Fates Parallel Chapter 404 - Found (Patreon)

Yue still didn’t understand what Heian was talking about, or how they were supposed to communicate with people halfway across the world and in another dimension. Nevertheless, she didn’t waste any more time asking questions.

Melati began ferrying people out towards the edge of the shield formation, leaving one drone with Yue for swift communication. Yue followed Heian—who seemed to know where she was going—and was joined by Iseul, Zheng Long, and Yang Qiu.

The demon couldn’t get too far from her core, and since Yue was currently entrusted with it, that meant they were stuck together, even if there was little for Yang Qiu to contribute.

As they made their way through the academy grounds, Yang Qiu was oddly pensive—glancing around furtively with a tight frown on her face.

“Is something wrong, Yang Qiu?”

She whirled on Yue as if startled, then quickly schooled her expression.

“No. I’m fine.”

“Clearly not. You know this place, don’t you? It’s where the demonic enclave was based after the descent.”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t offer anything more than that terse response, and Yue didn’t really care enough to pry.

Yang Qiu relaxed a bit once they were outside the academy walls, but Zheng Long grew increasingly tense as they followed the little spirit.

“Yue...look at the ground.”

Yue took in her surroundings and saw what he was trying to point out.

“Upturned earth, footprints, bloodstains—it’s like there’s been a battle here.”

He nodded.

“I had assumed this was meant to be a reflection of the academy as she remembered it, but if it’s a reflection of the academy as it is, then...”

“Then we might be in danger. Melati, tell the others to be wary of any unfamiliar figures.”

Melati nodded seriously, but Heian looked back over her shoulder and waved a hand flippantly.

“Mommy wouldn’t let anything bad in. Their thoughts might be here, but they can’t form unless she wants them to.”

Lovely—more riddles. Yue loved Heian to bits, but intelligent spirits were always frustrating to deal with.

“Does that mean Yoshika can give form to people who are in the real place if she wants to?”

“Mhm! That’s where we’re going now.”

Finally, Yue understood.

“Yoshika is drawing on her connection with the real academy to allow us to communicate with our allies there.”

“Yep! We need their help.”

“What can they possibly do from all the way out there?”

Heian shrugged.

“I don’t know. We’re almost there.”

As she said that, they crossed an invisible threshold that Yue could feel deep in her soul. It was nothing like crossing the shield formation back at the academy. That had merely given her a strange tingling feeling as the magic controlling it allowed her to pass. This time, rather than any physical sensation, she had gone from feeling safe and confident to an inexplicable sense of exposure.

In the distance, she could see Ja Yun and the others setting up defensive barricades on a hill.

“Is that really going to work? It seems rather silly to protect some random hill when we’ve got the entire academy’s defenses already.”

Heian shrugged.

“It might. It’s not about protecting the hill, it’s imparting the idea of protection upon it.”

“If you say so.”

The little spirit continued to lead them, taking an strangely winding path, as though she were going around invisible obstacles. Yue squinted her eyes.

“Heian, is there something here we can’t see?”

Heian turned and blinked, then her eyes widened.

“Oh! One second...”

She scrunched her face up in concentration, and a shimmering image came into view around them, depicting an army’s encampment. There were soldiers and medics everywhere, bustling about in an odd slow motion—though not as slow as Yue had expected.

Zheng Long sidestepped awkwardly to remove himself from a tent he was intersected with.

“What is this? A real-time illusion of the battlefield?”

Heian wobbled her head left and right.

“Mmm. Sort of. It’s thought from form, but the form isn’t here. The thoughts are real, though.”

He stared blankly for a moment.

“Insightful. Thank you.”

“I’m sorry for being bad at explaining.”

Iseul poked at a soldier with a slimy tendril, observing the way the shimmering essence interacted with her own, then nodded.

“I think I understand. All things have both material and immaterial substance. Non-living things have stronger material presences, while lifeforms like spirits and elementals are primarily immaterial. Humans and beasts live in the intersection between the two.”

“And Melati!”

Iseul ignored Melati’s interjection and continued.

“Immaterial substance doesn’t necessarily adhere to physical constraints. With Yoshika acting as the bridge between material and immaterial, what we’re seeing is the actual immaterial substance of Geumji. Essentially, a kind of soul resonance.”

Zheng Long frowned.

“So it’s like one very large and elaborate spiritual tablet?”

He looked to Heian for confirmation, but she just shrugged.

“Maybe. It sounds smart to me, but I don’t see the way Iseul does.”

Yue chewed on her thumbnail as they proceeded towards what she now recognized as a support camp—strategically positioned for ease of access and retreat and protected by the more solidly dug-in camps around it.

What was Yoshika’s plan? They would have to hurry once they established contact and the time compression ended. It was always maddening trying to guess what went on inside those bizarre minds of theirs, but now it was a matter of life and death.

Even just the first person they chose to contact could make the difference, but if she could divine Yoshika’s actual needs, then she’d be able to prioritize much more efficiently.

“Heian, you can speak to Yoshika, can’t you? It really would be best if we knew exactly what we were trying to accomplish.”

She shook her head.

“She’s too focused. Mommy can see and hear us, but if her concentration slips she might die—and then the rest of us too.”

“That sounds rather dire, no? Are you sure we shouldn’t be helping her out of whatever pinch she’s managed to put herself in?”

“I’m sure. Even if she can’t act right now, I can still hear her soul. It’s everywhere, now. I didn’t like the noise before, but now it makes sense to me.”

Yue sighed. That was a dead end, then—or was it? Heian had complained about the ‘noise’ before—it was a result of the grand formation powering everything in Chou’s realm. All the essence around them was part of it—there was just so much that they could cultivate off of it without any disruptions.

Now, that ‘noise’ was Yoshika, and the essence around them was her. Heian was intuiting her instructions by feeling that essence and listening to the intent behind it. Perhaps Yue could do the same...

Though Yoshika had called her their ‘best friend’ and invited her into the inner sanctum of their soulscape, Yue was one of a select few people Yoshika knew and hadn’t practiced dual cultivation with. Perhaps that was an uncharitable assumption—surely there were plenty others—but Yue was somewhat rare among her friends in that regard.

Normally, she appreciated it. It was heartening to know that Yoshika could maintain such a boundary while still considering Yue to be their closest friend. But at that precise moment, it was an inconvenience. Yue was in the perfect position to help, knew exactly what she needed to do, and didn’t know how.

Well, perhaps she’d just have to take notes from Yoshika, herself. When in doubt—simply try whatever reckless idea first springs to mind.

Yue closed her eyes to focus on the essence around her. Domains were complicated things, and while it was easy to imagine them as areas of control, the truth was more complex. Yue could sense that she was within Yoshika’s domain, but it wasn’t suppressing hers. This meant that there was some overlap between them—a perfectly normal occurrence.

While xiantian cultivators generally kept their domains restrained in each other’s company, that was mostly a matter of etiquette. If they were more comfortable with each other, then they would simply allow their domains to overlap. Such overlaps were harmless, and if a clash were to occur, then one would simply push out or suppress the other.

Cultivating the essence of another’s domain was not only possible, but fairly commonplace. It wasn’t the same as dual cultivation, where one took in essence from their partner directly. Most of the time it didn’t have any particular meaning at all. One would draw in the essence from another’s domain and make it theirs as they would any other essence.

Among powerful sects, a common punishment was to restrict a student’s cultivation for a time. For powerful grandmasters, doing this was as simple as refusing to release the essence they tried to cultivate.

Naturally, this meant that Yue had ample experience cultivating essence directly from the domain of a more powerful cultivator—she’d grown up beneath the veil of her father’s power. This was more of a curse than a blessing, though—what she wanted to do was nothing like typical cultivation.

First she tried feeling the essence through the telepathy technique that Yoshika had taught her. It wasn’t her area of expertise, but immediately she felt that was the wrong direction. Yoshika wasn’t trying to communicate thoughts directly, and attempting to parse the essence as such was a mistake.

No, she had to think about who she was trying to imitate. Heian had grown beyond her beginnings into something Yue didn’t understand, but at the core of it all she was still a spirit. In a way, Yoshika had become like a spirit as well, and so it was the way of spirits that Yue had to follow.

The essence around her had intent, but that was just the spell holding it all together—the noise that Heian had described. Deeper than the intent, it had meaning—the definition that gave it form. The spell had transformed into Yoshika’s soulscape because a different meaning had been attached to the same intent.

Yue needed to grasp that meaning.

Puzzling it out would do her no good. Spirits were beings of emotion, not thought. There would be no concrete answers, like she was looking for. Instead, she had to do as Yoshika did so frustratingly often and listen to her intuition.

Yue hated listening to her intuitions. She was talented at cultivation, and she had the powerful intuition that came with it, but unlike Yoshika, hers had always led her astray outside of cultivation.

It was Yue’s intuition that had led her to jump at the chance to get away from Coiling Dragon Peak and her father. It was intuition that had led her to cut Lee Jia and An Eui in on her plans. Intuition that led her to betray them.

One calamity after another, until the course of her life was irrevocably altered.

Yet, another thought in the back of her mind asked, was that so bad? Would she be as close to Yoshika as she was if their bonds hadn’t been forged in the fires of adversity? It wasn’t justification—Yue regretted the way she’d once treated them deeply, and always would—but the friendship they now shared was one that had survived such a trial, and that was a rare thing indeed.

Individually, each regret was a source of pain and loss, but taken together they formed a path unlike any other she could have taken.

Would she change it, if she could? Was there any other path that would have led her to where she now stood? Yue couldn’t say, but if that suffering was what it took for her to grow beyond the bitter, spoiled child she had once been, then she would experience it again without hesitation.

Yue let the essence flow through her, making no effort to cultivate or change it. She let her mind wander, and focused on her feelings. Nostalgia and melancholy, frustration and worry—some of her own emotions, some of the emotions of those around her. Yue didn’t shut it out, but she stopped trying to distinguish.

Just feel...

“Yue?”

She jumped at the sound of Zheng Long’s voice.

“No! Damn it! I was so close...”

He winced.

“Oh, I’m sorry...were you meditating? You just stopped suddenly.”

Yue scrunched her face up in concentration, but the feeling she was reaching for was gone. She sighed.

“Nevermind. I was trying to pick up on what Heian was sensing, but I don’t have Yoshika’s experience communing with spirits. Let’s just meet Magus Hyeong and get this over with.”

Zheng Long blinked.

“Is that where we’re going?”

Yue paused. Hyeong? Why did she mention him? She shook her head and stopped trying to rationalize it.

“Yes. I think it is. We need to talk to Hyeong Daesung—he’s the key to this.”

Zheng Long raised an eyebrow.

“To what?”

She chuckled and shook her head.

“I honestly have no idea, but I imagine he will. Heian, lead the way.”

Heian nodded seriously and picked up the pace, their destination now established more firmly. Zheng Long looked askance at Yue, but she could only giggle.

It was strangely satisfying to be on the other end of that for once.