Fate Unraveled

CHAPTER

34

TAKE YOUR TIME

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Immediately, the Fatebloom Heart stopped beating. Jieyuan felt his own heart race even faster, like it was picking up the slack, compensating for the Fatebloom Heart’s sudden lack of movement.

Chroma started vanishing from Jieyuan’s soulprism, sacrificed by the bonding ritual. The Fatebloom Heart, though it’d ceased to beat, remained mildly warm, if not warmer than before.

All of Jieyuan’s attention was on the Heart, looking for any other change. Chroma was vanishing from his soulprism, so the bonding ritual was working. Nothing would’ve happened, normally, if he tried to bond something at a higher realm. The ritual wouldn’t take, and no chroma would be sacrificed. And if he’d tried bonding something at the same realm, then the ritual would use up a set quantity of chroma, all in one go, instead of this continuous drain on his reserves. So something was happening, right now.

He felt something brush against his mind. Soft, faint—like someone was lightly prodding at his awareness with a feather. He tensed, startling, but not to the point of pulling his hand away. Under his palm, the Fatebloom Heart trembled softly, like it was shivering, and the faint, prodding feeling grew stronger, more tangible. And then it was another presence he felt in his head, as if he were in a mind-link with someone else.

It didn’t feel like a person’s mind he was connected to. In a mind-link you could get a general impression of the one you were connected to, and though this wasn’t a mind-link—at least not a conventional one—it felt like one. This presence he sensed was… simpler, and somehow structured differently.

Jieyuan recalled Daojue and Gleaming End. How Daojue had said Gleaming End refused to be lent to him. How Daojue had revealed that Gleaming End was alive. Was the Fatebloom Heart really an artifact, then? A sentient one, like Gleaming End?

“Is that you?” he asked, looking down at the Fatebloom Heart. It gave another little tremble, and from the odd presence in his mind, he got… something. Something like a sensation, or an emotion, but conveyed like a thought. Similar to the feelings and impressions he’d get from a shadow-song. Affirmation, Jieyuan figured out. That’s what it was sending him. Assent, agreement. Yes. It then changed into something else, and this one Jieyuan placed instantly. Curiosity. Meanwhile, the Heart’s presence in his mind grew stronger, more tangible.

“Hello?” Jieyuan said. He didn’t know how to go from here. Was it looking for something? Curiosity was what it was telling him—conveying to him. Was he supposed to talk with it? A trickle of chroma was still being sacrificed from his soul, so the bonding ritual was ongoing. He couldn’t think of anything else he could do—as far as he could tell, he’d done his part—so it seemed like the ball was now in the Fatebloom Heart’s court. He was guessing that to bond with a sentient artifact, it had to accept you, agree to the bonding. That’d make sense, even more so if the artifact was at a higher realm. That’d explain how Daojue had bonded Gleaming End.

If Jieyuan had known this would happen—that he’d get his own turn at bonding what he was guessing was a sentient artifact so soon—he’d have liked to ask Daojue some more questions about how it worked. Though, knowing Daojue, chances were he wouldn’t have gotten any answers.

At the very least, he wasn’t dead, not yet, or otherwise regretting his decision. Just a mite confused.

The impression the Heart was sending him changed again. It was a subtle shift, into something brighter, cheerier, energetic. Excitement, Jieyuan realized. And just as he recognized the feeling, it changed again. Still bright, still light, but now it was more nuanced, more complex. Satisfaction? No. Almost. It was…

Acceptance.

The Fatebloom Heart started beating again. Slowly, softly, but quickly getting faster and louder. Moments passed, and already it was outright thrumming, beating so fast its outline seemed to blur, and sounding as loud as a war drum. The Heart’s presence in his mind kept going even stronger, and it kept sending Jieyuan the same feeling, over and over.

Acceptance. Acceptance. Acceptance. Acceptance.

Hearing swishing sounds from all around him, Jieyuan looked up and to the sides. The trunks of the fatebloom trees enclosing the clearing were trembling like they were being buffeted by furious winds, even though all Jieyuan felt was a slight breeze. Over a hundred feet above, their crimson crowns—sprawling branches filled with flowers— shook, letting loose a shower of fatebloom blossoms, which drifted down to the ground like a curtain of red and green. The half-grown golden trunk in front of Jieyuan and the golden cabin were also shaking.

Jieyuan looked back down at the Heart. Acceptance—the Fatebloom Heart had accepted him. But chroma was still disappearing from his soulprism, so the bonding ritual was ongoing. And now it seemed the bonding process was affecting the Fatebloom Woods, or at the very least the fatebloom trees around him.

Jieyuan’s own heart seemed to be beating just as fast as the one he was trying to bond. Blood thumped in his ears, almost as loud as the drum-like rumble from the Fatebloom Heart. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Excited, for sure—but also a tad apprehensive, because he had no idea what all of this meant or what would come next.

He was completely out of his depth. When Daojue bonded Gleaming End, the Gleamstone Forest hadn’t decided to join in on the fun. And Gleaming End, sentient or not, was clearly an artifact, a weapon. What the Fatebloom Heart was or did wasn’t nearly as evident.

It was then that the Fatebloom Heart vanished. Just winked out of existence, his right hand, which an instant ago had been firmly pressed against it, now touching nothing but air. And in that very same instant, Jieyuan felt a pressure in his chest, a weight, physical but also chromal. Then Jieyuan realized that though the Fatebloom Heart had disappeared, he could still hear it. And it sounded louder, to the point his whole body was trembling, shivering along with its blazingly fast beats.

Jieyuan put all the pieces together in a split-second, and even before he’d figured it out, he was already sending his soulsense inward. Before, all he’d been able to sense within him had been his soul, floating in his chest, enclosed by his rib cage. Now, he could sense something else—and it was also in his chest.

Overlapping with his soul was now a heart-shaped form. Though it occupied the same space as his soul, he could sense them separately, for the same reason you could stab a chromal weapon through a cultivator’s chest without piercing through the soul. Your soul wasn’t actually inside your chest. It was anchored to your body, but it occupied a separate, non-physical space. What you saw with your soulsense in your rib cage was only an image of it. This heart-shaped structure was a different story. Its presence was firmer, more solid. He could tell it was actually there, chromally, spiritually, and physically. Physically—where his mundane heart should’ve been.

The Fatebloom Heart. No doubt about it. From the looks of it, it’d just replaced his original heart, which had been… destroyed? Vanished? Normally, the sudden removal—or rather, the replacement—of his heart should’ve been a pretty big deal, but right now Jieyuan had other, more pressing concerns.

The color of its spirit-shadow. Violet. He’d expected that, given it came from Beidao, a violetsoul, but it still would’ve been enough to startle him, because Violetsoul. But that wasn’t everything. The Heart’s spirit-shadow wasn’t just violet. It also had a metallic sheen to it. A silvery sheen.

Jieyuan had expected violet. Silver, not so much. It was the only other case he’d seen of something chromal not adhering to one of the chromal shades, besides his soul. But while black didn’t really have a specific meaning, any association that he knew of, silver did. Silver was the color of the Heavens, the color of the Laws—star-shaped specks in the Void—when you got a vision of the Heavenly Vault, as he had when he’d bonded Absolute Will Command. There was a reason why bond bands were only made of silver—and the only silver jewelry people wore over their necks were bond bands.

Chroma was no longer vanishing from his soulprism. Meaning that the ritual was over—and given the Heart had popped up in his chest now, and that he could soulsense it now, it should be safe to assume it’d worked. He’d bonded it. Probably how Daojue had been able to tell Gleaming End was at Orangesoul, after bonding it.

Jieyuan would have to puzzle over its color and what had happened to his old heart later, though, because the Fatebloom Heart was still thundering. Now he could not only hear it, but also see it with his soulsense. And now he wasn’t sure how much of the anxiousness he felt was his own, and how much was caused by the fact that his heart—his Heart, now—was beating far beyond the point a mundane heart would have burst in a gory mess. The blood thumping in his ears was now like a rushing river, and he felt warm and tingly all over, like there were ants crawling frantically under his skin.

The Fatebloom Woods remained awfully, absurdly animated, sending more and more fatebloom blossoms falling to the ground, like waterfalls of blood. If anything, they seemed to be shaking even harder than before. In his mind, the Fatebloom Heart’s presence was still there, but quiet now, no longer sending him its emotions.

Now, Jieyuan was flying blind here. Blind as it got, blinder than Qingshi. But he felt that all of that served as a pretty solid indication that things weren’t quite over yet. Problem was, he’d already bonded the Heart. So what was left?

Though the Heart wasn’t sending anything specific across their connection anymore, Jieyuan could still feel something coming from its presence in his mind. Something building, gathering. Intangible, like tension.

Then warmth bloomed in his chest, and there was nothing intangible about that. It wasn’t hot—nothing at all like the searing agony of the First Pain—but still warm enough to be uncomfortable to a cultivator. Through his soulsense, Jieyuan saw the Heart radiating a dim, golden light even as it kept on beating like mad. This light extended from the Heart in the form of minuscule tendrils, hair-like golden lines, reaching outward from the Heart. Reaching and growing.

As the golden lines spread throughout him, where his aura overlapped his body, growing longer and more numerous, branching out, the warmth spread along with them. But outside the Heart, the warmth seemed skin-deep, superficial. He was itching, too, everywhere, in the exact same places he could see the golden lines spreading

Jieyuan loosened his belt, then pulled his outer robe open to the right, and then did the same for his inner robe, leaving his chest bare.

On his skin was a thin spiderweb-like sprawl of glowing golden veins, matching the golden luminous lines he saw with his soulsense. They all extended from a point in the center of his chest, and they were pulsating like throbbing veins, at a rate of about a pulse per second. With each pulse, they spread just a bit further, like hairline fractures on cracking glass.

Jieyuan had little doubt that he’d see the same sight on his arms and legs, still covered by robes and armor. As he was focusing on these pulses, Jieyuan noticed that the tremors of the fatebloom trees now matched them, and while the Heart still beat madly, the glow from its spirit-shadow pulsated at the same rate as the veins.

Jieyuan still wasn’t feeling anything specific from his connection to the Heart, but its presence in his mind was stronger, now. Growing stronger. Jieyuan forced himself to remain calm, steady. It wasn’t easy, not just because he had no idea what was going on now, but because the Heart was still doing its best to compress entire marathons into each passing second.

But there was nothing he could do about this except wait. He’d tossed the coin, and now he’d just have to see how it’d land—though it sure was taking its time falling. So he stood there, surrounded by the trembling trees, his attention now back on his soulsense, focused on the Fatebloom Heart.

And because of that, after about three dozen pulses or so, Jieyuan saw the Heart’s spirit-shadow shimmer, then turn red. Red. It still had a silvery sheen, but it was red now. Close to third-shade red, the shade of red his soul should’ve been like.

The fatebloom trees stopped shaking. So did the pedestal-like trunk the Heart had been in, as well as the fatebloom wood cabin. And it wasn’t a gradual stop, but an immediate one, going from looking like they were about to go flying, plucked up by a tornado, to perfect repose. There would’ve been no indication of all the moving they’d been doing had it not been for the fatebloom blossoms still falling from the trees, piling up under each tree in scattered mounds.

Returning his attention to his bare chest, Jieyuan saw that the glowing golden veins on his skin had dimmed and cooled, both warmth and glow gone. Then, as he watched, they darkened to a muddy brown, before turning beige. From that, they became more and more like the surrounding skin, until they completely faded away. Likewise gone were the corresponding golden lines that had spread throughout his aura. In his chest, the Fatebloom Heart slowed, going from vibrating to thundering, from thundering to racing, and then from racing to steadily beating.

Jieyuan was only barely paying attention to all of that, though. He was more concerned about the Heart’s spirit-shadow, how it’d gone from violet to red. Violetsoul to Redsoul. If it’d gone even lower, the Fatebloom Heart would’ve turned mundane. It was still silvery, and he’d only had the Fatebloom Heart at Violetsoul for moments, and he didn’t know how its powers or capabilities had changed. But that didn’t change the fact it’d just changed from Violetsoul to Redsoul.

Whatever happened to Gleaming End in the Gleamstone Depths, it’d raised its realm to Orangesoul. That was an increase. So how come, when it came to him, bonding the Heart caused its soulsign to plunge?

The Fatebloom Heart, silent up to this point, sent him something again, something that felt suspiciously like amusement. That gave Jieyuan a pause. Amusement. It wasn’t just a reminder that the Fatebloom Heart was alive and connected to him. It also revealed a certain degree of intelligence, despite its rudimentary form of communication. Affirmation, the Heart sent him. And then… Jieyuan furrowed his brows. Cockiness…? Pride? Pride.

Jieyuan was about to speak again, but stopped himself. If his connection to the Fatebloom Heart functioned like a mind-link, and assuming it’d read his thoughts just now…. Can you hear me? He thought, focusing on the presence of the Fatebloom Heart.

Affirmation, was the impression he got back.

All right. What now? There was so much he wanted to know. Needed to know. But he also recalled something from Beidao’s jade slips. Are you Huaxin? The name had always appeared together with the Fatebloom Heart, and it’d meant Bloom Heart. He’d wondered at it, but now he knew that the Heart was sentient.

Affirmation, the Heart immediately sent him. Physically, it gave a little skip, and then transmitted… Satisfaction?

Huaxin. So now not only was his new heart an artifact, but it also had a name. Huaxin. Jieyuan had questions. Many of them. But there was really only one that mattered. What can you do?

What he received in response wasn’t one specific emotion, but rather a series of impressions and images. A drop of golden blood. Sacrifice. Augmentation. The Heavenly Vault, seen from below, but with faint lines connecting all the stars. Intuition. Divination. And then a rushing river of thick, crimson blood. Regeneration. Vitality.

Frowning, Jieyuan tried to put it all together. He hadn’t been exactly expecting a manual, but… Well, it was better than nothing. Huaxin had divided the transmitted impressions and images into three groups, so… That’s three gear-skills, then? Three prime skills?

Affirmation.

Jieyuan nodded to himself. Three prime skills. He could work with that. He could definitely work with that. He wasn’t quite sure what they did, but the first one, the one with the golden blood, seemed promising. Sacrifice. Augmentation. He’d go over this back home, though, and preferably with Maeva.

Jieyuan cast one last look around the clearing. Technically, he was still missing something—the field-focus the distracter field around the Heartseat was anchored to. But he’d already searched everywhere, and it wasn’t as if he’d be taking it with him, particularly since it’d keep others from finding Beidao’s corpse, and he didn’t want anyone coming across it and investigating its mystery. And Beidao might have used some special, Violetsoul method to set up the distracter field, in any case.

Now, to return. Jieyuan eyed the direction he’d arrived at the Heartseat from. It had been devoid of fatebloom elk except at the very end, and he hadn’t spent that long in the Heartseat. Chromal beasts weren’t known to move around much. He glanced up, checking the sun’s position, seeing that it was still on its way up. Not even a quarter of an hour, then. He’d been soul-stilling the entire time.

He’d go over and check whether the dust beacon had attracted any beasts. If not, he’d go for it. It might also be a good idea to see if he could pull the core disciple’s body into the distracted field, now that he thought of it. That way, if anyone from the Fusongshi Clan went looking for her, they should draw blanks. They might even put their efforts into tracking her down, meaning less attention spent on him.

It was just a short while later that Jieyuan caught the glow of the dust beacon among the trees. It was very faint, but still there. Just a few steps later, he found the prime disciple’s body, lying in a pool of its blood just where he’d left it, marking the very edge of the distracter field. But it wasn’t alone. There was a man standing in front of the corpse, his back to him.

A man in sapphire robes, with a lightcoat on top, holding a sword.

A core elder.

Jieyuan froze. This entire time, he’d kept the two talismans Meiyao had given him in his left hand, even after seeing that there was no immediate threat to him in the Heart. Now he gripped them tighter. With his right hand, he drew Meiyao’s saber. He eyed the man’s position. It was even closer to the distracter field than the prime disciple’s corpse. Should be pretty much glued to it, even, as close as someone could get. As long as he was inside the distracter field, the core elder wouldn’t be able to sense him. He could try the same thing he’d done to the core disciple.

Jieyuan approached, wary despite being technically safe. One step, two, three—

The man turned around. He seemed to be about middle-aged, with graying hair, in his fifties, though with a tall, solid build. He was one of the oldest-looking cultivators Jieyuan had seen yet. Given a Redsoul’s lifespan, the man should be over a hundred. The man was looking at him. Straight at him. Similar to how the core disciple had done at the end, but while she’d looked as if she was seeing through him, the man seemed to be looking at him.

Jieyuan’s heart—Heart—skipped. He whipped his right arm, but even as he was drawing chroma from his soul to channel into the Radiant Light Blast Talisman, the man flicked his wrist, and there was a gray blur. And then Jieyuan staggered back.

For the second time that day, he felt a weight in his chest. This time, though, he knew clearly what it was. He looked down, staring, uncomprehending, at the hilt of the sword sticking out of his chest. Its blade, buried inside him. Inside his rib cage, through his Heart. The Heart.

PAIN, Huaxin sent through their connection.

And in another blur, this one blue, the man was standing in front of him, one hand taking hold of the hilt of the sword, the other on Jieyuan’s back, pulling him into a parody of an embrace.

Blood bubbled up Jieyuan’s throat. He coughed, sending it splattering on the core elder’s robes.

The man leaned in, pulling him closer, and put his mouth next to Jieyuan’s ear. “She was my granddaughter,” he said, softly, almost tenderly. “Before you join her, know that I know you have family. And know that with them, I’ll be taking my time.”

Then the man pulled out his sword, stepping back, and Jieyuan collapsed to the ground.