Fate Unraveled

CHAPTER

5

KILL YOURSELF

JIEYUAN

—∞—

“I came to check up on Daojue,” Yunzhu was saying. “Father told me what happened on the mission.”

Yunzhu sounded normal enough, Jieyuan would give her that much. Lively, almost cheery.

“Well, as you can see, we’re perfectly fine,” Meiyao said, a touch exasperated. She was standing by the doorway, closer to Yunzhu than Daojue, who hadn’t seemed to have moved—or done anything at all, really—since opening the door. Jieyuan had a feeling that Daojue wasn’t in the mood to entertain guests. He doubted that Daojue was ever in such a mood, but earlier Daojue had definitely been impatient—or the Daojue equivalent of it—for him and Meiyao to leave.

“I can see that, yes,” Yunzhu said, still smiling brightly. It didn’t seem like such a smile would fit her—she had the kind of dark, alluring looks that were more given to smoldering smiles and sultry smirks—but it did, and her face lit up like the midday sun. As long as you ignored her eyes and the way she wouldn’t look away from Daojue, everything seemed, as Meiyao put it, perfectly fine. “Say, do you mind if I come in for a bit?” she said. Already she was walking inside. “It’s been a while since we last talked. I think we should catch up and—”

“No,” Daojue said, and he stepped to the side—not away from the door but toward it, putting himself directly in Yunzhu’s way, like some kind of immovable mountain. “Leave.”

No. Leave. Jieyuan winced. He’d thought that Daojue was bad enough when he was silent. Glancing to the side, he saw Meiyao cringe too.

“Oh.” Yunzhu wilted on the spot, her smile breaking, her eyes growing doe-large. But a beat later, she recovered and was back to smiling. “Right! I get it. After what happened, I can see you’d want some time to yourself. Well, don’t worry. I can always come back later.”

In what was the greatest show of emotion Jieyuan had yet to see from Daojue, Daojue frowned. Just a smidgen, but there it was—a crease between Daojue’s brows. Given the flash of impatience Jieyuan had caught earlier, he’d thought that Daojue just wanted everyone out of his house, but now he wasn’t so sure. It was probably true that Daojue did want to be left alone, but if that frown was any indication, Daojue wanted Yunzhu gone in particular.

Meiyao glanced at Daojue, then back at Yunzhu. It was her turn to frown, but hers seemed to be more out of concern. “Yunzhu… I don’t think—”

But Yunzhu wasn’t listening. She offered Daojue another wide, cheery smile, and then, for the first time, took her eyes off him to look at Meiyao. “And you! You haven’t visited at all lately. Mother and I miss you dearly. Even Father does, though we both know he’d never admit it. You must be sure to visit later.”

Meiyao seemed to be at a loss for words. “I— I guess I can—”

“Great! We’ll be waiting!” Yunzhu said, cheerful in a way Jieyuan had never seen anyone else be. She looked past Meiyao, her eyes finding Jieyuan’s. To his confusion, now that he was looking straight into them, Yunzhu’s eyes seemed perfectly ordinary. She smiled winningly. “And you—Jieyuan, right? Mother mentioned you a couple of times! I’m glad to finally meet you.”

Before Jieyuan could so much as start summoning up a reply, Yunzhu spun on the ball of her feet, and from the sleeves of her robes flowed out a billowing, light gray smoke-like substance. Faster than he could blink, that substance gathered in front of Yunzhu, taking the form of a cloud that looked just big enough for four to sit on. Yunzhu jumped on top of it, then turned back and gave them a jaunty little wave. Then she shot up into the air on her cloudcraft, zooming into the distance.

Jieyuan stared, caught up in the abruptness of it all, but also in how perfectly mundane she’d seemed when she’d looked at him.

He’d felt not even a shadow of that dark, dangerous impression he’d gotten earlier. He couldn’t make sense of it. But he didn’t know enough to start making sense of it, either, so he filed the thought away for later.

“Yunzhu… can come across as a little intense,” Meiyao eventually said, rather lamely. She stepped outside, through the doorway. To Daojue, she said, “I knew you’d met Taishou a couple of times, but I was unaware you’d also met Yunzhu before. Or that you two were close to the point she’d come visit you.”

To Jieyuan that didn’t sound all that accurate. Yunzhu had been close to Daojue, that much was more than true, but he wouldn’t say that the relationship was at all reciprocal. Still, he said nothing as he stepped outside beside Meiyao.

Daojue wasn’t frowning anymore, but he still had his gaze set on the direction Yunzhu had disappeared into. Then, without a word, he shut the door closed.

Meiyao glared at the door, and for a moment Jieyuan thought she’d start banging on it. But in the end, she sighed and turned to face him. “You said you wanted to practice your realmskill.”

“That’s right.”

“How does now sound?”

He smirked. “Like a yes.”

Meiyao didn’t smile back, not outright, but he caught the corner of her lips lifting. “We’ll do it at my place, then. I need to check on my garden.”

Garden?

Meiyao headed off down the pathway, and Jieyuan trailed behind her. But as he watched her ruby-robed form lead the way, he found his eyes invariably drawn to the outline of her. And he started thinking that spending any more time around Meiyao than necessary might not be that good of an idea.

Jieyuan forced himself to look away, past Meiyao. He could afford no distractions, he reminded himself. He was already struggling to keep up with Meiyao and Daojue as it was.

Those words rang chant-like in his head, and he had an inkling this wasn’t the last time he’d have to repeat them to himself today. But if that was what it took to keep his priorities straight, that was what he’d do.

—∞—

Meiyao’s house, Jieyuan found as he crossed into her living room, was a mirror of his and Daojue’s. Pretty much bare, boasting only the skeleton furniture that had come with it. Meiyao wordlessly crossed the room to the small hallway tucked into the corner of it. Jieyuan followed her into it, then past the door to her bedroom, and out into her backyard.

He came to a stop right at the doorway, realizing what exactly she’d meant when she mentioned her garden earlier.

Back at his place, Jieyuan’s backyard was just as he’d received it, a small, walled lawn with nothing on it besides grass. Even the length of the grass was the same as it’d been when he’d been assigned his house, because once a week one of the sect’s servants would drop by to trim it. All he used it for was as a place to swing his spear and train his body. Occasionally, when the mood struck, he’d cultivate in it at night, under the moonlight, but that was about it.

Meiyao had put hers to much better use. There was a garden in hers, and not some simple, shoddy one. Jieyuan’s old man had had a garden, back at the mansion. A big, sprawling one that took half a dozen servants to tend to. It’d been his favorite place to train. Compared to the garden back at the Haoyujin Compound, Meiyao’s was obviously smaller, but she’d made do with the little space she had. She made it work.

The middle of the lawn was left empty, just neatly trimmed grass, but on the ground surrounding it, as well as on the walls, were a motley of potted plants. His soulsense told him the ones nearest were all chromal plants, and he suspected that was true for the rest. Most of the ones he could sense were at first-sign Redsoul, but there were two small flowerpots hanging from the well beside with small blue-violet flowers in them that registered to his soulsense as second-sign.

Still standing at the doorway, Jieyuan watched, stunned, as Meiyao went over the plants, starting at one corner of the courtyard and going through them systematically. For each one, she closed her eyes, lightly touched a part of it for a moment, and then moved on to the next.

Tending to chromal plants was a chromal craft all of its own. Refining, inscribing, and nurturing, known as the three Secondary Pursuits—the Primary Pursuit being cultivation itself. Nurturing chromal plants, specifically, was a Tertiary Pursuit, derived from nurturing. Sustaining.

Up to this point, Jieyuan had been working under the assumption that like him, Meiyao and Daojue had been wholly dedicating themselves to cultivation and martial arts, without time to spare for anything else. Evidently, he’d been wrong about at least one of his teammates.

This is ridiculous. Meiyao was now checking up on the plants directly across from him, already halfway through her garden. Jieyuan had thought about taking up a chromal craft at one point, but had decided against it after he learned how much of a time investment they’d require before he could get anywhere with it. When it came to sustaining, specifically, he recalled how a sustainer had to spend months, sometimes years if not decades, to get the hang of performing the nurturing ritual—to manage to get the exact chroma channeling rate, sometimes down to a millionth of a prismful per second, for chromal plants of each race. And how that rate was influenced by the exact maturation point the plant was in, so much so that it could vary by the day depending on the plot.

Meiyao was kneeling down nearby, and Jieyuan could sense the chroma flowing out of Meiyao’s soul, through her body and into the plants, upon which it’d vanish. Her chroma would only disappear like that if she performed the nurturing ritual successfully. She moved on to the next plant and did the same. Again her chroma vanished. Each and every time. He didn’t even bother counting the number of plants of different races in the yard. It was easily over two dozen.

“I’m done,” Meiyao said, standing up from where she’d been kneeling beside the last flowerpot. A smirk tugged at her lips. She knew how impressive what she’d just done was. And she knew he knew. No doubt about it.

“Nice garden,” Jieyuan finally said, a touch dry.

“I do what I can,” Meiyao said offhandedly. Amusement played in her eyes. All that was missing was a little dismissive flick of the wrist. There and then, he’d have believed it if someone had told him she was a Watersoul. Never mind that she was actually a Woodsoul and usually acted like a Firesoul. In a way, that made even more sense. Watersouls were best known for being mercurial. That was their hallmark trait.

As Jieyuan stepped into the backyard proper, he felt envy come over him and make itself at home. It wasn’t Meiyao’s clearly absurd talent for sustaining that he envied, not on its own, but the fact that she’d managed to juggle her garden, cultivation, and martial arts and still come out on top of him at the last two, even though he only juggled those two exclusively. He felt his head clear up as the envy, bright and pure, burned inside him. Right now, envy was just what he needed. He welcomed it and wished it a good, long stay.

As he came to a stop in front of Meiyao, he found that he was no longer distracted by the sight of her. He was still attracted to her—even more so now, if anything—and he acknowledged that with the helpless surety of a man who knows what he wants. But he could set that attraction aside fully now. He wouldn’t need to remind himself to focus on the things that mattered. Not anymore. Right now, he was as focused as could be, set straight by envy and inadequacy.

The touch of mirth faded from Meiyao’s face. She looked at him searchingly, then took on a more somber look herself. “All right. What exactly is your realmskill? What does it do?”

“Absolute Will Command,” Jieyuan said. “The first form’s Absolute Mind Command. It—”

“Wait.” Meiyao held up a hand. “You’re mundane-born, right?”

“Yes?”

“Then you might already be aware of this, but I’ll tell you just in case. Realmskills are something best kept to yourself. I’m helping you practice using yours, so you’ll need to share with me the basics of what yours does, you should keep the specifics to yourself. Only tell me exactly what I need to know.”

Jieyuan had known all of that. Realmskills were a cultivator’s trump cards. The specifics of one—their exact limitations and mechanics—were something you’d only tell someone you already trusted with your life. All the same, he appreciated the advice. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it, before getting back to it. “The first form’s Absolute Mind Command. It allows me to give the target a command. If the target resists, it comes down to a battle of wills.”

“Given what happened with Rongkai, I suspected it’d be something like that,” Meiyao said. She took a few steps away from him until they were standing on opposite ends of the yard. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Jieyuan noticed how one of her hands had moved a little closer to the sheathed finesaber by her hip. So she did trust him somewhat, but not enough to just take his word for everything. That was about the best he could hope for. That she didn’t have her saber drawn was already plenty. Then again, it might also be that she was just that confident in herself.

He focused on that little something he’d been able to feel inside himself ever since he’d assimilated the Absolute Will Command skill seed, that feeling reminiscent of another limb. Focusing on Meiyao, he flexed it.

Even before he gave the Command, he got a sense of it. An instinctive idea of whether it was feasible, and how much it’d cost in terms of chroma. He found it cheap enough.

“Jump,” he Commanded, loud enough for Meiyao to hear. Louder than he needed to.

Some of the chroma inside his soul vanished.

Immediately Jieyuan felt a connection form between him and Meiyao—like a bridge, connecting their minds. From his side, the Command JUMP issued forward. At the same time, an instinctive NO came to meet it from the other side. The NO blasted at Jieyuan like a headache, but he’d been expecting something like this. He gritted his teeth and concentrated. JUMP.

Across him, Meiyao’s eyes went wide.

JUMP gained in on NO, and Meiyao slowly lowered her body, slightly bending her legs into a half-crouch. Mid-movement, Meiyao started consciously resisting, strengthening the NO, and her body froze in place.

Jieyuan scowled and put more of his will into the JUMP.

Meiyao crouched lower. Beads of sweat sprouted on her brows, and she was scowling right back at him in fierce concentration. Again she managed to match her NO to his JUMP and came to a stop.

Driven by instinct, Jieyuan mustered everything he’d left, all of his willpower, and sent it out.

JUMP broke through NO.

He watched, stunned, as Meiyao pushed her feet off the ground, jumping. It was a pathetic, half-aborted excuse of a jump—her feet rose only half a dozen inches or so off the ground—but it was a jump.

With the Command fulfilled, the connection between them disappeared, and Jieyuan staggered back, suddenly able to move again.

Meiyao, pale and wide-eyed, took deep breaths.

Digging his heels into the ground, Jieyuan steadied himself. “Well, that was something.” The words left his lips without much thought. He was too taken up with how the Command had won out in the end. How Meiyao had jumped.

Because what if he’d given her a different Command? A less innocuous one. Drop your weapons. Don’t move. Step to the side. Any of those could be deadly if timed right in a fight. But he could’ve gone even further. To take a page out of Rongkai’s book…

KILL YOURSELF.

And he could see it in Meiyao’s face, in the sharp, wary glint in her eyes, that she was thinking it too.