CHAPTER

25

IN THE SECT

JIEYUAN

—∞—

It was at much lower speeds—but still far, far faster than Jieyuan could hope to run, at least at his soulsign—that Taishou flew the cloudcraft through what Jieyuan assumed to be the Inner Court. From this high above, he couldn’t really tell—everything the same color looked to be also the same in shape and form—and there weren’t any landmarks he could use to situate himself.

Taishou seemed to be steering the cloud toward a particular group of mountains, three, tightly packed peaks that could, depending on how you looked at it, be considered a single mountain rather than three. And built into the middle of them, was a flat-topped tower-like structure made out of a pristine white stone. It rose slightly above the peaks of the mountains around it—though slightly, in this case, meant something along the lines of several hundred feet—and as they drew closer Jieyuan realized that it touched the insides of the three peaks surrounding it, like the tower was cradled between the three mountains.

As they approached the structure seemed to grow bigger, and Jieyuan was struck by the sheer size of it. It was, quite aptly, mountainous. Like a fourth mountain, a man-made one, built from marble.

Taishou flew them directly toward the top of it, and as he did, Jieyuan saw that the tower didn’t fully occupy the hollow formed by the three peaks. There were significant gaps on all three sides, but they weren’t fully unoccupied either. Built onto the face of the three surrounding peaks were more structures, and they were connected to the tower through hanging marble walkways and bridges. The tower itself wasn’t a straight cylinder, either. Jutting out from it were balcony-like platforms, though judging by the scale of them they could easily house entire houses. On them were gardens or other buildings.

Jieyuan took it all in, but he was no architect, nor did he have a particular interest in buildings. Rather, what struck him was how a structure like this couldn’t have been built by human hands—at least by mundane ones. Up to this point the Gleaming Stone Sect, at least in terms of its buildings and facilities, hadn’t looked all that different from what he would see around Radiant Gold City. A building of dimensions like this tower, though, was a different story. Cultivators had built it.

Not for the first time Jieyuan was struck by the power of the Gleaming Stone Sect—and right afterward, he once again wondered what higher-realm cabals would be like, when a Redsoul sect was already like this.

And was all of this the Justice Bureau? Or did the tower serve multiple functions?

The top of the tower was expansive, and it was divided into several—at least several dozens, probably over a hundred—walled courtyards. Some were unoccupied, but most of them showed at least some level of activity, be it people walking through them or even other cloudcrafts arriving.

Taishou lowered their cloudcraft onto a courtyard near the center of the tower’s top. It was one of the biggest courtyards from what Jieyuan had seen—possibly the biggest one—with a large, square lawn at its center. Directly ahead, connected to the courtyard, was a large, two-story building, made from the same sleek white stone as the rest of the tower. All around it were other buildings, but just like with the courtyard connected to it, it seemed to be the tallest, largest building on the top of the tower.

A pair of men in the topaz robes of inner elders stood at attention at the edge of the courtyard, and they approached as soon as the cloud made contact with the ground.

Taishou was the first to alight, grabbing the still-immobilized, barrier-covered Qingshi by the waist and stepping off the cloud. The pair of elders stopped right in front of him, and wordlessly Taishou handed Qingshi over to them. One of the elders took Qingshi by the feet, the other by the shoulders, and together they carried him away as if he were a statue, into the left wing of the building and out of sight.

Jieyuan’s gaze lingered on the doorway the inner elders disappeared into. Logic dictated they’d taken Qingshi to a holding cell or something to that effect. This could be the end of the whole Qingshi situation, the denouement leading to Qingshi being tried, judged, then executed, or however it was the Justice Bureau operated. That was, at least, the impression Taishou had given him. He’d just met the man, though, so he wasn’t quite sure how reliable that was.

Meiyao seemed to trust the elder well enough, but Meiyao was friends with Yunzhu. Jieyuan suspected she wasn’t quite the best judge for people. Even if she seemed to have about the right read on both Qingshi and Daojue.

Once they were all off the cloud, Taishou collected his part into his sleeves, leaving only Yunzhu’s half of it, then turned to his daughter. “Wait for me at home.”

As they were flying over, Yunzhu seemed to have taken a break from her new game of staring silently and creepily at Qingshi to resume her usual game of staring silently and creepily at Daojue, but then Taishou had nudged her again and she went back to staring silently and creepily at Qingshi.

But now Qingshi was gone, so Yunzhu only had one person to stare silently and creepily at.

Daojue met her disturbing gaze with an unsettling glare of his own, one that wasn’t quite as eerie as Yunzhu’s but just as intense, and Jieyuan edged away from what was, in his opinion, possibly the most disturbing, disconcerting stare-off he’d ever had the rotten luck to witness.

Jieyuan traded looks with Meiyao. She’d also stepped away from Yunzhu, and had her brow furrowed, like she wasn’t sure what to make of this situation.

Right now, Jieyuan would’ve actually given gold to see what was going on in either Daojue’s or Yunzhu’s head—what they were thinking, what made them behave their way. He suspected, though, that should he have his wish granted he might end up paying more gold to forget what he’d just seen.

“Yunzhu,” Taishou repeated, his voice still soft but firmer than before. Jieyuan studied the elder’s face. He had a wry sort of look on his face, like that of a parent watching their child do something silly, like catching bugs in the garden. “Yunzhu.”

At Taishou’s second, much firmer call, Yunzhu turned around to face her father, blinking. “Yes, Father?” She looked genuinely curious.

“I told you to wait for me at home.”

Yunzhu’s eyes widened. “But—”

Taishou leveled her a steely look—one that was, praise the Heavens, just a normal, admonishing look a parent would give a misbehaving child, and not a variation of the Yunzhu stare—and Yunzhu snapped her mouth shut, wilting on the spot, shoulders slumping.

“All right,” Yunzhu said, sounding just as tragically despondent as she looked. “We’ll be talking later, Meiyao. And it was nice seeing you again, Jieyuan.” Jieyuan was pretty sure that was the first time she’d so much as looked his way today, having been too busy earlier drilling her eyes into either Daojue or Qingshi. “And Daojue…”

Just as it seemed Yunzhu would fall into another daze, Taishou spoke up again, stern. “Yunzhu.”

“I’m going,” Yunzhu said, almost like a whine. But as she turned around, her gaze lingered for just a little on Daojue—on the wound on Daojue’s shoulder, no longer bleeding given the makeshift chroma staunch on it, but still surrounded by bloodied cloth.

She did finally turn, though, waving her hand as she did and pulling her cloudcraft into her sleeves, before she stomped away into one of the corridors enclosing the courtyard, opposite to the one the inner elders had taken Qingshi into.

Curiously, after Qingshi was taken away, she seemed to have forgotten about the prime disciple altogether. Or at the very least, she hadn’t said anything about him. Jieyuan recalled, earlier, how she’d tried to protest when Taishou had said what Qingshi had done was grounds for execution. Jieyuan wasn’t sure how much he could read into that, though, considering it involved Yunzhu, and he couldn’t begin to guess what went on in her head.

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Taishou followed his daughter with his gaze until she was gone, then addressed them, “Follow me.”

The elder made for the corridor directly across from them, the one leading to the large two-story building. Following Taishou inside, flanked by Daojue and Meiyao, Jieyuan found himself in an expansive entryway open at the side to two other courtyards. These courtyards were smaller, though, and in them were exotic gardens similar to the one Jieyuan had seen at Meiyao’s residence, with curious-looking plants—many of which growing, and more than a couple crystalline—that were definitely chromal in nature. But while Meiyao’s garden seemed makeshift and practical, even if very well tended to, these ones were very much so provisionally maintained and arranged, with sculpted pots deliberately arrayed.

It looked like the kind of garden you’d normally have servants caring for, but it had chromal plants on them. Did elders have cultivators for servants? Jieyuan found it doubtful, even more so a servant would need to be taught nurturing to be able to tend to chromal plants like this, and that didn’t seem to be worth the trouble. Was Taishou a nurturer himself, then? Maybe even a nurturer and refiner, like Meiyao.

They followed Taishou straight down the open-sided hallway, which led to the entrance of the two-story building proper. Inside was a large, spacious hallway, lit by gemstone lights on the ceiling and with doors on either side after every few steps. At the end of it was a large set of doors, and Taishou walked straight toward them. As they neared, the doors opened inward on their own, and Taishou strode inside without pausing.

Neither Meiyao nor Daojue hesitated to follow, and Jieyuan followed their example as he stepped through the doorway with them.

Jieyuan’s first impression of the room was that it was red. There was a large, deep red rug on the floor, there were a pair of burgundy couches in the middle surrounding a short, reddish-brown mahogany table, with all the other furniture in the room—shelves on the walls, the desk at the other end, and the chairs around it—being made of that same wood.

But then his eyes were drawn to the crystals. The room was large, square, and on the mahogany shelves taking up the left and right walls, many of them in the form of stand-alone little cubicles, there were varying crystals on display—or, more specifically, pieces of gleamstone, of different shapes and colors and ranging from thumb-sized to the size of a human heart to even larger.

It took Jieyuan a moment to realize they were gleam cores. His soulsense extended far enough that he could perceive a couple of them, and they were all at tenth-sign Redsoul. He cast his gaze around, wonderingly. Were these like the cultivator equivalent of hunting trophies? Or at least the Gleaming Stone Sect equivalent of it. Any of those cores was probably worth more than everything he had on him, even taking into account everything he’d gotten from Weiming.

Behind the desk at the end of the room was a large window that took up most of the wall beside it, showing off another garden, one even grander and more elaborate than the ones Jieyuan had passed through, except all the plants on it were gleamstone plants. Jieyuan felt like he was looking at a miniature replica of the Gleamstone Forest, like someone had cut off a slice of it and transported it into that garden.

Taishou crossed the room in a few large strides and settled down on the large, high-backed chair behind the desk. He motioned toward the couple of smaller, but similar-looking chairs facing it on the opposite side. “Please, sit.”

Meiyao picked the chair directly opposite Taishou. Daojue silently sat on the one to her left, and Jieyuan on the remaining one, to her right.

Gleaming End could not be split, so Daojue had been carrying it in his hand the entire time. Daojue didn’t have anything he could use to attach it to his back, and while it might have fit inside Weiming’s glyph-stretch pouch, Daojue’s pouch was at a lower soulsign and as such not big enough for it, though Jieyuan suspected Daojue would’ve remained walking around with the spear in his hand even if he could store it away. Now, sitting down, Daojue had the spear angled against his body. Were Daojue another person, he might have given the impression of hugging the weapon, but somehow Daojue—perfectly postured, borderline immobile—made it look like the gear-shrouded spear was merely resting against a very convincing statue.

Jieyuan scanned the desk in front of him. On it were several shelves filled with jade books, as well as a number of scrolls and sheets of paper. Everything looked meticulously organized.

“Now, then,” Taishou said, leaning forward, elbows over the desk, fingers steepled in front of his face. “As I mentioned earlier, Yunzhu and I followed Qingshi throughout his time in the forest, so I already have a fairly clear idea of what transpired. I do require a proper accounting from you three, but I understand you might not be exactly in the right condition for such tedious matters”—the elder’s eyes flitted to Daojue’s shoulder—“so I’ll only ask you three to fill in some blanks. Any questions before we begin?”

To the surprise of nobody, Daojue had none. Meiyao also stayed quiet. Jieyuan had no such reservations. “I do, actually. How exactly did you and Yunzhu end up following Qingshi into the forest?” Jieyuan paused, noting Taishou’s white lightcoat and yellow robes and remembering where he was and who he was talking to, then added, mustering respect he didn’t really feel, “Elder.”

Jieyuan hadn’t had much contact with elders of the Gleaming Stone Sect, and most of the ones he’d seen, even with a redsoul’s lifespan, had looked distinctly older than he. Taishou, on the other hand, looked like he could’ve easily been a peer, a fellow disciple, even more so than his wife, Wanxin, whom back during the entrance trials Jieyuan had already found oddly young-looking.

He noted on the bond band Taishou wore around his neck, completely covering it. Unlike Wanxin’s, which was an elaborate piece filled with gemstones and diamonds, his was a plain silver band.

“Ah.” Taishou leaned back in his chair. “I’d have gotten to this matter eventually, but… Well, this also works. As I assume you’re aware, the Inner Hunt ended on the fifteenth, two weeks ago. Qingshi returned together with all the other participants. My apprentice lives with me and my daughter, you see, and upon his return he claimed he’d spend the following days training in seclusion in preparation for the Radiant Gold Summit.”

Taishou looked off to the side, frowning, as if he was recalling something. “Earlier this morning, however, I happened to see him leaving our compounds in secret. I followed him from a distance, all the way to the Gleamstone Valley. My daughter was with me when I saw Qingshi, and she… insisted on coming along.” He sighed deeply as he leaned forward again over the table. “Now, I do believe an apology is in order. I am partially at fault for all this, Qingshi being my disciple, and I refrained from intervening in your fight with Qingshi and his helpers until the very end, as I’d wanted to see what else my apprentice was hiding from me.”

Daojue said nothing. Meiyao gave a slow nod and so did Jieyuan, even as he mulled over Taishou’s little tale. Taishou’s and Yunzhu’s presence in the forest were among the most suspicious things about this situation. Now Taishou had provided an explanation for it, but it didn’t quite put Jieyuan at ease. Could it be the truth? Jieyuan supposed so. But it was also awfully convenient. As he saw it, anything that involved an “I happened” warranted at least a little bit of suspicion.

Admittedly, there’d been plenty of situations ever since their ill-fated mission in the Fatebloom Woods that Jieyuan could tack “I happened” onto, but when he considered the things that he’d gotten up to—and that had happened to him—these last few weeks, suspicious wouldn’t have even started to describe what he’d have felt had all of it happened and been done by someone else and they’d relaid it to him. He didn’t even need an outsider’s perspective to be suspicious about it. An insider’s was enough. That was what had brought the Weave Mystery on in the first place. And considering Daojue’s detour in the Gleamstone Forest while they were running away from Weiming had ended up with Daojue finding Yuanzhi’s cave, killing Weiming, and getting Gleaming End, Jieyuan would say his hunch that there was more to Daojue than met the eye—which was a pretty preposterous thought, considering that the things that met the eye about Daojue were already plenty—had been proved to be right on the gold beyond the faintest, slimmest shadow of the doubt.

So now that Jieyuan was getting another hunch, one that told him that Taishou wasn’t what he seemed to be? The very last thing Jieyuan would do would be to ignore it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite yet at the point in which he could accuse a tenth-sign redsoul right to his face and expect to outlive his accusation by more than a few minutes.

“Good,” Taishou said. “Now, then, I only need to know about your encounter with Geshihan Weiming, as I wasn’t there for it. Daojue…” Daojue stared at Taishou. Taishou blinked, and just like the man had taken his daughter’s unusual, disturbing behavior in stride, he seemed to afford Daojue’s own brand of strange the same treatment, and looked past Daojue to Meiyao. “Or perhaps Meiyao. Would you mind telling me what exactly happened?”

Meiyao was a pretty expressive person. For the most part, she wore her emotions on her face, and she didn’t strike Jieyuan as a particularly adept liar. And now, faced with Taishou’s question, she glanced over at Daojue and Gleaming End, eyes narrowed, and then shot another brief look Jieyuan’s way.

Jieyuan affected a neutral expression. The alternative was to groan. If it’d been Meiyao’s idea to make herself—and the rest of them, by extension—seem suspicious, Jieyuan would say she’d succeeded spectacularly at it. He wondered, briefly, whether it’d be a good idea to try to just take over the explanation, but Meiyao had already done her damage, and he also wasn’t sure what he’d say in her place. He wanted to keep Gleaming End a secret, but he couldn’t really think of a scenario in which they could’ve killed Weiming without it. Taishou had also hinted he already knew what the weapon was.

Meiyao didn’t begin immediately. Taishou waited patiently.

“Weiming ambushed us,” Meiyao eventually said. “She tried to kill Jieyuan with her saber, but he got out of the way in time. I then used a Radiant Light Haven talisman on her, and we made a run for it.” She paused. “We found the cave—”

“Protector Yuanzhi’s cave, that is, right?” Taishou cut in. His expression hadn’t changed much, but his words sounded more intense. “How, exactly, did you find it?”

Meiyao pursed her lips. “Daojue found it.”

In hindsight, Jieyuan realized, once more having to force himself not to react, he should have tried to take over the explanation. If needed, he’d have said they’d stumbled onto the cave while climbing the Flaw, improbable as that was, and would have only doubled down on it when pressed.

He should’ve known that Meiyao wouldn’t cover for Daojue, not when she seemed to take his secrecy as a personal offense, even more so than his willfulness. Though he also didn’t know just how motivated Meiyao was to throw Daojue into the carriage’s path—whether if he’d been the one relating the events, and he’d tried to hide, she would’ve called him on it just to get Daojue.