Chapter Text
白日依山尽
As always, the white sun nears the mountain,
黄河入海流。
The Yellow River washes into the sea.
欲穷千里目
The world will sprawl for a thousand li1,
更上一层楼。
Up on the higher level.
《登鹳雀楼》唐代：王之涣
“Climbing White Stork Tower,” by Wang Zhihuan (Tang dynasty)
1 li (里) is a standard of measurement, approximately a third of a mile.
When Wu Zhu was taken from her side, Ye Qingmei knew she was going to die, and the person responsible for killing her. The funny thing was that, when she met Li Yunxu, she thought he was her true start in this life.
It would be fitting that he would be the one to end it.
The first two people she met in this world were two Alphas, one named Xiao En, the other Ku He. She had taken their names and wrote them on the insides of her arm, staining the pristine pale skin with the ink of this Earth with its unchanging mountains and strangely-shifted rivers. Though the two of them had continued bowing and kowtowing, she had felt a little more human, and a little less like a god.
That had been over a decade ago. She had more names now, writ in ink that covered every inch of her skin, dragging her further and further from that thing in the north that these new humans called the Temple of the Gods. Her feet had fully sunk into soil, her hands covered in mud, and though Wu Zhu still sometimes looked at her and murmured, Nüwa, who repaired the heavens, her head was nowhere near the clouds.
A fortuitous time for her to meet him.
His name was Li Yunxu, and he had arrived on foot to her little shop of curiosities in the capital city of Nanqing. Every other Minister or nobleman’s child had come by carriage or palanquin, which made him an anomaly. His surname was Li, which made him part of the Imperial family, and there was a certain noble arch of his brow, or perhaps a certain set to his mouth, that made her think of Mushu, that little worm-like dragon from that Mulan movie released seventy or eighty years before she was frozen and the world was covered in ice.
A very dignified dragon, indeed. She ducked her head down, and greeted:
“This student pays his respects to His Highness, the King of Chen’s Heir.”
“A student?” His voice had a curiously-rough rasp to it that did not suit the smooth silk of his clothes. “Aren’t scholars supposed to keep themselves away from all touches of riches?” Especially mercantilism, which he implies with a sweep of his arm outwards.
He seemed to take being recognise at a glance at his stride. How very different, she thought to herself, from the servants of rich men who always looked at her with wide eyes whenever she spoke the name they had already given her once.
“I am a scholar not of books, but of the world,” she told him.
“Interesting,” he said, and leaned an elbow on her counter. A small breeze wafted his scent over to her: sharp musk, nearly strong enough to overwhelm. Alpha. And a domineering one, too. “And what might you study?”
She tilted her head slightly to the side to let him have a whiff of her own scent. “The needs and wants of people,” she said candidly.
“Oh?” A frown creased his brow, and she knew it was not caused by her words, but her scent. She smelled, and had always smelled, of a mix of frankincense and myrrh, neither of which had survived the great ice that had covered the Earth. He wouldn’t be able to place her scent at all.
Still, he recovered quickly enough. “And what might fascinate about that?”
She hummed to pretend to think. “For one,” she rubbed her chin, “why must there be a difference between a need and a want? For does desire not grasp a person’s heart and tug upon it until they could not breathe, and thus affect their body as much as hunger might?”
“A philosophical slant to a merchant’s trade,” he said, dry.
She could tell him that philosophy had nothing to do with it; this was business, specifically the branch of it that concerned market research. Even more specifically, it was a line she stole from a book she has thumbed through when her beloved professor had scolded her for coming up with solutions that no one with the problem would even want to use.
But she knew better than to say such things in this world. It would only result in incomprehension, and she had experienced enough of that that a mere whiff of it now would plunge her into sadness.
“Does Your Highness believe that merchants have no right to touch philosophy, just as scholars should not dirty their hands with trade?” she asked lightly instead.
He didn’t reply for long moments. When he did, it was with a lifted finger pointing at something behind her. “Do you truly believe in that?” he asked.
She didn’t need to turn to know what he was talking about. That gigantic scroll she had commissioned from a local letter-writer – calligraphers were expensive, and she would rather have legibility than any kind of fancy flourish – that contained only six characters:
人人生而平等, Everyone is born equal.
“Am I not supposed to?” she lifted an eyebrow at him.
“It is a difficult belief to hold onto,” he said, “here in the capital.” Dangerous, too, his eyes added.
“I think it’s the simplest thing to believe in,” she refuted, letting a small smirk cross her lips as she looked at him. “Why, I can even find proof for its truthfulness when looking at the two of us.”
“Oh?”
“You are Your Highness, and I am but a merchant, but we still have two eyes,” she tapped the sides of her own, “one nose,” she reached out, “and one mouth,” and traced the shape of his lips in the air. “Two arms, and two legs. We both have a heart,” she moved her fingers so they now hovered above his chest, “that beats the blood around our body, and we have blood that keeps us alive, and skin that keeps it inside from spilling out.”
“Some would take your words as threats against me,” he murmured.
“Ah, but those would look for any and all excuse to be scandalised and offended,” she retorted. “Are you one of those?”
“I, and those like me, have the ability to cut your head off,” he said pointedly, “simply because I decide to find your words offensive.”
Ye Qingmei’s beloved professor had accused her of being impulsive, and rash, and without social graces, but he had never and would never think of labelling her as stupid in any form. So, no matter how much she was tempted by the urge to continue nudging him to check if the threat was real, she instead looked His Highness the King of Chen’s Heir in the eye, and gave him a small, wry smile.
“The words might be big, and sound grand, but I’m really saying that I don’t give discounts on my goods,” she said.
“A true merchant’s concern,” His Highness drawled. His eyes showed that he didn’t believe her in the slightest.
Ye Qingmei threw her head back and laughed, a sharp bark that echoed around the store. “Would you,” she leaned forward, smirking widely enough with one side of her mouth to show teeth, “like to try out a few samples?”
He took a whole bunch, and she waved him off knowing that she would see him again. People who changed one’s lives didn’t and couldn’t do so only after one short meeting, after all.
Han Guangling had been waiting for this moment.
Not for years, of course not; he had been rather sincere in his wish to stay away from Nanqing’s Imperial family, content with the life of an eternal wanderer around the provinces of the country and never approaching the capital. But then he had heard that the Emperor had taken a new consort, one whose name was as familiar to him as both of his own, and that new consort was practically set up as bait for some purpose that Han Guangling could not discern from afar…
Well, as the saying goes: promises were made to be broken.
The capital was as noisy and full of wonders as always. He had spent the last nineteen-odd years in the provinces where things were far quieter – even the cities couldn’t match the din that the capital was capable of – that it had taken him a few days before his ears could stop ringing and he could put on a good enough mask to fool the Investigative Bureau.
It really was a good thing, Han Guangling thought, that his darling Xian’er had never met his old woman, and that with his new, sunflower-scented, omega body, he wouldn’t be able to recognise him from the scent that had once been hers, either.
Turned out he shouldn’t he have bothered; the person who interviewed her was a beta named Wang Qinian, because the Chairman of the Investigative Bureau, Fan Xian, was, of course, far too busy to be conducting the first rounds of interviews for those desirous of becoming the personal doctor for the new Imperial Noble Consort.
It meant, however, that he had arrived a little late, and shouldn’t have taken those few days to acclimate himself. Not only was it useless now that he wouldn’t be faced with Xian’er immediately, he knew darling Ping’er very well: Ye Qingmei’s sweet omega had adored the courting gift she and Li Yunxu had given him, and he wouldn’t have let go of it unless he had no other choice.
That damned bastard, Han Guangling thought, his mental voice almost slipping entirely back into Ye Qingmei. What on this goddamned resilient Earth had he done to his— her— their Ping’er?
He left Wang Qinian a message that, he knew, would reach Ping’er and the bastard before he would, and then waited. He busied himself with the slums of the capital while biding his time to enter the Palace, and managed to save two districts from degenerating into a typhoid crisis – very much like the one in Hudong that he had used to make his name and shed the slavery-like betrothal contract that the Prefect had bound him to by putting money into his parents’ hands – when Xian’er called for him to enter the Palace.
Nothing of the place had changed: nearly every stone had remained exactly the same, pristine under the sunlight from the work of the thousands of servants who bent their backs and sweated their blood here. Even that particular rooftop, covering the Emperor Dowager’s residence, looked exactly the same as the day when Ye Qingmei had brought Wu Zhu with her to break into that old omega’s bedroom to see if she stowed any yellow-covered books or lewd drawings under her pillow.
Oh, yes. Speaking of Xiaozhuzhu, Han Guangling knew he was nearby; Fan Xian was in the Palace, after all, and Ye Qingmei had spoken very sternly to her constant companion to make sure that he would guard her son. Han Guangling hoped that Wu Zhu was alright: it had surely been twenty years or so since his last maintenance check. Ye Qingmei had made him self-sustaining, of course, but that was the hardware; the software still needed regular defragmentation and registry-cleaning so that he would work smoothly and express the cute little personality she had installed for him.
(At least he didn’t need to be worried about Xiaozhuzhu being infected by viruses, Han Guangling thought, and barely resisted giggling to himself.)
Xian’er had grown up tall and broad-shouldered, clearly an Alpha by the scent of cedarwood that coiled around him. There were some shadows at the sides of his eyes, and even more tucked into the corners of his mouth, but he greeted Wang Qinian with his shoulders loose, and walked through the Palace like he knew that he belonged here.
Ye Qingmei had done both things, and had even the same loping stride. She even had four different people as her companions – Xiaozhuzhu, Ping’er, Xiaojianjian, and the bastard – but none of them could truly make a dent in the loneliness she had felt, the way she had looked upon those she loved and knew that, while she understood them completely, they could only grasp the barest surface that she showed.
She had made Xian’er because she had wanted to have that one person who had always understood her back at her side. She had to adjust his age, of course, taking him from far before the time when he had met her, but when it came to technology like this, a few decades made no different when she was already jumping back millennia in time. She had so much hope that, when Xian’er was grown, he would learn to understand her again, and she wouldn’t be lonely anymore.
Then the bastard had used his Empress and mother to attack her, and Ye Qingmei’s body had died. She didn’t regret it – neither letting herself die, nor staying as Han Guangling in the provinces – but now Han Guangling was acutely aware that he had condemned Xian’er to the same fate that Ye Qingmei had once suffered.
The kid didn’t look like he was suffering. Then again, none of his parents – the bastard, Ping’er, Xiaojianjian, and Ye Qingmei herself – were the sort to show any sort of weakness to strangers, and Ye Qingmei hadn’t remembered anything of Xian’er’s previous incarnation ever being careless enough with his vulnerabilities, either.
He would have to talk to him, Han Guangling sighed to himself, and shelved it as something to be done later. Right now, he took a deep breath, taking in the hints of musk and daffodils and Xiaojianjian’s soothing crisp-new apples, all dearly beloved and missed, and folded his hands into his sleeves.
“This student,” he raised his voice, “pays his respect to His Highness, the King of Chen’s Heir.”
The next time they met, Li Yunxu had someone else with him.
“He’s actually interested in money and the making of,” His Highness drawled, propping his head with his fist. His elbow was once more on her counter, and she was tempted to shove him off just to see if he would end up smashing his face on the wood. “So, I brought him to discuss the philosophy of mercantilism with you.”
“This lowly student is honoured by Your Highness’s thoughtfulness,” Ye Qingmei drawled.
“You’re right,” the stranger said, giving His Highness a sideways glance. “She’s interesting.”
“You can tell that by a sentence?” she hiked up a brow.
“Anyone who dares to speak like that to someone of Imperial blood,” the stranger said, “while their identity, address, and livelihood were full- and closely-known without being an official… That’s a rare person indeed.” He snapped up a rather casual salute, barely bringing up his hands before his chin dipped towards his clavicle. “Fan Jian, eldest son of the Count of Sinan.”
“The son of the man whose territory surrounds the capital,” Ye Qingmei blinked. “No wonder you’re allowed to hang around an Imperial Prince.”
His Highness snorted. “I might receive the same honorific,” he drawled, “but I am too lowly to be described with that term.” Straightening, he tilted his head. “Or do your ideas about not giving discounts actually extend to that of inheritance?”
“Does Your Highness believe,” she lowered her lids a little while staring at him, “that this student is stupid?”
“Would I speak to someone who, I think to be so, much less sought her company/”
“Then Your Highness surely desires this student dead.” She used as flat a tone as she could manage.
“Oh? And why is that so?”
“A mere merchant daring to breathe a word about the Imperial succession,” she stated blandly, “wishes for a grand death by execution, and to drag her family and servants all along with her.”
“Only if it is reported to the courts,” His Highness swept out a hand. “Do you believe I could do that?”
“I believe that Your Highness has deep thoughts that are impossible for the lower classes to decipher,” she said, barely resisting the urge to grin.
“You say that,” Fan Jian finally spoke up, voice close to shaking with the force of his mirth, “while over your shoulder is writ the declaration that all who come into your shop are equal.”
“Ah, His Excellency has certainly grasped the root of the matter,” Ye Qingmei said, grinning as she lifted her head. “Only in here could there be a form of equality to be found. Outside, however, I am but an ant, and you are both giants.”
“And the dragon looms in the distance,” His Highness murmured.
“Again, the student asks, does His Highness want her dead?” She slapped her hands flat on her counter, shoving herself forward until she had crossed into his space. “If he does, it would be far easier if he ordered a few soldiers to burn down this student’s shop while she is inside.”
Fan Jian threw his head back and laughed, low and rich. He smelled of apples new on the branch, and she couldn’t help but reach out to brush her fingers over his silk-covered shoulders.
His Highness caught her wrist. She cocked her eyebrow at him, and he let go, laughing as well.
“Yes,” His Highness said, smile full of teeth. “I do believe I want to invite you for tea.”
In his house, where the calligraphy she had bought and hung up did not permeate the space. In his Father’s residence, bestowed upon him by the Emperor himself by the benefit of their sharing of blood.
Ye Qingmei stretched out her arms and tucked the fingers of one hand behind the other. “This student,” she murmured, “will obey.”
“It is,” Li Yunxu said, catching her gaze and holding it, “an invitation.”
Ah. She smiled then, bright and sharp. “Then, I will accept.”
When Ye Qingmei had offered Li Yunxu that manual for zhen qi that would make him on the same level as Ku He, Sigu Jian, and Ye Liuyun – three martial artists who had already gained the ridiculous title of Grandmaster – he had accepted. When she had offered him Wu Zhu’s services to help him practice, he had refused.
“Why?” she had asked.
“Practicing with Wu Zhu would need to be done in public,” he had said, “because he’s terrible with subtlety.” She couldn’t refute that, and so had said nothing. “I would rather,” he had continued, “keep this a secret. A card up my sleeve, if you will, for anyone who would try to attack me.”
“And you think many will try,” she had said.
“We’re trying to change the world, Qingmei,” he had said, smile crooked as he looked at her. “Why wouldn’t people try to kill me?”
Ironic, Han Guangling thought. Once, Ye Qingmei had given this man the secret. Now, Han Guangling would force him to reveal it.
The fish had already been displaced by the first impact, and now, with Li Yunxu’s back flat against the bottom of the rather shallow pond, they were swimming around the two of them in panic. Han Guangling watched, rather amused, as the Emperor of the Qing Empire tried to not twitch when one of the smaller koi threatened to swim into the low v-neck of his robes.
“We can talk right here,” he said. Speaking wasn’t a problem because both of them had used zhen qi to push the water away from them, creating an air pocket. “None of your Palace guards would dare to shoot in the pond in fear that they might hit you.”
“They won’t dare,” Li Yunxu said. True to the credit of a man who went from a forgotten Alpha of the Imperial family to the very dragon upon the throne, he had recovered his bearings easily. “But I’m rather sure Fan Xian and even Wu Zhu would barge in here at some point.”
“Is that what you call him?” Han Guangling asked, cocking his head to the side. “Fan Xian?”
“I’m the boy’s least favourite parent,” the bastard said, using a tone that was clearly meant to be mournful but fell rather short. “It’s better for him if I keep my distance.”
“You’re such,” Han Guangling said, fond despite himself, “a complete asshole.” Then, before Li Yunxu could react, he tangled his hands further into the Emperor’s collar, pulled him up, and crashed their lips together.
“Mmffph.” That sounded nearly thoughtful. Han Guangling grinned and dragged him up and away from the pond’s floor, and then into the air. Water sluiced down around them, the sound of it slamming back down nearly drowning out Xian’er’s choked sounds of protest.
Then Han Guangling had to focus back on the Alpha wrapped around him, because the utter bastard had curled his arm around his waist, crushing their chests together, and with a shift of zhen qi and qing’gong, landed them on a nearby rooftop.
“I shouldn’t tell my guards to not attack, should I?” Li Yunxu said, speaking as thought to the air itself. The nobility of that little display was blunted by how he had to pause to fish a few koi out of his robes. “Stand down. Do not attack.”
Han Guangling stood up. His clothes were utterly ruined, soaked and sticking to his skin, but it was the hair that was more of an issue, plastered all over his face and neck and shoulders. He grabbed the strands and shoved them out of the way— just in time to see a black figure approaching.
“Xiaozhuzhu!” he called, waving his arm hard. “Make sure that no one gets near us, alright?” He lifted his hands and did something only Ye Qingmei would know; something that was practically a secret signal between her and Wu Zhu:
He made a heart with both hands, pressed it against his chest, and then stretched his arms out.
Wu Zhu tripped over absolutely nothing and fell into the pond. His head jerked up, breaking through water. A fish flopped haplessly in his hair.
“Miss!” he practically shrieked. “You’re alive, Miss!”
“Kind of!” Han Guangling yelled back. “Make sure no one gets near me and,” he jerked a thumb towards the bastard lounging next to him, “until we’re done with our talk. Try to make sure that Xian’er doesn’t get an apoplexy, either! He looks very red!”
“You— you—” Fan Xian was pointing at him. “Lao Niang!”
“Well done!” He gave the boy a few seal claps. “Explanations will come later! I have to talk to this thing!” He threw the Emperor of the Qing Empire over one shoulder. “Bye!” And leaped into the air, heading for the Palace’s walls.
Li Yunxu, the bastard, was laughing, the sound low and rich and rumbling against the back of his ribs. “You always do like to make your entrances,” he said.
“That’s rich, coming from you,” Han Guangling snorted. “Given how much you like to scare the hell out of people by appearing in front of them. Or making them appear in front of you. While dressed in bedsheets.”
“They’re not bedsheets,” Li Yunxu said, sounding indignant. “They’re made of high-quality silk.”
“Well, if they’re not bedsheets,” Han Guangling said reasonably, “then they had to be curtains. Those are the only two things they resemble; they are certainly not proper clothes.”
Li Yunxu didn’t speak for long moments. When he did, his voice was very soft: “Is that all you have to say to me? Complaining about what I wear?”
“Oh, that’s just the start,” Han Guangling snorted. “There’s also the entire issue about what you have done to my Ping’er.”
“You mean my Xiaochangzai,” Li Yunxu retorted automatically. “But is that all?”
“Do you want me to take you to task for murdering me?”
“So,” Li Yunxu said, voice very steady. “You know.”
“I knew,” Han Guangling corrected. He felt the urge to laugh, but managed to stifle it without the slap of his foot on the city’s wall that took him all the way up into some of the highest trees outside. “Even when I could see Hong Siyang’s figure in the distance and knew that he was here on orders of your mother, I knew you were the one responsible.” When he remained silent, Han Guangling really did laugh.
“Who else could have calculated it such that Ku He would be keeping Wu Zhu busy right as Xiao En was taking up all of Ping’er and his Black Knights’ attention? Who else could have played a game of chess so perfectly that Ping’er, Xiaojianjian and Xiaozhuzhu all didn’t realise what was going on until it was too late?”
“You knew,” Li Yunxu said, sounding thoughtful. “Yet you didn’t stop me.”
“Do you regret it?” Han Guangling asked. It was the question that had come to him even when he was Ye Qingmei, and it had haunted him for years, tugging him towards the capital even when he swore to himself, over and over, that he would have nothing to do with the Imperial family unless absolutely necessary this time around. “Murdering me?”
Li Yunxu’s sigh was very heavy against his back. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”
Han Guangling smiled. It was a flaw he shared with Ye Qingmei: the desire to see themselves proven right. “That’s why,” he said, stopping at a tall, sturdy tree, “I didn’t stop you.” He set the Emperor down.
Turning until his back was against the fat trunk, the Emperor looked at him with dark eyes that were far, far more creased than the last time Ye Qingmei had seen them. “I’m out of practice,” he said, voice very soft. “You’ll have to explain, Qingmei.”
“Han Guangling,” he corrected. “Ye Qingmei is dead, and I am not her.” He paused. “Not entirely.” When the only response he received was a quirked eyebrow and tilt of the head, he laughed. “I thought Xian’er would’ve briefed you about my life so far.”
“He did,” the Emperor nodded, gaze fixed upon him. “I have you to thank for getting rid of that outbreak of disease in Hudong before it could spread out of the province.”
“It wouldn’t have spread that way,” Han Guangling waved a dismissive hand.
“Ah,” Li Yunxu said, a light of understanding coming to his eyes. “Typhoid from irrigation run-offs, caused by officials cutting costs?”
“Being lazy and not doing their inspections properly,” he corrected, sighing. Then he drew up one leg and dropped his head down to rest on his knee, staring at the Emperor with a crooked smile on his lips. “You’re a hell of a bastard, but I missed you.”
“You never had to explain much of anything with me,” Li Yunxu said, a similar expression of his face as he brushed the back of his hand over Han Guangling’s cheek. “But I never did manage to cure you of your loneliness.”
At that, Han Guangling threw his head back and cackled. “You did,” he said. “You killed me.”
“And still, you sit here,” Li Yunxu didn’t even hesitate. “Still with that wretched loneliness in your eyes.” His hand dropped back to his side, and he sighed. “Are you going to make me guess why you’re not angry about your own murder?”
“You already know,” Han Guangling said, eyes falling shut, “because you don’t regret it.”
There was another long silence before the Emperor started to laugh, loud and shaky and choked with something that Han Guangling refused to open his eyes to confirm. “I never thought,” he said, the words broken up by his strangely-stuttering tongue, “that you would actually understand.”
“Isn’t that why you loved Ye Qingmei, Your Majesty?” Han Guangling asked, a little shaky himself. “She has always understood.”