Fate Unraveled

CHAPTER

7

FROM THE MIND

JIEYUAN

—∞—

“Maeva,” Jieyuan said. He stared at her, tongue-tied. He’d known it’d work, but… She so looked real. Like she was really there.

“It’s been a while, Amyas.” The sadness left Maeva’s face, but the smile remained, now bright and cheery. She stepped back, taking a look around the room, turning this way and that, yellow dress and lab coat fluttering as she moved. He could hear her sandaled feet tapping and shifting on the floor. He could even faintly smell the vanilla perfume she often had on. “You know, I always suspected that left to your own devices you’d end up living in a bare-bones place like this. Of course you’d manage to live somewhere this drab and dull after reincarnating in a world that literally revolves around colors.”

“You…” He shook off his stupor. “You aren’t real. You’re a hallucination.”

“I am.”

Maeva walked up to him. As she got closer he realized that at least one thing was different. She seemed much smaller. As Amyas, he’d only been slightly taller than her, but now she was almost a foot shorter than him. He could feel his chroma being sacrificed at a steady rate. The Commands he’d given earlier had only had an upfront cost, but it seemed like this one was a continuous one. Still, it was an insignificant expense—he could keep it up for hours and it wouldn’t take even a hundredth of a prismful.

“In more technical terms…” She smirked, and he knew she was about to bring in the jargon. “You could say I’m… a psycho-cognitive construct derived from your unconsciously formed model of Maeva Auclair’s… behavioral paradigms. Hmmm. Not my best work. Psychology and neuroscience were never really my thing and you don’t know much about them either, so I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. Anyway, I’m pretty much a hallucination. I’d say I’m more stable than a normal hallucination by courtesy of your realmskill, but still a hallucination, yeah.” She shrugged in mock helplessness. “Nothing more than a product of your mind.”

She was standing right in front of him now. Slowly, she raised her hand and poked his nose. His eyes widened as he felt her touch. He reached up and grabbed her fingers. Actually grabbed it. It felt warm, and he could even feel the cool metal of her wedding band pressed against his skin.

“A very well-made product, mind you.” She grinned impishly and pulled her hand out of his grasp. “All five senses—or rather four, actually, since I don’t think we’ll be making much use of taste. I could even pick you up and carry you around, even though you’d be doing all the moving yourself.” She frowned up at him. “But maybe it wouldn’t be so realistic, with how tall you are now. Reincarnation sure did wonders for you.” She poked his arm. “And I see someone’s been working out, too. I think I might miss the scrawny you.

“All… All right.” His voice came out uncomfortably tight. His heart was racing, and his head hurt. He could feel Amyas’s memories, which he’d thought he’d fully assimilated, rising back up, making themselves known, clouding his mind. He wasn’t thinking straight. “Well, it’s good to know that this works,” he said, mostly to himself—because it’s not like he needed to say anything to this Maeva, did he? She was just a hallucination. She’d even said so herself just now.

He needed to put an end to this. If he wanted to use Absolute Will Command to cause others to hallucinate later, he’d need to know exactly how real the hallucinations were—so far, at least, it seemed terribly real—but he could use another hallucination for that, one that wasn’t Maeva.

But before he could cut off the realmskill, Maeva spoke up.

“I wouldn’t dismiss me so soon if I were you.” She looked more serious now, thoughtful.

“What?”

“This particular application of Absolute Will Command isn’t just useful when used on other people,” Maeva—the hallucination of Maeva—said. She had on what Amyas had called Maeva’s teaching voice, a gentle but firm tone that just made you sit down and listen. That was Maeva. Gently forceful, reasonably headstrong. “The ability to induce hallucinations in yourself can come in handy, too.”

“Handy how?” Jieyuan said. He forced himself to concentrate not on Maeva’s presence, but on her words. “And how would you know that, anyway? You’re just a product of my mind. How would you know something I don’t?”

Maeva shook her head gently. “It’s not that you don’t know—it’s that you haven’t consciously thought of it. You see, you can think of me as your unconscious mind filtered through your idea of Maeva. Your mental model of her, as I put it earlier. In other words, I’m you wearing Maeva-tinted glasses, made to think and act like Maeva. I only know the things you know, that’s true, but I interpret them from Maeva’s perspective—or what you think Maeva’s perspective would be, in any case.”

“And that could be useful?” Part of him—a confused, disturbed part—still wanted to just end the hallucination there and then. But if this hallucination of Maeva could help him in some way, that was a different story. He’d take any advantage he could get.

And there was another part of him that didn’t want Maeva to go, even if she was a hallucination. Maeva had always been something of a weakness to Amyas. His greatest one. She’d all but raised him, given how absent his parents had been in his life. It was her fault, in a way, that Amyas’s parents hadn’t cared much for him—because why would they pay attention to him when they already had college-at-fourteen, doctorate-at-twenty Maeva for a daughter—but he’d never blamed Maeva for it. How could he, when she gave him all the attention their parents denied him and then some more.

“I believe I can help shed some light on some of the mysteries concerning you.” Maeva began to pace around the room, as she often did when she was thinking. “First of all, I agree with you—there is some kind of unseen intrigue, some hidden hand moving things around, and your teammate Daojue is involved. That Weave Mystery of yours. But as I saw it, you’re as much a part of it as Daojue is. You were, most likely, intended to end up getting Rongkai’s realmskill and belongings, and even to find out about the Yikongwei Clan later. The likelihood of all that being a coincidence is far too low. And I suspect Meiyao is also involved.”

“Meiyao?” Jieyuan said. He readily agreed with the rest of what she’d said—they were things he’d already known at some level—but he wasn’t so sure about Meiyao. “Because she also didn’t have much of a reaction to the violet skill seed?”

“That’s a factor—an important one—but not everything.” Maeva kept on pacing slowly around the room. “There’s also the fact she has fourth-order heavenly affinity like you and Daojue. You’ve read up on heavenly affinity. You know how low the likelihood of a single candidate with fourth-order affinity appearing is. Most Redsoul cabals go for dozens if not hundreds of years without admitting someone that talented. And now there are three of you in the same batch?”

Maeva shook her head and put on a look of disbelief. “There’s also the little show she gave you in her garden yesterday. We don’t know enough about the chromal crafts to tell for certain, but her abilities as a sustainer seem as unlikely as her heavenly affinity, if not even more so. None of the jade books on the chromal craft you’ve read indicated that someone could perform sustaining as effortlessly as Meiyao did. And then there’s her green eyes and brown hair—colors that, in this world of black hair and eyes, are as anomalous as the Liangshibai gemstone eyes.”

She came to a stop and held his gaze. “We already know that there’s more to the situation than meets the eye because of your memories and that Daojue is involved because you only got those memories after he channeled his chroma into you, so it’s safe to assume that someone exhibiting as many anomalies as Meiyao is involved as well. Just like it’s safe to assume that the color of your soul is another piece of the puzzle.”

Jieyuan found no flaw in her logic, but he wasn’t trying too hard to. He didn’t want to. Amyas had always listened to Maeva almost without question, and being lectured by Maeva like this, he felt like Amyas more than he’d ever had before—if not for the first time. “So I should keep an eye on Meiyao too, like I am with Daojue. Add a Meiyao Mystery to the mix. To the Weave.”

“Pretty much. You’ve already heard the rumors that she’s had a falling out with her father, the sect leader, even if you don’t know the circumstances. Look deeper into that. Also, find out who exactly her mother is. It’s common knowledge that the sect leader, Liangshibai Junjie, married into the Liangshibai Clan, but the woman he married couldn’t have been Meiyao’s mother, otherwise she’d be called Liangshibai Meiyao, not Linzushen Meiyao. So she’s adopted, from another wife, or from a lover. You have no leads on Daojue’s background, but you should be able to find something about Meiyao.”

“Got it.” He’d have to head out before the Gleamstone Hunt to sell or trade Rongkai’s sword and cleansing ring and his old artifacts. He could see about asking around then. When everyone took you for a future orangesoul, if not a yellowsoul or even higher, it wasn’t hard getting others to talk. “Anything else?”

“Actually, yeah. Liangshibai Yunzhu. As you saw yesterday, there’s something off about her, and it has to do with Daojue. You were already planning on looking into her, but make a priority of it. And keep your guard up when you meet her again. She seems dangerous.”

Again, that sounded sensible enough. “I’ll also get around to that later this week.”

Maeva beamed up at him. “Then I’ve proved that I’m not entirely useless then, correct? But don’t worry—I’m nowhere near done yet.” She sank down to the floor carelessly in an easy drop, and patted his meditation mat. Her lab coat splayed out under her, yellow dress bunching up a bit. “Get yourself comfortable, Amyas. I’ve got all sorts of ideas for Absolute Will Command, and I also want to chat a bit about this new life of yours. It’s been a long while and we’ve got some serious catching up to do.”

Jieyuan stared down at the hallucination of Maeva, at her expectant but certain expression, as if she knew he’d comply and was just waiting for it. It wasn’t really Maeva. She’d admitted it herself. All of this was fake, just his unconscious mind pretending to be Maeva, acting as Maeva would have. But… She had put together all those things on Meiyao, and it was good to have confirmation something was off about Yunzhu, even if it was technically coming from himself.

But above all that, there was a thirsty, almost desperate part of him that didn’t want this to end. It felt like he was talking to Maeva. The real Maeva. And even though he was now Haoyujin Jieyuan… Right here, right now, he was Amyas, Maeva’s little brother.

He plopped down beside her, feeling helpless as only Maeva could make him.

—∞—

It was the first of Yellowfull, the day the Hunt was set to start, and Jieyuan stood on a hill under the Ruby Arch, the colossal ruby-red stone structure that marked the end of the Outer Court. Below, down the hill, was Ruby Square—a massive diamond-shaped stone platform, red like its namesake. He stared down at the crowd of disciples gathered there, like a sea of red with swirls of orange and flashes of yellow and blue.

He’d never seen so many cultivators gathered in one place. There had to be hundreds of them, all of them gathered for the Gleamstone Hunt. And even then, Ruby Square was big enough that they could all split up into little cliques, big enough to look like it could just swallow all of them up.

Directly across him, on the opposite hill, was the Topaz Arch—twin to the one he was standing under. A monumental structure of orange stone, easily some three hundred feet tall and twice as wide as that. The sun hung almost directly above, and both arches cast massive shadows over the square.

Meiyao and Daojue barely paid a glance to the crowd below as they continued on down the hill. They all had armor on—fullgreaves and fullgauntlets—and the two halves of Jieyuan’s new spear bobbed slightly as he made his way down together with his teammates. He had gone to the Inscribers’ Guild and managed to exchange Rongkai’s sword for a third-sign Redsoul spear by throwing in his old spear and chromal armor. Considering chromal spears were significantly more expensive than chromal swords at the same soulsign, that was a suspiciously good deal. He wasn’t sure if that was because cultivators were terrible at bargaining and being a merchant’s son was finally paying off, or because he was a fourth-order Firesoul, guaranteed to be scouted in the Radiant Gold Summit. He had a similar experience when he bought a couple of stamina augmenter pills from a concocter from the sect’s Refiners’ Guild for only a couple of shards.

As they reached the square, heads turned their way. A few disciples returned to their conversations after a glance, but most of them kept on staring, even if discreetly. Mostly it was Daojue and Meiyao they were looking at, but Jieyuan got a few looks sent his way. Some of these disciples he knew from the times he went around hunting for rumors, and he gave them brief nods and got a few uncertain nods back. He doubted that after the Hunt he’d be seeing any of them again, but being polite cost him nothing.

They hadn’t agreed on it beforehand, but Meiyao had started leading the way from the moment they’d met up this morning, and when she came to a stop in an emptier part of the square, so did he and Daojue. It was moments like this that reminded Jieyuan that Meiyao was, indeed, a Woodsoul, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Leadership came naturally to Woodsouls. Unthinkingly so. Woodsouls were all about fostering growth, in themselves and in others. They were by far the best with people, out of all the alignments.

Jieyuan took a look around. He didn’t pay much attention to the outer and inner disciples in ruby and topaz, but his eyes lingered on the prime and core disciples, the ones wearing citrine and sapphire. Those he’d be seeing later, at least, during the Radiant Gold Summit.

He noticed a woman in sapphire robes walking their way. Liangshibai Yunzhu. Tall, hauntingly beautiful, and looking like she’d taken a plunge in a pool of rubies. Today she had fullgauntlets and fullgreaves on, and he wasn’t surprised to see little rubies on the back of her fullgauntlets’ hands and on the exposed sides of her fullgreaves peeking out of her robes.

She was looking their way, but not at him—rather, at somewhere to his left. He didn’t need to follow her eyes to know it was Daojue she was looking at.

Walking next to her was a man in citrine robes, in plain steel fullgreaves and fullgauntlets and with a sheathed fineblade hanging from his belt. Jieyuan had never seen the man before, but he immediately recognized him all the same. Just the fact that the man was a prime disciple and together with Yunzhu would’ve been more than enough, but there was one thing he had that nobody else did.

A thick white blindfold covering his eyes and most of the upper half of his face.

Dajinzhi Qingshi, in the flesh. The strongest prime disciple. And, as far as Jieyuan knew, the only blind disciple in the sect.

Jieyuan studied the man more closely. Short, straight black hair. Broad-shouldered, tall. What little of his face was left bare looked angular, handsome.

By his side, Meiyao grumbled something. Jieyuan couldn’t make out the words, but he’d have bet on it being a curse. Daojue also noticed the approaching pair, turning their way, but he didn’t have any other reaction otherwise.

Yunzhu waved cheerily as she approached, beaming, radiant like a blood moon.