Chapter Text
Luka smiles as he finds himself on the steps leading to the Luofu city of Xianzhou. His exhaustion barely registers, knowing he was just so close to his goal. He told his country he’d make them proud, and now that he is almost here, he feels a little giddy inside.
He starts climbing the hundreds of winding stairs that his map did say would lead to the city of Luofu.
He makes his rounds until he reached a tree he swore he saw already. He brings up his map, trying to see where in the path he is. He should be in the long branch that heads back to the city, he reminds himself.
It isn’t until he’s walked a few more metres up when a flying sword almost misses his hair. Instead of feeling sizzling heat on his ponytail though, the moment his fingers touch it, they turn to ice.
“Woah.” It’s hard to stop his childlike wonder from getting ahead of him as he steps off the path and takes a closer look at the sword.
It definitely feels weird to be in a foreign country. The craftsmanship on it is way different from the rough and blunt edges he’s used to back home.
“Ack–” Luka yells out as he tries holding it and immediately jerks away, shaking his hand vigorously and trying to warm it back up. He almost thought his hand would’ve frozen on contact. “Damn that was cold.”
Of course he’s heard about the numerous swordmasters of the Xianzhou. How they wielded and practised the powers of different elements, but he didn’t think he’d be an almost-victim to it so soon.
Maybe he’s trespassing and one of the guards saw him. They’re called the Cloudnights, or something. He doesn’t quite remember. Makes sense, it felt like he was walking upwards forever.
Against his better judgment, he reaches out to touch the sword again and–
“Hands off Wenxue!”
Luka turns his head just in time to see a short young man run past him and towards the sword. An actual Xianzhou native, by the looks of his clothes. Luka couldn’t stop himself from smiling, but there’s something charming in the way he tried reaching the sword that securely fastened itself into a long slender shoot of bamboo.
“I can help y–”
“I got it.”
Almost as it from nowhere, another sword comes and the swordmaster wastes no time jumping onto it, almost using it as a floating stool as he tries to pry the sword off.
“Goddamn you- little- piece- of–” The sword finally comes flying off together with the blond man, rolling down onto the ground and hitting it at an angle that would not be comfortable after waking up the next day.
Luka walks forward and holds his hand out. “Let me h–”
The swordsman isn’t even up yet before three more swords emerge from the bamboo surrounding them, aiming right towards him. The swordsman stands up, and before he even blinks, already is in stance with the sword he recently pulled out of the bark. “Stand back. You aren’t permitted to enter the Luofu grounds.”
Luka sighs in relief despite having so many blades directed right at him. “Oh, so I am going the right way.”
The swordsman’s eyebrows furrow, his arm faltering the slightest bit. “That’s a weird sense of priority.” He clears his throat. “What’s your business in the Luofu?”
It takes him a few seconds before he answers. “Uh, I’m Luka Strongarm, I come from, ah, Belobog- and uh- and– I came here to–”
“Wait, you come from Belobog?” the swordsman interrupted him, all four swords still pointing towards him. “I thought that country was already destroyed by the Antimatter Legion or the blizzard. Don’t attack Belobog in the winter, after all…”
So that’s the stance of Xianzhou. If a country as powerful as that thinks they’re gone for good, then it’s probably already a common misconception among all the other countries.
“Ah actually a few tribes and organisations managed to take shelter during the worst of the Blizzard.
The swordsman grimaces and for a second Luka thinks that he didn’t buy into his story and he’s about to be murdered on the spot, before a very loud chirping interrupts them. Luka looks around but there hasn’t been any sign of life nearby for his whole hike, he realised. Then his eyes wander towards the flute that he just noticed on the swordsman’s belt. It’s lighting up and the source of the chirping.
Almost immediately the swordsman deflates and grabs the flute, where it starts playing a message in some language he doesn’t understand. He only knows two languages: Belobogian, and he recently studied the Interdynastial Standardised Penaconian. This one is probably the Xianzhou tongue.
The swordsman’s demeanour slowly goes from firm to childish, almost cutely stomping in anger as the other voice on the line instructs him for something. Luka awkwardly watches their back-and-forth for a few more minutes before the swordsman finally sighs and turns back towards him.
“That sounds tough.” Luka smiles nervously. At least he knows he’s met a real deal.
“If you were a true Belobogian, you wouldn’t have understood that,” the swordsman tells him, still sceptical as ever. He raises an eyebrow. “What exactly did we talk about then huh?”
“Uh… to let me inside?”
“.. close enough.” The swordsman sighs as he finally lowers the sword in his hand, and the other flying swords obediently hover behind him.
“Really?” Luka asks, his eyes wide in a bit of excitement for guessing it correctly.
“If you actually understood then you would’ve lied.” He nodded. “I’ve at least confirmed you’re not from here. My dad said he forgot to tell me someone from Belobog would be coming here. Sorry if you got a bit spooked earlier, I was practising nearby and it was just protocol whenever I met a stranger on these paths. Follow me.”
The swordsman starts walking up the trail again, taking a left where Luka would’ve previously sworn had not been there before. Maybe this is another work of the Xianzhou to hide their people from intruders. A bit smart, he realises. If Belobog took advantage of the snow to camouflage themselves back then, maybe they wouldn’t have been invaded and lost the war.
“Oh, uh, thank you…?”
The swordsman turns back to look at him. “Um, Lengfeng.”
There’s a specific intonation in his tone when he says it so he should probably follow that, Luka thought. He follows Lengfeng up the steps of the path. This guy is definitely someone with some semblance of authority, seeing that his father was the one to tell him it is okay to let the stranger in. “Do all the Xianzhou people have these flying sword things?”
It’s definitely a wonder to take notes off. Maybe if Luka learned how they’re made, it could add another group of weapons into Belobog’s arsenal.
“Oh these?” The swords fly around Lengfeng in a neat little circle. They’re a bit reminiscent of the flying animal he saw while heading towards this forest. “Ah sorry but they’re one-of-a-kind, in the Xianzhou and probably even the whole world. My papa made it for me. I don’t know how he made it neither, he said he used an ancient technique or something.”
Luka finds himself nodding. This one is probably a daddy’s boy. He wonders how it felt to grow up so close to one. If he had that extra bit of support as a child maybe he wouldn’t have struggled too much with even living. Sure, Oleg did take him in, but that was when he was already a few years old, when he had learned to walk on his own.
He wonders just how much power Lengfeng’s father had. Did he get lucky running into someone like him? Or does everyone in the Luofu just casually know how to make swords?
“Is it that much farther from here?”
Lengfeng shoots him an empathetic smile. “Yeah, sorry, it’s how we hide from the other cities. Usually I just ride my sword up there but you won’t be allowed in without an accompanying Luofu native so we kinda don’t have a choice on that.”
It’s only after an hour or so when the tops of the buildings finally come into view, tall towers with shingled roofs pointing to the sky. It’s nothing short of extraordinary, and a far cry from the short wood-and-concrete buildings they had back home in the Underground. It must be amazing seeing the sky everyday when you wake up.
The gate’s quite a small one, its metal circular structure probably too small to even fit Svarog. He makes a mental note in case Clara ever wants to visit. Not that it’ll come in years. People are still quite sceptical back at home, and being one of the first few people sent out to map out and update everything, he knows it’s gonna take at least a few more years. Unless he can somehow squeeze out a miracle from this visit and immediately gain strong allies. Which is unlikely.
Lengfeng removes a swallow pendant from his clothes and presses it into the exact middle of the gate. After waiting a few seconds, they swing wide open inwards to reveal rows and rows of crates. Now that he’s actually getting a view of everything, the heart of the city and the tall buildings seem to be higher in altitude and deeper in.
“Sorry if this isn’t a good first impression,” Lengfeng says, laughing nervously as he gestures around them, where various workers stack goods and wares. “This was the closest route and I was kinda lazy, the main gate was way further. But, uh, I can show you to the main city.”
Luka takes a deep breath, trying to keep in step with the young swordsman. He’s also good with stamina, if he could say so himself, lasting multiple rounds in the ring, but all that climbing barely gave him enough fuel left for this. He doesn’t know how, but it immediately got warmer inside. He wonders what techniques they use for that.
He subconsciously brings his right sleeve even lower despite the heat. It only hits him that while everyone in the Underground is used to seeing his little wooden prosthetic, everyone else probably has developed something much better. He doesn’t want to think about exactly how much better that technology is, even though he has been itching to replace the old sag of metal hanging on his shoulder.
They head towards a less crowded area where a few boats come and go, full of cargo. He’s still a bit put off by the cacophony of foreign syllables and tones.
“There’s another path going there but it’s faster on water. We just gotta wait a while. On a good day it takes only five minutes for them to fill up each boat.”
Luka watches Lengfeng talk to a few of the people on the dock, probably about renting a boat or something.
In a few more minutes, he finds himself sitting across Lengfeng, the other man holding onto a long stick that he uses to manoeuvre their way through the water. The river’s quiet but a lot of foreign plants line the riverbanks, only the sound of the wind and ripples in the water surrounding them for a good while.
“And it takes another fifteen minutes to go there, sorry,” Lengfeng smiles apologetically. He stands up, rocking the boat a bit as he tries to gain a better balance while holding the paddle. Probably hard with his small stature. Luka has noticed a lot of the other Luofu people are shorter than him.
“It’s fine! Do you need a hand there?”
Lengfeng tilts his head at him, before sitting down and handing the paddle over.
Luka at least is tall enough to manoeuvre it without standing up. He takes off his coat and wraps it around his waist for a bit more mobility and that’s when Lengfeng notices his stubbed arm.
“Oh you’re using a prosthetic?” Lengfeng asks innocently. “That’s kinda an old model though.”
“That's all we had back home.” Luka shrugs. He has to admit it is a bit hard living life without any grip on his right hand, especially after being raised right-handed, but he’s more or less got the hang of it now. His only issue here is telling the currents of the river.
“I’ll get you a new one. It’s kinda a shame if you just stuck with that the entire time,” Lengfeng offers him. “My papa can forge almost anything, and I heard my cousin’s not so bad with tech herself.”
“So you’re a family of engineers?” Luka finds himself asking. He’s a bit intimidated now, to say the least. Just who exactly is this Lengfeng fella? His family seems cracked as hell.
Lengfeng shrugs, scratching the back of his neck. “I mean I guess you can say that.”
He reaches over the edge of the boat, his swords flying out beside him, then dipping into the water. Ice crystals form momentarily before being dissolved again. It’s amazing, Luka thinks. He definitely hasn’t seen anything like it considering most of the water they have back home is always frozen.
The swords end up helping draw a current to help further paddle the board down the stream. Lengfeng’s gaze is fixed on the swords, making the slightest motions of his hands, delicately commanding where they should stir the water or leave it be. Luka finds it hard to look away.
As he sees the main city get closer and closer into view, he finally decides to interrupt Lengfeng’s concentration. “Does- does everyone in Luofu only speak your language?”
Lengfeng looks up, and the swords immediately stop their dance, only hovering with the boat. “Oh don’t worry, in the outskirts yeah but a lot of people in the main city can speak the common language. I can help you translate, if ever.”
“You aren’t that busy? It seems you were patrolling the outside and all,” Luka says, laughing nervously.
The swordsman shrugs, not meeting his eyes. “I was just practising in the woods outside. I, uh… I like practising out there more. But I guess you can say I don’t have much to do everyday. I just, um, help out my fathers whenever I can.”
Luka nods.
They finally arrive at an even bigger port, so many people running around yelling commands and wooden skiffs bigger than he can imagine all around. It feels a bit silly now, just showing up in a small bamboo boat purely driven by a paddle and some swords.
Lengfeng eases up a bit, retreating all his swords back to the boat as he scans the docks. He grins cheekily as he uses two swords to row their boat to a small protruding edge. “Okay we’ve technically entered through the cargo area buuut I think it’s fine.”
The boat bumps into the dock with a small thud, nearly shaking the wooden stick out of Luka’s grasp and into the water, but Lengfeng’s lightning-quick reflexes stop it in time.
“Woah!”
“I practise,” Lengfeng declares a little smugly. He uses his sword to fly off the boat and onto the dock, before stretching his arm out at him. Luka takes it and hops onto the dock as well. “Woah, you’re really tall. I could never jump that.”
“Hah.” Luka tries to steady his feet, not having travelled on water at all. It’s hard to believe it’s only been fifteen minutes. He looks at the boat that could easily drift away with the currents all the other skiffs are making. “Are we fine just leaving it here?”
Lengfeng waves his hand and two swords immediately pick up a nearby spare rope, tying it to the boat and weaving in and out of a dock peg, creating a sturdy knot. “It’ll be fine. I’ll ask a friend to send it back to the Cloudford port.”
“Woah, a lotta connections there.”
Lengfeng rolls his eyes as he holds out his hand. “Come on, let’s go!”
Luka immediately takes it, deciding that it would probably be fine trusting this person. Plus they could both fight, so he’s probably fine if they run into any trouble.
They climb another flight of stairs - they seem to be endless here - and they’re finally met with a bustling street full of multiple stalls selling goods and food that he didn’t even know existed. He still keeps his grip tight onto Lengfeng, acutely aware how easily he could be swayed by the sights and smells.
“Welcome to the Central Skiff Haven! Not exactly our busiest area but there’s still a lot for most tourists,” Lengfeng explains as they walk through the street.
Luka’s eyes start roaming everywhere. While the Central Skiff Haven is a sight for all five senses, there’s still a lot to be picked up with the eyes, something he’s developed over the years of scouting and fighting, he supposed. He spies a news stand and overhears two people talking about something that piqued his interest.
“Wardance is happening in a few weeks ain’t it?”
“Yeah, I hope the competitors in the ring this year are fierce. I wanna see a good fight.”
“Shame last year Yanqing was too young to join in.”
“Ah the general’s son? Yanqing is a force to be reckoned with, that's for sure. Can’t wait to see how the general’s been training his fighting style.”
He almost feels giddy in his steps as he hears about the news. A fighting ring, huh? Maybe he won’t feel that far from home, after all.
“What’s the Wardance?” Luka finds himself asking. A swordsman like Lengfeng would probably know what it is.
Lengfeng looks at him with a blank stare, before his eyes light up with recognition. “Ah, it’s a yearly tradition where all the cities in Xianzhou compete in a fighting match. I heard that it’s, um, gonna be fun to watch this year.”
“Are you planning to compete?”
It takes Lengfeng a good few seconds before he answers. “I’m, um.. I’m not sure. It would be great to face new opponents and learn in the ring but I don’t know if I’m ready yet.”
“Ah, that’s a shame.” Luka frowns. He feels something icy pat his head before realising it’s one of the flying swords again. Hm, it’s a bit disappointing that Lengfeng wouldn’t compete. He hasn’t really seen him fight yet and the flying swords seem like the coolest thing ever, especially if they’re really the only ones in the entire city.
“Actually what brings you to the Luofu? I doubt you guys get news about these kinds of stuff,” Lengfeng asks as they walk. The little tuft of hair on his head adorably bobs up and down, it’s a little distracting.
“Oh.” Luka slaps his forehead. “I completely forgot! I was supposed to be laying low and collecting data… gahhh I even forgot to sketch out the docks.”
Lengfeng’s eyebrows lift up the slightest bit at the mention of sketching. “That sounds like a big responsibility. And it’s just you?”
“We’re kinda running out of people. There are other guys, but they’ve been sent to other cities so I was assigned to this one.”
Lengfeng nods his head. “It’s alright. I can provide you with maps of this place if you want. You can bet they’re top quality.”
“Oh that’s good!” Luka sighs in relief. “They told me I shouldn’t really be trusting maps from authorities outright, might contain false info or a trap but I’m glad I’m getting it from you, Lengfeng.”
“Haha, yeah…” Lengfeng clears his throat. “So do you- do you have a place to stay or anything?”
Luka stops in his tracks. “Shoot, I forgot about that.”
Lengfeng chuckles and it sounds as cute as a bird chirping. He rolls his eyes. “You can stay with me and my family. We own a place nearby, and I doubt you have any Xianzhou currency on you.”
“That was my fear, too,” Luka admits, knowing the bag around his shoulder only carries Belobogian shield, and they warned him that a lot of countries already would’ve forgotten about that currency. “Can I- Can I get a job here or something?”
Lengfeng raises an eyebrow. “I like that you actually wanna work for it… but you do realise how hard it’s gonna be for you to get one right?”
“Actually I hadn’t thought about it until now.” Okay maybe he was the slightest bit too eager and skipping out on Lady Bronya’s multiple briefings was a bad call, but he couldn’t exactly say no to the kids back home. He wonders how they’re doing now.
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Lengfeng says, barely sounding bothered about the arrangement at all. “It must be hard being in a position you didn’t expect. I’ll talk to my papa, I’m sure he can find something for you. What are your skills?”
“Uh… I can fight?”
“Good enough.”
They make it past the busier streets and into a quieter area just on the edge of the city, in the district between the Centeal Skiff Haven and some place that served as the Artisanship Commission of the Luofu or something. A lot of terms whirl around in Luka’s head and he doesn’t really wanna dwell too much on them.
They approach a humble house that seems to be more like a shop at first glance, with dark black ink scratched onto a bamboo sign spelling words that he doesn’t recognise. It’s an unassuming exterior, but as Lengfeng opens the door, he’s immediately met with a small room full of various metal weapons. On the walls are various papers and sketches of swords and tools, probably orders or blueprints.
He doesn’t know if the house is deceptively small or if there’s another room behind this storefront.
An old man who seems to be in his mid-40s stands in the corner, hunched over an anvil beside a fiery furnace. He looks up, his face riddled with years of stress marked evidently by the wrinkles on it. But he still has a youthful air to him all the same. “Who’s this?”
“Ah… I’ll need to talk to you for a bit, Ren-baba. Luka, do you mind stepping out for a bit?”
Luka salutes a lil goofily and follows suit, hoping internally that the man inside wouldn’t kill him for randomly showing up.
—
“Yanqing, who the fuck was that?”
Yanqing scratches the back of his neck, trying to find how exactly he should explain this whole situation. The words just don’t seem to line up that well on his tongue. “So, uh, papa, do you remember Belobog?”
Ren raises an eyebrow. “Back in the day when I was just sixteen they told me it stopped existing fifty years ago.”
“Yeah, um actually… it’s back, and its people are back. The guy outside, Luka, he’s from Belobog.”
“And how are you sure it’s not a scam?”
“How are you sure it’s not?” Yanqing asks back innocently. “I mean he seems like a total stranger here and I’ve never seen anyone dress like him in all the meetings A-diē drags me to.”
Ren remains relatively unresponsive, and it’s moments like these when Yanqing feels like a cat who’s only clawing at a piece of rock.
Sighing deeply, he puts on his cutest face possible. “Pleaaase? Even if he isn’t actually from Belobog, he still needs some help! And you and I know exactly how to deal with him if he gets dangerous.”
Ren looks away. He will never admit it but the trick does work on him quite a lot. Yanqing loves abusing it. “Why don’t you take him to our place then? You know I only come here to work on some days.”
Yanqing bites his lip. Out of everyone he wants to talk to about his reasons, Ren is probably his pick over Jingyuan, but he doesn’t really want to delve into it that deeply yet, and he knows Ren would understand. “I don’t want him to be exposed to all that.”
“Ah.” Ren grimaces.
Politics, authority, all that nice stuff. Yanqing also wants to distance himself from that. The weeks leading up to the Wardance have been hectic and he hasn’t gotten even a moment's rest from all the mailing and meetings and double checking and quality controlling. “So you understand?”
“A-Yuan was asking me if you went down to the woods outside Cloudford again.”
Yanqing’s face immediately falls. Ren is ultimately easy to talk to but man he hates it whenever he says whatever he wants. Which is most of the time. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, I told him you didn’t. You were with me and I was helping you sharpen your million swords for practice.”
Yanqing sighs in relief, smiling wide. “Thank you.”
“I won’t cover for you again this week. You’ve got to get back to work.”
“Oh come on, I’ve been working nonstop ever since this all started. I want a break! My brain’s turned to mush.”
“I know you do.” Ren puts the blade he was working on down and walks towards Yanqing, kneeling down to meet his eye level. “And I’m not going to say stuff like ‘this would mean everything to me and A-Yuan’ because that’s not what matters. But it’s better to get shit done than just keep waiting.”
Yanqing slumps. “We have a guest now. Surely that can wait?”
Ren’s features soften the slightest bit. Yanqing always loves it whenever that happens. Ren is very rough around the edges after his time in the military but he’d trust his dad to take care of him more than anyone else in the entire Luofu. “I’ll help you shelter him here, just know that from the Day 1 through 3 of the week, I’ll be at the Alchemy Commission since they told me some of their furnaces got banged up because of someone.”
Yanqing grins. Guilty as charged. He and his cousin Yunli did have a little too much fun during a sparring match a week or two ago, and they maaay have bumped into a few of the cauldrons there. Just a few. “Heh sorry about that.”
“You and your father… I hope you both remember you’re the people with the biggest responsibilities in this city. I only want to see you two being idiots at home, not at work.”
“Yes, papa.” Yanqing salutes with a smile, running forward to hug him. “Oh by the way, he had his arm chopped off but his prosthetic’s pretty outdated.”
Ren pats him on the back before releasing him, a faint look of empathy on his face. Yanqing knows he was no stranger to disabling wounds, and his arm never really seemed to heal back. At least he could still forge quite a few things. “I’ll see what I can do for him.”
“Thank you!” Yanqing almost gets ready to run back outside but Ren holds up his hand.
“Do you want me to keep this from A-Yuan?” his dad asks him. “Just for the first few weeks, but I want you to tell him about it before the Wardance.”
Yanqing nods.
“What’s your code name?”
It makes him want to giggle a bit how Ren’s treating this all seriously but he knows it’s a great sign of respect from him. “Lengfeng.”
He can see the ghost of a smile on Ren’s features and he counts that as a win for him. He has to admit he did take inspiration from his father’s chosen name, and both of them had a great affinity to swords anyway. “That’s okay. Though you could’ve skipped the ‘leng’ part. Alright, you’re Lengfeng while in this house.”
—
Lengfeng finally opens the door after what felt like hours.
“Welcome to the household, Luka! Don’t forget, leave your shoes by the door,” he greets him with a smile, gesturing inside again. He points to the scary-looking man who seems to just be tidying up the workshop now. “That’s my dad, you can call him Ren.”
“Ah, hello, Mr. Ren!” Luka awkwardly calls out with a wave. He doesn’t know if he’s pronouncing it properly.
Ren nods at him, and based on the looks of things, probably the most recognition he’ll receive from the old man.
Lengfeng grabs his hand and he’s pushed through another door, to a much tidier room with a big window and three mats on the floor. He doesn’t know if that mat was miraculously prepared already. “Make yourself at home! You can take the left bed. I’ll just go grab us some lunch.”
Lengfeng walks back out the door at lightning speed, and Luka’s left alone in the room, the silence occasionally broken by the sounds of metal clanking against the other in the adjacent room. He walks over to his given mat with a sigh, laying down and staring at the ceiling. This is a wild day but he had to admit he has very much lucked out by running into Lengfeng. He really does seem just like your run-of-the-mill boy from the small district, just with an insanely talented control over his swords.
At least he hasn’t run into anyone high-profile yet, he thinks. Mission still accomplished.