Fate Unraveled

CHAPTER

30

IN THE WOODS

JIEYUAN

—∞—

Hardly a month and a half ago, the Fatebloom Woods had been quite the sight. Jieyuan remembered quite clearly his first impressions of it. To him, the trunks of the fatebloom trees had been like massive, towering pillars of gold that reached impossibly high, Heavens-ward. And when you looked up, the crowns of the fatebloom trees, so full of fatebloom blossoms, gathered and mingled high above to form an ocean of blood streaked with veins of emerald. All colors—gold, red, and green—unnaturally rich and vivid, brimming with vitality.

Now, as he stood at the edge of the Fatebloom Woods, he found that his earlier impressions remained true enough. But the impact of them—the effect they had on him—was a different story. After you got used to kaleidoscopic glowing crystal plants, it took a bit more than tall trees and an unusual palette to awe you.

Jieyuan’s heart beat fiercely in his chest, and his legs burned. Augmented stamina or not, he wasn’t a tenth-sign redsoul yet. Running for over two hours straight still took some wind out of him. Stepping into the woods proper, he stopped beside a fatebloom tree and gave his racing heart some time to realize he wasn’t running anymore, and so neither should it. He could feel the tree beside him and another one off to the side with his soulsense, massive shapes of fifth-shade red.

Following Meiyao’s instructions, he’d snuck out of the sect through a hidden path in the mountains just behind the Outer Court’s residential area, and from there, he’d made straight for the Fatebloom Woods. He’d left the sect just before daybreak, and now it was morning proper—a cool and pleasant one, even more so with the sun still on its way to its peak and under the shade of the massive trees around him.

In his left hand, Jieyuan had the two talismans Meiyao gave him. He’d had them out and ready from the moment he’d left his place, just in case. On that same hand was also the Yikongwei Ring, the small, golden wooden band wrapped around his forefinger.

Jieyuan reached to the side of his waist with his right hand and unsheathed Meiyao’s finesaber. As he stared down at its sleek blade, something slightly bitter rose up inside him, like the echo of nausea. He studied his warped reflection on the metal while he measured his own reactions and feelings.

He couldn’t explain what exactly this bitterness was, or where it came from. All he knew was that it came, unfailingly, every time he held a blade, like clockwork. Sabers weren’t so bad. Holding one, he could power through the discomfort, as he was doing now, to the point he could mostly ignore it. Swords were something else. They didn’t just unsettle him—they disturbed him. Looking at one—or even facing one in battle—was no problem. Holding one was where the problem lay.

It wasn’t out of preference alone that he’d picked the spear. Blades as a whole were a no-go. Swords were outright unbearable, and all the other kinds of blades—sabers, daggers, knives—were too uncomfortable for regular use and practice. He’d tried, for months, to overcome his seemingly inherent aversion towards them, but while the aversion hadn’t grown stronger over time, it hadn’t weakened, either.

That’d left other types of weapons, such as maces, hammers, axes, and polearms as a whole. Out of those, he’d picked the spear. He’d done so mostly out of practicality, as it was the most widely used weapon, and the one easiest to find tutors for. The spear had served him well enough so far, and up until recently, he’d felt that he’d made the right choice. Nowadays, though, a very similar kind of bitterness to the one he currently felt started welling inside him whenever he thought of Daojue, and how much better he was at the spear.

Jieyuan twisted his right wrist, reorienting the blade of the saber, and his reflection broke, the cutting edge of the blade now aligned with his line of sight.

Feeling his heart settle and his legs stop burning, Jieyuan set off. Seen from above, the Fatebloom Woods formed an almost perfect circle, and his destination was the very center. The Heartseat, as the Yikongwei called it. He didn’t run, but still set a brisk pace. Talismans in one hand, saber in the other.

He kept an ear out as he progressed forward. Unlike the Gleamstone Forest, the Fatebloom woods did have some mundane vegetation, mostly in the form of shrubs and undergrowth. Together with that came some mundane creatures, mostly small critters and insects. It wasn’t nearly to the same extent as a mundane woodland, but enough so that the Fatebloom Woods weren’t entirely devoid of the chirping, creaking, and rustling you’d expect from a forest.

What he was looking for were other sounds. Heavier ones. Namely, hoofbeats. The only chromal beasts known to live here were fatebloom elks, fifth-sign Redsoul beasts. His soulsense now had a range of eighteen feet or thereabouts, but that was a distance that a fatebloom elk could cross in the blink of an eye, so his hearing would still be able to alert him long before his soulsense could.

For all his caution, though, even as he weaved through the trees and advanced deeper into the forest, he failed to come across a single fatebloom elk.

Jieyuan looked around warily, slowing down his pace a bit to more measured strides. He had a fairly decent mental map of the Fatebloom Woods in his head—both from Rongkai’s jade book and the sect’s archives—and based on how much he’d walked so far, he knew he was far past the supposedly safe outer zone. He was deep in fatebloom elk territory now, or at least he should’ve been.

Now, he wasn’t complaining. But Rongkai had left pretty emphatic notes in his jade book despairing at what he’d called a veritable army of fatebloom elks guarding the Heartseat. From his descriptions, it’d seemed like the deeper regions of the Fatebloom Woods were teeming with the beasts. The sect’s records on the woods had supported that impression, being very clear on the point that it’d be the height of folly for anyone under ninth-sign Redsoul to leave the safe zone.

He looked up warily at the fatebloom trees around him. Dangerous as the ground level was, the higher levels weren’t much better. He’d read a bit further on the Fatebloom Woods since his last trip here, and he’d discovered that fatebloom elk could climb trees using their beast-skill, and could often be found prancing about high above in the canopy. The nearest branch was over a hundred feet up, though, and Jieyuan caught nothing happening high above.

Jieyuan kept on going, warier than ever despite the absence of enemies—if anything, that absence only made him warier—his footsteps resounding throughout the forest as at any time he expected an ambush from pretty much all directions except for directly underneath. He kept on drawing closer to the center, closer and closer, and by his estimate, he was almost there when he heard a dull, loud sound coming from up head.

The sound of hoofbeats.

Jieyuan slowed, slowing his stride to a careful, deliberate stalk, and as he rounded a particularly large fatebloom tree, he sighted three massive creatures up ahead. Even if had never heard or seen a description of what fatebloom elks were supposed to look like, he’d have still been able to tell that was what those three beasts ahead.

Because they were clearly elks, and, more importantly, they were clearly native to the fatebloom forest, sure as the gleam beasts were native to the Gleamstone Forest.

The beasts were significantly larger than any mundane elk Jieyuan had ever seen—he would say that standing beside them, he wouldn’t reach even the halfway mark of their necks—with massive, muscular bulks. Their antlers were wide, sprawling and sharp-looking, flaring out and backward, and the same golden color as the bark of fatebloom trees. Golden fur coated their heads and neck, but the rest of their body was the same blood-red crimson as fatebloom blossoms, with streaks of emerald-green fur running down their back and legs.

If the name of the fatebloom elks wasn’t clue enough, then their appearance left little doubt that they shared the exact same origin as the fatebloom trees.

Jieyuan was still a good distance away, still half-hidden behind a tree. The elks didn’t seem to have noticed him yet. Two of them had their heads buried in a shrub, probably eating, while the third was ambling about aimlessly. They all seemed to be about the same size, and judging by their size he’d say they were all adults, and given their antlers, male.

These were fifth-sign Redsoul beasts—just like the massive, fire-breathing gleam serpent he’d face together with Daojue and Meiyao in the Gleamstone Forest. He tightened his grip on the saber, and ignored the spike of discomfort that provoked.

Fatebloom elk were highly territorial. According to Rongkai’s jade book, they did their best to stop others from venturing deeper into the woods, stopping them from reaching the Heartseat. Which, as he saw, was a rather pointless, thankless job that they took upon themselves, considering the distracter field did a much better job than the beasts ever could of keeping others away from it.

They’d be fast. Mundane elks were already pretty agile animals, and the fatebloom elks’ soulsign would see that already fearsome speed magnified several times over. They should primarily attack using their antlers through rams and charges, but nothing was stopping them from kicking at him with one of those massive legs, or trying to bite his neck off. Either a bite or a kick could have him down for good, depending on where it hit.

And there was their beast-skill. Crimson Fate Attraction. They could use it to pull others—beings and objects alike—towards them, in varying degrees of strength, and they were adept enough at using it to climb up trees by using it on the trunk, pulling it toward the hooves. Since the trees wouldn’t move, being quite literally rooted in place, they were the ones drawn to it instead.

The tension that had been building inside him for a while now peaked. At the same time, a part of Jieyuan relaxed, because at least now the enemy was in sight. The question, then, was how to proceed. He hadn’t imagined he’d be able to get to the Heartseat without some fighting—if it were that easy, Rongkai wouldn’t have prepared so much for it—but he also hadn’t thought he’d only come across fatebloom elks so close to the Heartseat.

The boundary of the distracter field shouldn’t be much farther beyond the three elks, and if he only could get inside the field, he’d be safe. Rongkai’s jade book had been clear that the elk weren’t immune to the effects of the distracter field, and that they were unable to enter the Heartseat. All they did was guard it against all and any, for reasons that mystified the Yikongwei.

He could try and make a break for it. He couldn’t outrun the elk—it would’ve been impossible even if they were at the same soulsign, let alone with them being two soulsigns higher—but if he could stall them for just a few moments, that might just buy him enough time to make his way through. The problem with that was the elks would still be there when he made his way out and likely out for his blood, unless he opted for a different direction when leaving. Considering the one he’d come in was pretty much free of fatebloom elk up to this point, he wasn’t sure it was worth chancing another.

His choice was taken from him when the one fatebloom elk prancing about came to a sudden stop and twisted its neck in his direction. Its eyes were beady and completely black, like bottomless pits, seemingly devoid of any sort of emotion.

Keeping its eyes on him the entire time, the beast slowly moved its body so that it was fully facing him. Its head was angular, streamlined. Jieyuan swallowed. He’d faced gigantic crystal snakes and wolves and other beasts, but the fatebloom elk, normal as it looked in comparison, was no less intimidating, cast in the shade of the canopy hanging far above. It looked like a small hill, and its muscles were clear even under its thick coat.

Its mouth parted slightly, revealing large, pointed teeth he was pretty sure mundane elk didn’t have, and it let out a sharp, loud, whine-like bark. The other two fatebloom elks raised their heads from the shrubs they’d had their heads buried in, and they both turned to face him.

Jieyuan responded to their stillness by similarly staying put. He weighed his options as he stared back into the beady eyes of the fatebloom elk at the front.

Fatebloom elks were territorial and highly hostile, but as long as you showed no signs of aggression and gave no indication of encroaching on their territory, they wouldn’t attack. What this meant was that they wouldn’t go on the offensive unless he attacked them first or moved forward now, in their direction.

In a straight fight, he’d be hard-pressed to face a single one of them, even with his current chromal gears. Three were way more than he’d have been able to handle. It was a good thing, then, that he didn’t care much for fighting fair.

He clenched the talismans in his left hand tighter. He could use them, and they’d definitely get him through to the Heartseat if he used them, but those were a last resort. He did have something else, though. Slowly, so he wouldn’t startle the beasts, he reached with his left hand inside one of the inner pockets of his outer robe and took out a large, fat pinkish-red pill, holding it between his forefinger and thumb, as his remaining fingers clutched the talismans.

Cultivator’s Agony Beacon. Rongkai had come up with the pill precisely so he could brave the Fatebloom Woods.

It’d only be fitting to use it now.