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When Zhou Zishu was a little girl, her shifu had told her that the way to survive was to make sure that your enemy did not know they were your enemy until you were ready to strike.
The Valley Master had been fond of her, because she was efficient and loyal and beautiful, but too cold and lifeless to bother with. He had allowed her to inspect his food and keep watch while he slept. He had believed her, when she had said that his most powerful ghosts were scheming against him, and should be eliminated.
He had let her administer the lashes to those who dared displease him.
The Valley Master had trusted her, as much as he was capable of such a thing.
Which was why he screamed for hours before he died, clawing his own eyes out and tearing great bloody gashes into his flesh.
No one came to offer any help.
Zhou Zishu watched, unflinching, as he finally choked on his tongue, and silently thanked her shifu.
She had only spent short months as a disciple of the Healer Valley, before her parents and the Qin family had been forced to go into hiding and taken her along. Before the ghosts had caught up to them and Zhou Zishu was the only one left.
She had never been much of a healer in any case, squeamish around blood despite her best efforts and courteous with patients but uninterested in small everyday ailments. No, she had always been more interested in mixing powders and herbs, and the things they could do to a person. Gu Miaomiao, indulging her disciple's curiosity, had taught her that one didn't need a sword to inflict a painful death. Ingredients were scarce in the Valley, but she had learned to make do.
And despite the Mengpo Soup, she had never forgotten her shifu's advice.
At the crack of her whip, the ghosts gathered below stopped their fighting and, as if as one, turned their eyes to the heavy metal crown in her hand.
“The Valley Master is dead,” she announced.
Her statement did not elicit much of a reaction. They had all heard the wailing.
“ You think you can rule us, Poison Ghost?” Some brave soul dared to ask.
“No,” she said, simply, and let the crown fall into their midst.
Let them all kill each other over it , she thought. Let this whole place burn to the ground.
No one noticed as she scaled the fortifications and vanished into the night.
It was a long journey to the capital, but the Valley Master had had a lot of gold, and there was a lot of wine to be had along the way. She slept under bridges, rented rooms in expensive inns, and revelled in the fact that she was unlikely to be stabbed in the back every time she decided to take a nap.
But although being a jianghu wanderer certainly had its appeal, she couldn’t linger too long. Not until she had answers. Someone would know, in the capital, who had sold out her father and Qin-shu. She wasn’t so naive as to think she might still have allies there, but with her skillset it wouldn’t take her long to make a name for herself, and she was very good at making people talk.
At least that had been the plan, until she’d heard of the so-called Heroes’ Conference and gotten a little sidetracked. The jianghu was in upheaval since rumours had started linking the Five Lakes Alliance to the long-lost World's Armoury, and Gao Chong had finally agreed to discuss the situation. As Zhou Zishu held the key to the damned thing, she could hardly miss the event.
In the meantime, she spent enough time in taverns to pick up on some common jianghu codes, and even successfully used some of them. Having been cut off from the world of the living for so long, she felt like an ignorant child most of the time.
In her attempts to gather as much information as possible, she had even tried to charm her way into some idiot’s good graces a few times, but she had neither the talent nor the patience for it.
Unlike the lady in white robes sitting across the room, who had a whole table raptly hanging onto her every word as she recounted her noble deeds as a traveling doctor. She was animated, her voice deep and pleasant. Zhou Zishu found herself idly listening in , until the woman said:
“Back home, in the Valley, even children can easily do such things.”
Zhou Zishu straightened abruptly from her comfortable slouch, eyes locking onto the stranger. The Healer Valley, she had recently learned, had been sealed off for over a decade. The men at her table were also shocked for a moment, and then erupted into a flurry of questions.
"You're from the Healer Valley? So it has reopened!”
“Can people visit it? My sister—”
“Say, is it true what they say about Chief Zhen?"
The woman had been watching them with amusement, but her eyes narrowed at that last question.
"What do they say about Chief Zhen? That she is a peerless youthful beauty, generous and magnanimous like no other, a great lover of women?"
As she finished her statement, she caught Zhou Zishu's eyes.
The man she’d been addressing, like Zhou Zishu, was left speechless. The woman laughed.
“Enough, enough for today. I’m sure I will see you all at the conference, where my Lady will make all of this clear.”
“She will attend?”
“She will... make an appearance.”
With those weighted last words, she got to her feet with an elegant sweep of her robes and crossed the room... to sit at Zhou Zishu’s table.
“I right the wrongs I see in this world," the woman told her. "And if there is something I can't abide, it's a great beauty drinking alone.”
Well. This was shaping up to be an unexpected evening, Zhou Zishu thought. The woman motioned for a waiter to bring more wine, which convinced Zhou Zishu not to get up and leave right away.
“Are you really from the Healer Valley?” she asked, still not quite believing that the place she'd known could have produced such a character.
“I am! If you need me to… take a look at anything, just say the word. I am at your disposal.”
The woman filled both their cups, and Zhou Zishu wondered which master could have raised such a shameless disciple.
“The Lady you mentioned… She’s a young woman?”
There had been a bloody conflict, long ago. Vicious enough for the Healer Valley to have closed its doors to those in need. What casualties had they suffered? Had Zhen Ruyu not been next in line to inherit?
"Yes, as I said! And… I am her disciple in all things."
She looked up at Zhou Zishu from under her eyelashes, but Zhou Zishu was hardly in a mood to be made eyes at.
There had been no other Zhen children in her time at the Valley, so was little Zhen Yan…?
Zhen Yan. Little Zhen Yan who had thought it so funny that Zhou Zishu was afraid of blood. Zhou Zishu had taught her how to skip stones on the river.
“Oh, but I haven’t introduced myself! Wen, Wen Kexing.”
Zhou Zishu sighed, putting the pieces together.
Little Zhen Yan, who had apparently grown up to be a great pervert. Who was most definitely planning to stir up trouble at the Heroes' Conference.
But who wandered the jianghu to heal people, upholding her parents’ legacy.
While Zhou Zishu — Zhou Zishu wasn’t afraid of blood anymore.
“Zhou Xu,” she replied.