Fate Unraveled

CHAPTER

31

TO DISTRACT

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Jieyuan threw the pill—and it’d barely left his fingers when the elk at the front charged forward, and barely a moment later he felt something pulling him forward, like he’d just jumped off a cliff and was falling—except in the direction of the elk charging at him.

His aura-lashed feet kept him stuck in place even as the rest of his body was pulled forward, and the next moment the pill, already primed, exploded in the clearing in front of them, covering them all in a cloud of red dust. Poisonous dust.

All three elks recoiled, momentarily disturbed, and the invisible pull acting on him vanished. Jieyuan straightened himself, drawing himself back, and he acted quickly, jumping back to put more distance between himself and the elks. Crimson Fate Attraction had a limited range, and he only stopped when he was safely out of it, some good dozen feet away.

The elks seemed to have recovered from their surprise at the beacon, and they advanced on him again from within the floating, faintly glowing red dust. Keeping all three in his line of sight, he Commanded, “See me attack.”

An invisible, intangible connection snapped into place between him and the three beasts, and Jieyuan immediately felt chroma start vanishing from his soulprism at a very fast rate. But it did the trick, because the elks stopped advancing, and the one at the front charged at an empty spot to Jieyuan’s right.

As with any hallucination that didn’t target himself, Jieyuan had no way of telling what exactly the elks were seeing, but the intention he’d imbued into the Command should have them unable to see or otherwise perceive him while making them hallucinate him confronting them. As the beasts had no way of telling they were under the influence of some power, they wouldn’t resist—nor would they put up any subconscious resistance, since the Command would cause them neither pain nor directly incapacitate or kill them.

But it did use up a lot of chroma, given he was Commanding three at once, and all three at a higher soulsign. Not as much as it’d have been had he used it on a cultivator at the same soulsign as them—apparently, the Heavens didn’t rate influencing chromal beasts as highly as other cultivators—but he hadn’t managed to recover much of his soulprism. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up for more than a minute before he was out of chroma.

But he didn’t need that much time—even more so with how deeply the beasts seemed to be breathing as all three of them kept running about inside the beacon cloud. His hallucinated self, it seemed, was doing a pretty good job holding his own. Staying put, he reached inside his robe and took out a Cultivator’s Agony antidote pill—one of the ones Rongkai had had with him—and downed it, just in case he might need to speak or give another Command inside the beacon cloud.

One of the fatebloom elks launched itself against a tree, its massive body rotating sideways in midair, clearly under the influence of some unseen force. Its hooves met the trunk of the tree, and it climbed a good stretch of it almost instantaneously before launching itself off the tree, coming down from above toward a particular spot, while the other two elks charged at it from the ground. They all moved blurringly fast, like streaks of crimson and gold.

It was a surprisingly coordinated attack—and Jieyuan sure was glad he wasn’t at the empty spot all three were attacking.

Any moment now. Their hallucination of him had, as he’d intended, kept the beast within the dust beacon and breathing in the poison. And as the elks drew back from the spot they’d just unsuccessfully mounted a collective attack on—Jieyuan imagined their hallucination of him had somehow managed to avoid it, because they were turning in another direction now—they all stumbled at the same time. Then they let out loud, blood-curling shrieks.

Jieyuan immediately cut off the Command—his soulprism at less than quarter capacity now—and advanced. The elk didn’t seem to have noticed the sudden disappearance of their illusory enemy, all three of them trembling and shrieking loudly. They didn’t move, much, as if they’d forgotten how to, and one of them even slumped, falling to the ground as it shuddered.

The Cultivator’s Agony Rongkai had infused in his pills was only at third-sign Redsoul. These beasts were at fifth-sign. That meant its potency when used on them was reduced to less than half. Even still, it still wrought enough pain to render them completely motionless and impotent. Chances were that these beasts hadn’t even known pain before. There was nothing that could threaten or harm them in the Fatebloom Woods, and they weren’t known to fight among themselves.

The other two elks fell to the ground as well, convulsing.

Jieyuan moved swiftly. Meiyao’s saber in hand, he advanced on the first elk. Reaching it, he rounded its kicking, trembling legs, and placing himself in front of its head, stabbed the beast between its eyes. There was some resistance as the saber sunk into its head, piercing through the skull, but not much. The beast shuddered and then slumped.

The other two beasts took no notice of it all, too overwhelmed by pain, and Jieyuan was quick to dispatch them as well with similar blows. All three beasts now dead, Jieyuan cast a quick look around to make sure the commotion hadn’t drawn any other beasts over—if it had, it’d be better to deal with them now, before heading to the Heartseat—and then froze as he saw, not a beast, but a woman standing just at the edge of the beacon dust.

The woman was leaning against a fatebloom tree, her arms crossed, as she stared at him. On her body were blue robes. Sapphire robes. She wasn’t wearing a lightcoat, so a core disciple. She looked to be about the same age as him, maybe a little bit older.

“Oh, don’t mind me. Go about your business. I’m very interested in finding out what it was that brought you here to the Fatebloom Woods today.” The core disciple eyed the dead elks. “Unless you were just in the mood for venison?”

“Geshihan or Fusongshi?” Jieyuan asked, as he gripped his talismans tighter. He subtly reoriented himself to point his saber at her, while he put his left hand, with the talisman, behind his back. He didn’t know what the woman’s soulsign was, but it should be safe to assume she was over third-sign, otherwise she wouldn’t have been sent after him, and under tenth-sign, otherwise she’d have been a senior protector instead, a core elder.

He shouldn’t be in the range of her soulsense, and if she’d tailed him from the sect from afar, she couldn’t have come close enough at any point to do so. So she shouldn’t know what the talismans he was holding were.

“Fusongshi. I heard you killed my cousin.”

“Sunqiu?”

He didn’t really see the resemblance.

“Sunqiu.”

“Ah.” Jieyuan licked his lips. Was she alone? If she was, a Radiant Light Blast talisman could take her. Meiyao had explained to him how they worked. But if there were others, particularly elders, then he couldn’t afford to waste the talisman just yet. “It wasn’t personal?”

“I know,” the woman said, “honestly, I didn’t really care for him. He was from a branch family. And while I’m here because you killed him, it’s not because of his death, exactly—but more along the lines of how you killed him. Rather, what I followed you here for was to find out how you—a third-sign Redsoul—managed to get close enough to punch a hole in his neck.” She stood up from the tree. “Or at least that was the idea. Now I’m also very curious as to why you’ve made your way all over here. Would you care to share?”

Jieyuan glanced at the corpses of the fatebloom elk, and then back to the core disciple. If he was reading this situation right… then he might be able to deal with the woman without using his talismans. “Answer me this first, then. How did you track me here?”

“I had some people watching your residence yesterday. Yours and your teammates’. When they alerted me you left this morning, I followed. On that note, that was an interesting way out of the sect you took. I hadn’t known about it.”

“I see. And would you happen to know how exactly it was that Weiming and Qingshi tracked us down in the Gleamstone Forest?”

“A good question.”

As he took another step back, the woman finally got off the tree. She was shorter than he’d thought she’d be—still tall for a woman, but a good few inches shorter than Meiyao and Yunzhu. She started walking, but then paused just at the edge of the dust beacon. “Interesting. I’d figured as much, given what happened to the elks, but this is infused with Cultivator’s Agony. Something of your own design?”

“Not exactly. I have the formula, though.” He took a few more steps back.

“Hmmm.”

When the core disciple stepped forward into the beacon dust and kept on breathing as normal, Jieyuan decided that she was at least sixth-sign, because she wouldn’t have done so if she weren’t immune to it.

“Now, As for how you were tracked in the Gleamstone Forest… that is also something myself and a couple of others are pretty curious about, actually, but the elders are pretty light on the details. But…” She gave him a considering look. “I do believe it has something to do with Qingshi.”

“Qingshi?” Another few steps back. The core forward advanced by the same amount of steps. She’d clearly noticed the way he was gradually retreating, and judging by the smirk on her face, she was amused by it. Thought she had him cornered.

“The elders are rather… odd, when it comes to him. I have to say, I’m glad Elder Taishou caught him. Ever since Qingshi joined the Revolution, the elders have been more secretive than ever. Before, they used to share things with us. They’d tell us not only what we had to do, but also why. Now it’s just orders, no explanations. Even my master refuses to answer my questions now.”

“Revolution?” His next few backward steps put him past the beacon cloud.

“The Gleaming Nobles’ Revolution,” the core disciple said. “It’s… No, it’d take too much time to explain.” She gave him a measuring look, one that he was fairly certain was practiced. “You know, you don’t have to die. The Revolution only needs you gone. Killing you off is certainly the fastest, most practical way of going about it, but it also works as long as you leave for another city, another district. Moreover, the elders don’t know that either of us is here. Others were watching you, but I ensured their silence. I didn’t want anyone else following you on this little escapade.”

Behind his back, Jieyuan gripped the talismans tighter. If that was true, then he could just go ahead and use the Radiant Light Blast talisman on her. But she could be lying, or simply wrong. But it was something. Both of them were too far from the sect to mind-link anyone, even if her mind-link artifact was tenth-sign.

The core disciple took a few steps forward to match the one he’d just taken. “See, I’d be happy to let you off, so long as you share with me how you killed Sunqiu, and what you’re doing here. I’m also curious about what you might know about your two teammates, Meiyao and Daojue. And I’m not entirely unreasonable. I’d be willing to work out a deal with you.”

Jieyuan quirked an eyebrow up. “You’re awfully curious, aren’t you?” More steps back. He was now a good distance away from the place he’d originally started at.

“Personally, I’m partial to inquisitive. Now, I’ll let you know in advance that I’m at seventh-sign, and this”—she drew the blade she’d sheathed by her waist—“is a seventh-sign finesword. That saber of yours is Weiming’s, correct? I’d heard Meiyao had gotten it, so you must’ve borrowed it from her. We’re about evenly matched in terms of gear, and my soulsign is over twice yours. I believe the outcome of any possible clash between us should be fairly obvious.”

“True,” Jieyuan agreed. More steps. Nothing happened yet, but he should be close. Very close. “How do I know you’ll keep your word? How do I know you’ll let me live if I tell you what I know?”

The woman’s smile was like that of a predator. “You can’t. But I can assure you that if you don’t tell me, you’ll die. And it won’t be a pleasant death, either, because trust me, I will do my best to drag them out of you. We’re cultivators, so normal forms of torture won’t be that useful—but don’t worry, I can be very creative.” She waved her sword in the air in front of her as casually as if she were wagging a finger. “So it’s either the possibility of survival, or the guarantee of torture, and then death. That’s just a risk you’ll have to take, I guess.”

“You really don’t have much experience threatening others, do you?” Jieyuan asked. He then moved his saber and raised the blade—toward his own neck. “How about now?”

The woman went still. She stared at him, wide-eyed, and as far as he could tell, genuinely taken aback. “What— What are you doing?”

Jieyuan took a few steps back, still holding the blade against his throat. Come on. The woman didn’t seem to notice, now, looking warily at the blade that he was holding against his throat.

“No matter what I tell you, you’re obviously still going to torture me—creatively, as you put it—in case I kept anything from you, and then kill me. So both options you so graciously presented me are, in fact, guaranteed to lead to torture and death. So I might as well just kill myself, make sure you don’t get anything, and avoid that torture of yours.”

The core disciple worked her jaw soundlessly. “Wait—no. Don’t. We… We can work something out. I can—”

“I’m assuming you came on a cloudcraft?” He couldn’t see another way she could’ve followed him without him noticing from the sect to here if she hadn’t been above the clouds, as most of it was plain, open ground, and he had been very carefully keeping an eye out. “Give it to me.” He kept on retreating.

“What?”

“You’ll give me your cloudcraft, and then I’ll tell you what you want to know, once I’m up in the air.”

“But— But what’s stopping you from just flying away?”

He grinned, and returned her words to her, “That’s just a risk you’ll have to take, I guess. If you really want to know my secrets, that is.”

As the core disciple seemed to still be trying to come to a decision, he took a couple more steps. And though nothing seemed to change, in his perspective, the core disciple startled, and she blinked, wide-eyed, in his direction. Her gaze was unfocused, though.

She furrowed her brow, took a few steps forward, blinked again. She looked around, searching, confused. “I— What—” She turned back in his direction, but didn’t seem to see him. “Where…”

There we go. The distracter field. Jieyuan took another step back, watching as the woman kept looking around, frustrated and baffled. He hadn't known what exactly would happen once he got inside the distracter field, but he’d bet on something happening. Judging by the woman’s state, he probably hadn’t just vanished out of her sight, otherwise she’d have just rushed over to his last spot. The confusion seemed to be deeper than that, more comprehensive.

Slowly, the core disciple approached, and the closer she got, the more her brows furrowed, like she had to force herself to keep moving forward. By the time she reached the spot he’d just been at, she was gritting her teeth. Jieyuan didn’t move, staying still.

The woman was now standing not even half a foot away, looking straight at him without seeing him, an expression of pure concentration on her face.

Jieyuan jabbed forward with his saber from below, burrowing over a handspan of cold metal under the woman’s chin, right where her neck met her head.

Blood spurted out, and he drew the saber back just as cleanly as he’d thrust it inside.

The core disciple’s soul winked out of sight even before her corpse hit the ground.