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Suppose you find Li Lianhua’s broken body on the beach.
Suppose you find yourself cradling him—crossing that distance between you faster than his dog, faster than his best friend.
Suppose he opens his eyes in wonderment, as though he did not leave a trail for you to find him.
Would it be within your rights to press your mouth to his, sip in the poisoned blood, and pull away just for him to whisper, “You still have it”
—and you would follow his eyes to the glint of broken steel peeking from your sleeve—
and hold him so close as his best friend, Fang Duobing, tells him how long they searched for him? Holding onto his dog, his house, his book. “Di Feisheng found your sword and never let go,” Fang Duobing tells him, in such gentle tones.
You encountered Fang Duobing during your search. Your paths will always cross as long as he is involved. He told you the story of the broken blade, of the box filled with etchings of his name—“Li Xiangyi.”
It was all that was left of him, after all. You clung to it as though it would lead you to him.
Li Lianhua’s mournful eyes study you, but you cannot tell what he seeks in your face. “If you had found us instead…,” he whispers.
He kisses you back with just his lips, with such regard to your safety, but you pry his mouth open. “Don’t—” but his protest is swallowed, and you eat it along with the tang of poison.
—
And then you wake up.
—
The world is such a mess. Dirty and wild. Your clothes are still stained with blood—from before your escape from Di Fortress, or from the dead child lying in front of you.
Li Xiangyi, a child sitting by his brother’s corpse, is wide-eyed as he is plunged back into this forgotten memory. “Gege…,” he whispers, in the same voice he would use when he is an adult.
“Xiangyi.” You immediately palm the pendant in Li Xiangxian’s hand. “Do you remember?”
“Him?” The child’s eyes flick to the person he would never speak with again. “Or...?”
“Xiangyi.” You savor his name on your tongue. “We need to give him a proper burial.”
So you do. Two orphans on the street, hauling a body you can barely carry. It takes a day to do the job that, as adults, would have taken you mere hours.
You offer Xiangyi the pendant that caused—will cause—such a mess. “Yours.”
Weeping silently—for his child form can barely contain the emotions of his adult self—Xiangyi buries it with his brother.
—
By the time Qi Mushan finds you, your memories of your past—future—lives are fading. Names like Jiao Liqiao, the feeling of being tall enough to look Qi Mushan in the eye—they are a distant dream. You are Di Feisheng, and you found this child in the street. Qi Mushan looks you desperately in the eye. “Are you Xiangxian?”
You shake your head, but Li Xiangyi won’t let go of your hand.
You ascend Yunyin Mountain together.
—
You are unwelcome. Who are you, but another street beggar? An imposter for the dead child, a poor substitute? What are you, but a reminder that Qi Mushan was too late?
He looks at you, and he sees failure.
You’ll see about that.
Xiangyi is little, but he bests you. He never had to fight to the death, and he bests you. Outrageous. His smug little smile makes you want to lash out some more.
Instead, you keep training.
When you best Xiangyi, your victory is short-lived as Shifu alights on the scene to reprimand Xiangyi for giving you the win.
“How dare you,” you frothe. “How dare you deprive yourself of your talents.”
Sudden clarity as Xiangyi locks guilty eyes with you. “He thought I was pitying him.”
“He?” But then the moment is gone, and the memory of your future life is washed away with the present.
Pity. Perhaps that is how Shifu and Shiniang justify adopting you. This poor little beggar on the street, the one who is alive instead of Xiangxian.
And because you are a child, your resentment lands on Xiangyi. Clashing swords with him, the thrill filling your veins. It becomes a push-pull. How could you hate someone who loves this as much as you do? Who understands?
He never had to kill, and yet the result is the same as yours. He loves to fight.
You are alone by the waterfall when Xiangyi dances up to you. “Look what I won,” he says, proudly displaying the beautiful silver bow.
Your eyes widen. “That clan is impossible to defeat,” you say. “I never got a chance to fight them.”
Without a beat, Xiangyi says, “You can have it if you want.”
You are no stranger to the strange phrase, “Indulge your younger brother” that those mothers on the street say to their children. But Xiangyi is indulging you.
“No,” you say. You push the bow gently back into his hand. “You earned it, Li Xiangyi.” A beat. “Do you want to show me how you beat them?”
He smiles eagerly, and your resentment is washed away with the water.
—
Somehow, Shifu and Shiniang deal with you in an eerily similar way to the masters of Di Fortress. They draw lots to decide who takes which child, and Shiniang retreats into the clouds with your hand in hers.
She pushes you. Hard. And when you see Xiangyi again, clashing with him with all the brutality of two people’s broken love, you relish it.
Clarity strikes you, as brilliant as the way Xiangyi blocks your sword. Shan Gudao—that man was made to compete with Li Xiangyi. Children are not meant to fight each other. Not like this. Not for the bitter ambitions of adults. The real pity here is that Shan Gudao, child that he was, never realized that.
Your blade slides harmlessly off Xiangyi’s.
Shan Gudao was a fool.
By the time Shifu has led your shidi away—Xiangyi throwing a glance over his shoulder to show he misses you—you are hungering for the next fight, and you have forgotten who Shan Gudao is.
—
Xiangyi’s voice breaks by the time Shifu allows you to descend from the mountain. You make preparations. You also sneak with him in the woods. He is the one leading you by the hand.
You try to wash away your expectations. You would never take advantage of Xiangyi. But when he turns back around, his eyes are burning.
You missed this. You missed this so much.
“Shixiong,” he sighs fondly as he kisses you. The word is alien and familiar at once. Has he ever said the other name with the same amount of love he has said the word “shixiong”?
You test it.
By the time his legs are wrapped around your waist, his hair askew across the forest floor, he is calling you “A-Fei” again.
You dip your head low, mouth against his ear. “Is that any way to address your shixiong?” and he shivers at your breathy words.
“I’ll call you what I want to call you,” he says, alive again, “ Lao Di.”
—
And so you descend from the mountain. You create Sigu Sect together. You gather Jinyuan Alliance’s people beneath its banner. You indulge Xiangyi’s whims, while building the kind of organization that, in a future life, Sigu Sect failed to be.
His young arrogance suffuses with his memories of his past-future life. He looks at you with such sad eyes sometimes, as though regretting. He does not pursue Qiao Wanmian, smitten as he is with her talent and bravery.
“There’s young talent out there,” he says one day, eyes looking thousands of miles away. “In places we don’t expect.”
“I heard,” you say, slowly, “that He Xiaohui has a child in a wheelchair. The boy aspires to be a swordsman.”
Xiangyi’s eyes meet yours, knowingly.
—
But he comes anyway. Despite your best efforts to prevent it all from happening again. It plays out differently this time. Shan Gudao catches you off-guard, poisons you with something that shuts down your whole body. Everything dies. You become a corpse. But your mind is awake.
It is awake for when Xiangyi finds your body. Your nerves are broken, so you only distantly feel the warmth of his body curled around yours, wracked with grief. You hear him asking—and you picture his tremulous smile—you to wake. He shakes you lightly, as though you are only napping. “Shixiong” and again “ shixiong.”
Xiangyi, you think as he cries into your neck, holding you so tightly that your nerve-split body feels the strength in his grip. Xiangyi.
—
You wake up again, but you cannot move. Jiao Liqiao whispers something in a hush with Shan Gudao. Something about moving Li Xiangyi to wage war with the people responsible. With destroying Sigu Sect, the first threat to their plans to revive the Nanyin kingdom.
“And how is our prisoner?” Jiao Liqiao turns to you with a smile. Now that your heart has restarted, it strikes you painfully from the inside, blood roaring when your rage has nowhere to go. You cannot even glare at her.
It was the karmic bug. Again, it is the thing that traps you.
In your future-past life, you were presumed dead for ten years. You cannot let that happen again.
You bide your time, and meditate. I will come back to you, you think, grimly. I’ll come back, Xiangyi. Fang Duobing.
Her control slips one day, so you bite her. You bite her and suck down the blood like a feast, tilting your head so it splashes against the spot where the bug rests. You have that one instant, so you sink your teeth deep to make it count. She shrieks as the bug melts.
She dies rather silently. You kill her much the same way you did in your future life.
You spare Xiangyi from awakening a memory of betrayal by killing Shan Gudao on the way out, for good measure.
—
“Shidi.” He whips around, stops short. For once, you think, pleased, he is frozen in shock for something good. Something that will not hurt him.
“Well?” you say. “Are you going to make me wait a decade?”
You catch the red rims of his eyes as he flings himself into your arms.