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Three natural disasters, four famines—his work was done.
Ye Xiu turned his back on the burning city and sauntered down the hill. Around him were the remains of his earlier destruction: blighted earth, scorched farmhouses, and the withered husks of hundreds of felled trees. Off to his right, a pale streak in the once-vibrant landscape snaked seaward. The river was nearly bone-dry; soon it would be but the memory of water, and the citizens of Shaoxing would have nothing to save them. They would scatter to the winds, plead mercy from the cold winter, and be turned away.
Some of Shaoxing’s people, Ye Xiu knew, had boarded the merchant ships and pleasure barges that had unwisely lingered at port. He decided he didn’t mind this. Let them believe they had escaped his wrath. Let them believe they would find salvation on distant shores. Mortals were short-lived, and he had already visited three lifetimes’ worth of torment upon them. They would not rest easy for the remainder of their days.
In any case, he had better places to be. Autumn was well underway, and the coming winter would not be a kind one.
* * *
Autumn was almost at an end, and the wind was colder than it should be.
Su Muqiu closed his eyes.
“Sect Leader?”
He opened them again. The ruins of Shaoxing still stood before him. The blackened and broken walls, the rotting bodies strewn across the roads and stairs, the tattered banners, the ash-smoke scent—it was all exactly as he’d feared.
“Sect Leader…”
After taking a deep, fortifying breath, he turned and regarded his subordinate. Wu Xuefeng was older than he was, and one of the senior brothers he had most looked up to when he first became a disciple. At times, he wondered if their master had made a mistake in not naming Wu Xuefeng as her successor. At times—like now—Su Muqiu felt utterly out of his depth.
“We need to dispose of the dead, first and foremost,” Su Muqiu said firmly. “Before disease spreads.”
Wu Xuefeng pursed his lips and nodded. “I will relay your orders. How shall we…?”
Su Muqiu sighed. “Burn them.”
With another nod, Wu Xuefeng cast his eyes down. His expression was somber.
“Do you know—” But Su Muqiu stopped himself, unsure of how to go on.
Wu Xuefeng calmly encouraged him. “Yes, Sect Leader?”
“You lived here once, didn’t you?” Su Muqiu asked, reluctance and morbid fascination warring within him. “Was there…any family of yours here? Friends?”
To his relief, Wu Xuefeng shook his head. “I lived here for a brief time, but I was born in one of the villages there.” He pointed at the mountains. “A half-day’s trek, following the river uphill, and you’d reach it. Though there isn’t much of a river anymore.”
“Is your family safe, then?” Su Muqiu stared at the rise and fall of the peaks.
“As far as I know.” Wu Xuefeng didn’t look worried. “The curse wouldn’t have affected them.”
“The curse—do you know of it?”
“I know what anyone else from these parts knows. What the city of Shaoxing should have known,” Wu Xuefeng added heavily.
Su Muqiu took a step closer to him and lowered his voice. “And what, exactly, should they have known?”
Wu Xuefeng met his eyes. “That you don’t betray a god.”
* * *
It’s like this: Shaoxing was a great city. It received goods from the villages upriver, traded with the surrounding towns, and boasted who knew how many ancient, storied families. Its smooth roads, well-protected and well-maintained, made it a logical, easy stop for travelers. And when its port was built up to expand trade, Shaoxing became a center for commerce.
From that point on, Shaoxing teemed with activity year-round. During the day, it shone and glittered with wealth. During the night, it seduced and charmed, all sultry promise. It was a lodestone for the industrious as much as it was for the hedonistic. Rumor had it that no one could fail to find success in this great city, so long as they proved deserving of it.
Shaoxing had everything, and it was only getting better. If you find yourself in Shaoxing, people said, good fortune is sure to find you.
It’s like this: those blessed with good fortune often take that blessing for granted.
* * *
Four years ago, when the leaves were falling, Wu Xuefeng visited his birth village. He hadn’t planned to, but once the bulk of his work in the sect had been finished, Su Muqiu insisted he go. According to the sect leader, he deserved a break.
Wu Xuefeng was looking forward to it, honestly. He just wished he hadn’t run into those swamp monsters on the way. Even in clean clothes, the stench was discernible.
But it was his lucky day, for a strong wind blew as he ascended the foothills below his village. The mountain air, chilled and fresh, ought to peel away the swampy reek.
By the time he neared the end of his trek, though, all the mountain air did was remind him of how frigid this place could get.
“Home, sweet home,” Wu Xuefeng muttered under his breath as he crested yet another hill. Then he looked up from the dirt path to gauge the position of the sun and was confronted with the sight of a temple.
Temples were not a rarity in the region. Indeed, they were quite common. But this temple, sitting well ahead of the village’s entrance, had not been here on his last visit only two years ago. Wu Xuefeng stopped in his tracks and stared at it, utterly confused.
“Young Master Wu?” called the monk sweeping the temple’s front steps.
Wu Xuefeng looked into that aged face and exclaimed, “Teacher, it’s you!”
His old teacher grinned and let his broom clatter to the stone floor. He bumbled toward Wu Xuefeng with the speed of a man half his age. “You’ve returned!”
“For a visit,” Wu Xuefeng confirmed, bowing. “I was in the area...”
His old teacher hummed, his gaze as penetrating as ever. “In Shaoxing?”
Dammit. “Yes.”
The monk’s face darkened dramatically. “You ought to have nothing to do with that cursed place.”
Wu Xuefeng was taken aback. He had expected a negative reaction, but this was downright hostile. “I know, but I had to purchase new clothes.”
“And those clothes had to come from Shaoxing? You’d best burn them.”
“I’ll wear something else when I get home,” Wu Xuefeng hastily assured.
“Hmm. Well, go on,” said the monk, showing none of the serenity a monk should possess. “I won’t keep you from your kin. You’ll find the village much changed, I fear, but your house still stands.”
Wu Xuefeng dared to smile at the familiar grumbling. “I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t.”
“You can’t, can you? And just as well. We have ever been wiser than those city folk.”
“Indeed,” Wu Xuefeng replied, disturbed. He soon bid his old teacher farewell and went on his way.
The village wasn’t much changed, actually, not on the surface. But as Wu Xuefeng strolled down the main thoroughfare, he couldn’t help but note the recurring motif of red leaves everywhere. And that, combined with the new temple and the monk’s rancor, was what gave him the greatest sense of foreboding.
* * *
Three years ago, just after winter had set in, Su Muqiu went to his sister to ask her what should be done about Shaoxing’s plight.
“What have you seen of that city? How will the people fare?”
Sitting at the tea table in her personal garden, Su Mucheng stared at the bare branches of the tree above her head and sighed.
“Mucheng?”
“There is nothing you can do to stop it now.”
Su Muqiu frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Three natural disasters, four famines—that is their fate.”
“What?” Alarmed, Su Muqiu rose from his seat. “Are you saying they will all die?”
“Most will.”
“We must help them, then.”
“No!” Su Mucheng was the one looking alarmed now. “Brother, you mustn’t do anything.”
He stared at her. “How can you say that? We are cultivators, and the city of Shaoxing falls under our purview. We can’t just…”
But Su Mucheng shook her head, insistent. “You mustn’t do anything. There is nothing you can do,” she repeated.
Slowly, Su Muqiu sat back down. “Explain it to me. Please.”
“I…” Su Mucheng seemed to be picking over her words. “I am only a seer. I don’t know everything. But…there is a divinity.”
“A god?”
She nodded. “The people of Shaoxing slighted the divinity. Now they will be repaid in kind.”
Su Muqiu barely resisted the urge to slam his head against the table. Matters of divinity were not under a cultivators’ purview—not normally. Not unless that divinity was corrupted, warped, and inarguably a danger to humanity.
“A fallen god…” He shuddered to think of it. But already, plans unfolded in his mind. What weapons, talismans, spells, artifacts did the sect keep stored away that could counter a divinity capable of wiping out a city the size of Shaoxing?
“But they are not fallen.”
Su Muqiu blinked and refocused on Su Mucheng’s face. “No?”
“No.” She said it with such certainty that Su Muqiu was temporarily stymied.
Still, he had to ask. “You’re sure of this?”
“A divinity of such power must be honored and respected,” Su Mucheng said. “Long have the people of Shaoxing affirmed their devotion. Only recently did they choose a different path—a dangerous one. What they must endure now is the result of their own actions.”
Su Muqiu pondered that for a while. Karmic retribution was indeed not something a cultivator should interfere in. Everyone had to suffer the consequences of their choices. If not in this life, then in the next.
Maybe…once the dead were counted and the whole sad affair over with, those poor souls could be reborn into better lives—and wiser selves.
“Whatever they did, it must have been terrible,” Su Muqiu said quietly.
“It was.”
* * *
Six years ago, when the leaves first started to change color, Shaoxing’s demise was set into motion.
Every autumn, the region’s villages prepared for the yearly fall festival and gathered offerings for Autumn’s Lord. Each village had its own practices in this regard, songs and dances and aesthetic arrangements conceived to honor the divinity, to secure his blessings for the coming winter—and perhaps more than that. If you please Autumn’s Lord, people said, Autumn’s Lord will surely please you.
Wu Xuefeng had been taught all his life that Autumn’s Lord was fair, just, even benevolent. He did not ask for much. In truth, he asked for barely anything at all—it was mortals who asked him for things, and if they wished to receive, they had to work for it.
“We show our devotion,” his mother had told him as a child, “in every way we can afford to. My treasure, do not become arrogant. Without Autumn’s Lord, we would suffer much hardship. My son, you must not forget him.”
“I must not forget him,” little Wu Xuefeng would repeat. “I must not ignore him.”
“And above all, you must not betray him.”
“I must not betray him.” A pause. “How do you betray a god?”
Mother did not answer.
Unsurprisingly, the people of Shaoxing always organized the most extravagant festivals. Before the port was expanded, Shaoxing had been the biggest city within a week’s ride. In such a city, the performances were beautiful, the celebrations spirited, and the decorations decadent. After the port was expanded, the festivals only improved. For nearly a decade, each of Shaoxing’s fall festivals seemed determined to outdo the last. The city folk’s fervor matched their growing prosperity step for step.
Then the head of the Tao clan, the most influential family in Shaoxing and perhaps the entire region, declared that there would be no more fall festivals.
Or rather, there would be, but not in the same vein as before. The festival itself would continue to be celebrated as the changing seasons dictated, but no longer would the people of Shaoxing seek to please Autumn’s Lord. Instead, their aim was to honor all the new traditions being introduced in the city, never placing one tradition—or one god—above others. After all, Shaoxing had received an influx of residents from every corner of the continent. The nature of the city’s worship wasn’t nearly as homogeneous as it used to be.
It sounded like a fine idea. And at first, it was fine. Autumn’s Lord was not forgotten or ignored.
And yet. And yet—
Four years ago, when the leaves were falling, Wu Xuefeng returned to his childhood home. When his mother stepped forth to greet him, she, like him, did not smile. “My son. Have you felt it?”
“Now that I think about it…it’s colder than it should be,” he said cautiously, “at this time of year.”
“It is.”
“Mother, what happened? In your letters, you said the people of Shaoxing had turned away from Autumn’s Lord. We are not the people of Shaoxing, so why is everyone so afraid?”
“They did worse than turn away from him. They have betrayed him.”
The words landed between them like a ton of rocks: with a thunderous crash, followed by an even more thunderous silence.
Wu Xuefeng exhaled shakily. “How do you betray a god?”
Madam Wu laughed without humor. “Why do you ask? We should not speak of others’ shame. Will you repeat the whole sorry tale to that sect leader of yours?”
“I ought to.” But even as he said it, Wu Xuefeng knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t, not if this was as serious as he suspected.
Madam Wu seemed to see the truth of it in his eyes, because she said, “My son…you may regret asking.”
“Please answer me.”
Mother answered him.
* * *
How do you betray a god? What can you take from him that he can’t simply take back? How can you hurt him in a way that matters?
Wu Xuefeng had always wondered, but his mother was right, as usual. He regretted asking.
* * *
Four years ago, when the leaves began to fall, Ye Xiu heard a scream. And another, and another, and another.
He rose from the cold stream he’d been bathing in, water sluicing off his body. Then, before he could understand what had happened or do anything about it, he was yanked into a familiar building.
His temple was on fire.
Ye Xiu pulled himself to his feet, robes in place, eyes bright with fury. He did not burn; earthly fire could not touch him, much less hurt him. But the figures writhing on the floor—
He knew them. He knew all of them, and as soon as he realized what was happening, he banished the fire.
Too little, too late. The ones who weren’t already burned to a crisp were at death’s door. Though he’d extinguished the flames, they lay twisted in agony. Those who could still see gazed at him with pleading eyes.
Heart cold, Ye Xiu ended their suffering.
“What have you done?” he asked the mortals waiting outside once he was finished. Most of the temple complex was intact—it was just the main building that had suffered, along with the people inside it.
Shock was a mortal affliction. Ye Xiu was not mortal, but something in him felt like it was about to give out. Shock was the only word he knew that could encapsulate his feelings in that moment.
“What have you done?” he demanded again, and the words were less a cold utterance and more a deadly hiss.
The mortals stared at him, wide-eyed and pale. Then one of them strode forward, raised a flask that glowed white-blue, and threw it straight at Ye Xiu.
It shattered at his feet. He had flinched back just in time to avoid a direct hit, but it wasn’t enough. Not when the pain and fear of his Chosen, still so fresh, throbbed inside him like a festering wound.
Ye Xiu gritted his teeth as flames licked up his legs. Earthly fire couldn’t hurt him. Celestial fire, on the other hand…
In moments, the flames had become chains of glowing, burning light and wrapped around him. Where they touched his godly flesh, an indescribable ache arose, piercing him to his core. It was only his anger that kept him upright.
The jaws of the trap had snapped shut. But Ye Xiu was a god, and gods have their pride. He faced his adversaries without flinching.
“You rats,” he drawled, “used some manner of enchantment to silence my Chosen’s summons until the last moment. I don’t suppose you went to all this trouble just to say hello?”
One of the rats came to the forefront of the group, blank-faced.
Ye Xiu stared at him. “Tao Xuan. You dare?”
“You know me,” said Tao Xuan. “Do you know everyone who has bowed to you? Who has begged for your favor?”
“I do.”
“Yet you ignore them. Us.”
“I give you my blessings. Good fortune and easy winters.”
Tao Xuan jabbed a finger at the blackened building behind Ye Xiu. “And what of them? Why do you give them more than that? What makes them so worthy?”
Ye Xiu huffed out a disbelieving laugh and didn’t answer.
“Tell me your name, O Lord of Autumn.”
“You seek to compel me?” Ye Xiu laughed again. “You’d need more than just my name to do so. Nonetheless, I won’t give you the satisfaction.”
“You have no choice. Tell me your name!”
Ye Xiu didn’t move and didn’t speak. He would rather die here and now than allow these rats to leash him like a dog.
“He’s not very impressive for a divinity,” someone in the small crowd commented. “Surely there are other ways to hurt him.”
Tao Xuan scoffed a little. “This is the best way. He cherished his Chosen…though I don’t see any tears, or even much wrath. Rather cold-hearted, aren’t you, Autumn’s Lord?”
“I have no use for tears,” Ye Xiu said, “but wrath—I can show you that.”
“You will show me, and tell me, what I command you.” Tao Xuan drifted closer. “Autumn’s Lord, you will never escape the celestial fire. Not with your life. Gods have limits, too.”
“Limits?” Ye Xiu repeated. He wanted so badly to retort, but his body shook just then, the agony of the fire reaching a new peak. He lowered his head as he fought to master himself.
“How humble you are now.” He sensed Tao Xuan’s breath stir his hair. The other rats moved in, too, murmuring curiously. A couple reached out and touched the parts of him left exposed by the chains. “How weak. Will you endure this indignity, Autumn’s Lord? Surrender your name to me. Let it be over. Your power is not endless.”
Slowly, Ye Xiu raised his head.
“You still…” Tao Xuan took one look at his face and stumbled back.
“What would a child like you,” Ye Xiu gritted out, “know of godly power?”
* * *
Autumn was almost at an end, and the wind was colder than it should be.
“You’ve been quiet today.”
Wu Xuefeng turned his eyes from the black void of the sea and faced Su Muqiu. His teeth glinted for a moment—a brief smile soon extinguished by the weight of tragedy. Shaoxing’s fate, of which their sect now had intimate knowledge, hung over their party like a miasma, and not even the stars or the moon could lighten the cultivators’ moods.
However, Wu Xuefeng was normally more upbeat. If not upbeat, then composed. Su Muqiu felt unsettled to see his senior brother so…glum.
“Is your family truly all right? Your village?”
“My village is just fine.”
Su Muqiu nodded. After receiving such a firm answer, he was unwilling to pry anymore.
“If you want to know something, Sect Leader, just ask,” Wu Xuefeng said with his customary patience.
“You seem to have some…awareness of what occurred here, and why,” Su Muqiu said eventually. “If you’d share your insights, this junior would be most grateful.”
Wu Xuefeng chuckled. “My sect leader is not my junior.”
“I figured a little flattery couldn’t hurt.”
Still chuckling, Wu Xuefeng clapped him on the shoulder. “Never change, Su Muqiu. But as for what occurred…that’s not something I can tell you much about.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“You’ve always been perceptive.” Wu Xuefeng sighed. “My mother once said we ought not to speak of others’ shame. I didn’t really understand why that was, given the—magnitude—of all this. You see, I asked questions, too, when I visited here four years ago. I could tell something had changed.”
Su Muqiu listened with rapt attention.
“I know this region is peripheral to our sect, but do you know anything about Autumn’s Lord, or Autumn’s Chosen?”
“I’ve read a thing or two about your patron deity”—several things, actually, since Su Mucheng told him of Shaoxing’s inevitable end—“but I’ve never heard of Autumn’s Chosen.”
Wu Xuefeng didn’t seem surprised. “Autumn’s Chosen are those who receive their own blessings from the divinity, a manner of blessing that grants them more than just good fortune and easy winters. They receive speed, strength, wisdom, knowledge—I could go on. Some Chosen even develop inhuman abilities…”
“If that’s true,” Su Muqiu said, skeptical, “why are they not more well known?”
“It’s hard for people to believe that anyone but a cultivator could do the things Chosen can do. We don’t speak of them to outsiders. It makes us look foolish, and it might draw unwanted attention.” Wu Xuefeng quirked his eyebrows meaningfully. “The Chosen are powerful, not invincible.”
Su Muqiu supposed that, since Wu Xuefeng said so, these Chosen must be the real deal. He wouldn’t put much stock in folklore, but Wu Xuefeng was no liar. “And I suppose you have a reason for telling me about them now? You do not think my attention unwanted?”
“They’re all dead.”
“Oh.”
Wu Xuefeng hadn’t specified what Autumn’s Chosen meant to their lord, but it didn’t take a genius to read between the lines. Anyone who received a personal blessing from a god must be favored by that god. Must be important to that god.
“Someone from Shaoxing had them killed?” Su Muqiu asked, his voice blank.
“Not just someone. Several powerful families, some rooted in our tradition, some not. You see, Shaoxing grew a lot since the port was expanded, and when things grow…they change.”
“And so they betrayed their god. For what purpose?”
“What do you think?” Wu Xuefeng gestured at the sea, the sky, and the graying hills behind them, shrouded in the dark of night and the pall of divine wrath. “Our lord asks little of us, but we ask much of him. Good fortune and easy winters—what other deity would offer such blessings so readily to a people who only celebrate him when the leaves start to change color? Do you know of such a benevolent god?”
Shaken, Su Muqiu asked, “Do you claim… You’re saying he’s not called Autumn’s Lord because he is a seasonal deity, but merely because autumn is when he’s celebrated?”
Wu Xuefeng nodded.
“What’s his domain, then? Good fortune and easy winters…” Su Muqiu shook his head. “Good fortune year-round? And an easy winter? Why—”
“Because winter is the only season we fear.”
The truth dawned. “They wanted his power,” Su Muqiu whispered.
Wu Xuefeng smiled without humor. “They thought themselves above it all. The devotion, the rituals, the thanks-giving. We had good fortune and easy winters, all year and every year. You live with a blessing long enough and you—”
“You forget it’s a blessing at all. You think it’s the way of things.”
“Our golden years began centuries ago,” Wu Xuefeng explained evenly, “with the favor of Autumn’s Lord. But Shaoxing’s golden years ended with his grief.”
* * *
Four years ago, when the leaves began to fall, Ye Xiu bled for the first time in a millennium. Like water dripping down his skin, golden light poured from his body, pooled at his feet, and vanished into the earth.
The celestial fire was bearable, Ye Xiu had thought. He had not been overly concerned with his capture. A momentary weakness, that was all. Soon enough, he’d recover and break free.
Then they brought out the spears. Three of them, heaven-blessed and earth-made. It would not surprise him if they had been forged with celestial fire, too, for when they lanced through his body, the ache was depressingly familiar.
Weeks passed, and Ye Xiu bled, and the leaves fell from the trees faster than they ever had.
He thought about his Chosen. The ones lost in the fire, the ones who came before, and the ones to follow.
“What makes them so worthy?”
Of all the mortals in the world, he favored a few because he wished to. He was generous toward them because he wanted to be generous. He was good to them because they were worthy of his goodness. People assumed it was a contract, an exchange, but the truth was kinder than that. They owed him nothing.
As for what he owed them…
Ye Xiu watched his blood sink into the dirt and resolved he owed them vengeance. He was old and powerful and that golden light disappearing into the ground was his. Just like the Chosen had been his. This was his mark. His pain.
His fury.
He lifted his eyes to the shattered ceiling and blinked up at the stars. Then he smiled.
A door opened to his left, quiet and furtive, only to shut hastily. Ye Xiu did not turn his head to look at who’d entered.
“My lord,” said a half-known voice.
“Wu Xuefeng,” Ye Xiu greeted. “When you left to cultivate in that faraway land, I was quite miffed. I thought you would have been worthy of my blessing. But it’s good you went—it would have been for naught.”
With obvious caution, Wu Xuefeng approached and knelt in the dirt. To his eyes, the ground was undisturbed, but the mark of Ye Xiu’s wrath was not beyond a cultivator’s detection.
As Ye Xiu laughed, Wu Xuefeng stood up again in a rush, brushing frantically at his knees. “Forgive my impertinence. I’ve come to free my lord.”
Ye Xiu fell quiet. He still did not bother to look at Wu Xuefeng properly. “You have? Even knowing what will happen if you do? You can already feel it.”
“Leaving my lord to die won’t rid this place of a well-earned blight. I’d rather my lord be released.”
“So I can wreak havoc?”
“So my lord can grant forgiveness.”
“You’d ask mercy for those who bound me? Who slaughtered my Chosen?” Ye Xiu scoffed.
But Wu Xuefeng only shook his head and knelt again, well away from where Ye Xiu’s blood had spilled. “I’m not that foolish.”
“Then perhaps you plan to seal me.”
“No. Like I said”—and here Wu Xuefeng swallowed—“I only want… I beseech my lord to grant forgiveness. To the villages and towns who still honor you, who mourn with you. The ones who never turned their backs.”
Ye Xiu finally met Wu Xuefeng’s eyes. At once, the mortal lowered his gaze and threw himself to the dirt in prostration.
“Very well,” Ye Xiu said at last. “My curse will fall on the deserving. Four years of famine, a great wave from the sea, a storm strong enough to break stone, and a relentless wildfire to end it all. Seven curses for seven deaths. So long as the rest of you do not help the people of Shaoxing, you will be shielded from the worst.”
“It will be as you say, honored lord.” Wu Xuefeng pressed his face into the earth.
“Then free me and be done with it.”
Wu Xuefeng tugged the spears out of him and used several cleverly devised talismans to weaken the celestial fire. The glow of the chains dimmed, then they fell away entirely, and Ye Xiu was free.
“You may taste this,” Ye Xiu said, holding out the least injured of his arms. “It’ll go to waste otherwise.”
Reluctantly, Wu Xuefeng drew his hand over Ye Xiu’s gold-stained skin. He studied the divine blood on his fingers, then with a slow, enlightened blink, said, “I’d rather not.”
Ye Xiu blinked back. “Hm.”
“I mean no offense.”
“Ha. Of course you don’t.” Ye Xiu shook his head bemusedly. “Off you go, now. Your work is done.”
“And…and you, my lord?”
“Oh, mine is just beginning.”
* * *
The first year of famine was the most bewildering. It was normal that some years’ harvest did not yield as much as expected, but there was always enough food to go around regardless. In the case of emergency, their reserves could be relied upon to serve the population and keep market prices from skyrocketing.
But in the first year, each and every harvest was tragic, and by wintertime, the stores were ruined. Too much damp, the experts said, or a new pest. In frightened voices, some spoke of a strange blight, seeping through the earth to eat away at their food reserves.
The Tao family and their friends received the news with tense expressions. They thought about that lonely hovel where they’d spilled divine blood. A blight from the earth—it would make sense, wouldn’t it?
Then they shook their heads. That golden light, so pure and powerful…surely it could not be destructive in nature. The legends say that a god’s essence nurtures the earth. They had even collected some of it and sprinkled it over their own fields, eager to see the results.
Soon they learned that it was in those very fields that the blight began.
* * *
The second year of famine was wearying more than anything. Still, Shaoxing was a rich city, and the surrounding settlements were not so afflicted. They bought what they could, but the prices were exorbitant and the formerly cooperative farmers hostile, so they turned to the sea.
From ships came what they assumed was salvation. For a few scant months, the famine seemed almost a thing of the past. Bellies were full, the markets were nearly thriving, and the people were jubilant. Finally, some good fortune!
So they thought. Unfortunately, ships weren’t all that came from the sea.
A great wave crashed into the city one night, looming taller than any building in Shaoxing. The force of it tore the port to pieces and drowned countless people. Many were swept out to open water, never to be seen again.
The next morning, the flooded streets were loud with cries of loss and fear. The people tried to save what they could, but everything was changed. So much was gone.
In a few disturbed minds, thoughts of golden blood resurfaced, and were just as quickly dismissed again.
* * *
The third year of famine brought with it a series of storms, each one worse than the last. Not only were Shaoxing’s people hungry, cut off from the bulk of their trade, and weighed down by tragedy, they also spent weeks terrified out of their minds by ear-shattering claps of thunder and relentless lightning strikes.
For a brief time—some ten or so days, perhaps—there was a lull in the horrid weather. The sky opened to Shaoxing, blue and wondrous, and the sun shone with heart-rending brilliance, warm as a mother’s own hearth.
It didn’t last. The next and final storm poured down on Shaoxing like a waterfall, rekindling memories of drowning. The winds tore down several buildings, not to mention the damage to the land and trees. There was more than one mudslide and flash flood, and of the few ships at port, over half were wrecked.
In the aftermath, Shaoxing was barely recognizable. It was but a ghost of its former self, its glory trampled into dust.
Ye Xiu, from atop his hill, watched the caravans streaming out of the city with indifference.
* * *
One year ago, after the storm’s decimation, Wu Xuefeng ventured back home, afraid of what he’d find.
His fears were unwarranted: the village was safe. Not exactly thriving, and far less prosperous than before, but though times were lean, nobody was starving or suffering unduly.
“I’ve heard such terrible things,” Wu Xuefeng told his mother, relieved.
She scoffed at him, then wrapped him in a hug. “And my letters were not enough reassurance? I hope you’re not here on behalf of your sect.”
Wu Xuefeng shook his head and kissed her cheek before pulling away. “My sect leader has sent cultivators to Shaoxing, but they only tell people to flee to greener pastures.”
“Unusually astute of them,” Madam Wu said with a snort. She walked back to her work table and picked up the robe she’d been mending. “In my experience, cultivators stick their noses in everything.”
It was kind of her to forget he was a cultivator for a moment. “That’s true enough, but cultivators can also sense what happened here if they’re observant.”
“Can they?” Madam Wu was suddenly curious.
“They hurt him,” Wu Xuefeng said, voice quiet with remembered horror. When he’d walked into that carcass of a building and saw what had been done to the divinity, he’d known things would never go back to how they were. “Do you know what divine blood looks like? Liquid sunlight. He was nearly covered in it. It was beautiful, but terrifying. For a moment, I thought I’d watch a god die.”
“You’re pale,” Madam Wu observed. “Sit down before you fall.”
Wu Xuefeng took a seat across from her. He didn’t feel especially faint, but the memories did make him nauseous when he sank too deep into them.
“It was a horrible thing they did,” his mother reminded him, her normally cutting voice soft. “Shaoxing deserved what it got. At least we can put all this sad business behind us.”
With a jolt, Wu Xuefeng said, “Put it behind us? But it’s not over.”
“What isn’t over?”
“The curse. Well, it was never a curse,” Wu Xuefeng confessed. “Four years of famine and three natural disasters. Seven curses for seven deaths. That’s what Autumn’s Lord told me.”
Madam Wu’s eyes widened. She nearly covered her mouth, but forced her hand down and composed herself. “Then there is another year of famine to come…and another disaster.”
“Yes.”
They had traded places; Madam Wu was the pale one now. Wu Xuefeng quickly got up to fetch her something to eat.
“I never thought—well, that’s not true,” Madam Wu said sometime later. “A god’s fury is no fickle thing. It’s only that our lord has always been so gentle.”
Wu Xuefeng thought back to the golden-eyed figure hunched in the dark, supported only by the three spears struck through his torso. He would not call that being gentle.
When night fell, he wandered out of the village and into the woods, mired in dread. Though he hid it well enough, he too was shocked at the extent of their lord’s wrath, so accustomed was he to the godly magnanimity his people had been treated with. Why else would he have come here himself? The tales were downright ghastly. Even forewarned of what would befall Shaoxing’s people, he hadn’t expected…
When he emerged from the trees near the bank of a familiar stream, Wu Xuefeng was met with the subject of his thoughts.
“You’re back again,” said Autumn’s Lord. “Have you seen what you wrought?”
“Me?” Wu Xuefeng demanded after a stunned silence. “It’s your curse. My lord,” he added, kneeling.
Autumn’s Lord smiled. He stepped out from the water, long black hair dripping moisture, body entirely exposed—and bare of scars. Wu Xuefeng should not have been surprised by that. A god so powerful—yet the masters always said that celestial fire scarred anything and everything, forever.
“Yet I couldn’t have unleashed a single curse had you not freed me.”
Wu Xuefeng doubted that very much. “I trust, my lord, that all this would have happened with or without my interference.”
With a laugh, Autumn’s Lord said, “Stand, Wu Xuefeng. Your trust is well-founded. Even if I had died, the day of Shaoxing’s reckoning would have come.” Autumn’s Lord passed under the shadow of a tree and reappeared in the moonlight fully dressed.
“Because of your mark, I know,” Wu Xuefeng said, rising to his feet.
“You have a most informal manner of speaking to me,” Autumn’s Lord commented after a small pause. “I find it refreshing.”
Cautiously, Wu Xuefeng said, “This humble one is glad to hear it.”
“Oh, don’t start.” Autumn’s Lord tilted his head back to look at the stars. “You could have been one of them.”
“A Chosen?” Wu Xuefeng asked, recalling the halfhearted compliment Autumn’s Lord had paid him during their last encounter.
“That, and more.” Golden eyes met his. “It’s not too late.”
“Not too late for what?”
“To become.”
* * *
The fourth year of famine was the last, though only two people knew it, and neither said anything of it. If they had, they would also have had to explain why it was the last. They would have had to explain it was not mercy.
Some endings are alleviating. A chapter is over, another begins. Some endings are just an opportunity for a fresh start.
This ending was damning.
There were signs, because of course there would be: the shrinking river, the punishing heat, the dying animals, the rainless clouds. Yet when asked exactly when the end began, people would say it started with the fire.
The first tongues of smoke were spotted far upriver, a fair distance from any settlement. A great flaming current gushed down the foothills, sparing human life but not much else. Pits were dug to try and halt it; trees were cut down to avoid feeding it; and yet it burned and crackled and roared, unfaltering. Unforgiving.
From beyond the half-collapsed walls of Shaoxing, the smoke closed in like a dark veil. And then the flames finally arrived.
Tao Xuan wanted to believe it was celestial fire, set upon the city by the wrathful divinity. But it was just earthly fire, and his was just an earthly body. When he fell on the road, coughing and wheezing, there was nothing celestial about it.
* * *
Autumn was almost at an end, and the wind was warmer than it’d been in weeks.
Ye Xiu sat just beyond the sea’s reach, where waves lapped greedily at the sand. As the sun rose higher and dyed the clouds in shades of pink and gold, he looked down at his palm and sliced into his skin with a sharp nail.
Golden light dripped into the sand, then sank slowly out of sight.
“It’s over,” he told the world. “My rage is spent.”
The coming winter would not be a kind one. But with every drop of divine blood, he made it kinder. There was an art to it, this gentling of the seasons. It was a surrender and a demand in one. Ye Xiu coaxed nature to follow where he led, and it lapped at his fingers and trailed his steps like a tamed wolf.
Long had he protected the people of this region from nature’s bite. Long had he nurtured their fields and bolstered their bloodlines. He was glad, now, to return to what he knew best. Rage was far too wearying.
Wu Xuefeng appeared at the top of the slope, partially obscured by prickly shrubs and cacti. When he descended far enough to spot Ye Xiu, he froze.
Ye Xiu smiled and waved him over.
“My lord.” With a calm expression, Wu Xuefeng dropped to his knees a few body-lengths away.
“Wu Xuefeng. Come here. Closer.”
Slowly, Wu Xuefeng crawled toward him, head lowered but watching him through his eyelashes. Ye Xiu did not stop smiling.
When they were close enough to touch, Ye Xiu closed his fingers over his split palm and held out his hand. Wu Xuefeng sat back on his heels and stared quizzically at the offering.
“Taste it. Consider it my thanks.”
Wu Xuefeng went from confused to alarmed in seconds. “My lord…”
“There is glory in blood,” Ye Xiu told him. “The glory of battles won, years lived, and challenges overcome. There is resentment too, when your blood is spilled by an enemy. But blood given willingly—blood sacrificed—is an honor to one deemed worthy of it. The blood I sacrifice is a blessing.”
Emanating warmth and power, gold-drenched fingers touched Wu Xuefeng’s lips.
“Is this how people are Chosen?”
“No,” Ye Xiu said with a chuckle. “I am not bestowing you with favor befitting a mortal, Wu Xuefeng. It would be right if I did—it would be procedural, some might say—but it’s not a step you need take. We’re skipping it.”
“This humble one does not understand.”
“What don’t you understand? Henceforth, you need never be humble again. You will be divine, a god in your own right. Immortal and untouchable, like me.”
“But you’re not really untouchable, are you?” Wu Xuefeng whispered, his gaze falling to the half-open lapels of Ye Xiu’s robes.
Ye Xiu grinned, almost too amused for words. “You want to touch me, is that it? I suppose you’re looking to taste another kind of essence.”
As if snatched from a daydream, Wu Xuefeng blinked hard and sputtered.
“I will allow it.” In the blink of an eye, Ye Xiu had pushed Wu Xuefeng down onto the sand and straddled his waist. His hand left glowing trails of gold on Wu Xuefeng’s chest. “The one who freed me deserves this honor.”
He leaned down.
“I am not like them,” Wu Xuefeng said through gritted teeth. “I don’t want your power.”
Ye Xiu froze.
“I don’t want your thanks, either. I never did. I only wanted to—to fulfill my duty and protect my family. To return to you a measure of the kindness you have shown us for generations. All these golden years…” Wu Xuefeng gripped the wrist of Ye Xiu’s bleeding hand and kissed the knuckles. “Good fortune and easy winters… All these years, you’ve cared for us. And when I helped you, the single time you’ve ever needed help, you try to—what? Nullify it?”
“I didn’t ask for your help,” Ye Xiu said, baffled.
“You never ask for anything. That’s the whole point!” Wu Xuefeng sat up, forcing Ye Xiu to settle on his lap. “Tell me, what is the nature of your power? What are its limits?”
“Why do mortals always assume there are limits?” Ye Xiu demanded. “Do you think it costly, what I do for you? Do you think me fragile? I don’t need festivals. I don’t need celebrations. I don’t need you to thank me or honor me. We are not exchanging favors.”
“But we owe you!”
“No, you don’t.”
In the absence of words, the pounding of the waves was more prominent than ever before.
“Well,” Wu Xuefeng said slowly, “if we don’t owe you anything, you don’t owe me anything, either.”
Ye Xiu could only stare.
Wu Xuefeng’s expression gentled. “Forget limits. Forget favors. What do you need, my lord?”
“What does anyone need?” Ye Xiu sighed, the pulse of his blood matched to that of the sea. “To be remembered. To be acknowledged.”
“To not be hurt,” Wu Xuefeng finished, voice low. Ye Xiu nodded, and the mortal—the stupid, frustrating mortal who wanted nothing of his—sank back into the sand. Flat on his back, he refused to look at Ye Xiu and instead pointed his tearful gaze at the lightening sky.
Overcome, Ye Xiu lay beside him and watched the day steal over the last remnants of night.
“Wu Xuefeng.”
“My lord?”
“It was painful, truly. What they did to me. What I did to them.”
With a sigh of his own, Wu Xuefeng clasped his hand. “I know it was.”
* * *
When they started packing up camp, Su Muqiu noticed Wu Xuefeng was nowhere to be found. Somewhat concerned, he walked about the sandy dunes, looking for signs of his favorite brother-disciple.
He spotted him, finally, at the boundary of beach with grass. He stood with a strange man. Su Muqiu crossed his arms and squinted, but he didn’t recognize him, nor could he identify him as a cultivator. He was, to all appearances, just a man.
Then, as Su Muqiu watched, he took Wu Xuefeng’s face in his hands and kissed him.
Immediately, Su Muqiu blushed and spun away. He hesitated a few moments, wondering if he should flee and pretend he was never there, but some unnameable instinct had him turn his head. When his eyes landed on Wu Xuefeng once more, he was alone.
And walking toward him.
“Meeting with a friend?” Su Muqiu called, all too aware that it was past the point where he could feign ignorance.
Wu Xuefeng bore a pensive expression. “Something like that. Are we leaving now, Sect Leader?”
“As soon as we dismantle our camp.”
“I see. I ought to go help.”
“Let the juniors handle it. Brother, could it be that you’ve been hiding a sweetheart from me all this time?” Su Muqiu blurted.
“A what?” Wu Xuefeng stared uncomprehendingly. “You mean—no! Good grief, no. He’s not my sweetheart.”
“Well, I saw…” Su Muqiu was too courteous to say it.
“Ah. Hm.” Wu Xuefeng brushed a finger over his lips. The pensiveness returned, now accompanied by a little pink in his cheeks. “He’s just…unique.”
“You’re glowing.”
With a jolt, Wu Xuefeng looked down at himself. “Still?”
Su Muqiu knew he was the one to pursue this line of conversation, but he was scandalized nonetheless. “What do you mean, still?! Were you with him all night?”
“That is not what I—no, I was not! Sect Leader, please stop asking questions. I’m going to go help the juniors.”
The grimness of their mission momentarily forgotten, Su Muqiu laughed and followed him.