqiu was a fifth-sign redsoul, giving him a soulsense range of about thirty feet, meaning that though the inner disciple was beyond Jieyuan’s soulsense, Jieyuan wasn’t outside his.

For his part, Jieyuan was mostly concerned with Sunqiu’s glaive. It was made entirely out of steel. A sleek metal shaft and a broad single-edged blade at the top, with some intricate patterns and designs that only served as adornments. It was probably safe to assume it didn’t have a prime gear-skill, so no special powers he needed to watch out for. But if it was at fifth-sign Redsoul like he imagined Sunqiu was, then if it got Jieyuan anywhere above his elbows or knees—where he didn’t have Weiming’s armor on—it’d probably cut through him with just slightly more difficulty than Gleaming End drilled past Weiming’s chest, two weeks earlier.

Jieyuan held his spear in front of him, but didn’t fall into a specific stance, keeping his form fluid, reactive. He didn’t have much experience fighting with glaives. He did have an idea of what it’d be like—glaives were to spears what sabers were to swords, one-edged rather than double-edged, less stabbing, more cutting—but he’d never fought a master glaive user before. And he didn’t expect a noble inner disciple to be some half-trained novitiate.

“So,” Jieyuan said, affecting a conversational tone not unlike Qingshi’s earlier. “Sunqiu, right?”

Sunqiu had no reply, only narrowed his eyes at him.

“Since you’re here to kill me and all, would you mind letting me in on what exactly this is?” Still moving his feet, Jieyuan gestured vaguely with his spear. “You know, this whole killing me and Daojue, capturing Meiyao business?”

He hadn’t had much luck with getting information out of Weiming earlier, but nothing was stopping him from trying again. You missed all the shots you didn’t take. And after Qingshi’s little show earlier, he had to admit he was a mite inspired.

Sunqiu said nothing and just kept glaring. Jieyuan wasn’t discouraged. If anyone had experience talking to the human equivalent of a doormat, it was him, and he had Daojue to thank for that. Try as Sunqiu might, Daojue was on a level of uncommunicative all on his own.

“Given you’re here, I’m guessing that the Fusongshi Clan is involved,” Jieyuan said. “So is the Geshihan Clan, given we’ve already had two Geshihan knocking on our door. So that’s the Gleaming Stone Sect’s two noble clans together, colluding in some sort of conspiracy. Am I right so far?”

Still no answer, but Sunqiu narrowed his eyes more, tightened his lips, got visibly more tense, and Jieyuan felt it was safe to take that as indicative of a yes. “Now, I’ll go out on a limb and say that the Liangshibai Clan isn’t involved. In fact, I’d say they don’t know about this funny business of yours, whatever it is.”

Over the past few days Jieyuan had pondered the subject further, mostly in talks with Maeva, and it’d occurred to him that there was a chance Meiyao’s fall-out with her father and surrogate grandfather might be related, but it didn’t strike him as likely. If the chief protector and the sect leader of the sect wanted something done, they wouldn’t need to go through all this trouble. They’d just take action directly. No, this stank of subterfuge. And if Meiyao thought that there was any possibility her family drama was related to this whole situation, he’d like to think she’d have had the grace to share her suspicions, at least with him.

“Now, the question is, what do the two noble clans stand to gain from me and Daojue dead, and Meiyao captured?” Jieyuan pressed on. “Even more so considering that if they are found out, that’ll very likely mean a pretty significant squabble with the Liangshibai Clan and the rest of the sect. As powerful as you nobles are, I don’t imagine you’ve got the leeway to just go around killing disciples like Daojue and me as you see fit. Not to mention kidnapping the daughter of the sect leader, who’s also the surrogate granddaughter of the chief protector.”

Sunqiu had his brows furrowed now.

“So whatever it is you nobles think you’ll get out of this, it should be worth the risks. Worth upsetting the Liangshibai Clan. Worth upsetting a status quo that’s been around for thousands of years. So what is it?”

Sunqiu still didn’t speak, but Jieyuan thought he was close. Time to switch gears. Casual didn’t work, but taunting might do the trick. “Come on. Don’t tell me you don’t know. Or are you being kept in the dark? Are you some mindless, unthinking pawn to be moved by your superiors as they—”

Sunqiu moved—and Jieyuan barely had time to register, as the inner disciple got within range of his soulsense, that both he and his glaive were indeed at fifth-sign Redsoul, before Sunqiu was there, right in front of him, swinging his glaive in a sideways arc.

Immediately forced into retreating, Jieyuan stepped back even as he brought his spear to his right to meet Sunqiu’s attack. There was a sharp, cringing noise as blade met blade.

He’d hoped to bat aside Sunqiu’s glaive. His spear got thrown to the side instead. It did allow Jieyuan to avoid the attack, but Sunqiu didn’t pause. Relentless, the inner disciple pressed forward, twisting his arms and body as he shifted the failed swing up, preserving momentum, and then down into an overhead slash. All with the blurry, unnatural speed of someone moving at a higher time-warp.

Jieyuan didn’t have time to pull his spear back in front of him, so instead he brought his right arm up, meeting the attack with his fullgauntlet. Jieyuan’s arm shook, but the higher chromal weight of the fullgauntlet significantly reduced the effectiveness of the blow. Still, Sunqiu was fast. Both of them were soul-stilling, but the inner disciple’s higher soulsign meant he was experiencing time at a significantly faster pace. And he was also strong—the augmented strength he’d get from aura was also greater than Jieyuan’s by more than half.

If Jieyuan hadn’t gotten plenty of practice fighting someone overwhelmingly better than him, he’d have probably been killed already. Dying to Daojue in his head again and again sure was paying off if it meant not dying when it’d actually count.

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Sunqiu didn’t keep bearing down with his glaive, and as the inner disciple brought his arm back to reorient his weapon, Jieyuan seized the opportunity and thrust his spear forward in a stab.

The timing was near perfect, but Sunqiu still managed to react and angle his body away from it, and instead of piercing Sunqiu’s chest, the spearhead burrowed into the prime disciple’s shoulder instead—and even as it pierced flesh and skin, Jieyuan felt the strength behind the attack quickly dissipating, pretty much evaporating, and the spearhead didn’t sink even an inch into Sunqiu’s shoulder before the attack was spent.

Sunqiu immediately jumped back, but Jieyuan didn’t give chase. Instead, he had his eyes on Sunqiu’s shoulder, where he’d just landed a hit. Even if he hadn’t been targeting the shoulder, it should have still torn through flesh and even bone. Instead, there was just a small hole in it, barely bleeding. A superficial puncture.

That had been a good, solid hit, and that was all he had to show for it? Jieyuan gritted his teeth. He had known that the odds were stacked against him. Sunqiu’s chromal weight was much higher, so Jieyuan’s spear would have a hard time harming him, and Sunqiu’s aura would augment his durability more than Jieyuan’s could augment his strength. But he hadn’t expected that’d render his spear this ineffective.

Still keeping Sunqiu well in his line of sight, Jieyuan glanced at his spear and saw a nick on its blade, where it’d met Sunqiu’s glaive in their first exchange. The fullgauntlet that had taken the strike head-on, on the other hand, wasn’t even scratched. Jieyuan thought hard for a moment. Hard and fast.

What were his advantages here? His gauntlets. His remaining Cultivator’s Agony Beacon… was only at third-sign and wouldn’t be of much use against a fifth-sign. What else? His realmskill. He also wouldn’t be able to use it to great effect—Absolute Will Command scaled significantly with the chromal weight differential between him and the target in both directions, making it much stronger against targets at a lower soulsign but also much weaker against a target at higher one—but Sunqiu didn’t know he had it, and that was something he could take advantage of.

No conscious commands, then. Subtle was what he should go for. Subtle and clever. Sneaky. And there was a particular application of his realmskill that Jieyuan had a lot of practice with.

Something shifted in Sunqiu’s posture, and it gave Jieyuan just enough warning to move out of the way as Sunqiu lunged at him. The next couple of attacks, Jieyuan dodged, giving up the offense altogether, as he tried to come up with a plan.

Sunqiu was no slouch with his glaive, but Jieyuan would say he had the edge in skill. If they were evenly matched, the fight would’ve already been over, with Sunqiu’s significant advantage in speed and strength. But that meant nothing if when Jieyuan landed a hit, it wouldn’t do much damage. The only thing on him that had any chance of harming Sunqiu were his armor pieces, but even then, there was only so much their higher soulsign could do for him. They’d help him ignore some of Sunqiu’s augmented durability, but he’d still need to land a hit somewhere significant to get anywhere.

Even as he dodged Sunqiu’s flurry of swings, weaving out of each one just barely, getting a nick or two on himself as the flashing glaive’s blade brushed cloth and skin, he eyed Sunqiu’s black-shrouded neck.

Jieyuan didn’t know how it was in other parts of the Chromajie, but at least in the Radiant Gold District, and as far as he knew in Incandescent Serenity Island as a whole, there was this whole taboo around the neck. It was viewed as the single most fragile, most mortal, location of the human body. And so it was always covered in public, either by cloth or metal, and you’d only bear it around someone you really trusted—because doing so was tantamount to saying you’d trust them with your mortality, with your life.

In more practical terms? What that meant was that if you wanted to put someone down, the neck was a pretty good place to get a hit in.

Jieyuan was still coming up with a plan when something struck him in the legs, and he tripped, falling. In a blur Geshihan’s glaive was swinging down on him, down on his head, and Jieyuan gave himself fully into his instincts as he pushed off against the ground and rolled out of the way. The blade struck the gleamstone floor on the spot he’d just been, and Jieyuan immediately pushed himself into a crouch and then jumped back, dodging another strike.

He noted, near where he’d been earlier, a floating slab of gleamstone.

Gleaming Stone Containment. Sunqiu also had a realmskill—and it was the same one Weiming had. As Jieyuan put some distance between them, with Sunqiu advancing and gaining ground, he tried to recall everything he had on that realmskill. Its first form was Gleaming Stone Impediment, and it gave the user the power to temporarily manifest powers out of gleamstone. Barriers couldn’t be moved, but they were fixed in place, even if manifested in air, so they could even be used as platforms. Because they were made of gleamstone, they were harder than diamond, and you’d need something with at least twice its chromal weight to damage it.

It was a pretty straightforward skill, but given how Sunqiu had used it just now, he’d say the inner disciple was clever with it. That didn’t bode well for him.

When another barrier appeared, this time between his legs, Jieyuan was prepared for it, and he managed to weave his way around it. But in the process, Sunqiu managed more than a glancing blow, his glaive cutting a line on Jieyuan’s arm. Still superficial, but deeper than all other nicks he’d received so far.

Jieyuan needed to finish this. He needed to finish this fast. Sunqiu wasn’t playing around anymore, and Jieyuan could hardly afford to let this go on for long. One slip, one wrong move, one surprise, and that could very well be the end of it.

He had his target, the neck. He had his means of attack, his armor. And he had the means to give himself the opportunity to get a blow in, his realmskill.

Sunqiu couldn’t see the attack coming—if he did, he could just summon another gleamstone barrier, and his fullgauntlets wouldn’t be able to do anything to them. He’d have needed tenth-sign armor for that. It was a good thing, actually, that Sunqiu had played his hand like this.

What to do? He needed to use Absolute Will Command to distract Sunqiu. Or… he could be even more direct.

Still busy dodging and retreating, Jieyuan reached for Absolute Will Command and tried a Command in his head, imagining Sunqiu as the target. Immediately he got a sense of what it’d cost. It’d be steep. Half-his-soulprism steep. But it’d be worth it.

Absolute Will Command had a couple of limitations. One of them was vocalization. The target didn’t need to hear the Command, but it needed to be spoken aloud. Whispering worked, but cultivators had very good hearing. Whatever he said, even as a whisper, Sunqiu would hear. But he could work around that.

“See DAOJUE!” Jieyuan Commanded, looking behind Sunqiu. Half his soulprism vanished on the spot. Jieyuan couldn’t tell exactly what Sunqiu was experiencing, what he was hallucinating, but together with his shout just now, it was enough to get the inner disciple to rapidly turn around, bringing up his spear as if to defend from an attack.

Immediately Jieyuan stepped closer, into close range, and holding his spear with only his left hand, delivered a punch with his other hand right into the side of Sunqiu’s neck.

Metal met flesh.

Metal tore flesh.

Metal struck bone.

Metal cracked bone.

Dropping his glaive, the inner disciple stumbled back a step, eyes wide as he turned to look back at Jieyuan. The side of his neck where Jieyuan’s fullgauntlet struck him was caved in and torn open. There were warm spots on Jieyuan’s face. Blood had spurted onto him on impact, and even now more blood was gushing out of the large, gaping wound.

Sunqiu dropped to his knees. Much like Weiming didn’t take her eyes off Daojue as she collapsed, Sunqiu didn’t take his eyes off Jieyuan. Even as he clutched at the ruins of his neck he stared straight into Jieyuan’s eyes. It wasn’t pain Jieyuan saw on Sunqiu’s face, though, but bewilderment. But that confusion soon faded, with Sunqiu kneeling, on the verge of collapse, all of his body’s blood evacuating him through the gaps between his fingers holding his neck, and what took its place was a hard look of grim acceptance.

And Jieyuan understood that what he was looking at—what he’d just faced—was another cultivator. Someone who would suffer indescribable pain, over and over, in exchange for power. To people like them, pain was a constant, and death was an inevitability. Neither would cower them.

Sunqiu’s stare was only broken when he toppled over, collapsing. Jieyuan stared down at the inner disciple’s still body as more blood bloomed beneath him against the crystalline ground. And with his soulsense Jieyuan watched as the inner disciple lingered on, his soul still there for a moment, then two, three, four…

And then it vanished.

Claimed by the Silver Stream.

Jieyuan kept on staring at the corpse he’d just made, heart beating like a drum in his chest, still high on the thrill of battle but coming off it.

His first kill. He’d been connected to murder before in some ways, but even with Rongkai in the Fatebloom Woods, all he’d done was bury the spear in his back. The one who’d dealt the killing blow was Daojue.

This was different. This was all him, all Jieyuan.

He considered it, for a moment. Searched his feelings. Were he Amyas, he reckoned he’d have felt guilt or remorse. Even as practical, as pragmatic, as he’d been as Amyas, death and murder had never been part of his reality. They’d been something distant, something he’d had no business with and probably never would have, not by choice nor by need. But he wasn’t Amyas, not anymore. He was Jieyuan, and Jieyuan had grown up in a world where death and murder were commonplace among mundanes and cultivators both. Where killing was simply part of living.

And so what Jieyuan found in himself was grim satisfaction. Of a fight won and an obstacle overcome. Of having lived while his opponent didn’t.

“Well fought,” Jieyuan said to Sunqiu, meaning it.

Then he turned and left.

There was still more to do.