Fate Unraveled

CHAPTER

27

TO SET FORTH

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Meiyao sat in Jieyuan’s living room. Jieyuan was sitting across from her, the small table that had come with the house between them. He had all the windows closed, and the yellow-white gemstone light embedded on the ceiling lit.

The Justice Hall elder had brought them straight to the Outer Court’s residential area, landing near Jieyuan’s residence. Daojue had stalked off immediately, but Jieyuan had asked Meiyao to stay behind so they could talk. She’d hesitated but agreed. And now here they were.

Meiyao was drumming her fingers on the table. She hadn’t spoken a word since he’d invited her inside. She seemed distracted, lost in her thoughts.

“So,” Jieyuan said, gathering his thoughts. “What do you make of what just happened? Taishou letting Daojue keep Gleaming End. Helping him keep it, covering for him.”

“Taishou…” Meiyao didn’t look at him, still with a faraway look. She turned to him properly. She had her lower lip slightly sucked in, biting it. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“The way I see it, that was awfully generous of him,” Jieyuan said. “Too generous. Do you know him well? Enough to say whether that’s something he’d do?”

“He’s… like an uncle, I’d say.” Meiyao was still speaking slowly, like she was working through her thoughts with great care before she voiced them. “But a distant one. I haven’t had much to do with him, not directly, but he was often around when Yunzhu and Wanxin would visit, or when we’d visit them.”

Meiyao frowned. “I don’t really have much of an impression of him. He’s usually silent, and for the most part, he’d keep to himself, only watching over us. My stepmother, Yuyan, holds him in high regard, but… well, it doesn’t take much to make her like you. Wanxin, his wife, adores him, but that’s the way the Liangshibai tend to be with their partners. Yunzhu… doesn’t really talk much about him, but I get the impression that they’re pretty close—in fact, Wanxin has complained more than once about how much time they spend together, excluding her.”

She drummed her fingers on the table. “My grandfather also likes him. In fact, he offered the position of sect leader to Taishou first. It was only when he refused that it went”—Meiyao scowled—“to my father. His reputation is also spotless. From what I was told, he indicated an interest in being the head of the Justice Bureau after refusing the sect leader position, and Zhaoyong arranged for him to get it shortly afterward. Zhaoyong says he’s one of the best bureau heads the sect has ever had. Pretty much every issue the sect has ever had since, Taishou has handled. There’s only really one matter he never managed to get to the bottom of, the disappearances.”

So far, nothing Meiyao had said had really stood out to Jieyuan—except her last sentence. “The disappearances?”

Meiyao looked confused. “What? Oh. I guess you wouldn’t know. The Liangshibai have been keeping it under wraps. For a couple of decades now, Liangshibai have been disappearing, averaging about one a year. The clan only realized it after Liangshibai who weren’t cultivators started disappearing too, about twenty years ago, and it was Taishou who went through the records and found out that it’s been happening for almost fifty years now, except before it used to be Liangshibai cultivators on missions outside the sect. It’s not uncommon for cultivators to go missing, but Taishou realized it’d been happening too consistently to the Liangshibai for it to be a coincidence.”

Jieyuan frowned. When he’d asked Meiyao the question, he’d simply wanted to know what she thought of the man. He hadn’t expected she’d pull out on him a decades-long string of mysterious disappearances. It could be that it didn’t concern them, that it was a completely unrelated matter. But he still asked, “How old is Taishou? How long has he been in the sect?”

“He… I believe he’ll be turning seventy-eight next week. He was born on the fourth of Yellowlack. He’d have entered the sect at the same age as us, at eighteen, so… sixty years ago.” She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think he has anything to do with the disappearances, do you? I’m not sure about his decision to let Daojue keep Gleaming End, but the disappearances are something else altogether. What reason would he even have to kidnap Liangshibai?”

“Well, someone must have some reason to be doing it,” Jieyuan argued. “But… never mind. He’s almost eighty, then? I’d have thought he was closer to forty. He looks practically our age.”

“Oh,” Meiyao said, smiling a little. “That’s something that drives Wanxin up the wall. Taishou has barely aged since he entered the sect, at least in terms of appearance. Wanxin complains it makes her feel old, even more since she’s younger than him by about twenty years. According to him, youthful looks run in his family.”

“Right,” Jieyuan said, dryly. That probably didn’t mean anything. But it was an oddity that surrounded Taishou. And the disappearances had started after he entered the sect. That made it two anomalies surrounding Taishou now. “What reason do you think he might have had to let Daojue keep Gleaming End? Do you think we need to be concerned about that?”

“I don’t know,” Meiyao said. “It could be that he was telling the truth. He is pretty fond of Daojue. You already know about it. He offered to apprentice Daojue just after the entrance trials, and has repeated the offer several times since. It’s not that much of a stretch to assume he’d have wanted to give Daojue another layer of protection.”

When Meiyao put things this way, rather than reassure him, it only made Taishou more suspicious.

“And… Daojue is at least a future yellowsoul. Taishou, I think, mostly abstains from sect politics, but he should know what the favor of a future yellowsoul or greensoul is worth,” Meiyao continued, then frowned. “But even if he’s planning something—why should we care? This is between him and Daojue, and there are no more missions ahead of us. We’re not a team anymore. What happens to Daojue is none of our business.”

Her frown deepened. “And if we all enter the Howling Lightning Sect together and have the misfortune of getting teamed up again with him there…” She waved her hand dismissively. “Well, then we’d be way out of Taishou’s reach, anyway.”

That’d have been true enough, Jieyuan reckoned, if it weren’t for the whole Weave Mystery matter. His belief that Daojue was part of something greater had been all but confirmed with the whole Gleaming End business, and by sticking around Daojue he might just become involved in it too. And that came with all sorts of opportunities. Dangers, too, but nothing ventured was nothing gained.

He only needed to look at the events of the last couple of weeks. He’d gotten involved with Daojue’s matter with Rongkai, and gotten a violet skill seed out of it and a lead on what he believed to be a violetsoul’s inheritance. Then he was Daojue’s teammate during the Gleamstone Hunt, and he’d gotten out of it a tenth-sign redsoul’s armor and pouch, found out about the mysteries of the Gleamstone Depth, and now he seemed to be getting embroiled in a yet another matter. Risks and opportunities. That was what it came down to.

“I guess,” Jieyuan said, slowly.

He couldn’t afford to alienate Meiyao, either—and not just because of his personal unwillingness to do so. Although not to the same extent as Daojue, Meiyao also appeared to be part of the Weave Mystery. Being around her might lead to its own opportunities. And he didn’t want to let go of that. He wanted Daojue and Meiyao.

He was a merchant’s son, once heir to the greatest mundane business empire in Radiant Gold City. All the good merchants were greedy jackals, and his father had raised him to be the best of them. Opportunities were something that’d have to be pried off his stiff, dead hands.

And speaking of opportunities… “Would you happen to know a way to secretly leave the sect?”

“A what?”

“Some way I could leave the sect without drawing attention. For only a brief while.”

“What for?”

“There’s something I need to go outside for. It’s not too far away. It should only take a couple of hours.”

“That’s a bad idea,” Meiyao said. “No, that’s a terrible idea. We shouldn’t have to worry about the noble clans once we’re in Radiant Gold City, but it’s a different story if you go gallivanting outside the sect… they want you dead. You and Daojue.”

“That’s exactly why I’m looking for a secret way to leave,” Jieyuan insisted.

“What is it—” Meiyao cut herself off. She gave him a hard stare that he held. Then she sighed. “All right. All right. Well, it depends. What direction do you want to go? Where do you want to leave the sect from?”

“West of the mountain range.”

“West,” Meiyao repeated. “All right. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll link you later tonight if I find out anything.”

“Thank you,” Jieyuan said.

“We’re done here, then?”

Jieyuan considered it. One possibility he’d been toying with was having Meiyao use her old mind-link artifact to get in touch with one of the Liangshibai and tell them about Gleaming End. That’d mean Daojue would have to hand the weapon back, but it’d also ruin whatever it was Taishou was planning. But Taishou had been right about one thing. Gleaming End would serve them well if they were attacked again. In fact, it might be coming in handy very soon, depending on how a conversation he’d be having later turned out.

“I think so,” Jieyuan said. “Unless there’s something else you’d like to discuss?”

“No.” Meiyao stood up.

Jieyuan walked her to the entrance.

Opening the door, Meiyao turned to him. “Jieyuan?”

“Don’t get yourself killed.” She had a teasing smile on her face, but her eyes—there was concern in them.

Jieyuan smiled softly. “I’ll do my best.”

Meiyao left, and he watched her go for a few seconds, before softly closing the door.

Don’t get yourself killed.

He held the doorknob for a moment, his heart hammering in his chest, the soft smile on his face giving way to a giddy grin.

No. Focus.

He took a deep breath, schooled his expression, and pushed all thoughts of Meiyao out of his head. He then made his way to his room and sat down on his meditation mat. He forced himself to think of his plans for the near future—and as he did, it was a different type of giddiness that came over him.

The Fatebloom Woods. The inheritance of the founder of the Yikongwei Clan. As a third-sign redsoul, he could make his way to the Fatebloom Woods and return all in one morning if he ran at his fastest.

The smart thing to do would be to leave that for later. He was only at third-sign Redsoul, and he was being targeted by the sect’s two noble clans. He’d put another target on his back if his second talk that day went well. It was also still unclear how Weiming and then Qingshi tracked them down in the Gleamstone Forest and whether they could do that again elsewhere.

He knew all of that. But after Radiant Gold City, he’d be leaving straight for the Howling Lighting Sect, and he didn’t know when he’d be back. He was a merchant’s son, and a Firesoul to boot. He didn’t want to wait, even though he knew he should. But if Meiyao could get him a way out of the sect, and things went well later today, then… then he felt it was worth the risk. Even more so if he was going to be sticking around Daojue and Meiyao going forward, meaning he’d need all the advantages he could get if he wanted to survive.

Maeva would be against it. In fact, he was betting on it. Which was why he’d be having a talk with her before anything else, to give her a chance to dissuade him, to change his mind. But if she couldn’t, Meiyao followed through, and he got the other thing done?

Then tomorrow he’d be making a quick trip to the Fatebloom Woods.