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It was tradition, before the massacre at Lotus Pier, for the Jiang Sect Leader and a few elders to travel the province in search of promising students. Not every family could send their child off to Lotus Pier for the regular admissions process, and not every family knew cultivation was an option for their children.
The last time the Sect elders had made the journey was four years ago, before Jiang Cheng left for the summer lectures in Gusu. He dutifully followed his father from small town to small town and watched as Jiang Fengmian assessed the spiritual root and power of children from every corner of Yunmeng. In the end, they returned to Lotus Pier with eighteen possible recruits, ten of whom stayed with the Sect.
They all died in the massacre.
Now that things had settled slightly, Jiang Cheng set off for the tour. It would be less comfortable than in previous years, since he was travelling alone and the Jiang coffers were strained, but he didn’t care. What mattered most was giving the people of Yunmeng an opportunity. Rebuilding the Sect. Keeping traditions alive.
In Chongyang, one ten year old boy had a decent amount of spiritual power. He was a little skittish, but that would be trained out in time. In Yunping, a set of eight year old twins had a water spiritual root, which paired well with Jiang sword techniques. It took a few days to convince their parents that they would be safe at Lotus Pier, but they were mollified when Jiang Cheng told them he brought his nephew to the estate every summer.
No one in the villages near Qishan who would let their child take the tests. Sometimes the parents were polite. “We still need Yi-er on the farm for a few more years,” they would demur. Usually they didn’t even bother speaking to him.
Not that Jiang Cheng could blame them. The countryside still bore the scars of the Sunshot Campaign. Here and there he spied old Wen or Jiang forts, reappropriated by locals as grain storage or housing.
He took his time wandering in these small places, just in case.
In one such town, Jiang Cheng was startled out of his thoughts by a shout.
“Hey! What are you doing?” A ruddy-faced man rushed past him to the largest pier on the shore waving his hands angrily.
A waif of a girl was sitting on the pier, pants rolled up and shoes off so she could kick her feet in the water among the lotuses. “What does it look like I’m doing?” She picked up a half-empty lotus pod and made a show of removing and peeling a seed. “I’m enjoying the weather.”
“Those are my lotuses!”
“Are they? Did you plant them? Do you own the mud they’re in? You don’t, because this lake’s owned by the local Sect!”
At that, the man sputtered slightly. “I own the pier, that’s enough!”
“No it’s not,” the girl shot back. “The flowers are in the lake, not the pier.”
“Then get off of my pier!”
The argument was getting to be more than Jiang Cheng wanted to listen to. He stepped forward, next to the dock owner, and put on his best Sect Leader airs. “Is something the matter, sir?”
“This fucker thinks he owns the town, that’s what’s the matter,” the girl called from the dock.
Jiang Cheng turned to the girl briefly to give her a Look: Stop digging deeper, I’ve got this. The sort of look he used to give his brother when--
It didn’t matter. Judging by her white eyes, she was blind. She couldn’t see the Look and Jiang Cheng didn’t have to keep thinking about it.
“See? Help me punish this girl, gongzi, please--”
Jiang Cheng glared at the dock owner. “Why should I?”
“She’s interfering with my business!” The man gestured to the dock as though it was obvious what the girl was doing wrong.
“What business?” the girl shouted. “The merchant boats won’t dock for another week! I’m not in anyone’s way.”
“Well?” Jiang Cheng watched the dock owner huff and fume for a moment, just to make him squirm. “Maybe you should go to the tavern and calm down.”
With his best dismissive huff, Jiang Cheng turned away from the man and walked to where the girl was still seated. “Are you okay?”
The girl laughed and peeled another lotus seed. “Sure, now that the dickbag’s on his way.” She popped the seed in her mouth. “He is leaving, right?”
“Yes, with his tail between his legs.”
“Then thank you, gongzi.” She reached into her seed pod and then frowned. “Shit, this one’s kicked…” She leaned forward to grab for a new one in the water, but they evaded her grasp.
“Here.” Jiang Cheng handed her a fresh seed pod. “Mind if I join you?”
The girl shrugged. “I can’t stop you.” She handed him a peeled lotus seed. “You’re not that terrible, for a rich fuck.”
He laughed and laid back on the dock. Between the sound of the river and the taste of the lotus seeds, he found himself thinking of his childhood. He had been no stranger to arguing with grumpy old men about where he was and was not allowed to bask in the sun. And (while his mother would never admit it) that free attitude helped students develop a detachment from worldly concerns that paved the way for immortality.
It was important to recognize talent no matter where it was. Lotuses grow from the mud, after all. Jiang Cheng turned to his new friend and asked, “What do you know about cultivation?”
“I did it, I shot the kite!” Jin Ling said proudly. He had not, in fact, shot the kite A-Qing was flying. He had missed by a solid foot.
“Are you sure, A-Ling?” A-Qing tugged on the kite string and made a face. “It doesn’t feel like it’s been shot. It’s still flying fine.”
Jin Ling crossed his arms and pouted, the perfect picture of four-year-old stubbornness. “I did!”
Thankfully, A-Qing was practiced at ignoring such displays. “And you’re not just saying that because I’m blind? Because if you were, that wouldn’t be very nice.”
“It wouldn’t? It would be mean?” Jin Ling looked up at her with fear on his face. “Maybe--maybe I should shoot again. Just in case I was wrong.”
“Maybe.”
It took another four tries for him to shoot the kite, but he was so happy when he finally hit it for real that A-Qing forgave him for the attempt at trickery. She pulled him in and ruffled his hair before reaching for another kite in the pile.
“Shimei,” the fifth shixiong called, “we have lectures in a few minutes, I don’t think you’ll have time to keep playing.”
She groaned quietly and put the kite back down. “Sorry, kiddo, I gotta go study.”
The past year of cultivation training had been fantastic. Objectively wonderful. The Jiang Sect provided A-Qing with three meals a day, a bed of her own, clothes of her own, and basic medical care. This was the type of luxury she could never have dreamed of on the street. And all she had to do in return was swing a sword and meditate. It was a little more work than picking pockets and begging, but not unbearable.
The only problem was the recent classes. In the lecture hall, A-Qing took her usual seat next to Dai Qiao, a new student. Dai Qiao was perhaps ten years old and had never left her hometown before coming to Lotus Pier. She had appointed herself as A-Qing’s eyes, a duty she was incredibly bad at. She got distracted whenever she tried to describe a sword move and she tripped over her words more often than not.
But she was earnest and trying her best to do good, so of course A-Qing was going to take care of her. And letting her “help” with A-Qing’s studies was a great way to keep Dai Qiao away from bullies. She didn’t trust any of the kids in town.
“Are you ready, shijie?” Dai Qiao asked. “Last night you were having trouble--”
“I’ll be fine.” If A-Qing was quiet and did not attract the teacher’s attention, she would not be asked to recite the next section of the cultivation manual.
“A-Qing!” The teacher, Yu Pengfei at the head of the room gave her a nasty look. “If you’re coming in late and talking, that must mean you’ve prepared the assignment.”
A-Qing scowled. Yu Pengfei was a distant cousin of Jiang-zongzhu and therefore thought he was a better cultivator than all of the students. As though he had put in any effort into learning the Jiang sword forms or breathing exercises. A-Qing had put in effort and was a better cultivator than the rest of the students, possibly better than Yu Pengfei, so he did his best to either forget about her existence or humiliate her.
“Recite and explain the passage about core formation.”
One day A-Qing would be able to punch the sneer right off of Yu Pengfei’s face. At least zongzhu was nice underneath his sour face. He understood that A-Qing was (supposedly) blind.
She stood and took a breath, trying to remember what Dai Qiao had said the night before during their study session. “The energies are easy to move, difficult to fix. If they circulate long enough, they… uh… congeal--” Fuck, Dai Qiao had gotten distracted and talked about soup dumplings for fifteen minutes and never really got back on track. “They congeal. After a hundred days… the meditation is fiery--”
“Stop, don’t bother,” Yu Pengfei interrupted. “Sit down. A-Qiao, can you manage to read and understand a simple text?”
A-Qing’s face burned when she sat down. She did understand the text, sort of. It was about how to meditate and let your qi flow through you until it made a core. There were a bunch of references to other books in there, but she knew how to meditate and move qi.
Dai Qiao gave her a sympathetic smile (which she should know A-Qing couldn’t see) before standing to perfectly recite the passage.
The lecture took another unbearable hour to finish, and A-Qing was too wrapped up in her embarrassment to pay attention to any of the material. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t memorize the text. She couldn’t read! She was never taught and she couldn’t ask anyone to teach her because she was supposed to be blind! But the sect still required her to somehow absorb a flowery and dense text on her own. Dai Qiao helped, sure, but it didn’t seem fair that the sect itself wasn’t offering any help.
A-Qing didn’t cry. She wouldn’t give stupid Yu Pengfei or anyone else the satisfaction. Instead she lingered in the training yard and worked through her feelings. She cut lashes into each of the dummies with her whip, and when that didn’t make her feel better, she moved on to taking their heads off. That brought a smile to her face.
At dinner, she asked Dai Qiao for help with the assignment again.
The younger student sighed. “I’d love to, A-Qing, but dashixiong said if I don’t improve my footwork on the first sword form by the end of the week, I’ll be sitting in the ancestor hall for a month.”
“I can help!” Jin Ling scurried over from where he was eating with Jiang Cheng to sit between them. “Let me help, Qing-jie!”
“Can you even read the manuals?” A-Qing teased.
“Yeah! Xiaoshushu says it’s important to read!” He sat up straight. “Reading gives you knowledge and knowledge is power,” he said with a slightly unnerving smile.
Of course a four-year-old could read. Why not? “It’s fine, A-Ling, you focus on having fun. I’ll get someone else to read it for me tonight.”
Later that night, A-Qing glared at her manual in the lamplight. Dai Qiao was still on the practice grounds working on her footwork, so A-Qing had their room to herself for her secret project: learning to read.
Surely it couldn’t be too hard. If all these rich fucks learned to read as children, if Jin Ling could already read, then A-Qing could figure it out now. She had some of the passages memorized, and she could use those as a guide for learning new characters.
“Light comes from the sun and moon. But awareness of their light does not come from anywhere else. Even if there is no sun or moon in the sky, the awareness of their light doesn’t come from somewhere else,” she recited. She definitely had missed some of the words there, but it was fine. It was a good way to start.
She opened the manual to the correct chapter and verse and, after some effort, decoded a handful of characters. It felt unfair, though, that all the characters bled together and half of them looked the same. And it left her with a terrible headache.
A-Qing threw the manual across the room, where it bounced off the wall and into her laundry pile. Reading was a pointless endeavor and she was better off just focusing on the other parts of her training. Who cared if she couldn’t properly cultivate immortality. As long as she could subdue spirits and help people.
That attitude lasted until the end of the next day’s lecture. A-Qing did do her best to avoid notice. But Yu Pengfei made sure to ask her to recite every single passage. And when she failed, because of course she did, he made a point of sighing in disappointment and asking Dai Qiao or another student.
“If the material in the manual is too difficult for you, perhaps you should reconsider your presence here at Lotus Pier.” Yu Pengfei stretched his mouth into something adjacent to a grin, but without any of the easy kindness usually found in the Jiang Sect. “There’s a reason most cultivators don’t come from your background.”
Yu Pengfei turned to pay attention to another student, some merchant’s daughter who had been surprised the first time she was asked to help with chores, and A-Qing saw red. She launched herself over her desk and the students in front of her to collide right with his stomach and knock them both to the ground. The room behind her exploded into noise and confusion while she focused on smashing his smug fucking face.
“How’s my background now? Am I suited to this?”
It took ten minutes and three senior students to remove A-Qing from Yu Pengfei. She hadn’t injured him too badly, but she had broken his nose, which almost made up for the guilt coiling in her stomach.
Later that evening, Jiang Cheng found himself in a stalemate with Xiao Qing. She refused to speak from where she knelt in the Great Hall, and he refused let her stand until she said something.
“Zongzhu, you’re going to do something, right?” Yu Pengfei looked a little absurd, holding a cut of meat to his cheek, and he was a limp noodle who was only in Yunmeng because Meishan Yu was tired of him, but he was right. Xiao Qing had to face some consequences for attacking a teacher.
“Do you have anything to say, Xiao Qing?”
Apparently she did not. If she said something, anything, maybe Jiang Cheng could work with her, maybe mediate between her and Yu Pengfei. As it stood, Yu Pengfei wanted her gone and it would take a great deal of persuasion to appease him.
Jiang Cheng didn’t want to expel Xiao Qing. She was smart and brought a new perspective to her lessons and had taken to the whip alarmingly well. He didn’t technically have favorite disciples, that would be unfair. So he needed something to mollify Yu Pengfei.
“Nothing to defend yourself?”
She maintained her sulk.
“Fine. If you want to be silent, be silent during your punishment. Go kneel in the Ancestor Hall until curfew and compose an apology for Yu Pengfei. You’ll deliver it tomorrow morning.”
Finally, she faced him, furious. “How am I supposed to write an apology, zongzhu? Have you forgotten my eyes?”
“Memorize it. It doesn’t have to be beautiful. Now go.” Jiang Cheng hated how much he sounded like his mother, but his time as a child considering his mistakes in the Ancestor Hall had made him more disciplined.
Xiao Qing shook in anger and grit her teeth, then stomped her way out of the hall.
Jiang Cheng set up a tray of food for Xiao Qing and took it to the Ancestor Hall. She was in trouble, sure, but he wasn’t so cruel as to leave her without dinner. And it would give him a chance to check in with her again, maybe figure out why the hell she attacked a teacher.
He stopped just outside the door and looked at Xiao Qing. Now that all her anger and energy had apparently been spent, she looked so small compared to the central fountain, her shoulders drooped but her posture straight. Jiang Cheng was momentarily thrown back a decade, to when he would regularly bring dinner to an unruly but clever disciple.
He was about to call out and end her punishment early when she spoke.
“I know your name’s up there, but I can’t--” Xiao Qing sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know who you are, except zongzhu’s family and A-Ling’s mother. I heard you were kind. So. I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t beat people up if I’m representing your Sect or whatever.”
She was silent for a minute, fiddling with the hem of her sleeves. “I thought I could do it. And I could, for a while. I’m good at the swordwork and the meditation techniques make sense. But the readings… Maybe cultivation isn’t meant for me. Maybe I’m just supposed to die young and dirt poor like my parents did.” She laughed bitterly. “There’s impossible, and then there’s impossible.”
Jiang Cheng pressed his lips into a thin line. He had failed magnificently by not taking a more active role in teaching the new generation of disciples. He set the tray of food at the door of the Ancestor Hall as quietly as possible before returning to his office.
“I’m taking over this class,” Jiang Cheng announced when he swept into the lecture room with a senior cultivator in tow. Yu Pengfei nearly tripped over his robes in his efforts to bow.
“You can leave,” Jiang Cheng added, when Yu Pengfei didn’t move from the front of the room. “Today we’re going over the first chapter of the manual line by line to focus on their applications.”
The cultivator, Liu Cenying, took a seat next to Xiao Qing and explained her purpose: She was in charge of reading texts for her.
“The first few lines of the manual are about how Jiang Chi founded the Sect and wrote down the techniques,” Jiang Cheng began.
Something was wrong with A-Qing. She had been hiding it from herself for months, pretending she was just tired or something, but when she lost in the precision whip section of the monthly skills tournament, she had to accept the facts.
“It’s fine, A-Qing! Guo-shixiong was just better this time!” Dai Qiao patted her arm and did her best to not sound patronizing. It didn’t quite work.
“Xiao Guo is a slow clumsy idiot. If he beat me, that means I’m no better than a slow clumsy idiot.” A-Qing was being a little melodramatic, sure, but her persistent headache was back and her eyes were crossing from the stress of the tournament. Plus: she had missed every single strike with her whip, and she had no idea how.
Her junior pouted, so A-Qing sighed and made herself smile. “You go on ahead, I’m going to stay out for a little while longer.” A-Qing waved Dai Qiao off and waited for the training yard to clear before picking her whip up again. She couldn’t be bad with the whip. Zongzhu himself taught her, since being unable to see the target made firing a bow difficult. She couldn’t let him down.
Whatever was wrong was interfering with her ability to aim. After half an hour of careful practice, A-Qing was once again able to reliably hit the practice dummies. Not as deeply as she wanted, but she was hitting them. Small victories.
She rubbed her tired eyes for a moment. Dusk was falling and her headache was getting worse and she would have to go inside soon but at least--
A-Qing’s heart stopped. With her left eye covered, she stared at the practice yard and the complete void directly in front of her where one of the practice dummies should be.
“No no no no--” This couldn’t be happening--not now--not after so many years of taking advantage of people who assumed she was blind because of her eye color--
She uncovered her left eye, and the practice dummy reappeared. She covered it again and the dummy disappeared. With her heart in her throat, she covered her right eye. At least with her left eye she could see everything.
But it was all blurry. How had she not noticed before? And the detail was disappearing as the sun set. The sounds of the lake changed and suddenly the laughter and shouts from the dining hall felt infinitely far away. Everything about the Jiang Sect stronghold, the dorms and the main hall and the front gate, all felt foreign in the growing dark.
For one horrible moment it was too much. A-Qing stood alone in the training yard and let the sobs break through. She was fifteen and her body was betraying her and she was going to be kicked out of the only home she’d ever known for being useless or a liar or both.
The first fireflies of the night started to fly over the shore. At least I can still see them, A-Qing thought darkly. But it was enough to snap her out of her tears. She dried her eyes and walked to the dining hall for dinner, tapping her sword on the ground with more purpose than she ever had before.
The last meal before students returned home for Mid-Autumn was always Jiang Cheng’s favorite. He wore his most casual robes and cooked his best approximation of Yanli’s pork and lotus root soup and made sure everyone asked the kitchens for their favorite snacks. After a year of quiet, working meals (or, even worse, stuffy cultivation conferences), it was nice to eat surrounded by kids fighting over plates and who was the best archer.
This year he had five students at the table with him, as well as Jin Ling, who, after an assassination attempt on Jin Guangyao, was spending the holiday in Lotus Pier. They were engaged in a heated conversation over who was the best and worst singer of the bunch. If Jiang Cheng was lucky, they would wait to demonstrate their skills until after he retired for the night.
“You’re all wrong!” Jin Ling leaned over the table to be heard. “Qing-shijie is the best singer!”
“You’re just saying that because she sneaks you candy,” Guo Xiaowen teased. When Jin Ling stuck his tongue out at him, he retaliated by throwing a fried chestnut at him.
Unfortunately, Guo Xiaowen’s aim left something to be desired, and the chestnut fell instead on Jiang Cheng’s plate. The boy blushed bright red and looked ready to melt into the floor. “Ah! Zongzhu, I didn’t--”
Jiang Cheng huffed and rolled his eyes with a smile before pushing the chestnut aside. “Don’t do it again. Jin Ling might get ideas.” He watched as Guo Xiaowen (and several other students) visibly relaxed and went back to their “discussion.” And if another chestnut was thrown at someone, well, Jiang Cheng made a point not to notice.
His heart twisted in that fond, sweet way. Lotus Pier was returning to its proper state. Sometimes it felt like he would never be able to truly rebuild the Sect and they would fade into obscurity, the final casualty of the Sunshot Campaign. But whenever he saw his students push the rules or laugh in an unguarded way, he knew he was at least making progress.
Next to him, on the other side of Jin Ling, was an uncharacteristically quiet Xiao Qing. She had barely spoken all night, not even to defend herself against accusations of being a good singer.
“What’s wrong, Xiao Qing?” Jiang Cheng teased. “You don’t think you’re above a little dinner argument, do you?”
She blinked slowly and sighed. “I’m fine. I just have a headache.”
Jiang Cheng frowned in concern, but rather than push her, he refilled her bowl of soup. It had always worked for Jiang Yanli when they were children. “Eat some more, then. We can’t have the pork going to waste.” When Xiao Qing was ready, she would talk to him.
The next morning, he and Jin Ling and Xiao Qing said goodbye to all of the disciples and wished them good luck on their trips home. Then Xiao Qing went into town to mess around and Jin Ling ran to his room to play with his gold foils.
Jiang Cheng sighed fondly, in the exact tone he’d heard Jiang Yanli sigh once upon a time, and retired to his office to plan which night hunts the disciples would go on when they returned from the holiday. There were some small water ghosts down-river that would be a wonderful first night hunt for the current class. It was important work, as most of the villages on the river depended on the Jiang Sect to keep the waters safe, but it was also simple work. Perhaps the best disciples could help him check on the seals on the Waterborne Abyss in Caiyi.
Xiao Qing didn’t return for lunch. That was fine. She probably bought something in town and had it billed to the Sect. The restaurants and shopkeeps were used to that sort of behavior.
Xiao Qing didn’t return at sunset. That was less fine, but he could discipline her when she made it home. He’d certainly stayed out too late when he was her age, although he was usually with someone else, and he wasn’t blind. But Jiang Cheng trusted her. She was a smart kid.
Xiao Qing didn’t return for dinner. And when he checked the dorms, in case she had snuck in without him noticing, he saw that her best clothes and boots were missing.
Zidian crackled loudly on Jiang Cheng’s wrist when he bellowed for the staff to search for her. “Find me Xiao Qing immediately!”
He managed to calm down enough to settle the electricity when he explained the situation to Jin Ling.
“Qing-jiejie’s gone? Where?” Jin Ling let the gold foil tower collapse to grab Fairy’s lead. “Can we help?”
“You can help by staying here, A-Ling.” Jiang Cheng scritched Fairy’s head. “I can’t worry about both of you at the same time.”
“You wouldn’t have to worry! I’m very good at hide and seek!” Jin Ling’s eyebrows scrunched up and he stuck out his chin. “I have to help!”
Jiang Cheng glared back. “Jin Ling. Do not step off the Pier until we find Xiao Qing.”
It was a long minute before Jin Ling broke eye contact. “Fine, I promise.”
“Good.” Jiang Cheng kissed his forehead. “And thank you for worrying. You’re a good kid.” He left to search town.
In Jin Ling’s defense, he did his absolute best to wait for his uncle. But after an hour there was no sign of Qing-jiejie or jiujiu or anything else, so he had to do something.
So he left his room (with Fairy! So he wasn’t alone!) and searched Lotus Pier for clues, hiding from the staff in case any of them ratted him out to Jiang Cheng.
Qing-jiejie’s half of her room with Dai Qiao was usually a mess. She made Jin Ling clean it when he lost to her at games. Now it was neater than Dai Qiao’s side, with all the practice robes folded neatly at the foot of the bed next to the practice weapons and unused cultivation manuals.
Actually, Dai Qiao’s side of the room was extra messy. All her talismans were scattered on her bed in little piles. Jin Ling looked at them more closely, and most were there. Except the flame talismans and the ones used to move boats faster.
Aha! A clue! Qing-jiejie must have taken a boat! And technically, getting on a boat wasn’t stepping off Lotus Pier.
So, really, stealing a boat to follow A-Qing was the right thing to do, even if it was a small boat and he wasn’t good at sailing and Fairy was a bad passenger.
The moon was bright enough to see by. If you could see. Which A-Qing couldn’t.
In previous years, A-Qing loved the full moon. It was more than bright enough for her to set up a small camp, maybe wedged in a tree, maybe just next to some bushes, and no one would notice her. All the bandits who travelled the same roads she did had to light fires every night, so she could steer clear of them, or maybe even sneak up and steal their provisions when they fell asleep.
Now she was stuck debating whether it was worth it to use one of her flame talismans to start a fire. The light would keep away animals for a while, and she could use it to cook dinner.
But she only had so many talismans, and between her terrible handwriting and her worsening eyesight, she couldn’t make more. And it was still warm enough that she didn’t need the heat of the fire. So maybe it would be better to save it for later in the season.
“Fuck this,” she muttered, not for the first time that night. “Fuck this!” she added, because there were no annoying elder disciples to yell at her for her language.
She opted to draw a protection array around the edges of her campsite and go without the fire. She had made zongzhu teach her how to write the protection arrays and spirit repelling talismans back when she was only pretending to be blind.
Well. He wasn’t her zongzhu anymore. He was just Jiang Wanyin, some rich fuck who would forget her, like all adults and rich fucks. The sooner A-Qing redefined him in her head, redefined everyone in Lotus Pier, the sooner she would be back to her old, independent self.
She wiped her eyes and stared at the moon. At least she could still see it shining above her, even if she couldn’t see the rabbit anymore.
She had gotten weak in the last few years. She knew better than to care this much about a home--about a waystation. She was a wanderer who belonged on the road, by herself. Leaving was the right thing to do.
A cloud passed over the moon and A-Qing had to bite her knuckle to control her breath.
A voice from somewhere on the river was calling her name.
It was probably some resentful spirit, frustrated that A-Qing had already drawn the protection array around her camp. She ignored it.
The voice sounded again, closer this time. It almost sounded like Jin Ling.
“Rude,” she muttered. “Wait until I try to settle or exorcise you before you start pulling out the emotional appeals.” Fucking spirits.
She had decided it was nothing at all when she heard it again. “Qing-jiejie! Where are you?”
A-Qing snapped up and looked out over the water. That was definitely Jin Ling. Water ghosts weren’t that good at mimicking voices and they never quite got the hang of honorifics and family titles.
“Jin Ling?” A-Qing started stripping off her outer layers as she ran to the shore of the river. She couldn’t see much, beyond the handful of lanterns that the town had released earlier that night, but there was a shadow about fifty feet upriver. “Jin Ling are you out there?”
Jin Ling cheered and Fairy barked from the direction of the shape. “Found you! We were worried!” Then there was a loud squeak, a splash, and a series of barks.
“A-Ling you fucking idiot!” A-Qing shouted before jumping into the river.
It was horrifying, swimming in near-total darkness, against the current, with reeds and other plants winding around her ankles. But Jin Ling was thrashing in the water enough that she had a good idea of where to swim.
The river hadn’t been cleansed recently, A-Qing remembered in a flash. A few animals had drowned in the summer floods. Was that near here? Were there restless spirits in the water? She pushed herself to swim a little faster.
Her heart nearly stopped when she felt cold hands grab onto her shoulders, but then chubby legs wrapped around her torso and Jin Ling was squeezing the life out of her, so she could survive. “Qing-jiejie! Are you okay? You were gone so long--”
“I’m not talking to you,” she growled. “Hold on and tell me if I’m going in the right direction.” She swam roughly in the direction she came from, with minimal guidance from Jin Ling and Fairy (who seemed to think this was all a fun adventure, because dogs were fucking horrible), before dumping the boy on the shore.
“What the hell are you doing here and not at Lotus Pier?”
“We came looking for you,” Jin Ling said, and Fairy barked happily in agreement. “I thought maybe you’d gotten lost. You shouldn’t be on a boat by yourself if you can’t see.”
A-Qing huffed in anger and reached into her bag. She would have to waste one of her precious flame talismans to dry off their clothes, or else Jin Ling would catch a cold and she would be stuck with the stench of wet dog for the rest of her journey. “You shouldn’t be on a boat by yourself at all. You’re too young.”
Jin Ling crawled over to the now-crackling fire and said, “I wasn’t by myself, I had Fairy.”
“Fairy doesn’t count! She sank your boat!” The dog in question ignored A-Qing and circled the fire twice before settling down.
“But you saved me, so it’s all good.” Jin Ling leaned against A-Qing and stuck his wet grimy hands around her in a disgusting hug.
“Should have let you drown,” A-Qing muttered, but she sat down and pulled Jin Ling into her lap. “Now hurry and dry yourself off, I have to be on my way as soon as possible and I can’t send you back to Lotus Pier sopping wet.”
Jin Ling shifted in A-Qing’s lap to look at her. “On your way? Where are you going?”
Shit, she had been hoping to avoid this question and the note of fear on the edge of Jin Ling’s voice. “I’m going travelling. I’m not made to stay in one place and I’ve stayed in Yunmeng too long.”
“But you’ll come back home, right?” Jin Ling’s voice got higher and quieter, and for all that A-Qing couldn’t see the tears in his eyes, she could feel how his body was tensing for the worst. Fairy made an unhappy noise and looked around for what was disturbing Jin Ling. “You’re not leaving, just going on a visit.”
“Lotus Pier isn’t--” Isn’t my home, she wanted to say. It was true and she knew it and she wished she believed it. “It’s not mine. Not like it’s yours.”
“No!” Jin Ling fisted his hands in A-Qing’s robes and shook her as hard as his six-year-old arms could. “No, you’re not leaving!”
A-Qing pulled Jin Ling close and rubbed his back until he let himself cry. “I don’t know what to say, buddy.” How could she explain that she was blind for real now, and had been lying for years? That from now on, she would be a detriment to the Jiang name, and it would be better to leave the Sect to preserve its reputation?
She opened her mouth to say something comforting, but was interrupted by another two barks from Fairy. In the firelight, she could see that the dog wasn’t facing them, but rather the river. A-Qing stretched out her senses to the surrounding area and discovered two things. First, the protection array she had drawn around her camp had been broken, probably by a sopping wet child crawling carelessly. And second, something resentful was emerging from the water.
“A-Ling,” A-Qing said, her voice low and steady. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“No,” he said into her chest. “I don’t wanna.”
“Jin Ling,” she said again, and at that he stopped crying. She never used his full name. “In a minute I’m going to stand up. I need you to stand right next to the fire, okay?” A-Qing fumbled around for her qiankun pouch and pulled out all the talismans to hand to Jin Ling. “And when I say so, you have to close your eyes real tight and throw one of the flame talismans into the fire. Can you do that?”
“Why? You already have a fire.”
“I want a bigger one. Are you ready?” She waited until Jin Ling nodded to put him down. “And if I tell you to run, I want you to run into the forest with Fairy. I’ll catch up, I promise.”
A-Qing was kind of glad she couldn’t see Jin Ling’s face. Instead, she could focus on standing casually, rolling her shoulders like she had no cares in the world, and walking in the vague direction of the shore. Whatever guai was crawling its way towards the camp didn’t register her as a threat. Yet.
The instant she was within striking distance (she could tell by the putrid smell), A-Qing held out her hand and her sword flew into action. She cut the guai twice before it realized it should move, but by then it was hemmorhaging ichor and could barely raise a limb in defense.
Unfortunately, the combination of ichor and movement woke up other spirits in the vicinity. There was more splashing in the water, and A-Qing could feel the change in air pressure that usually heralded ghosts moving in from the forest.
“Jin Ling! Now!”
The fire behind A-Qing tripled in size, bathing everything in more than enough light to blind everything that made the mistake of looking near it. As an added bonus, it was enough light to let A-Qing actually see what was going on.
The splashing at the shore was an army of frog guai, half of which were focused on the corpse of the previous guai, and the other half focused on Fairy and Jin Ling. The energy from the forest was just one ghost, but a fresh one with enough emotional attachments and anger about her death that she came with an intimidating cloud of resentment.
A-Qing threw her sword to the forest where it could hold off the ghost for a few minutes. Then she pulled the whip off her hip and struck at the frog army, aiming more to make intimidating noises than to actually kill every single creature. The fire started to die down, making it hard for her to aim, but after a handful of cracks of the whip, she heard dramatic frog screams and more splashes in the water.
“A-Ling, again!” The second blaze of light confirmed what she had suspected: the frogs were retreating. She turned her attention to the forest and called her sword back to her hand. She slashed furiously at the ghost, channeling her qi to add extra strength to her blows. The ghost dove forward and clawed at A-Qing’s legs.
Jin Ling screamed in terror, but A-Qing ignored him, trusting that Fairy would protect him for the moment. Instead, she dropped to the ground and sprawled over the ghost. When she had hold of all the ghost’s limbs, she started chanting one of the Jiang Sect sutras for quieting restless spirits. The ghost twisted underneath A-Qing for a moment before the combination of qi and grievous injuries became too much. The ghost’s talons retracted and her screams died off as she disappeared into mist.
A-Qing took a moment to rest on the ground before rolling over. “Did you get hurt?”
Jin Ling sniffed once before saying, “No,” in a wet voice and crawling over to hug A-Qing. “Did you?”
“Probably,” A-Qing said with a light laugh. “But I won’t know until tomorrow morning.” She wrapped her arm around Jin Ling and pretended to not notice how he was crying into her chest.
When his breathing finally settled, she shook him a little and said, “That’s enough rest, I’ve got to set up the protection array again before we sleep. Then first thing tomorrow I’ll drop you back home.” Jin Ling made an unhappy noise when he slid off her, but otherwise didn’t argue.
Fairy, on the other hand, felt that the moment A-Qing stood was the perfect time to run off into the woods and probably get herself killed.
“Ah! No, Fairy--”
“Leave her, A-Ling. If she dies, it’s her fault. And if you leave this circle, I’ll kill you, and that will be your fault.” A-Qing focused on drawing the array with the tip of her sword on the dirt below. The dog would return when she was bored.
There was a crashing from the forest, accompanied by Fairy’s happy barks. Someone was approaching their camp.
“A-Ling, pick up another flame talisman and get ready to light it.” A-Qing quickly finished the array around the camp and waited. The second the intruder broke through the forest, she pointed her sword in their direction.
Before she could say anything appropriately threatening, Jin Ling barreled past her (managing to not scuff the array this time, thankfully). “Jiujiu! Look!”
“Xiao Qing?” Jiang Cheng grunted when Jin Ling launched himself into his grasp. “A-Ling! What are you doing here?”
“Looking for Qing-jiejie. And I found her!”
A-Qing sheathed her sword and gave a shallow bow. “I was going to escort him home in the morning, when he was dry and rested. Because some idiot decided to dump himself in the river in the middle of the night.”
“And then?” Jiang Cheng didn’t sound livid, not yet, but he was close.
A-Qing ignored his tone. “Then I was going to travel down the river. I’ve left Yunmeng Jiang and I’m going to be a wandering cultivator.”
“You--” Fairy howled in key with Jiang Cheng’s shout. He took a sharp breath through his nose before continuing at a more reasonable volume. “What makes you think you can just leave?”
“What, am I your prisoner, now? Wait until everyone hears that Jiang-zongzhu kidnaps young women!”
“You’re not a young woman, you’re my best student, now pack your things and let’s go home!”
“I’m not, though!” A-Qing was tired already of the stress of pretending she was blind for years. Exhausted pretending she was fine and not in mourning for the first family she had ever really felt. She knew the smart thing, the kind thing, would be to stop pretending. “I’m blind and I’m getting worse and I’m only going to drag down the Jiang name. You won’t want me in the Sect in a few years, so I’m just saving you the trouble of kicking me out.”
Jiang Cheng set Jin Ling down and rubbed his temples. “Is this about the competition last week? Because if it is--”
“I used to be able to see.” A-Qing’s stomach dropped uncomfortably. She was almost being honest, and it was terrifying and the worst thing she’d had to do in years. “Not much, just enough to mean I wasn’t entirely helpless, y’know? And now I can’t, and losing that stupid competition is just the start, soon I’m not going to be able to do anything--”
“Xiao Qing,” Jiang Cheng interrupted. “It doesn’t matter. You joined the Jiang Sect, you’re a member of the Jiang Sect, regardless of how skilled you are.”
“That’s how we explain Yu Pengfei,” Jin Ling said brightly. Then, presumably because of a glare from Jiang Cheng, he added, “Sorry, I wasn’t supposed to repeat that.”
A-Qing was not crying, because she wasn’t going to cry today, she had promised herself when she woke up. But some blood and ichor had sprayed onto her face during the fighting, so she wiped it away. Fairy pressed herself against A-Qing’s leg in an completely unnecessary show of comfort.
“Besides, I see those guai corpses behind you. You aren’t helpless now and you won’t be in the future.” Jiang Cheng stepped forward awkwardly, reached up his hands, and after a moment of thought, patted her shoulder twice.
A-Qing had a home, somehow. One that wasn’t conditional or dependent on her performance. And apparently she could keep doing what she loved even as her eyes changed. She had not prepared for this possibility. This was not what she had expected. A great deal had happened to A-Qing in the last hour and she wasn’t sure she could keep it all in.
Jin Ling yawned, breaking the tension still woven through A-Qing’s entire body. She laughed lightly and stepped back into her camp. “I guess I should pack so we can go home and get you to bed.”
“And then you’re not leaving your room except for meals and chores, A-Ling” Jiang Cheng growled. “You’re in big trouble.”
“What?” Jin Ling whined. “I found Qing-jiejie! I should be rewarded!”
“You found me by running away in a boat you couldn’t steer,” A-Qing pointed out. “You’re lucky zongzhu isn’t breaking your legs.”
“Don’t think you’re getting away without punishment, Xiao Qing,” Jiang Cheng snapped. “You’re also stuck in your room except for meals.”
A-Qing huffed, but didn’t argue. A short grounding was a fair price for a stable home. She tucked the last of her bedroll into her qiankun pouch and smoored the fire. “Ready to go back, zongzhu.”
He led the way through the forest, to the main road. “I’m not sure I trust you not to run away again, Xiao Qing. You’re moving to the room next to A-Ling’s, so we’ll be able to hear you sneaking out.”
A-Qing nearly tripped. That wasn’t a dorm for a disciple. That room was deep in the compound. All she could say was, “Yes, zongzhu.”