Archive of Our Own ^beta

(There was a lot of that, in the beginning, when she was a ghost stuck in Yicheng; but moping doesn’t get you anywhere, and it doesn’t save lives. A-Qing has learnt that over the painful years trying to protect innocent people from Xue Yang’s bloodied hands; she can’t fault Daozhang for not doing the same, when to him he’s only recently regained consciousness, cursed to wander about aimlessly until he gets enough of his soul back to reincarnate.)

So A-Qing does what she knows best: pretends to be a lost little girl, curious and blind and vulnerable, and robs everyone she comes across blind. The only difference is, in this limbo where shattered souls go, there is nothing physical to steal, only knowledge – but stealing is stealing, no matter what it is exactly that you steal. The souls sent here, they either know nothing, only collateral damage to someone greater’s machinations, or they’re powerful and wizened and hide secrets that can destroy worlds.

(A-Qing doesn’t like thinking in which category she’s in.)

It takes time, determination, some truly trying amount of acting, and a lot of death threats (thank the Heavens that no one can actually harm one another in the limbo, otherwise A-Qing would be fucking toast in seconds, what with all the evil cultivators and serial killers here) but an eternity later, A-Qing can say with confidence that she knows more about cultivation and its numerous secret spells and branches than anyone else, alive or dead. It doesn’t mean she can practice it, not yet and maybe not for a long time, maybe not until her soul is whole again, but. A-Qing has never been a patient person; she can force it to work, somehow.

I’m sorry, Daozhang, she thinks, trying to sink into meditation yet again, this time, too, unsuccessfully. Wait a bit longer, Daozhang. I swear I’ll help you if it’s the last thing I do!

It works, finally – because of course it fucking does, A-Qing wouldn’t have it any other way. She takes a breath, with actual, physical lungs, breathes in actual, physical air, and opens her eyes.

She’s right in front of Yicheng’s gates, vibrant red like when she first saw them, nothing like the rotten wood and sinister aura they’d had for the last few years when it’d been turned into that bastard Xue Yang’s haunt. The sun is beating down on her back, and the summer heat is oppressive; A-Qing’s already forgotten what it feels like to sweat through your clothes, but it seems like she’ll be remembering shortly.

A-Qing takes another deep breath. The smell of heat and plant life assaults her nose, and it takes her more self-control than she wants to admit not to cry, because she’s missed this, she’s missed feeling anything other than coldness and darkness, missed seeing vibrant colours, missed seeing and living in general. Those years spent trying to save people as a ghost were agonizing, every failure scarred into her heart, to be remembered and mourned forever, not even able to commit their faces or names to memory. For all she got her vision and speech back as a shattered soul, the limbo was just dark and scary, being surrounded by megalomaniacs just like the one who killed her.

(She’s wondered, so many times, if she’ll ever come across that son of a bitch there, has readied herself to fight and kill even though nobody can hurt or be hurt in there.

She doesn’t. And it makes her wonder if that’s a good or a bad thing.)

A-Qing looks up to the sun, and it’s so bright it makes her dizzy, warms her freezing cold body. Wind blows through the field, the green grass dances wildly to its tunes, and A-Qing is absolutely unsurprised to feel tears falling down her cheeks. The sobs wrack her tiny body, and she can only curl up in a ball on the side of the road and cry it out; she did it, she’s alive, and this time, things will be different, so much different.

I promise, Daozhang. This time I’ll save you!

The sun has gone down considerably when A-Qing finally brushes away her tears and stands up, covered in dust and grass stains. It’s a miracle no one has passed through while she was having her mental breakdown; then again, they might have, for all she was looking. A-Qing quietly scolds herself for being so fucking careless; a vulnerable, crying girl on the side of a road? That’s just asking for trouble. If she dies again after returning back to life so soon, she’ll wring her neck herself.

First things first, though – A-Qing tries to dust her clothes off as much as she can, but it’s obvious it’s a lost cause. She can’t even think of changing them or anything, since she hasn’t got any money, and though she’s lucky she appeared in the middle of summer, her thin robes will not be of any help during the heavy snowfall of winter.

So! A bamboo stick so she can pretend to be blind, also acting as a convenient weapon, is the first thing she should get her hands on.

(True, she hasn’t practiced any cultivation sword routines physically, since she had no body to speak of until a few hours ago, but shattered souls are both surprisingly chatty and surprisingly brutal teachers, so she isn’t that worried she won’t know what she’s doing.)

There is an abundance of bamboo forests around Yicheng, ones that A-Qing knows like the back of her hand, and so it’s more than easy to walk in and search for the perfect one.

The problem, A-Qing figures out a bit later, isn’t that she can’t find a perfect bamboo stick, because there are many of those, just the perfect thickness to hurt when you hit somebody with them and yet innocuous enough not to look like an actual weapon. It’s that she can’t cut the bamboo down to size, since she has no sword or a companion conveniently carrying one to cut it out for her (really, Daozhang, look how spoilt you’ve gotten me!).

A-Qing sighs sharply and starts stretching. She has to take good care of this body, because otherwise she’ll fail before she’s even started, and that’s absolutely unforgivable.

She has no shoes – doesn’t really need them, her soles are calloused like crazy so unless she’s walking over thorns it doesn’t bother her at all – but it’d be nice to have some on right now, to help alleviate the bruises she’s surely going to get.

A-Qing takes a deep breath, centers herself, focusing on the bamboo stalk she wants, and then she kicks it with all her might. It crackles, sways, and then falls right at her feet. A-Qing can feel a smile blossoming on her face - seems like she did retain some of the things she was taught in the limbo. She picks the pole up, looks it over – the break isn’t clean, and it’s much too light to be of any use. A-Qing clicks her tongue, mentally revises the image of what she wants, looks around to find a better one and try again.

She’s content with her fifth attempt – both ends of the bamboo stick are sharp from where she’d broken them off, painful to be stabbed with but not nearly enough to be obvious from a distance. That out of the way, A-Qing finally decides to find where she’s going to stay for the night – the sun is dying the sky orange already, even though it feels like only moments have passed since A-Qing’s returned from the dead.

She debates camping out in the forest – she’s roamed it more times than she can count, she knows where everything is, there’s no way anyone could sneak up on her – but in the end her growling stomach pushes her to try for the nearest city instead. If she’s lucky, she may find not only shelter but also maybe a soft-hearted person to throw her a few leftovers so she doesn’t have to worry about finding food on her own.

(A-Qing pointedly turns her back on Yicheng’s gates and walks in the other direction without looking back; she would rather never return there, not even under threat of death.)

A-Qing doesn’t manage to reach the first village until after sundown, but it doesn’t bother her much – she’s used to total darkness, so much so that she feels right at home, and the moon and stars provide more than enough light anyways.

A-Qing makes sure to slow down the moment she nears the village, taping her bamboo stick on the ground every few seconds the way she did when she was still at Yicheng– that’s not a good thought to have, right now, and she shakes her head to get rid of it. (As if she’ll ever be able to.)

There’s still people on the streets, few but loud, mostly consisting of laughing drunks and giggling couples. A-Qing doesn’t pay them much attention, hopes they do the same; the last thing she needs is some random fuckwad trying to amuse themselves by bullying a random tiny blind girl they’d just seen. Her stomach growls, but she shushes it quietly, promises herself that her first job tomorrow is to find food – it’s much harder taking care of a body after so many years of not doing it, she thinks sourly.

At least it isn’t going to rain tonight, so as long as she finds a mostly hidden place to spend the night, she’s be good. In the end, A-Qing curls into a dusty corner on the back of a restaurant, bamboo pole hugged close to her chest, and falls into a restless sleep.