Chapter Text
Yu Mei-ren sighed. She had been walking for hours and everything still looked the same. Was it possible to get lost when you didn’t have a destination in mind? Apparently so.
She had been chased out of the town she had been hiding in again, and the villagers were so persistent she ended up having to flee into the nearby mountains. She could have just killed them, but she had been through this process enough times by now to know that doing that sort of thing just caused more rumours to pop up and led more people to come looking for her. There was no point in killing humans, ants like them died quickly and constantly without her to help the process along.
Ugh! How the hell was this mountain so confusing?? It wasn’t that she needed a path down, if she could find a cliff than she could just throw herself off the mountain and then regenerate when she hit the bottom, but all she could see was trees no matter which direction she went. It was like she was stuck in a valley instead of stranded in the mountains!
Yu Mei-ren had started debating with herself whether using her abilities to just blow away the trees was worth the attention it might draw to her when she heard something. That sound… she was pretty confident it wasn’t a wild animal. It definitely sounded like a person.
Peeking cautiously through the trees to the nearby river, Yu Mei-ren saw a fisherman. He was pulling up a net filled with fish out of the water, grunting from the effort as he hoisted it over his shoulder.
He was struggling with just that much weight? Typical weakling human. But if someone was living out here in the mountains and felt the need to catch that many fish, there must be a village nearby.
Yu Mei-ren found herself conflicted. The idea that there were people living so close to her, especially if they were superstitious rural types, was concerning. Even if they stayed in the town most of the time, someone would eventually catch a glimpse of her if she stayed here, and then the rumours of ‘the woman in the woods’ would start. And then, sooner or later, more and more people would come looking for her, until she got chased off again, like had happened many times before. At the same time, though, she didn’t intend to stay here for a while to begin with. If she could sneak in without being spotted and find a map of the neighbouring mountains, then she would be able to leave without any worry.
She sighed. It was frustrating, but she really did want to get off the mountains. Even in the worse case scenario, it’s not like these people could do anything to hurt her. She began to silently follow the fisherman through the trees.
“What the heck is this?” Yu Mei-ren mumbled, dumbfounded. When she had seen a person living here, she had expected a small mountain village like so many that she had seen before, both on the mainland and in this new island country. But instead, all of these buildings and this massive lake… from the top of the cliff Yu Mei-ren was looking down from, she saw more people gathered around outside, moving about and doing menial jobs, than she could count. A settlement like this… there had to be thousands of people living here.
But why? A remote place like this, up in the mountains… it didn’t make sense for so many people to have gathered and chosen to live here. Humans might be foolish creatures who Yu Mei-ren could never really understand, but this still went against everything she thought she knew about them.
Yu Mei-ren shook herself out of her confusion. Even if this didn’t make sense, if this many people lived here, it made getting away and finding somewhere else all the more important. It might be a bit trickier than she was expecting, but she really was hoping to get a map.
Yu Mei-ren climbed down the cliff and slowly slinked her way towards the edge of the settlement. She hid around the edge of the trees and looked at a footpath leading into the place. Approaching from here would probably mean she would get seen as she tried to sneak in, so she should probably enter through the trees.
But how else should she go about this? She could try to pretend to be a traveler trekking through the mountains, but doing that would probably mean she would have to deal with a bunch of questions, especially since she was just a single person, not to mention a woman. Perhaps she could try to just blend in? A place as big as this, most likely the people here wouldn’t be able to recognize every single person’s face. But if she tried that, there would be a solid chance of her accidently making a mistake that could get her recognized as an outsider, especially since this settlement seemed so unusual. With how open and large the place was, using stealth would be difficult… unless she waited for night. Yes, that was probably the safest approach…
“Huh?! A stranger?! How are you here?!” Yu Mei-ren jumped in shock, manifesting a sword of blood on instinct, and turning to face the voice. The voice came from a fisherman, a different one than the one she had seen earlier, staring at her, looking confused and frightened. She clicked her tongue in annoyance. Of course this would happen, she was too careless and didn’t check if she could be seen coming up the path, only from the gate. “How could you have— The mistress’s wards should have stopped you from reaching here!”
Yu Mei-ren for a moment prepared to throw the sword she was carrying and will it to cut off the man’s head, but stopped herself. She had no compunctions about killing him, but if she did, then it was possible that his death would motivate the other people of the village to pursue her in hopes of revenge. She could just kill him and destroy the body immediately after, but people would probably notice he was missing and search for him anyway, and likely find her in the process. Either way, she would be found and chased; her best bet would be to run now before they could properly organize and catch her.
Yu Mei-ren’s sword disappeared and she turned and leaped, flying over the man’s head before landing and beginning to run away at her full speed. The man stared agape for a moment before recovering. “Hey, stop!” He shouted, like that would actually accomplish anything. Yu Mei-ren’s keen senses let her hear him run up the path even as she put distance between him and begin to shout. She grimaced. What a nuisance this had ended up becoming.
Yu Mei-ren was getting tired of these people’s competence and persistence. Unlike the barely organized rural mobs she was so familiar with, these people had sent out a proper search party for her. Even as they split up into groups to widen their search through the woods, they stayed in groups of two with every person carrying a strange instrument Yu Mei-ren guessed was meant to contact all the other groups, so she couldn’t just pick off those who came too close to her. But that wasn’t even the most frustrating part of this.
She had been in situations like this enough times now that she had thought she was familiar with all the tricks humans attempted to employ, but as the people continued to search into the evening, she found herself confronted with a baffling unknown element. The groups of separated people had begun to peter out and be replaced with exceedingly bizarre, large, animate dolls. Yu Mei-ren had no idea what to make of them beyond the fact that they were filled with magical energy, and while she knew they couldn’t do anything to hurt her, not truly, she still found herself wary to get close to them. Even beyond that, she found that for some reason, their appearance evoked a sort of… strange familiarity in her, but all that did was make her even more annoyed.
So here she had found herself, sitting in a tree for hours. Her! At this point, she was seriously considering just deciding to kill everyone in that settlement so they’d leave her alone, with how isolated they were she probably wouldn’t have to deal with anyone finding their corpses and telling stories that would draw attention to her. And maybe after she did that, she could level this whole damn mountain… she didn’t know how long it would take, but she had all the time in the world, and this mountain had pissed her off enough for her to feel it deserved it.
“What is the delay, foreman?” Yu Mei-ren focused, her keen senses picking up a new voice nearby in the forest, a stern feminine one she hadn’t heard among the search party before.
“M-mistress!” Another voice, the one belonging to the leader of the search party, spoke next. “Why are you— you didn’t need to—”
“The commotion was disturbing me. It’s taking too much time and manpower for you all to handle this yourself, so I’ve decided to handle this myself so everyone can get back to work sooner.”
“Mistress, t-there’s no need for you to—” He sounded like he was pleading now. Pathetic.
“That is enough, foreman. Give me your report.”
“Y-yes, mistress!” The man said. “We haven’t managed to find the intruder, but we’ve formed a perimeter around this part of the forest! We at least are sure that they are somewhere within there.”
Yu Mei-ren bit back a curse. They had managed to surround her? How had she not noticed that?
“Hm. Very well.” A shuffling noise, Yu Mei-ren couldn’t make out exactly what it was. “I will take some of the dolls with me and seize the intruder myself. Have the rest of the dolls and men maintain the circle. I’m curious about the strange abilities that they were described to have, but assuming nothing captures my attention, I’ll erase their memory and release them back down the mountain as usual.”
“Mistress, I don’t mean to offend, but, uh, how do you intend to find them on your own? We’ve been searching for hours and still aren’t entirely sure where they are…”
“I already know where they are.” Huh? “This individual… they aren’t a normal person, I can tell. I can sense the magical energy they are emanating.”
Yu Mei-ren gritted her teeth. This woman, she must be some sort of sorceress. That was even worse than the superstitious mob of commonfolk that Yu Mei-ren normally had to deal with. If she discovered Yu Mei-ren’s nature, she would definitely try to keep hold of her to try and discover the secrets of immortality. Yu Mei-ren created another sword. This woman wasn’t an easily-frightened insect like other humans, she was a true enemy willing to push beyond her means. Yu Mei-ren was going to kill her.
“What are you waiting around for?!” The woman snapped. “I don’t have time for you to sit around! Get in position!”
“Y-yes, mistress!” The man stuttered. Yu Mei-ren listened to him run off. The woman took a sigh, before she started walking forward alongside several of those dolls. True to what she was saying, the sounds of the footsteps told Yu Mei-ren the woman was walking directly towards her, knowing where to look.
Yu Mei-ren crouched down, tensing, and counted the footsteps of the woman as they approached. She gripped her sword so hard her knuckles whitened. She was going to behead her in a single swing, before the woman could cast a single spell.
As the woman got closer and closer, she began to move slower. It didn’t matter how cautious she thought she was being, Yu Mei-ren’s senses were better than hers. Yu Mei-ren was only going to move at the exact moment she needed to.
After moment after moment of waiting with the air thick with tension, eventually, after what felt like forever, that woman sloooowly took that final step. The very instant her foot touched the grass, Yu Mei-ren pounced like a wildcat, baring her fangs. She saw the figure look up as she dove down from the treetop and tense, but it was too late. Yu Mei-ren swung her sword with enough force to slice her head off in one clean blow… and found her blade bouncing off a barrier of magical energy.
“Gah!” Yu Mei-ren gasped, falling down on her back. Damn it! The woman sprung into action in response, rushing at Yu Mei-ren and reaching out her arm to grab— no, to try and shove something at her face. Yu Mei-ren snarled. It didn’t matter, by the time this woman reached her, Yu Mei-ren would be able to explode herself, killing this woman without letting her even touch her.
The woman ran up and swung her hand back, ready to slam what she was holding down onto Yu Mei-ren, but right before Yu Mei-ren blew herself up, the two of them froze. The woman’s one visible eye widened, and she gasped. “L-lady Yu?”
Yu Mei-ren was too stunned to speak. This woman, it couldn’t be her. The last time she had seen her had been hundreds of years ago, at least. She shouldn’t be here, no, she couldn’t be here! She should be rotting in the ground like all other humans, but somehow, even still, this woman was…!
“Ha…” The woman’s shocked look slowly changed into a slightly manic smile. “Hahahahahah!” She giggled hysterically, before leaping down on top of Yu Mei-ren.
Yu Mei-ren gasped. Her grip on her sword slowly loosened before it fell and disappeared as the woman pulled her into a crushingly tight hug.
“LADY YUUUUU!” Xu Fu squeed, Yu Mei-ren beginning to feel her shoulder become wet with tears of joy.