Beware Of Chicken

It was a pleasant spring night. Not too hot, but neither was it cold. The air was laden with the sounds of crickets and frogs coming out of hibernation and getting their groove on… Though they were nowhere to be seen.

The sky was full of thin cracks, radiating golden light. They shone and pulsed with shared power, but they had been growing thinner and thinner as the world healed.

A young man sat on the veranda of a house. It was an odd looking thing; a clash of styles that had completely different priorities and philosophies, but somehow managed to look pleasing.

The young man was tall and broad, with freckles on his cheeks, and a soft smile on his face. His right eye was closed. There was, oddly, a mirror beside him.

“You know, I honestly wasn’t expecting the old man to visit.” A voice said from beside the young man, and he turned to look at the mirror. In the strange, silver thing, he saw his reflection. The same freckles. The same exact face… save for the fact that the mirror had his left eye closed.

“Yeah, it's good to see the old bastard again.” Rou replied. It was… difficult to see where Rou ended and Jin began.

He wasn’t really ‘asleep’ these days. It was more like… well, it was like they were just one guy. Even in this place, where there were half memories of them being near fully separate, connected only by their feet… they were one. The conversation was more like he was talking to himself then talking to somebody else. Even though Jin had let Rou’s side.. Come to the fore, as it was, to see Gramps again.

“It’s… a little strange to really see him, for me.” Jin murmured. “Honestly? I thought the old man would be taller.”

“Yeah. I got taller. We got taller. Shit, we’re damn huge, now.” Rou mused. Three years. It was a long time, and yet Gramps, aside from the bandages, looked exactly the same as when he left.

“The wonders of eating well.” Jin deadpanned, and then started to flex. “Just look at these things.”

Rou clenched his own fist and looked down at his arms. No matter how inefficient it was for a cultivator to be this big, well, he couldn’t deny that he liked it.

And Meimei liked it too.

They both laughed.

After a moment, Rou spoke.

“So… what did ya think of him?”

Jin the man in the mirror—or was he the man in the mirror?— considered the question.

“He’s better with kids than I would have thought.” Jin admitted.

“Yeah. I wasn’t expecting the old bastard to know what gentle means! He hung me upside down by my ankle more times than I care to count!” Rou declared smiling as he was, remembering the tender care Gramps had lifted Xiaode with. The bright smile on his face, as the babe had reached for his beard, was priceless.

“He got along well with everybody.” Jin continued, his voice soft.

“Yeah. Yeah he did. You see Yun’s face when he told him about the Soaring Heavens Isles? Or when He started critiquing Big D’s form?”

It was nice. Gramps, getting along with Rou’s new family. Like he had dreamed about.

“He seemed to think we were doing a pretty good job with things, too.” Gramps had, for the first time, told him he had done a good job with no conditions attached. The joy still bubbled in Rou’s gut.

“I should have kept the still a secret.” Rou said, shaking his head. “The old boozehound looked like he saw the Emperor when we told him what it does.”

Jin laughed again as they remembered the look of joy and greed on Gramp’s face. It was companionable— Jin’s company had been growing more and more bearable, from what he could remember of it.

Either that or he had that “Stockholm Syndrome” thing that Jin had told him about.

Rou snorted as he looked up at the sky, his smile growing wider on his face as they lapsed into silence for a moment.

And then Jin spoke again. “He was playing it a bit close to his chest though.”

The good mood faltered. The thing Rou had not wanted to see, but Jin couldn’t help but notice.

“He didn’t really talk about the whole cultivation thing, or the Cloudy Sword Sect stuff.” Rou agreed.. But it wasn’t like he had brought it up either. For the day… Gramps was back. He had savoured the little moments, the pride in the old man’s eyes. But it was… tainted and slightly strained by words left unsaid. “...I was just happy he was alive.” Rou said. He hated how vulnerable it made him sound.

Jin didn’t pounce on the obvious weakness.

Instead, his reflection turned to look at the sky as well. “What do you think about what Mei said? That he wants to convince us to become cultivators again?”

Meimei had confronted Gramps. The woman was nuts…. But damn, Rou was impressed… And once again humbled that his wife was so willing to step up for his sake.

Rou took a deep breath. “I meant every word I said in that letter. I won’t leave.”

Perhaps, if Jin hadn't been so… Jin, the bleeding heart bastard, and helped Rou out, Gramps would have picked up instantly that something was wrong. Perhaps, if the relationship he had with Jin was any different, Rou would be raging, and hoping Gramps found the fact that Rou had been broken and replaced.

But Jin Rou was Rou Jin. Some days, that separation wasn’t even there. Perhaps the final parts of the union between Jin and Rou had started when they defeated Zang Li. Or maybe, the merge happened when he first saw his son’s face.

Or maybe the separation didn’t exist at all, and this was just some insanely unhealthy coping mechanism, as Jin had joked. That he had made Rou, or Rou had made Jin to handle the trauma of their death, and the influx of foreign memories.

“Our therapists would need therapists.” Jin often joked. Rou still found the idea of that profession strange. Well, most of Jin’s world was fucking werid—and that discounted the truly insane shit, like ‘dank meeems’.

Well, some of them were kind of funny. “Fuck Around and Find Out” was truly an eloquent phrase, elegant in its concise crassness.

Rou sighed, and looked away from the mirror. “I’m not really looking forward to this conversation. Sometimes I wish I had more problems that I could solve by punching it in the face.”

Jin snorted. “It would make things a bit easier, yeah.”

“Well. When the old man wants to talk.. We’ll talk.” Rou finally said. “We’ll face it together. Like we did with Zang Li.” Rou declared. His eyes bored into the sky of this strange place.

There was no need to discuss their plan of action. There were no doubts or worries from his other half that they would be in conflict over this.

He loved the old man. He really did.

But Rou had his own home now. His own family. He would hear what the old man had to say… and then decide his own future.

The gold cracks in the sky thinned. The mirror beside him disappeared.

The boundary between him and himself started to fade.

“You know, there's usually an epic battle in the center of the mind before this thing happens. Feels sorta anti climactic.” Jin mused.

“I can punch myself in the face if it makes you feel better.” Rou said. “And we both know I'd win that fight anyway.”

“Oh? But obviously, you’re the dark, broody side. So that means I win by default.” Jin laughed, as images from a bunch of books flooded his mind, and hundreds of protagonists hugged their darker halves spouting sappy lines about love and friendship and acceptance.

Rou sighed in disgust, as Jin cackled, but he couldn’t quite keep the smirk off his face. Those stories were…. Well, he was kind of glad that Jin had liked them so much.

It was more idealism than an orphan from the streets of Crimson Crucible City could really handle at times… But Rou really did prefer a world that wasn’t as dark and depressing.

Jin Rou who was Rou Jin opened his other eye.

The night sky changed. To the dawn.

The place, deep in a fractured soul, sealed shut.

=========================================

Shen Yu’s mood was little improved when he exited the room he had been given by Rou. He had meditated deeply upon the words of Hong Meiling… but they were words he had not wanted to hear.

The night had passed in the blink of an eye to his senses, and he was still no closer to finding peace with her statement than when she had first spoken them.

Grudgingly, Shen Yu moved Hong Meiling up slightly in his estimation. Few could lay claim to the feat of stunning him so utterly he had no immediate answer. She was as audacious as any cultivator, that girl.

So he rose with the rooster. Bi De’s voice carried a slight bit of Qi with it, invigorating all that heard the sound. Another interesting feat. Tou Le would pay a castle for that ability.

So he ventured down the stairs to breakfast; the day regimented as a mortal’s day. He frowned minutely at the sight of Hong Meiling, nursing her son, but he averted his eyes.

Instead, he gazed at the symphony of blades that was Cai Xiulan, cooking breakfast with a pig and a dragon.

It was amusing, and Shen Yu couldn’t help the smile that came to his face at the sight of a proud beast chopping vegetables.

Nor at the lovely sway of Cai Xiulan’s hips. The girl was an excellent dancer, and her voice was sweet.

There were footsteps, and the feeling of power. Shen Yu turned his eyes away from the kitchen, and to Little Rou.

His grandson smiled back at him. Shen Yu sucked in a breath at what he beheld. Little Rou’s eyes were conviction incarnate, and his spirit as serene as the boar Chun Ke.

“Good morning, Gramps.” he said as he poured Shen Yu tea.

The old man swallowed. “Good Morning, Little Rou,” he returned as more and more Spirit Beasts and men entered the house, chatting with each other and sitting down at the table.

Shen Yu watched Rou with Hong Meiling’s words in his head. “What if he doesn’t?”

Above all, Shen Yu desired a legacy. Not in the sense of most men, with their blood.

No. What Shen Yu desired was a legacy of an ideal. An ideal of a man who forged a path that was truly his own.

A man whose every advancement in cultivation was because of reagents that he gathered himself. A man who learned from others, but did not fall into their dogma. A man who was tempted by everything that this world had to offer, experienced every pleasure and every pain, and still found the strength to separate himself from it, leaving but one thing behind.

When Shen Yu ascended to the Heavens, and to whatever lay out there… he would leave behind a man that was the purest expression of their own will.

Who would find his own apprentice, teach him what Shen Yu taught to them, and then ascend himself and join Shen Yu in the heavens.

A never ending chain of his own thoughts and ideals. Not because Shen Yu demanded it; but because the strength and value of his way would be self-evident to all who saw it… even if they did stray from the path at times.

Rou would understand. He had to understand.