CHAPTER

28

TO PREPARE

JIEYUAN

Jieyuan was standing in his doorway, clad in his new set of topaz robes. Just in front of his residence, rising into the air on a cloudcraft, was the Management Bureau elder who’d just now processed his induction to the Inner Court. It’d been a short, straightforward visit. The man had congratulated him on his advancement, handed him his new robes, and told him that should he choose to remain in the Gleaming Stone Sect after the Radiant Gold Summit, he’d be given a new residence in the Inner Court. The man had also collected his gleam stones from the Hunt, and informed him that his team’s rewards would be distributed in the morning of the thirty-first.

Jieyuan waited until the elder was high up in the air, and then lost among the bleeding skyline. The sun was already far along on its way down and out of sight, darkness creeping around the edges of the sky as day turned to dusk. He then turned around, closed the door door, and set down the path to Daojue’s place.

Meiyao hadn’t gotten back to him yet, but he’d already had his talk with Maeva. She’d been… not as against his little expedition as he’d expected. She hadn’t approved of it, but she hadn’t accused him of being out of his mind, either. Instead, she’d sighed, listed the pros and cons of going and not going, and told him it was his choice. Well, he’d chosen, so while he waited for Meiyao to come through, he decided to tackle the last item on his list.

Arriving at Daojue’s place, he didn’t bother knocking. He just stood by the door, knowing that Daojue would be alerted to his arrival by the inscribed field around the residence. Sure enough, just a couple of seconds later, Daojue opened the door. He was still wearing ruby robes, but Jieyuan suspected that Daojue had already received his inner-disciple robes and just hadn’t bothered changing yet.

Unsurprisingly, Daojue made no move to step aside or invite him inside, just stared down at him from the doorway as he held the door open. In Daojue’s other hand was Gleaming End, held out angled up and outwards, still wrapped in a gear-shroud.

“I’ve got a favor to ask,” Jieyuan said, cutting straight to the chase. He knew well enough that Daojue couldn’t care less for pleasantries. “Can I come inside for a moment?’

Daojue stepped back after a brief stretch of silence, and Jieyuan stepped inside. Now in Daojue’s living room, Jieyuan didn’t make for the table, but instead stood by the doorway, watching as Daojue closed the door. This probably wouldn’t take long, and all he wanted was a little bit of privacy.

“I want to borrow Gleaming End,” Jieyuan said.

The ever-so-slightly wide-eyed look he got in response was probably the closest Daojue would—could, even—ever get to dumbfounded disbelief.

“I’ll only need it for half a day or so,” Jieyuan said. “There’s something I want to do outside the sect, and I think an Orangesoul weapon will go a long way in keeping me alive.”

Daojue remained silent, his eyes narrowing just enough for him to reestablish his usual mask of indifference.

“Look, I won’t beg. You know I won’t run off with your weapon—even if an Orangesoul spear is a big deal right now, it’s only a matter of time before the two of us reach Orangesoul ourselves, and then Yellowsoul. Something like this is not worth making an enemy out of you for. I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, and returning in the afternoon. I’ll just need it for that long. Will you lend it to me?”

As Jieyuan spoke, Daojue listened silently with an expression that betrayed none of what he thought or felt. After Jieyuan was done, Daojue surprised him by shifting his gaze to Gleaming End. For over a minute, Daojue stared silently at the spear.

Jieyuan waited. Was Daojue actually considering it? It looked like he was, at least. Jieyuan wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d gotten an immediate refusal.

Finally, Daojue looked up from the spear. “It refuses.”

“It?” Jieyuan took a moment to understand. He glanced from Daojue to the gear-shrouded spear. “You mean Gleaming End? It refused?”

“Yes,” Daojue said.

It refuses. “So… What? Are you saying Gleaming End is alive?”

“Yes.”

Daojue didn’t elaborate, but Jieyuan was already surprised that Daojue had bothered answering to begin with. Jieyuan looked between man and spear again. This… wasn’t what he’d been expecting when he’d come here. “All right. So you can’t lend it to me, then?”

Daojue said nothing, but Jieyuan reckoned that served as well as another yes.

“All right.” If it were some other person in front of him, he’d have thought that this was some flimsy, weird excuse. Oh, I’d love to, but I’m afraid to say my weapon isn’t quite up to it. You know how it is, don’t you? But this was Daojue. “I guess that’s it, then. Thank you, anyway.”

Jieyuan didn’t linger. He gave Daojue a nod, then opened the door and stepped outside. Back under the dying light of the sun, he made his way back to the main pathway in silence.

He hadn’t managed to borrow Gleaming End, but he’d known his chances were slim from the get-go, and he had managed to get something out of it.

Finding out that Gleaming End was alive and that Daojue could communicate with it was… curious, to be sure, but not particularly important. There wasn’t really much he could do with that information, besides being aware of the existence of sentient artifacts, as Jieyuan doubted that Gleaming End was the sole of its kind in the entirety of the Chromajie.

Without stopping his steps, Jieyuan glanced back at Daojue’s house. No, the important takeaway here was that Daojue had at least given the matter consideration—and might have even been willing to lend Gleaming End, if the weapon itself hadn’t been against the idea. That meant that Daojue wasn’t some immovable, entirely self-interested, consummate Metalsoul. Daojue could be reasoned with, and Jieyuan must’ve grown on him, at least a wee bit, because Jieyuan doubted that Daojue would’ve spared the matter even a single thought if a stranger had been the one to ask.

Considering Jieyuan’s intentions for the future, that boded well for him. He couldn’t imagine Daojue ever being cooperative, but at least he knew that Daojue wasn’t entirely inflexible.

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He didn’t return straight back home. Gleaming End might have been a no-go—literally, since he’d been apparently refused by the weapon itself, which was rather insulting—but he hadn’t exhausted all of his options yet.

From where he stood, he could even see Meiyao’s place, a couple of houses down and to the right, and—and wasn’t that Meiyao? He stopped, watching as Meiyao strode down the path that led from her house to the main pathway. She was wearing an inner disciple’s topaz robes, like him. Just as she was reaching the main path, though, her eyes fell on him, and she came to a sudden stop.

Then she beckoned him over. He quickened his steps to join her.

“I was heading over to visit you just now,” Meiyao said, turning around as he got near enough. “Come on.” She walked back to her house.

Unsure what Meiyao wanted him for, Jieyuan followed her inside. Meiyao closed the door behind him, then, still standing by the doorway, she reached into her robes and produced a white strip of paper. On it was a sprawl of symbols. “Take this.”

Jieyuan made no move to reach for it. Meiyao was right in front of him, and the paper was well within the range of his soulsense. And so he could tell that it was not just a piece of paper, but a tenth-sign Redsoul talisman. And although he’d never gotten a proper look at it before… “Is that the Radiant Light Haven talisman?”

“It is,” Meiyao said. She was holding the talisman out toward him, and when he didn’t move to take it, she gave it a little shake. He reached for it, and she pressed it into his hand.

“Yuyan just stopped by.” Turning her back on him, she walked over to her living room table, but instead of sitting down, she leaned against it. Jieyuan, for his part, walked a little further inside, then adopted a similar posture, leaning back against a wall. “She collected my gleam cores, and inducted me to the Inner Court. She also gave me this.”

Meiyao reached into her robe and pulled out a stack of papers. He was still close enough to tell that they were all tenth-sign Redsoul talismans. He counted ten of them. A quick inspection with his soulsense told him that half of them had an almost identical spirit-song to the one he was currently holding, whereas the other five had very different ones, but he couldn’t really pin down any properties without concentrating on them for some time.

“Radiant Light Haven and Radiant Light Blast talismans,” Meiyao said, and he looked back up to her. “Five of each. Taishou filled her in on what happened, though with the adjustments we discussed. When I refused to move back in with her until the Summit, she gave me these instead.”

Now, Jieyuan wasn’t really sure what the market rate for tenth-sign Redsoul talismans was, but he knew all the same that they couldn’t be cheap. Talismans could only be used once, unlike artifacts, but they tended to cost as much as a plain artifact at the same soulsign, if not more—because while talismans were single-use, they came with a prime gear-skill, a unique ability comparable to a cultivator’s realmskill. Talismans were things that cultivators kept as a last resort, as a life-saving treasure that they could use if things got particularly bleak.

A single one of the talismans in Meiyao’s hand was probably worth more than everything he had on him, including Weiming’s seventh-sign fullgreaves and fullgauntlets.

“Actually…” Meiyao plucked a talisman from the stack and thrust it toward him. “Take a Radiant Light Blast talisman too. Heavens know I’ve got more of them than I know what to do with.”

“Er… Thanks,” Jieyuan said, reaching forward to take it, before pocketing it together with the first talisman. He felt a little overwhelmed—and he wasn’t sure if it was because of Meiyao’s generosity, or Yuyan’s. Both, probably. He focused on the latter. “Yuyan… Your stepmother must really care for you.”

“Yes. She does.” Though Meiyao spoke softly, she wore a strange look that was almost, but not quite, a frown. She said nothing for a while, looking like she had her mind on something else, before she shook it off. “Anyway, that should help you out with whatever it is you’re planning on doing tomorrow.”

“Oh, it really should.” Jieyuan chuckled dryly. Then he frowned. Although definitely handy, the talismans weren’t what he’d come here for. He needed a weapon, and while the Radiant Light Blast talisman should do much more damage than he could ever hope to—he wasn’t quite sure what it did, but it should be able to kill a tenth-sign redsoul, based on the cover story Taishou had come up for them— it’d only be able to do so once. He needed something more reliable than that. “Actually… I wanted to know if I could also borrow your saber.”

He felt a tad awkward, what with Meiyao having already handed him the two talismans. It didn’t help that the worth of Meiyao’s seventh-sign saber was probably not even half that of the talismans, making him feel like he was begging for scraps.

Meiyao blinked at him. “Oh. Well. Hmmm.” She shrugged, then made to unhook the sheath holding her saber from her belt. Midway, though, she looked back at him. “This thing you’re doing tomorrow. You want to keep it a secret, right?”

“I…” There was something odd about her stare. “I do.”

“If asked you, would you tell me what it was?”

The Yikongwei inheritance was something he hadn’t meant to share with anyone. Something he hadn’t imagined sharing with anyone, especially Meiyao and Daojue. They clearly had secrets of their own, and although Absolute Will Command had helped bridge the gap a bit, it wasn’t enough. He still needed more advantages of his own if he wanted to catch up to them, let alone surpass them.

If Meiyao had asked that question a month ago, Jieyuan reckoned he’d have lied and said yes, and then come up with another lie if she followed up with a proper question. If it’d been two weeks ago instead, after the start of the Hunt but before Weiming attacked them, then he’d have probably been honest and told her no. Now, though? After everything? Jieyuan could feel the talismans he’d tucked inside his robe, physically and with his soulsense. If nothing else, then Jieyuan liked to think he wasn’t ungrateful. He wouldn’t tell her everything—this was still a Violetsoul’s inheritance—but he owed her at least some of the truth.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s—”

“Don’t,” Meiyao said. “Don’t tell me.” She gave him a long, measuring look. “I believe you.” She finished detaching the sheath from her belt, and without another word, tossed it over to him.

He grabbed the saber, but his attention was on Meiyao. “You don’t want to know?”

“Oh, I do. But… Well, you haven’t asked me about my secrets. I won’t ask you about yours. It’s only fair. Maybe I’d have asked to come along, even if only to make sure you didn’t get into more trouble than you can handle, but Yuyan is probably having my place watched. On that note, I recommend keeping the saber in your glyph-stretch pouch until you’re back home.”

Jieyuan nodded slowly and stored the sheathed saber away. His next words were out of his mouth before he could think them through. “If I asked you about your secrets, would you tell me?”

Meiyao gave him another long, silent stare that lasted for over a minute, this one deeper than before. Her green eyes were enchanting, as always, and he’d have lost himself in them if not for the tension of the moment and the weight of her consideration. “I don’t know,” Meiyao said, at last. “Maybe. Will you ask?”

Jieyuan considered it, for just a moment, unsure whether this was a test, or whether Meiyao really didn’t know. He usually found Meiyao fairly easy to read—she was pretty open with her emotions—but right now he was struggling to glean the truth from the set of her face, and he suspected the problem lay with him. He hadn’t been ready for a conversation like this, one with so many things hinging on it.

“I won’t,” he finally said. He measured his next words carefully. “I’ll wait. Wait for you to tell me yourself. For you to want to tell me.” That had sounded better in his head. He wasn’t sure how much of it he actually meant. How much of it was cheek, to deescalate the situation. And how much of it was guile, to kick the ball into her court, make it her choice.

Meiyao’s eyes seemed to brighten, and she let slip a small, soft smile. “I’ll say the same for you and yours, then.”

She said nothing else for a moment, and neither did he, and a strange air hung between them.

Meiyao was the one to scatter it. “You asked about ways out of the sect, right? I asked Yuyan if she knew of any ways out of the sect I could use in case of an emergency, and she listed a couple. There’s a little-known path just behind the Outer Court’s residential district, cutting straight to the mountain range. She’ll be getting back to me later with more details on each and their exact locations still today, and I’ll pass them on to you.”

“All right,” Jieyuan said. “Thanks for... Well, everything, really.”

Meiyao raised an eyebrow, and her smile sharpened into a smirk. “Oh, this isn’t free. You owe me one. And I’ll be collecting on that in the future.”

“Of course.” Jieyuan matched her tone. “It’s only fair. I’m a merchant’s son. Trust me, I know all about debts.” He looked around the living room, but it was bare, just like his. Nothing to comment on. Nothing to say. He pushed off the wall. “Well, I’ll be going, then.”

Meiyao nodded and also straightened herself. “Good luck tomorrow. And like I told you earlier, try not to die.”

Jieyuan sent her a smirk of his own. “Can't collect on your favor if I'm dead, is it?”

“Exactly.”