Young Master Xian Sure Has Changed

“Come,” Xiuying says after a moment, we’ve done enough talking. And with that she leads the way out onto the training ground.

“Faster!” Xiuying commands, swinging her training spear at my head so fast it’s a blur.

I duck, nearly collapsing to the ground.

Xiuying redirects her weapon immediately, the red painted tip signifying the spearhead stabbing at me with the power and precision of a sniper round.

I dive wildly to the side.

“Stop flailing,” Xiuying says. “Move with precision. Move with purpose.”

I rise to my feet, breathing hard and wiping sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my stained, and doubtlessly expensive, outfit.

Even with my superhuman physique, the last hour has been taxing for me.

“I am moving with purpose,” I say. “Survival.”

I mean, I know I told her not to go easy on me, but seriously!? I have bruises.

“Besides, shouldn’t you be teaching me proper forms and katas and stuff like that, instead of trying to murder me?”

“Well, I could, but would you rather spend the next three years learning a fancy move that will be useless ninety-nine times out of a hundred, or would you rather spend it learning how to kick ass and avoid getting your own kicked?” she asks.

I… can’t actually argue with that one.

“Qigang,” she continues, “you’re a cultivator. For a mortal, learning things like blocks and counters and grapples are sensible, but for us, cultivation is what truly matters. And your cultivation is noble rank. You, more than most, can’t afford to think like a mortal.

“Very soon you’ll properly unlock your cultivation’s techniques, and when you do half the moves a mortal would need to learn will become pointless to you, because you’ll have something better. And if you ever meet an enemy that your techniques can’t beat, then believe me when I tell you that fancy footwork won’t save your life.”

“Then what will?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“Probably nothing,” Xiuying admits with brutal honesty. “But I bet in that moment you’ll be glad you didn’t waste your life practicing some fancy move that ended up being useless.”

“Uh-huh,” I say slowly at her words. “You’re not very good at this teaching stuff, are you?”

“Don’t blame me, you’re the one who wanted to be trained by a barbarian,” she says.

“Okay, it was Meng Yi who called you a barbarian. I was an innocent bystander.”

Xiuying tuts. “Throwing your subordinate to the wolves, how dishonourable.”

“You cut me deep, Young Master,” Meng Yi adds from the corner where she watches us train.

I roll my eyes at their antics. “You know, for two people who can’t seem to get along, you certainly have no problem working together to tease me,” I say. “If I didn’t know any better I’d mistake you two for sisters.”

Like a switch is flipped, both women’s expressions change immediately to one of affront.

“Now you’re just being mean,” Xiuying says.

“Young Master Xian, I would like to tender my resignation for this slander against my character,” Meng Yi adds.

I roll my eyes again, barely holding back a snort. “You two are ridiculous,” I say.

We get back to training eventually, Xiuying pushing me to my limits and beyond till the sun hangs high in the sky.

Unlike me, who’s a rich, jobless, pretty boy, Meng Yi and Xiuying actually have jobs to do.

Jobs which, ironically enough, are the reason why I have no responsibilities myself, seeing as one handles my estate, and the other handles the outpost that I should be commanding.

…You know, put that way I kinda sound like a rather scummy guy.

Anyway, regardless of how they came to have these important responsibilities, the fact is that thanks to them, both women have to head out after training, and I’m left by my lonesome.

Being the diligent helper that she is though, Meng Yi gives me the opportunity to be productive in her absence, by taking me to a part of the manor that I hadn’t even known existed until this moment; the library.

Maybe it’s because of his personality, but I honestly never expected Xian Qigang to own a library, especially not one with so many books on history and geography and the minutiae of qi and cultivation.

Then again, I suppose owning a book doesn’t necessarily mean being familiar with the information contained within.

I know I certainly owned a bunch of books back in my old life that I barely even cracked open, much less read.

Thanks to Meng Yi, my knowledge of this world and its customs and such has been steadily growing, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that what I don’t know still far surpasses what I do, even for a regular person.

I’m not even sure how they tell time here. Or the date. How many months do they have? Do they have weeks? How many days in a year? How do they keep time?

Knowledge that children have, might as well be mysteries of the universe to me, and it’s time I began to correct that.

Meng Yi won’t always be around to hold my hand, and even if she was, that’s no reason that she should have to.

I lose track of time in the library, moving from books to scrolls on topics ranging from the fundamentals of qi to the greatest poets of the ages.

I’ve always had an issue with pulling on mental threads; one thought leads to another leads to another leads another, on and on and on, and that comes into play here.

Which is why when Meng Yi returns several hours later, it is to find me at a table with a dozen plus open books and unrolled scrolls surrounding me.

I stare at her.

“You’re back,” I say.

“Have you been in here the whole time?” Meng Yi asks, approaching me.

I nod. “Has it been that long?” I ask, then look outside and notice for the first time that night has fallen.

“Oh.”

Looking around the library again, I notice that the strange, glowing crystals had all come on.

They must have brightened softly as the natural light coming in dimmed, because I had not noticed their sun-like glow replace the actual sunlight in the room.

“Come,” Meng Yi says, helping me up, “let’s get you dinner.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I say rising, before belatedly remembering one of the reasons she’d gone out in the first place. “Oh, um, the qi doctor, did you talk to them?”

Meng Yi nods. “Everything’s been taken care of. She’ll visit them tonight. Assuming they accept, treatment should begin tomorrow, or next, at the latest.”

I nod in understanding, but something Meng Yi says sticks with me. “I suppose there is the possibility that they might refuse, isn’t there?”

Funny how I hadn’t considered it before now, but people refuse help all the time, especially when it comes from strange, unknown sources.

Situations like the one I’ve had Meng Yi set up almost always are too good to be true and come with strings attached. Many people would rather walk away and leave things as they are than risk a potential deal with the devil type situation.

“I don’t think the Fan family will refuse,” Meng Yi says. “They care about their father too much.”

“But you think Chang might,” I say, not needing to ask.

“He hasn’t taken well to sympathy since the incident,” she says.

“What if I go to him?” I suggest, despite having a pretty good idea how that will go. “Just tell him upfront that I want to make amends?”

“He will spit on your face,” Meng Yi says simply.

I sigh. Yeah, that’s about what I expected.

“Well, I guess we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” I say finally.

“I suppose we will,” Meng Yi agrees, a pensive look in her face.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Just dwelling on the irony of it,” she says. “Ju’s family, they never approved of her relationship with Chang. They’re cultivators and his family aren’t. It was a whole thing at one point. Her father once said he would die before letting her marry some mortal farmer.”

Meng Yi goes quiet for several moments.

I say nothing either.

What is there to say?

A soft knock comes at the door.

“Yes?” Meng Yi calls, and it opens to reveal Fan Si behind it.

“Si, your shift ended over ten minutes ago,” Meng Yi says, sounding somewhat exasperated. “Go home.”

“In a moment, Manager Meng,” Si says bowing, “but there’s someone here to see the Young Master.” Her eyes flick to me and away quickly. “It’s Wei Ju.”

I still.

Even Meng Yi is temporarily at a loss for what to do, before she recovers.

As she opens her mouth to speak though, I cut in.

“Take me to her.”

Both women look at me with surprise.

Meng Yi begins to say something again, but the look on my face halts the words before she can say them.

After a moment, she nods, and steps back.

I turn to Fan Si. “Take me to her,” I repeat.

The walk to Wei Ju takes both a minute and a thousand years.

I move with measured steps, trying, and mostly failing, to control the apprehension growing in my chest.

A million questions flit through my mind; why is she here? Why now? What does she want? What will she do? What will she say?

I have no answers to any of them, only speculation, and that only makes my agitation harder to quell.

Eventually… finally… much too quickly… we reach where Ju stands at the door to the house, refusing even to step a foot into my home.

I can’t say I blame her.

Wei Ju looks… mostly normal.

Her hair is neatly made, her clothes fine… she’s a little too far on the skinny side, but that’s hardly strange enough to warrant notice.

Even her qi is ordinary; beast rank second layer of the Weaving phase.

So, yeah, Wei Ju looks mostly normal.

The one thing that gives her away though, the thing that reveals the trauma and pain hidden in her heart, plain as day for me to see, are her eyes.

They haunt me with their stare. And as I walk up to her, they never waver from me.

We say nothing for several long moments, simply watch each other, me waiting patiently for her to break the silence, and her searching my gaze for something that only becomes known to me when she says; “You really remember nothing.”

It was recognition.

She was searching my eyes for recognition.

“I remember everything,” she says, and the words pierce me like a knife to the chest.

“Would it help at all if I told you how sorry I am?” I ask her.

She actually seems to think about that for a moment, then she shakes her head. “No. I don’t think it will.”

I’d expected that.

I mean, would an apology from me really even mean anything?

I’m not the one who hurt her, everyone knows that. They think it’s for reasons different than what it really is, but that’s immaterial.

What matters is, an apology from me would be like an apology from Xian Qigang’s twin brother. We may look the same, we may sound the same, hell, we may even act the same in some ways, but I am not him and he is not me.

Ju chuckles in a way that is devoid of humour, her gaze still not leaving mine.

“I can’t even hate you anymore,” she says. “Even that you’ve taken from me.”

An expression of anguish so deep it damn near swallows me up twists her face for a moment, but then, with a choked gasp, it passes, and Ju looks around like she doesn’t even know what to do with herself now.

Almost like hating me, no, hating him was all that had kept her going till this point.

“I paid for a qi doctor to heal Chang,” I hear myself saying before I even become aware of opening my mouth.

Ju blinks at me, the words taking a moment to sink in.

She looks at me incredulously. “You think he would accept charity?” she asks. “From you?”

“No, I don’t,” I say. “Which is why you’re going to make him.”

Ju looks at me like I’ve gone insane.

And maybe I have gone insane. Maybe I’ve lost my mind. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Because, I don’t know how I know, but just then, when she talked about how she can’t even hate me anymore, I saw it; she’s given up. Completely.

“You are going to go to him,” I say, spine straightening as the sun within my chest flares. “You are going to make him receive the treatment. And you are going to tell him, that if he has something to say to me, then he can walk up to my doorstep when he is healed and look me in the eyes as you have done.”

Qi gushes from me in a quantity so great its loss leaves me light-headed.

The qi is invisible, but I feel it wash over Ju, making her stagger back a few steps before she regains her balance.

Just like the last time something like this happened, I hear it again.

Only this time, instead of the words sounding staticky or underwater, it sounds like a different language. One so familiar I can almost make out the words.

ヨ冊尸ヨ尺回尺'己 句ヨ亡尺ヨヨ

Ju’s eyes widen in shock for a moment, but that quickly morphs into hate.

“Damn you, Xian Qigang,” she says with deep emotion. “With every breath in my body I curse you.”

“Good,” I say.

I sway unsteadily, but before I’m even at risk of falling, Meng Yi is there supporting me.

I lean on her gratefully, not looking away from Wei Ju.

“Good,” I repeat. “Curse me. As long as you curse me, you’re breathing.”

I catch Ju’s eyes glimmer for a split instant, before she turns her back to me.

She stands still for several seconds, and just when I think she’ll say whatever she wants to, she storms off.

She will go to Chang, I know. And she will do everything I told her to, she literally can’t stop herself.

Tomorrow, I will freak out over what having the power to force my will onto others, limited as it is, means, but for tonight… my sinfully soft bed is calling my name.

Liu Li

“Li, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Pan Hu, coward that he was, said for the millionth time in the last two days.

“Gotta agree with him here, Li,” Du Kun said, his long, thin body folded under a cloak as they huddled by the fire for warmth. “I mean, even if the hidden realm is still open, and we can somehow find it in these fuck-ass huge mountain, you really think Senior Brother Xian woulda left anything behind?”

Liu Li’s eyes flashed. “Don’t fucking call him that,” he snarled. “He’s not your fucking senior brother.”

Pan Hu and Du Kun shared a look that he ignored.

“Li, come on, man, we always knew the thing with Xian was temporary,” Du Kun said. “Honestly, it’s kinda crazy he kept us around for this long. We had our fun, he helped us ignite, let’s just take the win and—” the rest of Du Kun’s words were cut off courtesy of Liu Li’s first smashing into his jaw.

The thin man went tumbling back off the small rock he was sitting on, and Liu Li stood over him, panting with rage.

“Don’t you have any fucking pride?” Liu Li screamed. “You wanna be a dog for the rest of your life, following some rich fuck around and being treated like shit, then go do that.

“Me? I have a fucking destiny. I’m gonna find that hidden realm, I’m gonna get my own power, and then I’m gonna fuck up Qigang and fuck that bitch who thinks she’s hot shit.

“You can go feed on fucking scraps, if you want.”

Du Kun rose to his feet, his six foot seven of height helping him tower over Liu Li.

“So, what?” he screamed back. “You’re gonna get us fucking killed in the mountains for you stupid destiny? There are qi beasts out here, you idiot. Peasant rank qi beasts. Is your destiny going to save us from being eaten?”

“Um, guys?” Pan Hu called, only to be ignored.

He was always ignored.

Cowardly Pan Hu, they called him. Pan the Pussy.

And yes, he was a pussy. He jumped at shadows, sometimes his own. He wasn’t brave, he wasn’t strong, he wasn’t tough.

But he did know danger, and, for the past two days, ever since they’d gone past the marked safe zone of the Bloody Fangs, they’d been in danger.

Something was hunting them, and he’d told the others. But he was Pan the Pussy. Why would they believe him?

Pan Hu opened his mouth to call out again, but his life ended before the air could leave his lungs.

It took Liu Li and Du Kun five seconds to notice the death of their friend, but by then it was already too late.

In fact, it had been too late since two days ago.

The beasts, deliberately and measuredly corrupted with Wild Qi, delivered the bodies to their Master.

One was very dead, but the others were alive. Barely, but enough.

Their Master walked forward.

“Ah,” he said. “Finally.”

Then he dined.