CHAPTER

24

TO RETURN

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Yunzhu slowly lowered her cloud to the ground.

Jieyuan stared at her throughout the entire length of her descent, mystified. Nobody reacted.

Yunzhu alighted not too far away from where Qingshi was standing. The prime disciple had his head facing her way and was completely still. Unnaturally so.

Meiyao and Daojue….

Yunzhu stepped off her cloud, then looked from Qingshi to the three of them. Then she suddenly went still, her eyes glued onto Daojue—or, to be more precise, onto Daojue’s bleeding shoulder. She stared at it like she was in a daze, and she made to take a step forward before she stopped midway. Her face scrunched up as she looked away, like it took her a monumental effort to do so.

Now facing Qingshi, Yunzhu pursed her lips. “What’s this?” Her voice didn’t have her usual cheer. It was cutting, incisive. “What are you doing here, Qingshi?”

“Yunzhu,” Qingshi said, tightly. “This… This is…” He trailed off, like he was at a loss for words. He didn’t stop facing Yunzhu for even a moment.

Then he exploded into movement, crossing the distance between himself and Yunzhu. Startled, she edged back, but Qingshi was faster, reaching her and wrapping one arm around her waist, and with the other one holding the blade of his sword against her throat.

He nudged Yunzhu to move as he turned her body so that the two of them were facing Jieyuan and his team. “All right,” Qingshi said. If his voice had been tight before, now it was almost painfully so. He spoke through gritted teeth. “All right. Here’s what will happen. The three of you will turn around and go on your way.”

Jieyuan looked from Qingshi, to his hostage. Yunzhu had frozen up—but she was back to staring at Daojue and his bleeding shoulder now, so Jieyuan wasn’t entirely sure if that was because of the blade at her throat. Wasn’t entirely sure if she’d even noticed the blade at her throat.

Jieyuan licked his lips. He… wasn’t sure what to make of this situation. Yunzhu… didn’t really strike him as that good a hostage. More than anything else, Yunzhu unsettled him. Particularly when she was doing…. Well, the thing she was doing now, staring at Daojue like that. It didn’t mean Jieyuan wanted her dead, not quite, but it also wasn’t as if he’d be shedding any tears if the Silver Stream paid her a brief but lasting visit.

Jieyuan glanced at Daojue. His teammate was, unsurprisingly, mostly impassive, but his eyes were narrowed enough for Jieyuan to call his stare a glare. But the one Daojue was glaring wasn’t Qingshi. It was Yunzhu. Jieyuan recalled every time he’d seen Daojue and Yunzhu interact so far, and he was left with the suspicion that Daojue would probably celebrate—or whatever passed for celebration to Daojue—if Yunzhu were killed.

Really, Meiyao was the only one among them that probably cared. And as Jieyuan turned to her, he saw that she was, for one, glaring at Qingshi. But when her gaze dipped a little lower to Yunzhu, who was still staring something fierce at Daojue in what was probably her weirdest, most intense moment yet, Meiyao seemed just the slightest bit unsure.

Jieyuan weighed their options. It wasn’t as if they were having much luck against Qingshi before. In fact, Jieyuan suspected that if that fight had gone on for much longer he’d have ended up asking Meiyao to use her talisman, if she didn’t take it upon herself to do so before he got around to asking.

And Yunzhu was a fifth-sign Redsoul. If she’d joined up with them, they’d have very likely been able to beat Qingshi. So maybe what Qingshi was doing was temporarily neutralizing his toughest opponent, and then getting them out of the picture so he could deal with Yunzhu on his own terms, after which he’d chase after them… Except… Except that didn’t make sense, because if that was Qingshi’s intention, he was very much so in a position to kill off Yunzhu now. Meaning Qingshi couldn’t kill Yunzhu, because if he could, he’d have done so already. Going by that logic, Qingshi’s threat—which, again, wasn’t even that much of a threat—wasn’t even one he could follow through on.

And what was Yunzhu even doing here, anyway? And how did Qingshi sense her presence earlier, way before everyone else? There was no way Qingshi’s soulsense reached that far up. His echolocation thing, maybe? They had certainly been making enough noise for it, both with their weapons and with their heavy steps on the gleamstone floor. But did it have that much of a range?

Jieyuan was trying to understand the situation, to figure out Qingshi’s motives and Yunzhu’s circumstances. He really was. But the more he thought about it and this whole situation, the more confused he got. It was like he was trying to piece a puzzle together but more than half of the pieces were missing.

Jieyuan had been stumped a couple of times in his life before, but never to this extent. He was about to call on Maeva when another voice came from above. A man’s voice, cold and deep, resonant.

“Enough.”

Before Jieyuan could look up, he was distracted as Qingshi was suddenly encased in gleamstone. One moment the prime disciple had been there, and the next a gleamstone statue—a rough, featureless one that only had the outline of a person—was standing in its place.

For a brief, crazed instant, Jieyuan remembered Protector Yuanzhi and thought that Qingshi had been spontaneously converted into gleamstone. Even though he looked nothing like Yuanzhi had, and they were nowhere near the Gleamstone Depths. But then he remembered the voice and looked up.

Another cloudcraft drifting down toward them. A man was standing on it. What first caught Jieyuan’s attention were the man’s robes. Citrine, with an elder’s lightcoat over it. A prime elder. Jieyuan then noted the man’s appearance, and he blinked, then stared.

The man looked young—not that much older than them, probably in his mid-twenties at the most. It wasn’t anyone he’d ever seen before, but he looked… familiar. He was handsome. Handsome in a statue-perfect way, with sharp, chiseled features, that reminded him of Daojue. But his features were even more delicate than Daojue’s, almost androgynous.

And as the man’s cloudcraft reached the ground, just beside the gleamstone-covered Qingshi and Yunzhu, who was still in Qingshi’s grasp even though everything indicated she could very well get herself out of it now, still with that eerie, deeply unsettling look in her eyes as she stared at Daojue, utterly entranced. But Jieyuan’s attention was brought back to the prime elder as he stepped off the cloud, and Jieyuan realized there was another way the man resembled Daojue.

The man was very tall—the tallest person he’d ever seen, pretty much of height with Daojue. Only about an inch taller than Qingshi, but Qingshi was a towering fellow himself. Whereas Daojue was clearly heavily muscled, though, this man seemed slender, lean, if not outright gaunt. To Jieyuan’s knowledge, all cultivators were martial artists, so he was guessing the man had some muscle, but of the wirier, denser sort.

The man didn’t have armor on, but there was a sheath by his waist, with the hilt of a blade extending from it. He also had a bond band covering his neck, indicating he was married.

Jieyuan’s gaze flicked down to Yunzhu, then back to the man. With both of them in his line of sight, Jieyuan could spot the similarities between them in the lines of their face. They had the same dark, somber looks, despondent-like.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Unless Yunzhu had a brother who was a prime elder, then what Jieyuan was looking at was Elder Taishou. Jieyuan had never really wondered what the man looked like, didn’t really have his own mental image of what Taishou should look like, but he still found his non-existent expectations defied.

“Yunzhu,” the man said in a soft, pleasant voice, almost silky—not at all like the cold, reverberating way he’d spoken earlier.

Yunzhu blinked, then turned to look at the man. “Ah! Father.” She blinked again, this time down at the blade that after her motion just now was pressed against her neck, and she twisted her head back, to Qingshi’s crystallized face. “Oh. Oh.” Gingerly, she leaned her body steps and took a few steps to the side until she was out of Qingshi’s grasp. She then walked from around Qingshi to stand behind her father.

Where she stopped and went back to staring at Daojue.

Taishou put a hand on her shoulder, and she snapped out of it. She then turned to look at Qingshi’s imprisoned form, her expression growing blank, inscrutable

Taishou faced them. “Meiyao, Daojue,” he said, nodding at the two. The elder then paused before also giving Jieyuan a nod. “Jieyuan. Well met.”

Uncertain, Jieyuan nodded back.

“Elder Taishou,” Meiyao said, slowly, hesitatingly, looking from Yunzhu, to the elder, to the crystallized Qingshi. “What… are you doing here?”

Daojue didn’t have much of a reaction, though he did evenly meet Taishou’s gaze. From Daojue, Jieyuan would say that was about as much acknowledgment as could be expected.

Taishou glanced sideways at his imprisoned disciple. “It’s a long story, one I’ll be sharing with you soon. For now, however, it suffices to say that I saw what happened here and decided to intervene, lest my apprentice makes any more of a mockery of the sect’s rules and of both my station and his.” He narrowed his eyes at Daojue. “How’s your shoulder?”

Jieyuan also turned to look, having stopped paying attention to the wound Daojue had suffered. When he looked at it more closely, however, he saw that while the cloth around it darkened with blood, the wound itself wasn’t bleeding anymore—covering the gash was something small and red. It took Jieyuan a moment to place as physicalized chroma.

It hadn’t occurred to Jieyuan to use chroma to staunch a wound like that. He made a note of that.

Daojue also seemed to have regained some measure of control over his left arm. Although he only had his right hand on Gleaming End, the spear held up by his side with its butt against the ground, his left arm wasn’t dangling loose anymore, but pulled back and firm in proper standing posture.

Daojue said nothing, but to Taishou that seemed to be answered enough, and he nodded.

Meiyao took a moment before she spoke next. “How much did you see?”

“Enough,” Taishou said, “to have my apprentice executed.”

Well. That was one way of putting it.

Yunzhu whipped her head up to look at Taishou. “Father—”

Taishou put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a look, and she settled down, before he returned his attention to them. “I understand all of you have many questions, but this is not the place for them. Acting in my capacity as head of the Justice Bureau, I’m taking Qingshi into custody for his crimes, and I’d ask the three of you to accompany me as witnesses. I lack details, and while Qingshi will be interrogated, I require a proper accounting of the situation from you three.”

Into custody… Jieyuan glanced back at Qingshi. Those words and the promise of an interrogation implied that Qingshi was alive—so he hadn’t been turned into gleamstone. Meaning that he was only covered in it… Gleaming Stone Containment? Jieyuan didn’t know what realmskill Elder Taishou had, but he imagined it was either that or the sect’s other realmskill, Gleaming Stone Protection, and all the first form of Gleaming Stone Protection did was summon gleamstone weapons. He doubted the gleamstone casing Qingshi was imprisoned in could qualify as a weapon, but maybe, if you really stretched the definition, it could be seen as a barrier.

“You’re taking us back to the Justice Hall?” Meiyao asked.

“Yes,” Taishou said, “but I assure you, none of you are in any trouble.”

Meiyao glanced to the left, and Jieyuan spotted Liangjie’s corpse on the ground, among the gleamstone trees.

The man followed her gaze. “I stand by what I said. You aren’t in any trouble. I am witness to all that has happened here, and should the Geshihan Clan”—he glanced at Jieyuan—“or the Fusongshi Clan demand satisfaction for the death of their members, they’ll have to go through me and the entirety of the Justice Bureau first.”

Meiyao nodded slowly. “And what will happen to Qingshi?”

Taishou’s expression darkened. “It is as I said earlier. I saw enough to have him executed, and he’ll find that being my apprentice grants him no leeway or any measure of leniency from me.”

Taishou then reached into his robes and produced a talisman from within, which he held near Qingshi. The barrier binding Qingshi vanished, but before Jieyuan could get a proper look at him, Taishou slammed his hand down onto his apprentice’s shoulder, moving with a tenth-sign redsoul’s speed. A dim white light flashed, and another barrier materialized around Qingshi, except this one wasn’t made out of gleamstone but out of what looked like hard light, and was wrapped much more tightly against Qingshi’s body. It was the exactly same color as the dome of light conjured by Meiyao’s Radiant Light Haven talisman.

Elder Taishou picked up the imprisoned Qingshi by the arm and hauled him up effortlessly onto the cloudcraft he’d arrived in, carelessly tossing him on top of it. It seemed that this barrier was as solid as the gleamstone barrier that had preceded it, and throughout it all Qingshi’s pose remained the same.

“Yunzhu, join your cloud to mine,” Taishou said. Yunzhu, her attention still on Qingshi, face still unreadable, complied. She motioned at her cloudcraft, which was just beside her, and it drifted closer to meet Taishou’s. The two then seemed to meld into one. Yunzhu then jumped up on top of the composite cloudcraft and then took a few steps to stand right beside Qingshi’s form at the front.

Taishou waved them over. “Shall we?”

Meiyao made her way over without hesitation, and Daojue lingered in place for a few moments, his eyes shifting from Elder Taishou to Yunzhu to Qingshi, before he followed.

Jieyuan was right behind him, but as he approached he cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Elder,” he said , drawing Taishou’s attention. “But what of the Hunt?”

Jieyuan wasn’t so keen on following Taishou like this, no matter how much Meiyao seemed to trust the man, as he still found it very odd how the man and his daughter had just popped up here. But it wasn’t like he had much of a choice, given the man was a tenth-sign redsoul. They’d only have a chance to run off if Meiyao used her talisman, and that didn’t seem all that likely right now. So since he couldn’t do anything about that, he decided to just cover his bases instead and ensure that leaving early like this didn’t get disqualified on some technicality.

A thousand shards—three thousand split between the three of them. Jieyuan had hardly forgotten of the reward for the first place in the Outer Hunt. Even though the armor pieces he had on were probably worth that much, if not more, as seventh-sign redsoul artifacts, that wasn’t a prize he was willing to pass up on easily.

“Worry not,” Taishou said. “I’ll arrange for your contribution points to be calculated and considered.” He tipped his head in Meiyao’s direction. “However, I suspect that even if I did nothing, my sister-in-law would still find a way to ensure you three were given what you were due.”

“Aunt Yuyan!” Meiyao was already standing on the cloudcraft, next to Yunzhu. Yunzhu still only had eyes for Qingshi, for some reason—though Jieyuan wondered if she wasn’t simply avoiding looking at Daojue. Regardless, he’d consider it as an improvement.

Meiyao turned back to Taishou, looking rather worried. “Does she know—”

“I haven’t informed her yet,” Taishou said. “I decided it’d be best to get all the facts out of you three first.”

“That’s… good.” Meiyao didn’t elaborate.

“And the corpses?” Jieyuan glanced back at where he’d left behind Sunqiu’s body, and then over at where Liangjie was.

“I’ve already called some of my men over. They should be arriving shortly to both collect the bodies and inspect the area. High-profile cases such as this call for… thorough investigations.” After a pause, he added, “Weiming’s body has also been collected already.”

Jieyuan froze. Meiyao’s eyes widened. “You know—”

“Yunzhu and I tailed my apprentice for quite some time,” Taishou said. “He inspected the cave before he met up with Sunqiu and Liangjie and tracked you three down. I inspected the cave after he left.”

Taishou spared a glance at Daojue’s spear. “As I said earlier, we have much to discuss.”

Daojue had no reaction to speak of, and he climbed onto the cloudcraft after Meiyao, taking a position at the very back, as far away as he could be from the two women and the imprisoned Qingshi. Jieyuan got on next and moved to stand beside Daojue at the back, aura-lashing himself to the cloud’s surface while he was at it.

Taishou was last, and as soon as he was standing on the cloud they began rising upward, putting on speed. By the time they were nearing the canopy, the gleamstone trees were little better than shimmering blues, and Taishou directed them through a gap among the thick gleamstone leaves and branches.

And with that, they were out in the open, the Gleamstone Forest below them and the mountains that surrounded the Gleamstone Valley—the Twins—now in plain sight, in all their massive, crystalline, and borderline blinding splendor.

Taishou sped up—and everything was a blur, the wind howling, screeching in Jieyuan’s ears. When the cloud began to slow and he could see clearly again, barely moments seemed to have passed, but the Gleamstone Valley was nowhere in sight.

Rather, leaning to the side of the cloud, what he saw far below were the white, vaguely geometric shapes of buildings and the softer hills and slopes that were so commonly found throughout the Gleaming Stone Sect.

Well, that was it. They were back in the sect.

Whether that was for good or ill stood to be seen.

Jieyuan had always been a betting man, and right now he wasn’t sure he liked the way the odds were leaning.