Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“this fall from grace

is in my hands…

and my heart does not bleed for anyone but my own

am i loveless?”

“Loveless,” by Kittie

It ended simply, with the metallic hiss of metal being swept from his grip.

Mu Qing fell to the ground as he watched his zhanmadao fly to the edge of the arena. The once infallible, honed blade was now buried deep in celestial ground, every razor-sharp inch still ringing with the sound of irreversible impact. In the surrounding quiet, the only noise to interrupt that ominous hum was breath—shaking, angry. Human. But it wasn’t exertion that left Mu Qing gasping and heaving where he wrung his hands against crumbling white stone. It was shame. It was embarrassment.

It was the knowledge that he had failed.

He failed in front of everyone.

A cocky voice dripping with venom resounded clear and unbothered through the windless air. The crowds of officials on every side were already buzzing, but this lone voice was the one that made it to Mu Qing’s ear.

The Crimson Rain Sought Flower hummed and sheathed his saber. “I believe this match is over, General. You don’t deserve the courtesy, but,” he smirked and let his words trickle out one by one, “please leave. Before I make you.”

The crowd was immediately sent into an uproar. Every hope for the ghost’s defeat had been heaved on Mu Qing’s shoulders after their own thirty-three rounds of undeniable loss. This spirit—this madman—had broken through into the Heavens and defied the will of the Heavenly Emperor to pose his ludicrous challenge. And now, after a full day and night of watching him single-handedly drag thirty-three gods to the depths of shame and despair, Mu Qing, General Xuan Zhen, God of the Southwest, had fallen too.

And everyone had seen it.

“You bastard!” A familiar voice shouted, sounding nearer with every stomp past the boundary of the clearing. “You think you can march in here and cut us down? Who the fuck do you—urgh!”

“Shut the fuck up.” Mu Qing hissed and pushed Feng Xin back by his shoulders. Feng Xin had come up to stand between him and the ghost, his bow at the ready and gleaming with brilliant, golden light. But Mu Qing had already been at the other end of that terrifying saber the ghost held in his grip. And he… He couldn’t watch that blade cut through one more body. Not if it was Feng Xin. “Stand down, you moron. You already rejected his challenge. Just go away.”

Feng Xin’s dark eyes went wide and Mu Qing focused on the fury that gaze brought him to distract from the shame. “Are you fucking serious? You saw what he just did! We all saw!”

“Exactly. So get out of here before you make things worse! He can’t challenge you again, so just—”

“Oh, I’ll gladly challenge him again.” The ghost laughed behind them. “I would even give you a second shot, General. If you’re man enough to take it.”

Mu Qing turned slowly to see that single, calculating eye already looking back. That word, that title—General—was spoken with not an ounce of respect, not even a trace of intimidation. It was pure amusement. Mu Qing’s scalp prickled at the thought of facing the ghost again.

“You—” Feng Xin growled, pressing forward against Mu Qing’s hold.

It was the heat beneath his palms that snapped Mu Qing back into the moment. He dared one last look at that bronzed, honest face before banishing the years-old warmth in his chest.

With all the strength he could muster—burdened by the fear of losing this one person—Mu Qing pulled Feng Xin just close enough to wring his hands through the collar of his robes. He whispered, harsh and terrified, “Stay down.”, before pushing Feng Xin to the ground and facing the ghost once more.

When Mu Qing turned again, for the final time, the Crimson Rain Sought Flower was already brandishing his saber and distractedly admiring its gleam in the sunlight.

“So eager.” The ghost smiled as he ran a finger along his blade. “So foolish.”

Mu Qing clenched his teeth and pulled his zhanmadao from the ground. “I have a wager of my own, ghost. When I win, you leave this place. Immediately.”

“Hmm. And when I win?”

Mu Qing swallowed past the shameful lump in his throat. “I accept Nan Yang’s defeat in his place. He takes over my territory. The Southwest is his. And I’ll step down, just like you said.”

“You WHAT?! Mu Qing! You—mmf.” Feng Xin’s tirade was cut off with a grunt as Pei Ming pulled him back from the clearing with a hand at his mouth. Mu Qing felt his nerves ease knowing his rival would be kept from the makeshift arena, but that relief didn’t last long.

For a moment, it looked as if the ghost would deny the challenge. But when his pale finger reached the tip of his saber, the Crimson Rain Sought Flower cast his gaze across the cracked tile and his smiling lips pulled into a sneer. His dark eye went thin, curious and seeking where he looked Mu Qing over. Those terrifying silver butterflies flitted across the clearing as if they were parsing through the crowd for any sign of a trick. But there was none.

There was no scheming or half-truth in Mu Qing’s wager. He would take it all, crushing defeat two times over, if he could have this chance to prove his worth.

The ghost laughed outright, a booming, haughty sound that rattled bones and sent his butterflies in a frenzy. “That would just kill you. Wouldn’t it, General?”

Mu Qing didn’t answer.

The ghost raised his blade and fell into an easy offensive stance. With one final smirk, his saber caught the light and hummed where it was held at the ready.

“Well, one can hope, anyway.”

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

The heavy wooden door of the Palace of Xuan Zhen shut with a boom. An empty roar of thunder over a brittle, beaten valley; foreboding and ominous, it echoed through every empty hall and rattled the mounted treasures that decorated the passageways of Mu Qing’s celestial home.

No, this wasn’t a home. Maybe it had never been. After today, Mu Qing realized this was little more than ornate tomb built to house the memory of a failed and futile god.

Something old and bitter rocked Mu Qing to his core, gripping him not with bruising fists, but with the cold press of glowering, haughty faces and the desolate sensation of being completely and utterly humiliated. Mu Qing wanted to fall to the floor and hug his knees, he wanted to tear down every glittering hall of this fucking tomb and run his blade across the delicate silks and adornments his merits had earned him.

But a whining brat, an angry, petulant little commoner is what they all saw in him now. That’s what the ghost’s match had proven. The reward of the Crimson Rain Sought Flower’s victory was not Mu Qing’s territory or his followers—it was his dignity. His standing respect as a foremost martial god.

But Mu Qing still had his pride.

This palace didn’t belong to Mu Qing anymore. This hall was not his to burden with torrential anger. He would hold himself together just long enough to get out of the Heavens, then the anger could come. In an odd way, he patiently welcomed it.

Anger was better than bitter tears, after all.

Directly following his second defeat, Mu Qing retreated to his palace to quell the uproar of his deputies. When the ghost had first torn his way into the Heavens, Mu Qing and Feng Xin were the very first officials his chilling eye sought out. It wasn’t until his first defeat of a familiar and unimportant civil god, however, that Mu Qing recognized the tremendous power behind those silver vambraces, the unrelenting fury carefully hidden by a cocky smile.

When the next god to accept his challenge stepped forward and offered, like the first, a vision of his duel to his followers in their dreams, Mu Qing had a terrifying feeling that this match would end no different from the last. He sent every one of his deputies back to the Palace of Xuan Zhen under threat of severe punishment. In the end, he was glad to have saved at least this meager scrap of face.

On his return, Mu Qing ignored all pleas for a rematch and stifled any hope that he would deny the results of the ghost’s challenge. The Crimson Rain Sought Flower had beaten him with no room for doubt; the Southwest was out of his hands, and with it, his deputies. Behind the closed doors of his study, Mu Qing drafted a letter of recommendation detailing the accomplishments and skills of every official in his palace—every single one, all contained in a single letter addressed to the Palace of Nan Yang.

There was no telling how Feng Xin would respond to taking over the Southwest. In his most private and foolish thoughts, Mu Qing hoped he would be remorseful. He hoped that some last vanishing thread of war-torn kinship between them would make this a sad day for them both. But Mu Qing knew better than to hope for the best, and the last thing he would ever accept from Feng Xin was pity.

Still, sympathy, warmth—even a feeling as stupid as loss—were a comfort in his imagination.

So, Mu Qing sent his former deputies out of the palace with little more than a quick look past the distant gates enclosing him. If it weren’t for the sun glinting off golden armor, he would’ve missed the pathetic sight of Feng Xin uselessly trying to break past the invisible barrier cast across the property. No, Mu Qing would’ve recognized him even without the armor, even with leagues between them.

Because he would know that furious yell anywhere. He had heard it plenty enough as they stood back-to-back in battle as young, mortal men. Many times, Mu Qing had seen that bronzed, honest face across a battlefield and across a rickety kitchen table.

It was murderous now, stretched in fury as he brought a brilliant sword down again and again on the barrier, creased with something like pain as he watched Mu Qing shut the palace door with one final push.

That was the last time he saw Feng Xin bathed in the unfiltered light of the Heavens. Mu Qing almost wished they could’ve parted under better circumstances, but as recent events had come to prove, there was no more time for wishes and wants. All Mu Qing had now was himself.

He wouldn’t let his final day as a god end with some bitter, meaningless goodbye.

Jun Wu wasn’t present in the Heavens at this time. He had gone into seclusion some years before, so Mu Qing refused to let his self-imposed banishment carry out with any ceremony. He was the only one to comply with the ghost’s challenge to its full extent. And in the back of his mind, Mu Qing knew he’d made the right decision.

If the rest of the defeated officials had any hope of clinging to their position after this, they were idiots. There would be consequences for broadcasting their own failure to their believers, and Mu Qing opted to cut his embarrassment while he still had this last shred of pride.

But there was one last thing to do before leaping down to the Mortal Realm. Mu Qing walked stiffly to one small, hidden alcove nestled within his dressing room. Dark, finely crafted wardrobes filled with the finest robes and ornaments lined the walls, but they were far from the most valuable treasures in this room. The wealth of the palace in its entirety could never reach the worth of this one item he sought.

In that hidden alcove, Mu Qing pulled a single robe from the bottom of a locked chest. The familiar embroidery met him like the warm smile of a face he’d almost forgotten, the kind eyes of someone he missed with every breath he took. By some last stroke of fortune, it fit perfectly.

After the fall of Xianle, after His Highness’ ascension and banishment, after Mu Qing clawed his way to the pedestal of the martial protector of the Southwest, the newly ascended god had seen this last extant piece of his mother’s artistry draped across the shoulders of some far-off noble. He would know these stitches blind; it took no time at all to don the disguise of a mortal and trade the man more than ten times what he paid for the robe.

According to that long-dead aristocrat, the robe had traded hands many times till it fell, at last, on Mu Qing’s shoulders. Now, when he traded heavenly silk woven from stardust and strands finer than mist for the simple fabric of a well-made robe, he finally felt ready to descend.

In a flutter of black sleeves embroidered with cherry blossoms, its silver hem still vibrant and gleaming, Mu Qing left the Heavens and the martial god Xuan Zhen, protector of the Southwest, was no more.

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

“That’s not enough. A meal and a night’s stay will cost at least double that.”

Mu Qing clenched his teeth. “But I heard you give this price to that man over there.”

The innkeeper cast a lazy glance to the patron now seated across the food stall. As the man side-eyed them with a tense expression, the innkeeper only clicked his tongue and fixed his eyes back on the finely dressed, and clearly wealthy, gentleman in front of him.

“Double. Take it or leave it.”

Mu Qing ground his teeth and flexed the fingers of his right hand where it was hidden in his sleeve. But even as a banished, fallen god, he was prohibited from using what little spiritual energy he had left.

“Just the soup, then.” He spoke through a grumble.

The innkeeper scoffed and moved to pour him a bowl. “Coming right up, good sir.”

This was the one part of his plan that Mu Qing had foolishly decided to ignore until it was much too late. Though leaving his mother’s robe behind was, of course, unthinkable, the craftsmanship of the garment had made him the target of much undue price gouging since he first descended back to the Mortal Realm.

He wasn’t a complete idiot. The qiankun pouch he kept on his person at all times was full of enough heavenly bits and baubles that he could pawn off when things got rough, but he didn’t have a whole territory of merits to fall back on anymore. It was him, this finite hoard of savings, his robe, and a simple sword he’d traded for a month ago, but that was it. This was all he had left in the world.

But, again, merchants and mortals who were also securing their next meal only ever saw the robe.

As Mu Qing rudely clattered his now empty bowl down on the food stall, a breathy voice sounded beside him, the sound of it not at all dampened by a polite hand settled over the intruder’s impertinent mouth.

Someone was laughing. Laughing at him.

Mu Qing turned to the girl at his side who was clearly trying to look elsewhere. “Is something funny, miss?”

“Oh,” she giggled, “please forgive me, gongzi. You just—hahaha—you just looked so…helpless.”

Mu Qing felt his face twist. “I beg your pardon?”

The girl smiled and beckoned him closer with a surreptitious wave of her hand. She whispered, “That guy took you for a ride, didn’t he?”

He whispered back, “He did not.”

“He did too! I saw it!” The girl laughed outright again, ruining the pretend secrecy she’d cast in the first place. “Ah, don’t take it to heart, gongzi. We’re all just trying to get by. It’s nothing personal.”

“I’m not offended by some—”

“It’s no offense! But it is a shame though.” She sighed, “You didn’t even get a room.”

Mu Qing wanted to retort, to save himself the face of absolutely getting taken for a ride. But the girl was right. This wasn’t the first time, after all. But he had his pride to protect. So, he spoke through clenched teeth and did his best to contain his ire.

“Well then, what should I do?”

“Hmm…” The girl gave him a quick once over but only shook her head glumly. “I’m afraid you just look too rich, gongzi. You’re too pretty to be from around here.”

Mu Qing flexed his fingers again. Maybe it wouldn’t be a complete waste of his spiritual energy to blow this whole street straight up to the heavens.

“I’d say you look easy to pick on, but that robe of yours would have been stolen already if you were. Your shoes though,” she whistled empathetically. “You’ve been on the road for a while, haven’t you?”

Mu Qing shut his eyes tight and mentally counted to five. “I’ve been travelling.”

“Oh. So you’ve been displaced too?”

At that, Mu Qing opened his eyes again to see the girl’s smiling face had fallen pale. Her eyes went wide and apologetic, studying him for some further sign of distress.

It was…concerned. Kind.

“Displaced?”

“Yes, from the fighting in the West.” The girl pointed around the bustling street, gesturing toward the crowd of travel weary faces. “That’s where we’ve all come from, anyway.”

“Who’s we?”

“Well, me and Xiaobo, for starters.” The girl turned just enough that Mu Qing could see the baby slung securely across her back, sound asleep in the warm afternoon sun. “Us and the others at the camp. We’re all waiting for our boys to come back from the front, but it’s been so long…”

Her voice faltered there, and she gave a light squeeze at the small, pudgy foot poking through the wrap at her hip. “So, we’ve all been travelling too. Trying to keep up with the army while they move. Is that what stole you from your own home, gongzi?”

Mu Qing gave the question a silent beat of thought. He couldn’t tell her the truth, but there was no reason to lie. Even if it made this mortal, this woman who’s lifespan was less than a tenth of his own, feel better.

The baby, Xiaobo, started to fuss, and the girl’s attention was stolen as she rocked him gently back to sleep.

“Yes,” Mu Qing replied. “I’m running too.”

The girl faced him again, and her wide eyes lifted into happy crescents. “What running? Who said we’re running? Ah, gongzi, things will turn out just fine. Our boys will be back before the year is over, and we’ll all be back home before too long. Trust me, I can feel it.” With that, the girl turned toward a little handcart behind her, one that must have been her own, and grabbed its handles in a fierce grip.

“Heh, you can feel it, can you?” Mu Qing rolled his eyes and shooed her hands from the cart. When he took over and waited for further instruction with a patient smirk, she smiled in return and directed him toward the road.

The girl still had a few stops to make. Bags of rice and bundles of discounted, half-fresh vegetables were mounted onto the steady little handcart as the trio made their way through the wind-weathered town with frugal determination. Like a pair of old friends, they worked in perfect tandem to haggle for the best prices and choose the best produce the girl’s short finances could afford. If Mu Qing stepped in to sneak some dried meats and fruits into the handcart —for the baby, of course—then that was his business, and he would hear no words of reimbursement.

Xiaobo woke soon enough and held a small trinket in his hand as he babbled and giggled where the painted pinwheel fluttered in the breeze. Mu Qing looked back and accidentally let an easy smile slip across his face.

The girl bumped him in the stomach with her elbow. “You shop like a stingy housewife, gongzi.”

“Watch it.”

She didn’t. “Where did you learn to haggle like that? Don’t tell me you’re some palace servant that’s gone rogue.”

Mu Qing laughed despite himself. “You have quite an imagination, miss.”

“Xue Zhenzhen,” she smiled warmly. “That’s my name. And my little one is Zeng Xiaobo.”

Mu Qing stopped the handcart and let it settle with a quiet creak on the dusty road. He turned to the girl and took a breath to settle the pull in his chest.

They had reached the border of the town; foot-beaten ground gave way here to wilderness and scrap-dressed tents that leaned into trees and foothills. This was where they should part ways and say their goodbyes. Nothing good could come from meddling very long with mortals—not when age was a race ordinary people would always win, not when ascending back to godhood was the one thing keeping him alive.

Because that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? A chance to prove himself again, to show the heavens that he had earned and deserved his place there. Mu Qing had worked hard in his first life to reach those summits—there was no question that he should work just as hard to do it again. Because he could. Mu Qing couldn’t let them think otherwise.

But this girl, Xue Zhenzhen, her back must be impossibly sore from carrying her child all this way. And they had been travelling just as long as him.

Mu Qing rolled his eyes and returned the cart to its easy pace. “My name is Fu Yao.”

“Fu Yao. It’s lovely to meet you, Fu Yao.” The girl smiled again and Xiaobo babbled from his perch on her back.

“fufufu—fuuuhhh…” He said eloquently.

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Auntie Hao bellowed and the braided hair in her hands unraveled. “And I’m telling you, it was a calamity! This was a punishment form the gods! I saw it! You all saw it, too!”

Auntie Peng smiled to herself. “And I say you’ve been drinking too much.”

“Well, who asked you?”

“You did, ya old bat!”

Mu Qing groaned freely from his place by the fire and stirred the pot in front of him with an anguished hand.

“Ah, there you are, gongzi.” Xue Zhenzhen chirped as she took up a seat beside him. “Oof. Got stuck with cooking duty? That’s too bad.”

“What? Is my soup not good enough for you?” He hissed with no venom. “Please, by all means, take over.”

She shook his arm playfully and laughed as he groaned again. “No, no. I’m sure it’s fine. It smells good, anyway. Why do you think the aunties are badgering each other instead of you?”

True enough, the rest of the group was happy to chatter amongst themselves as Mu Qing toiled for their dinner. At first, the trio of older women had seemed none too pleased to have their “signature dish” in the hands of a perfect stranger, but once tales of Mu Qing’s shopping expertise had been passed throughout the camp, they were all suddenly too busy to cook anyway.

So, there they were, seated together in a tight ring, clucking like hens while they masterfully combed the hair on each head of a smaller ring of children. And here he was, the former god of the Southwest, the all-but-once inconquerable General Xuan Zhen…sitting by the fire and making stew.

The evening sun had just begun to set like a ripened, slouching peach in the bowl of the valley. Xue Zhenzhen had led Mu Qing far down a skinny, foot-weathered path—skirting the town by half a mile, following the bend of a shallow creek and the path of the setting sun—until they came upon a small encampment nestled in this safe, tidy valley. Hand-stitched tents and a few donkeys peppered the clearing in a busy, lively spray. Among the travelers, there was not a single young man to be seen, save for Mu Qing himself. He almost thought he was the only man among them entirely, until a few hobbling grandfathers and determined uncles came out of their tents to find the cause of all the excitement.

Still, it was mostly women and children. Old, young, infirm. Wrinkled grandmothers sat on the ground, cleaning the leaves of what foraged greens they could find. Little ones crawled around on blankets spread between side-leaning tents, the warmth of their hearths traded for dust and bramble bushes.

But joy was taken where it could be found. The arrival of Fu Yao, the camp’s newest member—at least, this was how Xue Zhenzhen had introduced him—would have been a cause for some celebration if the impressed gasps by a certain trio of aunties was anything to go by. But there was little their band could spare in the name of a feast. So, instead, once Mu Qing’s natural, ah, temperament became a fine enough excuse to welcome their latest addition with their usual evening fare, the camp settled into a friendly hum as several of the women (and Mu Qing) set about making dinner.

While the hearty stew was, apparently, the usual responsibility of the noisy old hens clucking not too far away, Mu Qing decided this exercise was as good as any to test his mettle. Keeping Xiaobo away from the steaming pot was not an annoyance, rather, it was an additive to this curiously domestic challenge that kept Mu Qing as wary as any battlefield.

Mu Qing watched Xiaobo pull at Xue Zhenzhen’s robes and grabbed a bowl from the small, mismatched stack at his side. “I think the kid is hungry. Do you want me to pull out some food to cool?”

“No, no, that’s fine. I’ll feed him.” But before Xue Zhenzhen lowered her sleeve, she looked at Mu Qing with a testing smirk. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Mu Qing rolled his eyes, “Why would I?”

“Aww,” she crooned as she patted his shoulder. “Such a good boy. What manners.”

The loudest of the hens—Auntie Hao—redirected her attention and fixed Mu Qing with a teasing look. With a twitch of her brows, Auntie Hao directed the attention of her two sisters in crime toward the fire as she shooed a fidgety young girl from her lap.

“He is a good boy,” Auntie Hao crooned. “You know, he reminds me a lot of your brother, Zhenzhen.”

Xue Zhenzhen smiled brightly and shoved Mu Qing’s shoulder with a laugh. “Ha! That’s what I was thinking! He’s just like my didi!”

“That boy was always so polite, but he would get so angry when the other kids teased him.” Auntie Hao continued, helping the others up before the three of them ambled over to the fire. “That Xue Quan. He would turn as red as a—yes, see, just like that.”

Mu Qing steamed as he felt his face heat and gave a particularly hard scrape to the bottom of the large iron pot.

“Oh, you know him. My A-Quan wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Xue Zhenzhen clutched Xiaobo tighter to her chest and spoke through a placid smile, “He would just cry and howl at it till the damn thing flew away.”

The four of them laughed amongst themselves before delving into more tales from whatever village they called home. The oldest of them by far—Auntie Qin—sat closest to Mu Qing. After gazing at him for much too long through hazy, clouded eyes, her face brightened with a wide toothless smile and she pinched his cheek. The tallest of them—Auntie Peng—joined in and pinched the other cheek, happily complimenting Mu Qing for his manners in escorting their Zhenzhen home safely.

While Mu Qing didn’t necessarily appreciate the gesture, he couldn’t just thrash the first old women who got on his nerves—even if the touch felt familiar, even if Auntie Qin’s cooing smile and teary eyes were the warmest he’d seen in a long, long time.

No. He couldn’t thrash these aunties. But when Auntie Qin poured Mu Qing a bowl of his own stew and tried valiantly (by elderly standards) to feed it to him, the great General Xuan Zhen decided enough was enough.

“Ladies,” he all but shouted as he pushed their hands away, “dinner is ready. Are we eating or not?”

The rest of their meal was ready soon after that. The other cooks busy at their own iron pots called out one after the other. Groups settled together in cozy circles around the few campfires they had—mothers darting back and forth between iron pots and open flames, taking what they needed to feed their children with a grateful smile and a respectful tilt of their head to each cook.

The band of travelers had been together so long that they’d already worked out a system for sharing food throughout the group. It was admirable, from a tactical perspective. But every thankful, easy face that met Mu Qing’s across the iron pot made his chest ache a little more than the last. When one child, skinnier than the rest, came up with his own bowl in hand and no mother to escort him, Auntie Hao gave him a cheerful smile and ruffled his hair before pouring him a large bowl of soup. She sent him along with a sad look in her eye.

Mu Qing asked, “Where’s his—"

“A-Qiao is alone.” Xue Zhenzhen spoke low at his ear, rocking Xiaobo a little faster as she did. “We lost his mother to sickness a few months ago. So we’ve been keeping an eye on him until his father comes back.”

“That man.” That loud, generous auntie grumbled to herself as she set her empty bowl aside. Auntie Peng settled a hand at her arm, but if Auntie Hao noticed, she didn’t show it. “He was a scoundrel. A-Qiao would be better off without him.”

Xue Zhenzhen looked on, somehow heartbroken. “But auntie—”

“Now yours is a different story, Zhenzhen. Your Zeng Huan was a good man—”

“IS. He is a good man.”

Mu Qing jolted as Xue Zhenzhen stood up with a huff. Her chest was heaving, just barely concealing her chest where she pulled her sleeve over her shoulder with a sharp tug. When Xiaobo started to cry, that hard glint in Xue Zhenzhen’s face cracked by degrees and she held him closer to her shoulder as she gave them each an apologetic look and stalked toward a small, empty tent nestled deeper in the woods.

The aunties started muttering to themselves. Though it was all hushed whispers and sharp tongues, Mu Qing could tell from the glances they stole in her direction that it was only concern for Xue Zhenzhen that gave their thoughts voice.

He asked, “What was that all about?”

Like a true brood of hens, the three aunties looked back at Mu Qing all at once. Auntie Qin had remained close to him, but she couldn’t answer. She only clasped her hands together and bowed her head as she muttered to herself. Auntie Hao, however, gave Mu Qing a discerning look, no doubt judging if he was worth the risk of gossip. Fortunately, Auntie Peng was the one to see through the façade of aloof detachment in his expression and she answered him quietly.

“Zhenzhen’s husband was one of the first to be called out to the front lines. It’s been over a year, and still no word.”

Mu Qing balked, “Didn’t she receive a letter about where he would be stationed? Could they keep in contact?”

Auntie Peng shook her head. “His letters stopped soon after he was conscripted. When she found out she was pregnant, he was already gone.”

“I’m telling you,” Auntie Hao puffed, viciously stoking the fire, “this was all a punishment. There’s no sense in keeping the girl’s hopes up when the gods have abandoned us.”

At that shout, Mu Qing felt a crawling tension race through his gut.

Auntie Peng gave her friend a pleading look. “Yuyue…”

“Don’t Yuyue me! You had the dream, same as I did. The martial god of the West was beaten by that… that ghost king!”

Mu Qing stared at the smoldering embers of the fire, praying to no god he could name that the clawing in his core would cease. When two weathered, trembling hands fell to his knee—shaking him, begging him mutely—he didn’t feel the motion any more than he could feel his absent immortality winding freely through his mortal veins.

“The Crimson Rain Sought Flower destroyed our temples in the West, and all of you act as if it never happened!” Auntie Hao was nearly shouting now, almost panicked. “When did the fighting start back home? When did we all have those dreams? It all happened at once! You—" She jabbed a shaking finger at Auntie Peng. “Fenhua, you saw it. Even Old Qin saw her god too! And look how the poor dear ended up. Now you all want to scurry to the South as if that god will make things any bett—"

A loud, metallic clatter broke the tension of Auntie Hao’s speech. Every eye in the encampment had been pulled her way as she stood and spouted off her nonsense. Mu Qing could feel the accusatory, belittling stares from every one of those faces. The hatred behind them roiled and burned in his chest. In the last snap of his sudden fury, he sent the iron pot—still scalding from the fire—across the clearing with a single burst from his palm.

Auntie Hao and Auntie Peng looked back at him in blank surprise. Auntie Qin stopped her muttering, and her cloudy eyes went watery with tears.

“My job is done,” Mu Qing muttered, red-faced and suddenly ashamed. “Call me when it's time for a nightwatch.”

He didn’t wait for a response, and he didn’t even ask who would be watching the camp along with him on this self-imposed watch. Mu Qing’s only concern at this moment was the kind young mother who’d been left alone with her child.

There were many reasons Mu Qing had not stayed in his old territory of the Southwest. The biggest reason being that it was no longer his own; the Southwest was Feng Xin’s. And that big, brawny oaf could handle it by himself. Mu Qing had enough to deal with, being mortal and banished as he was. He couldn’t stay in his old territory where that last remnant of his past could find him so easily. He wouldn’t stay where any of the gods could find him.

Especially not that… That ghost king.

And yet, that crimson nightmare had followed him all the same.

The other reason Mu Qing had remained in the West was to keep an eye on this fallen god’s territory. Mu Qing had seen the man go down with his own eyes; and if the stories were true, then every one of his temples, shrines, and statues had gone up in flames along with the others in a single night.

There was no telling what this nightmare of a vengeful spirit could do. So, without fully entrenching himself in his old territory, the only option Mu Qing had left was to skirt the border and keep an eye on both his own people and the people of the West from afar.

This one thing he could do. This one thing he still had control over.

Somehow, he would ascend again. He knew it. He could feel it.

But, for now, these mortals needed him. This band especially.

Mu Qing was no stranger to war, and he had certainly seen his fair share of the hardship it caused. Xue Zhenzhen and Xiaobo. The new bride and a husband gone to war. This scene was one he knew as well as he could—in his life as a soldier, in his early years as a child who clung to his grieving mother like Xiaobo did.

He tried to tell himself that he would keep all the distance a heavenly official should, but he was already crouching low into a cross-legged position at the flap of Xue Zhenzhen’s tent.

Mu Qing rolled his eyes. “You can’t hide in there forever.”

Xue Zhenzhen clicked her tongue. “I’m not hiding.”

“Are you sure? That’s what it looks like from out here. Oof—” Mu Qing groaned around the wooden rattle that was thrown squarely at the back of his head. “Really?”

“You—! Don’t be a baby.”

Mu Qing’s face dropped, completely affronted. “I’m not being a baby.”

“You are, too.” Xue Zhenzhen poked her head through the tent and brought a finger to her lips with a rough shush. “Now, quiet. He’s sleeping.”

Mu Qing did stay quiet, but definitely not because this girl told him to. He did, however, scooch a bit to the right as Xue Zhenzhen clambered out of her small tent and settled beside him. But that was just because he had good manners.

He spoke quietly, staring up at the twinkling, inky darkness of the sky. “I heard about your husband.”

Xue Zhenzhen sighed, her breath almost brightening into a laugh. “So tactful, Fu Yao. Very charming to bring up a woman’s missing husband. With charisma like that, it’s a wonder you don’t have a wife yet.”

“Who says I don’t?”

“Well, a good husband wouldn’t let a known beauty like Qin Lifen hang onto his arm all night. So which is it?” Xue Zhenzhen bumped their shoulders together and fixed Mu Qing with a teasing, sisterly look. “Are you a philandering husband who captures the hearts of old biddies or a lifelong bachelor who charms his way into poor women’s camps?”

Mu Qing scoffed and watched the seriousness in Xue Zhenzhen’s face break as she fell into a quiet fit of laughter. Her breaths tinkled and chimed like the soft song of a lonely bell, rattling as she trembled and shook Mu Qing’s arm to stave off the worst of her amusement. He felt his own lips crack into a grin, completely unprepared for this little mortal’s bravery.

“You know I have a friend who’s terrified of women,” he said. “I think I’m starting to understand why.”

“You—hahaha—oh, Fu Yao, you… You really are just like my didi. He never took a wife. He just took those damn conscription papers and… and…” Xue Zhenzhen’s laughter finally came to a rushing end. It fell breathy and watery, wetting Mu Qing’s sleeve where she held her face pressed to his arm. Those bright, cheerful giggles turned into heaving breaths, and suddenly Mu Qing found himself alone with a crying girl at the bottom of a very small valley.

When he looked up at the stars, he couldn’t see the Heavens. He couldn’t feel that lingering, magical pull that would—at his mere command—lift him from the soil and welcome him to a palace he built from nothing.

He couldn’t call on the Heavenly Emperor. He couldn’t call on his deputies. Mu Qing couldn’t even call on Feng Xin to challenge him with a spar—filling his endless days and nights with the sound of clanging metal and bruising fists that they might, at the very least, make him feel a little more at home.

This was all he had now. This was all he could be. A shoulder for this girl to cry on. A campfire cook with barely enough food to go around.

If Mu Qing left now, he could still wander the border of the South. He could cultivate serenely in some lonesome field and subsist on the dregs of spiritual energy that still flowed through him. If Mu Qing abandoned these people now, he could wait at that border, wait for the final spark of human war to stoke the flames of a Heavenly Tribulation, some calamity he could overcome as proof that he was still a god.

“Fu Yao,” Xue Zhenzhen screamed in a small, patient voice. “Auntie Hao wants to go further South, and everyone’s starting to agree. But… if we go… I don’t know how laogong or didi are going to find me and Xiaobo. What if they can’t? What if they…”

Mu Qing studied the stars for a single beat. When he looked down, it was with a goodbye spelled in silence on the wind and a steadied breath as he looked down at the crying girl’s face.

“They’ll find you.”

Xue Zhenzhen sniffled, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He lied. “You can feel these things, can’t you?”

At that, the terrified, crying girl brightened once again into the brave little mortal that dared to call a god her didi. Xue Zhenzhen smiled and laid her head on Mu Qing’s shoulder with a happy hum.

Mu Qing didn’t look at the stars again. Instead, he let his gaze linger on the bright campfires that were left smoldering around the valley. With a groan, he rattled off all manner of military protocol, excruciating specifics about the most efficient, most tactful disbursal of work they would need to do to make sure everyone—everyone—survived the far trek to the Southwest. This group had made impressive progress in the months they’d had to get this far, but there was much more ground to cover if they wanted to settle in new territory comfortably before the winter.

“Ah, Fu Yao. I knew it from the moment you offered to push my cart through the market,” Xue Zhenzhen ruffled Mu Qing’s hair and spoke through tired, puffy eyes. “You really are a blessing to us.”

Mu Qing was grateful for the darkness that hid the creeping redness on his face. Still, he rolled his eyes to ward off the bashfulness. “Enough of that. You can thank me when we get there.”

“Mmn. Actually, I’ve been thinking. What if Auntie Hao is right? Since the god of our territory fell, shouldn’t we be honoring the Crimson Rain—”

Mu Qing shouted, “NO,” and Xue Zhenzhen landed with an oof as he swiftly jumped to his feet. Before marching off to his own self-imposed position as nightwatch, he turned back with a final complaint. “This camp will never, ever pray to that lunatic! I forbid it!”

“You forbid it?” Xue Zhenzhen huffed. “Since when do you forbid things, Fu Yao?”

“Since I promised to lead you people to the South.”

Neither of them spoke. Perhaps they were each equally surprised by the outright promise that came from the band’s newest member; while Mu Qing almost wished he could take back those words, Xue Zhenzhen clung to them with a parted mouth full of hope.

“You mean it? Do you really mean it, Fu Yao?”

Mu Qing couldn’t answer her.

He couldn’t fail his followers a second time.

He only muttered as he walked back toward those smoldering campfires. “Get some sleep. We should be up early to pack up camp.”

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Chapter Text

True to Mu Qing's word, this wind-weathered bunch never needed the blessing or patronage of the Crimson Rain Sought Flower. Under Mu Qing’s supervision, the group made it safely to the Southwest, bypassing no short number of trials and dangers. In the beginning, the greatest challenge had been motivating them into setting out on their expedition: there were those who couldn’t travel quickly, those who would rather move with the army than risk moving further away. But, in the end, it was due to Xue Zhenzhen’s trust in Mu Qing and her established connection with the group (as well as a few well-placed compliments from a certain trio of aunties) that the camp was able to set off toward new territory in just a few short days.

Mu Qing used some of his own funds to purchase horses and crude wagons and carts for their journey. With the older members and the smaller children bundled up safely, he could focus better on their defense and navigation. It took time. Many months passed as Mu Qing single-handedly fought off wandering bands of robbers and enemy deserters.

In a war like this, when the fallout was realized in exhausted, resolute bands of ordinary people trying to escape the cooling ashes of their home, the colors these deserters wore amounted to nothing. Mu Qing fought back what enemies he could, terrifying them into retreat with his mastery of a simple sword. But when threats proved too vicious or dangerous to allow the opportunity for escape, Mu Qing cut them down with no remorse.

These were his people now, and he had vowed in not so many words that he would transport them safely—whatever the cost.

In this way, he became the leader of the group by informal terms. They made decisions under the advice of the oldest group members, but ultimately, every one of them looked to Mu Qing for a final say.

He could have led them to the edge of the Southern border or ferried them closer to its heart before slinking away in the night to continue his solitary journey back to immortality. But there was always some reason or another for him to stay. Auntie Peng or A-Qiao had gotten sick overnight; there was a problem with their camp materials or food stores that could only be solved by Mu Qing’s swift expedition to the closest town for a restock of their supplies.

For no reason—for many reasons—Mu Qing stayed with the group until they found another safe little valley in the Southwest and set up their camp for an extended stay. Like this, Mu Qing finally had his first reunion with a most unwelcome visitor.

It happened when he was asleep. Winter was creeping closer in puffy, staggered clouds. Beneath that cold, quiet sky, Mu Qing closed his eyes and felt his dreams melt away into the warmth of a summer afternoon.

Mu Qing felt a light kick to his side and his eyes snapped open.

“You awake?” A familiar voice sounded from above.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Well,” Feng Xin frowned. “It’s nice to see you too.”

Mu Qing scoffed. Really, he wanted to spit. But he only swatted Feng Xin’s offered hand away and rose to his feet with an angry huff. “Leave me alone. I was sleeping.”

Feng Xin, for his part, looked like he was one word closer to throttling his long-absent rival. The thought of it warmed some homesick part of Mu Qing’s chest that he hadn’t realized was empty for the longest time.

“Well,” Mu Qing continued, “are you going to keep gawking at me like an overgrown trout or can I go now?”

“You-! What are you talking about? What are you doing here? Where have you been?” Feng Xin was nearly in a rage. That familiar, very stupid, very unbecoming vein in his neck was protruding more and more with each word, egged on as Mu Qing rolled his eyes and ignored every question. “Are you even trying to ascend again? I’ve been looking everywhere and you—”

“And who told you to look? Huh?”

Feng Xin was struck, his mouth twisted well past anger and pulled right into confusion.

Mu Qing spat and prayed that he didn’t look just as terrified as he felt. “I was banished. Learn to fucking live with it. You don’t see me whining and moaning about it, so why don’t you fly away to your precious temple in the Heavens and leave me the fuck alone!”

“Live with it? You want me to just live with it?!” Feng Xin roared, his eyes wide and rimmed with crimson. “You got cheated, Mu Qing! Who could ever defeat you twice? That bastard stole his victory and burned down all your temples! Don’t you care at all? What about your believers?”

“They have you, don’t they?” Mu Qing scoffed. “Haven’t you been taking care of them? Or did I leave their livelihoods to the stupidest person alive?”

At that, Feng Xin roared into action and grabbed Mu Qing’s shoulders with angry fists. Mu Qing fought back with godly strength he’d missed early, bashing his head forward until Feng Xin was pushing back just as hard, each of them gnashing their teeth as they grappled.

“They—urgh—they saw the fight, you asshole!” Feng Xin gritted out. “They saw you give up your territory.”

“I know, dumbass!” Mu Qing groaned as he narrowly avoided an uppercut with a throw of his own. “That’s why you’re their god now! Or is it too much for you to handle?”

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

“Then what are you saying?” Mu Qing shoved Feng Xin off with one final throw of his hands. Feng Xin stumbled to a halt just a few inches out of reach, but it was enough to see how the whole of him was shaking.

Feng Xin. Those stalwart shoulders, that indomitable, legendary martial god was shaking.

For whatever reason, in the name of some feeling he’d rather ignore, that image snapped the last of Mu Qing’s composure.

Mu Qing swallowed the lump in his throat and screamed up at the illusory sky. He kicked at the grass beneath his feet, knowing it wasn’t real, knowing that none of this was real and Feng Xin wasn’t really standing behind him. This was a dream, a vision gods could give to the people in their territory—the very fucking thing Mu Qing was hoping to avoid when he stayed out of the stupid fucking South in the first fucking place.

But the grass only fluttered into mist, the ground beneath his feet gave way without the grounding resistance Mu Qing needed to properly vent his anger.

In this dream, just like in the Mortal Realm, his screams were soundless to the ears of heaven.

When he’d decided the sight of his oldest rival absolutely would no longer make him ache the way it just had, Mu Qing turned again and faced Feng Xin with a twisted smile.

“I bet you’re happy not to be seeing my ass all the time.”

Though it looked like it pained him, Feng Xin let out a short laugh. “You’re sure about that?”

Mu Qing clicked his tongue and looked to the distant horizon. The sun in this dream was setting. Morning in the waking world must be close.

“Come back with me, Mu Qing.”

The horizon became bleary and muddled with something like hazy fog. Mu Qing blinked and ignored the cool sensation rolling down the cheek Feng Xin couldn’t see.

“You were banished,” Feng Xin said softly, “but I can still take you in as a deputy. I know that’s… That’s not the same, but—”

“It’s not.”

Mu Qing spoke into the wind, not daring to look back toward this one person. He dragged in a breath, hoping to catch some mote of the clean, sparkling air of the Heavens, but it only landed stale and empty in his chest.

He continued, “It’s not the same. I didn’t train all these years to be a deputy, Feng Xin.”

“You know it wouldn’t be like that.”

“Maybe not to you.” Mu Qing blinked and that cool sensation dripped from his jaw. “But it wouldn’t be the same to me. Or any of them.”

He heard more than he saw Feng Xin throw his hands in the air and pace behind him. The sun was almost fully set now, and a dreamy darkness was beginning to creep in from the horizon. That darkness was safe, cloaking; so when Feng Xin called his name again, Mu Qing turned to face him fully.

Those honey-brown eyes were honest and wet, pleading in how the full brows above them quivered as Feng Xin spoke. “You’re really not coming back?”

Mu Qing took a breath. “No.”

The darkness became hazier, crawling across grass like it would sweep them both away. Oddly, the thought of waking became a bit unbearable, a little terrifying in one locked corner of Mu Qing’s heart. But he couldn’t let it show. Mu Qing wouldn’t allow his decision to seem so easily shaken.

Because he couldn’t go back like this.

Feng Xin’s jaw moved like he had words left to say, but he only stepped forward and tentatively threw a light punch at Mu Qing’s shoulder.

“I’ll come visit you again,” he murmured. “Whether you like it or not.”

“Eww,” Mu Qing laughed. “Whatever.”

“I can’t… With dianxia gone, and you—”

“Don’t.”

Feng Xin flinched. “Just take care. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Who’s the one being stupid?” Mu Qing huffed and let his hand linger a moment longer where he threw his own punch. “I’ll be fine. Worry about your own territory, and I’ll worry about mine.”

“Right.” Feng Xin laughed and that hazy darkness billowed across their ankles. “The mortals. I’m surprised they haven’t kicked you out yet.”

“Ugh—” Mu Qing wanted to will himself awake but that loud, boisterous laugh kept him tethered. As Feng Xin quieted down, the fog came up to reach their waists and Mu Qing found himself wishing it would just stop.

“I left something for you,” Feng Xin said. “Just try not to kill too many mortals down there, alright?”

The darkness made words cloudy and hard to decipher. Mu Qing felt himself slip further and further from that dreamy, grassy clearing; the fine clothes gripped hard in his fists fading away like mist. “What?”

“By the way, I like the robe.” Feng Xin spoke through the dark mist, the image of him fading moments before the sound of his voice went with it. “Your mother always made pretty things.”

Mu Qing melted into the darkness. When he next opened his eyes, it was to greet a bright and chilly morning at the bottom of a valley in his rival’s territory.

Somehow, he awoke feeling more refreshed than someone who had slept in a cramped tent should have. And, by his side, a familiar weapon lay sheathed and pristine just out of his reach.

When Mu Qing led a small scouting group that day—their reach wide, seeking a neighboring friendly town—there were many comments on the sudden appearance of the exquisite and deadly zhanmadao he held lightly in his grip. But Mu Qing only settled their curiosity by naming it as a gift from the martial god of the region, a good omen that their journey was blessed and that Fu Yao was named by the Heavens as their protector.

Mu Qing himself had not claimed this last statement as fact. But Xue Zhenzhen and Auntie Qin had stirred enough of this particular sentiment that it was acknowledged as so, and the band was, at last, comfortably settled in their new home.

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Years passed without major incident. Seasons came and went like the steady beat of a cold river, trickling by to smooth over the rough edges of the stones in its bed. The camp grew, the camp got smaller; their numbers following that same pattern of a river through seasons of drought and rain. Children grew and grandfathers passed. This was the natural way for all things, but Mu Qing still felt his immortal indifference flutter away piece by piece with every grave he dug.

Still, the group was happy in the Southwest. Time passed: seasons became years, and years became a decade. In what felt like no time at all, their small encampment traded canvas tents for hand-hewn wood and the group settled comfortably at the bottom of their small valley.

Upon deciding that this would be their new home, the eldest members of the group were quick to solve the logistics of settling down in the valley. Plots of land were cleared to make way for crops in the following spring, and shacks and small houses were erected over a mild, merciful winter. By the turning of the season’s last cold snap, the group emerged from around their hearths healthy and buzzing with a renewed sense of vigor.

But the Martial God of the South, the one that had spared them the cruelty of their first winter, couldn’t fetter the season’s chill forever.

It was on this winter day, a decade after the group first arrived in the region, little more than two weeks after he’d been gone on an extended run for supplies, that Mu Qing realized he had none of that immortal indifference left within him.

When he stepped down from his horse, the thing that stilled him was the quiet. When A-Qiao jumped off the wagon, Mu Qing put a hand to his shoulder and stopped him from going further.

“Yao-gege,” the boy asked, a frightened edge to his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Stay here. Don’t move till I come back.”

A-Qiao was left standing there, unmoving, and Mu Qing took off in a sprint for the home he shared with Xue Zhenzhen.

In their village, the people stayed close to each other. Houses were built to accommodate larger families than normal; grandparents who’d sent their only sons to war, aunties and uncles with no one but themselves. This was how Mu Qing had advised they settle for now, and it hadn’t posed any issues yet.

But sickness lingered and whirled in crowded breath. When Mu Qing pushed open the front door of Xue Zhenzhen’s humble home, the stagnant air of illness met him a moment before a wracking cough broke his panic.

“Zhenzhen. Zhenzhen!” He cried. “Auntie—”

A calming, wrinkled arm settled on the silver hem of his sleeve and Mu Qing turned to meet Auntie Qin’s misty eyes. She nodded wearily at him behind the cloth she had draped over her nose and raised another hand to point at the room Xue Zhenzhen and Xiaobo shared. Mu Qing patted her shoulder and dashed through.

“Zhenzhen, what happened?”

“Fu Yao.” The girl looked up at him from her place sitting at Xiaobo’s side. He was laying in bed, much too still to be the rambunctious boy that always challenged Mu Qing to a foot race or a wrestling match. His fine, dark hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat, and his round cheeks were flushed with a fever.

Truthfully, Xue Zhenzhen didn’t look much better. Though she wasn’t coughing as violently as Xiaobo, her arms shivered where she held a damp cloth to his head.

Mu Qing rushed to her side and checked Xiaobo over for any other symptoms. “How long has he been like this? It’s the whole village, isn’t it?”

Xue Zhenzhen spoke through a thick, wet cough. “It’s only been a few days. But it—khagh—it came on so suddenly. Everyone…everyone is…”

“What about medicine? Didn’t Auntie Peng—” But Mu Qing was interrupted as the young mortal girl fell forward in a heaving fit over her son.

Sapped of her energy, Xue Zhenzhen hacked and sobbed over the thin sheets of Xiaobo’s bed, clinging to Mu Qing’s hand when he reached out to her. Auntie Qin came in a moment later and pulled weakly to let Xue Zhenzhen sit again.

“It’s fine, auntie. She should rest.” Mu Qing settled Xue Zhenzhen next to Xiaobo until he was content that neither would fall from the bed. With a rising panic he hadn’t known for what seemed like centuries, he turned to Auntie Qin. “Where’s Auntie Hao? Is she sick too?”

Auntie Qin shook her head and squeezed Mu Qing’s hand tight.

“What about the medicine in the storeroom? Is it gone? All of it?”

Auntie Qin looked up, fear coloring her cloudy eyes a touch more pained. She bent her forehead to rest the back of Mu Qing’s hand against it. She did this often, these days. It was an exchange the old woman seemed to treasure. Though the touch usually healed something old and broken in Mu Qing’s heart, it only made him feel more terrified now.

“Stay here, stay inside.” He urged her, leading her carefully to a chair at the bedside. “I’m going to check out everyone else.”

On leaving the house, the main path of the village was more lively than before, though this was only in terms of mortals present. The mood—their faces—it was all wrong. Several members of the village had come out from their own homes, masked just like Auntie Qin had been, all carrying the look of dread and panic in the way they flocked to Mu Qing.

“Fu Yao! You’ve returned! Please, there’s been a terrible—”

“It came on so quick. We already lost—”

“We ran out medicine days ago! Please tell us you brought more—”

A clamor. A panic. A whirlwind of sickness and pain and fear. Fear for what had passed in a matter of days; fear for the winter that had only just begun.

Fear for those that had already fallen and the number that might join them soon.

“Where is Auntie Hao?” Mu Qing roared, pleading to be heard above the din. “I left her in charge of the supplies while I was away. So where is she?”

A hundred wide eyes blinked back at Mu Qing from above their fluttering masks. From the emotion flickering within them, it could have been a thousand.

One uncle spoke up and pointed over his shoulder toward the large shack at the edge of the village. “She’s in the storeroom.”

That was all Mu Qing needed to hear. Though the sprint across the village felt long, no time could have prepared Mu Qing for the sight that battered him when those doors were flung wide.

It was true, Mu Qing had left Auntie Hao and Auntie Peng in charge of the storeroom when he’d left. Just like every other time before. The old hens would manage what supplies they had—food, medicine, fabric—and dole out what they could before Mu Qing returned to refill it all, piece by piece. It was a system that worked well. And they’d had plenty of medicine on hand before this last trip.

So, why…

The doors flew open and the stench of death flew from that dark room like flame seeking the wind.

Auntie Hao was kneeling beside a wrapped body. For all her absent movement, she might have been wrapped as well.

“Auntie, I’m back,” Mu Qing tried softly, but his voice faltered. “W-w-what is this?”

That voice that should have cackled, that voice that teased him so often, rang through empty and solemn. “She’s gone, Fu Yao. My Fenhua is…”

Mu Qing watched a single tear drop to the dusty floor. When it was followed by another, it wet the fabric of the dingy wrappings. Another. Another. Another followed. Auntie Hao only crouched closer and let every one drop where they would.

Wind howled through the open doors. The distinct twinge of human fear ripped through Mu Qing just as violently.

“She wasn’t… She wasn’t supposed to get sick. I told her… I told her not to go out in the cold. But she never listens. She just loves to fight me.”

Mu Qing looked around the storeroom and saw not a single box or bottle of the medicine they’d had before. Shelves had been stripped bare, cabinets and baskets and barrels overturned in evidence of manic search. All that was left was their preserved food and some old blankets, but even that had no doubt been ruined by the presence of death so near.

Mu Qing tried to hold his breath, but kneeling beside Auntie Hao—beside the unmoving sheets—made him shudder. His bones ached. His eyes stung. He wished more than ever that this was something he could fix.

And yet, even if his godly power was somehow restored, there was nothing he could have done to bring Peng Fenhua back. At the very least, as a god it wouldn’t have hurt so bad, hidden behind his immortal indifference.

But he wasn’t a god anymore. And he wasn’t truly a mortal. He was just a man who had given ten years out of his hundreds to people he almost, sort of…

People he cared about.

And now, one of them was gone. And there was nothing in the world he could do to make it any easier.

Mu Qing didn’t wish for strength and power to prove himself. He didn’t call on absent heavens—on gods that he knew could never hear him from so far below their palaces—for his own sake. As Mu Qing knelt beside Auntie Peng’s still form, the person he prayed for was the mortal kneeling with him.

The power he tried so desperately to call on was meant for her sake alone.

“Auntie,” he whispered, “you won’t like it, but we have to bury her. Today.”

“She did it to help them, did you know? She was delivering medicine and food all day and night when the children started getting sick. She love them like her own. You know that. She…” Auntie Hao sniffled and ran her hand in a tender caress over the topmost edge of the wrapping. “Fenhua was so glad that A-Qiao went on the trip with you. She didn’t want him to see her like this.”

“She wouldn’t want to see you like this, either.” Mu Qing tried for lightness. Auntie Hao only levelled her tired eyes at him in a punishing glare.

“She’s gone.” Auntie Hao spat hollowly, “My Fenhua is gone. And you—"

“I know,” Mu Qing whispered. Though tears threatened to fall, he held them back as fiercely as he could with the strength he had left. “I know, Auntie. I w-w-wasn’t here. But I—”

A hand came to rest at his cheek. Warm. Kind. Merciful.

As merciful and forgiving as any god.

Auntie Hao smiled through her tears. “And you did everything you could Fu Yao. She would be so grateful you brought our boy back safe.”

Before Mu Qing could respond, a quiet voice came from the open door.

“Auntie?” A-Qiao whispered as he stepped a single foot closer. “What’s wrong? Auntie Peng isn’t at home.”

“A-Qiao!” Auntie Hao moved too suddenly. She had been kneeling for so long; in her old age, her legs nearly gave out beneath her. But both young men—one who’d found a mother through seasons of hardship, another who saw his own in every wrinkled face—rushed to her side before she could fall.

Mu Qing watched as they fell into each other, a heaving mess of sobs and reassurances. Gentle kisses laid to the top of the boy’s head; skinny, clinging arms wrapped tightly across the woman’s back. Auntie Hao nearly wailed, but A-Qiao hardly made a sound.

What followed next was drowned in a haze. Like a fever that turns moments into days, the evening and the night and the morning after Mu Qing returned were muddled in his memory. He remembered his body moving of its own accord, his tongue speaking words that felt practiced from a distant nightmare. As he organized the distribution of medicine, food, and supplies, healthier members of the village rallied around to help, coordinating their efforts under his advice without argument.

Numb and busy, night became morning. When Mu Qing finally found himself back in Xue Zhenzhen’s home, Auntie Qin was pushing a wooden spoon to his mouth and trying to feed him.

There was no one else present. They were in his bedroom—this small and empty corner he had chosen. He was seated on his bed. And an old woman was wordlessly begging him to please, just eat something.

Slowly, like he was forcing himself, like he’d forgotten how, Mu Qing opened his mouth by the barest degree and met Auntie Qin’s eyes over the steaming bowl in her hand.

Her cloudy eyes wrinkled with a soft smile and Mu Qing felt searing shame roll down his cheek.

Spoonful by spoonful, the thin soup slipped down his throat and tried vainly to heal what could never be fixed. Mu Qing drank down every drop and felt impossibly heavy with the weight of it.

This soup could have fed anyone else in the house. Any other sick person in the village. It shouldn’t have gone to the one who’d vowed to protect them, the one who had spent most of his existence without the need for mortal food.

But Mu Qing’s reserves of spiritual energy were already so low these days. After the harried, numbing panic of calming a storm, Mu Qing felt his body grow weaker and weaker until mortal necessities like food and sleep became all too real once again.

That night, for the first time since he was a child, Mu Qing cried himself to sleep; and when he opened his eyes again, the sun met him and had the nerve to give a shit.

“Mu Qing,” the sun called out from above, lifting a fallen god from where he sat beneath a bare cherry tree. “I’ve been waiting for you. I heard about the—mmf.”

“Feng Xin. You-you asshole.” Mu Qing was shaking, cradling his wrist from the force of the punch. “They’re in your territory! How could you let this happen? How?”

Even now, after a strike that had knocked him square on his ass, Feng Xin only looked up with the softest expression of hurt. He spoke slowly, like he was calming a crying child. “Mu Qing, there was nothing I could do. It spread so fast. By the time my deputies—”

“You mean my deputies! Mine! The ones I trusted you with so that you could protect my territory!”

“Our territory.”

“It doesn’t matter! None of it matters b-b-because you didn’t protect them.” Mu Qing fell to his knees and dropped in a heap on Feng Xin’s lap. With enraged, shaking fists, he rained down blow after blow against Feng Xin’s chest as he felt the knot in his own come undone with every accusation he spat. “You—you left them there. I was gone for w-w-weeks and they needed someone. And you—you asshole! You brought me here to spar every night and you d-d-didn’t, you didn’t check on them once!”

“Mu Qing, stop!” Feng Xin caught Mu Qing’s wrists and held them fast at his chest. Though he fought to catch just a glimpse of those trembling eyes, Mu Qing kept them clenched shut as tears poured down his face. “I’m sorry. Alright? I’m sorry.” Feng Xin’s voice wavered, flitting through his breath where he fought to be heard, believed. “Mu Qing, I’m so… I’m so sorry.”

Sobbing, the fallen god ground his locked fists against his temple, praying on absent strength that he could move even a finger from where Feng Xin kept him close. But nearness was easier to escape than futility.

“I hate this. I can’t help them, Feng Xin. I can’t help them like I’m supposed to. Even with my cultivation… I can’t… I’m not enough like this.”

The darkening horizon had slowed to a crawl. In the absence of wind, breath ruffled the stray locks of hair that kept warm lips from touching Mu Qing’s brow.

“I’m not a god anymore.” Mu Qing harshly buried his face further into weathered, supple leather where it was stretched across Feng Xin’s chest. “I’m not anything.”

The hands that had captured Mu Qing’s wrists released him tenderly him before landing soft at his back.

Feng Xin spoke quietly, breaking that silence. “You wanna know why I didn’t check on them?”

Mu Qing laughed, bitter and tired. “You think having an excuse is going to—”

Feng Xin fumed, but it sounded more wounded than anything. “It’s not an excuse. There’s no excuse. You can be mad at me, but I… I didn’t check on them because you’ve taken such good care of that village for years now. This winter wasn’t much harsher than the last. But, you...” Feng Xin’s voice rumbled low in his chest and Mu Qing didn’t have the strength to ignore it. “You’ve done so much. Even like this, you’re exactly what those people need.”

Mu Qing rolled his eyes. “Like this? You mean weak? Pathetic?”

A laugh escaped to ruffle dark hair. Feng Xin grinned, “Like a crybaby.” Then, he winced. “Hey, hey—oww…”

Hardly satisfied, Mu Qing released Feng Xin’s ear from the pinch of his fingertips. With a scoff, he pushed himself up to sit. “You’re an idiot.”

“Said the idiot.”

Mu Qing couldn’t conceal his smile. When Feng Xin sat up and brushed their shoulders together, Mu Qing pushed him back and huffed a single, weary laugh. “Shut up.”

“You know,” Feng Xin said easily, notably refusing to shut up. “There’s still room for one more deputy in the South.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You could help them from the Heavens, too.” Feng Xin rubbed his neck, like he was plumbing the shallow depths of his subtlety. “We’re not supposed to interfere with mortal affairs directly, but, you know… Maybe you could visit. Sometimes.”

The wind picked up again and the golden field below rolled quietly with it. As the midnight sun continued its slow descent, Mu Qing wondered if he would have the strength to greet the real morning again. There would be so much to do, so much pain to heal and so many problems to mend. It was an impossible weight for any one person to carry.

But Mu Qing had never been very fond of giving up, not when he’d committed himself so wholly to one cause or another.

And this was different now. Somehow, along the way, between all the warm meals and quaint celebrations and kind pats to his head, his motivations came less and less from that urgent and painful part of his mind and sprouted from the one place in his heart he had been determined to seal off. He couldn’t accept short and infrequent visits to his village, not after all this time.

Mu Qing wanted to go back and fix things. Not for his stubborn pride, not for a chance at redemption from above, but for the sake and wellbeing of those people. His people.

They needed the blessing of the Martial God of the South, they needed the help that Feng Xin could give. But they needed Fu Yao just as much.

They needed Mu Qing. Just as he was.

With a groan, Mu Qing stretched out his arms behind him. “Sorry, General. I’m gonna have to pass.”

That oafish, tenderhearted general by his side only pouted. Feng Xin hummed, like he’d been expecting the answer all along. “So, what’re you going to do?”

At last, Mu Qing had an answer.

“What I’ve been doing, I guess.” He snickered, “No thanks to you.”

Feng Xin sighed, “Mu Qing—”

“I know, I know. It wasn’t your fault.” As he stood, Mu Qing turned back with an arm outstretched and the hint of a smile turning his pale cheeks the softest pink. “It wasn’t.”

Feng Xin stammered but wisely kept silent and spoke no more on this rare moment of grace from his oldest rival. As he took Mu Qing’s hand, the sun dipped lower and encroaching shadows came up to skirt the bottom of the hill.

“Well, if you need any help… You know…”

Mu Qing smirked, “Thanks, but a village-wide epidemic isn’t something your stupid muscles can solve.”

“You’re always so stubborn. I meant—I don’t know. Don’t you need more medicine?”

That was quite a question. More supplies would be a tremendous help since leaving the village again was the last thing Mu Qing wanted to do. But to accept them so freely, well, the thought alone spurred on those sour, prideful feelings again.

But this was bigger than his pride. When Mu Qing thought of Auntie Hao and her broken, stricken vigil by Auntie Peng’s side, he felt pride—even one as stubborn as his—was worth the breaking if it kept his people alive another season.

Mu Qing stuttered and turned to face the bottom of the hill, “I-I can’t pay you back. Not right away.”

A sigh, soft and amused. “You don’t need to pay me back at all.”

The fallen god laughed as he shook his head, and turned back just as the shadows reached his feet. “Oh no, I’m not getting this for free. I won’t let you hang this over my head. I can…” Mu Qing thought a moment before the idea hit him. “You can have one shrine in my village. Just one.”

At the determined set of Mu Qing’s spiteful smirk, Feng Xin’s face finally split into a wide smile. He fell over at the waist laughing, breaths heaving, his golden face teary and full of delight. Mu Qing rolled his eyes but felt his own smile grew wider.

“Idiot,” he chuckled. “Is it a deal or not?”

When Feng Xin recovered, he stepped forward to throw his fist gently at Mu Qing’s shoulder. Their gazes met; before that sunny smile could dim any further, Feng Xin pushed forward until his forehead was resting firmly to Mu Qing’s. By the delicate quiver of his lashes and the despair etched in the crease of his brow, Mu Qing could see he was expecting to be brushed off.

But this nearness felt too valuable to break. For Mu Qing—for tonight, at least—humiliation in this small degree was worth the embarrassing flush rising to his cheeks.

Feng Xin spoke into that close distance through a smile. “It’s a deal. I’ll be listening for prayers, then.”

Misty shadows overtook them both and Mu Qing couldn’t help the teasing stretch of his lips. He laughed too, “You are so going to regret that when I make sure your statue is fucking ugly.”

The last thing Mu Qing heard as he was pulled back into his sleeping body was the sound of rich, hearty laughter. But the sweetest lingering sensation was the warm press of a calloused hand cradling his cheek until the last possible second.

Each man was true to their word. The next day, a large, pristine wagon was found in the woods outside of Xue Zhenzhen’s home. It was stuffed obscenely full with enough medicine, goods, and food than anyone knew what to do with.

The villagers were shocked by the wagon’s undeniable markings of the Martial God of the South but were quick to offer their devotion. Consequently, Mu Qing soon found himself busy planning out the logistics of erecting a humble shrine.

Healing didn’t happen overnight, but that winter was the easiest the village had seen in many years. Once Xiaobo was healthy enough to wrestle A-Qiao again and Xue Zhenzhen was strong enough to bully Mu Qing into taking time for himself, the fallen god was at last able to soak in the returned sense of normalcy.

This was, after all, his new normal. He had finally made his peace with that.

Mu Qing hadn’t forgotten the few centuries he’d spent in the Palace of Xuan Zhen, and he even had the heart to miss it sometimes. But days like this, as the protector of this small corner of the world—as Fu Yao, the unassuming mortal with no expectations but a busy, mortal life—these days were ones he quietly cherished the most.

When the harshest of the winter had passed, Mu Qing kept up his side of the deal with Feng Xin. Sparing no more time, a Nan Yang shrine was built at the very center of the village where offerings and prayers could be made there daily. And because the great Ju Yang’s gift was so great, the modest statue placed within it wasn’t as degrading as Mu Qing promised it would be. It was even rather…handsome.

For clarity, the many weeks Mu Qing spent hassling their volunteer sculptor are irrelevant and should not be counted.

Chapter Text

Seasons turned and turned. While the village slowly grew, it was still far from the glittering palaces Mu Qing had grown accustomed to all those years ago.

But that was okay. He liked it better here, anyway.

Sincerely, he really did. Since the fighting in the West had slowed to a standstill, foot traffic in this corner of the Southern territories increased by the day. Travelers became aware of the humble and friendly village, meaning more and more dropped by as the roads became safer. Most travelers went on to busier corners of the territory for work, but still, some stayed. Most notably among them were the children.

From the depths of the valley’s countryside, from time to time a child would make their way to the village seeking the protection of “the kind and pretty gege with the fancy robe.” Each one would claim this advice had been given to them in a dream once they reached the barest edge of the Southern territories; each one describing the same smiling, handsome face to the finest detail before even knowing about the shrine statue at the village’s center that matched it perfectly.

Mu Qing could have been annoyed at the interference of his old rival, but the children deserved more attention. Feng Xin could wait a few more years for the compliment of Mu Qing’s acknowledgement.

In order to one up his rival—and absolutely not to quell the softer parts of his heart—Mu Qing built these children a home of their own. A warm and safe place where Auntie Hao could clothe and care for them, where Xue Zhenzhen could tuck them in each night and greet them with a smile every morning. In time, they healed past their hurts and learned to play in the carefree manner children should.

Though they still often pestered their kind Robe-gege to do “sword tricks” for them every now and again.

So, their small encampment grew larger by the year. It expanded until it took Mu Qing nearly an entire day to patrol its perimeter.

On these walks—when there was little else for Mu Qing to do but keep a vigilant eye, when he could take enough leisure to watch the sunlight dim to dusk—he would give a polite nod to each passing neighbor and shoo away each approaching child that knew, if they only pestered him long enough, he would play. He would study the newly built houses and sheds; he would check the storerooms and stables; he would visit ailing aunties and mothers and uncles. His people were so much more settled now, but they still cheerfully relied on Fu Yao for every task between delivering leftovers, building new houses, and catching stray donkeys.

Mu Qing was happy for the simple work. His responsibilities now were confined to the soil beneath his feet and the peaceful lives of the people he protected in this shallow valley. His days were far from idle, but they were leagues apart from battling Heavenly Calamities.

Mu Qing had made his peace with this; the rewards and trophies and acclaim he won now were so much more sincere than the pride and authority he’d scraped together in the Heavens. He guessed his accomplishments from those long-gone centuries had already been forgotten. Though he staunchly refused to hear any mortal gossip about the goings on of those other 32 gods—refused to give them anymore presence in his mind than he had already since his banishment—patching over this final wound was no easy task.

Mu Qing was fine. He was needed. He was important. He didn’t need to shout it out to all of the Heavens for validation of that fact.

This was what he repeated to himself, at least.

Stubbornly banishing those relentless thoughts, Mu Qing continued on his wide patrol of the village until the shade of a nearby roof darkened his path. The sound of a broom brushing across creaking wooden floors roused Mu Qing from his quiet and he couldn’t stop the warm, private smile he gave to the intruder of that pervasive silence.

“Auntie Qin,” he greeted. “Can’t you let the kids do that? I told Xiaobo to come help you clean.”

The old woman bowed with a smile but waved her hand as if to say that she didn’t need the help. Though she was nearly the oldest in the village, some stubborn and spirited force within her had kept Auntie Qin on her feet all these years. If Mu Qing didn’t know any better, and if he had enough spiritual energy left to verify for himself, he would say that it could only be a close affinity the god of this region that kept the old woman alive and healthy this long.

Auntie Qin couldn’t speak, but her actions spoke more than words could say. When she touched Mu Qing’s knuckles to her brow and pushed him to sit while she cleaned, the fallen god let more of the day slip by as he watched her putter about beneath the roof of their humble Nan Yang shrine.

Humble was a generous word for it, strictly speaking. Though their village couldn’t afford the rich gilded décor better befitting the temple of a high-ranking martial god, the sincere and reverent offerings of food and incense were as valuable as any emperor’s gold.

The villagers hadn’t forgotten General Nan Yang’s favor all those years ago, and from the many peaceful seasons they’d lived here in his territory, Mu Qing could tell his old rival had been listening.

Auntie Qin began dusting the altar beneath Feng Xin’s statue. By the timid, secretive way she hid her motions from Mu Qing, he could guess what she was up to.

He stood with a sigh and gently plucked the small, framed portrait that kept reappearing at the altar.

“Auntie Qin, please. You know you can’t put this here.”

The old woman had the nerve to look confused, but Mu Qing knew her better than that.

“You can’t put my portrait up here, Auntie. This is Nan Yang’s shrine.” Auntie Qin reached for the small, faded painting but Mu Qing held it just out of reach. “Agh—hey—Auntie, please. I know you know what I’m talking about. Who got this down for you? I put it high up on your wall for a reas—Hey! Is… What is my zhanmadao doing in the shrine?”

Mu Qing’s eyes flickered back and forth with exasperation, one hand holding his portrait out of reach and the other gently pushing the old biddy’s arms away. His zhanmadao was nestled comfortably against Feng Xin’s statue, polished and well cared for. While he didn’t appreciate having his only spiritual weapon taken from home without his notice, he was more concerned the half-blind old bat would injure herself dragging it around.

Finally, bested by the wingspan of a young man much, much taller than her, Auntie Qin’s misty gaze snapped to clarity and she—ah—she slowly rolled her eyes.

“Hey,” Mu Qing chided. But it was no use. Auntie Qin was already walking away to tidy the shrine further. But Mu Qing refused to be beaten by an old lady, even if she was his favorite.

“Alright, that’s it. You’ve been acting so sassy with me, Auntie.” Mu Qing moved to place himself in Auntie Qin’s line of sight, but the old biddy kept artfully moving about the shrine. “Hey! Listen up, no more of this Fu Yao and Nan Yang nonsense. Got it? I know you’ve been spreading those rumors… Somehow. And stop swiping my blade to put it up out here. That’s, like, blasphemous. Or something.” Mu Qing moved again, but Auntie Qin was astonishingly quicker. “Auntie.”

At last, Mu Qing had her cornered. Though Auntie Qin was trapped, when the suspecting, smiling young gongzi finally caught her gaze, she only smiled back and pinched his cheeks.

“Bah. Have you been drinking with Zhenzhen again? No,” he grumbled through the pinch, “Auntie Hao. I told her not to let you—”

“Fu Yao!” A voice interrupted, calling from further down the busy road. “Fu Yao!”

“Speak of the devil.” Mu Qing rolled his eyes.

“Fu Yao! There you are.” Auntie Hao hobbled her way up the short wooden steps into the shrine with nothing less than determined agility. Though Mu Qing offered her an arm, she stubbornly batted it away and sank to his former seat beneath the shade. “A-Qiao said you were on patrol. I had to run around the entire village to find you, young man. In this heat!”

Mu Qing rolled his eyes, “What is it this time, Auntie? Did Uncle Huang cheat at weiqi again? Or—hey…” With a sigh, Mu Qing found his palm empty where Auntie Qin had finally swiped his portrait, replacing it with a tender squeeze of his hand. “Or perhaps you came to confess that you and Zhenzhen have been sneaking drinks to someone again?”

“Nothing of the sort.” Auntie Hao looked innocuously at the ground and kicked a stray pebble out past the steps. “I came to tell you that you’ve been promising my boy you would take him into town again, and he hasn’t forgotten. Now, I have some money saved up and I have a short list of things that the children need. If you could just run and get them for me…”

“Right,” Mu Qing pinched the bridge of his nose. “Apologies, Auntie, I haven’t had the time. Can A-Qiao go himself? I still have to make my rounds.”

“Oh, your rounds can wait, Fu Yao! And A-Qiao’s so excited. You know how the children adore you.” With a stifled grunt, Auntie Hao stood and took Mu Qing’s arm in her own. She pulled him to face the handsome sculpture of one General Nan Yang and spoke quietly enough for only the three souls in the shrine to hear.

She shook his arm and smiled. “You’ve been taking such good care of us all these years, Fu Yao. There’s no harm in taking a few days off. Eh?”

Mu Qing scoffed. “A day off to run your errands?”

Auntie Hao balked and struck Mu Qing upside his well-groomed head. “A day off to stretch your legs, you fool! To pretend you’re still that handsome young gongzi who strode into our lives so long ago. I can’t watch you while away your youth in this dusty village. And Auntie Qin feels the same! Don’t you?”

Mu Qing was struck less by her words and more by the pain written across Auntie Hao’s expression. Normally so coarse and ready to meet every one of his remarks with equal acerbity, her eyes were imploring and faintly worried.

She was sincere. And when Mu Qing followed her gaze to Auntie Qin, his favorite of all the old hens was wearing the same look.

Mu Qing couldn’t burden them with the truth that his age was of little concern, and even less was his desire to be anywhere but this “dusty village.” But these old biddies were stubborn, and Auntie Hao was right on two fronts: he had certainly promised A-Qiao for long enough that he would take the boy on another outing into town, and the small orphanage he’d constructed—the burning pride of his accomplishments since his banishment—deserved its fair share of Mu Qing’s attention.

With a weary sigh, Mu Qing mindfully closed his eyes before rolling them and patted Auntie Hao’s hand where it clutched his arm. “Alright. What’s on your list?”

Auntie Hao grinned, “That’s our Fu Yao. Always such a good boy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mu Qing muttered to himself, smiling.

While Auntie Hao searched her robes for her definitely-not-short list, Auntie Qin returned from her cleaning to take hold of Mu Qing’s hand again. She gazed up at him with that same kind, oddly reverent expression before bringing his knuckles to the wrinkled line of her brow. Mu Qing couldn’t help the faint smile that burdened his lips, allowing it even as he chided Auntie Qin about keeping his likeness out of the Southern God’s temple.

Before he could stop himself, Mu Qing sent up the quietest prayer to the Martial God of the South that this dusty little village would be undisturbed in his short absence.

But, like a single voice screaming into the wind, like the creeping frost reaching the nest while the mother is away, the enduring will of man was sometimes enough to shatter the prayers of even the most devoted.

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Mu Qing was juggling three sticks of candied hawthorn when he heard the bleak news from passersby.

“Did you hear?” One man gasped to another. “There’s been talk of a roaming army taking over the countryside.”

“That’s impossible.” The second voice replied with a shake as Mu Qing dropped one stick of candied fruit. “The front’s been quiet for months. I thought they were getting ready to send those young men home?”

“Well I hear there’s a rogue general from the northern army who’s been cutting his way to the South for years now. He’s been skirting the western coast and some say he’s gone unchecked because,” the first voice dropped to a whisper and Mu Qing went still. “Because he leaves no survivors.”

A second stick of candied fruit hit the ground and Mu Qing jumped as a hand clapped down on his shoulder.

“Yao-ge!” A-Qiao spoke up from beside him and settled his small handcart down with a grunt. “I got all the fabric Auntie Hao asked for. And I even haggled, just like you taught me! You should have seen… Hey, Fu Yao? What’s wrong?”

Some forgotten sense, some long undisturbed feeling of knowing buried itself deep in Mu Qing’s chest. It crackled and spat and burned like a small candlelight whispering beneath his fingers; years of its warm and comforting glow being breathed into a flame that scorched his hands as punishment for daring to relish it.

Mu Qing had allowed himself to be comfortable—happy. And now it was all crashing down again with the swipe of a single, determined blade.

“Yao-ge,” A-Qiao murmured. “What is it?”

Mu Qing turned to him and dropped the last stick of candy before steering them both into a sprint toward their wagon.

“We need to go now,” he hissed. “Now.”

That long ride back to the village was the hardest Mu Qing had taken in all the years since his banishment. Mu Qing pushed their horses almost past their limit, riding a full day and a half without sleep and without food. A-Qiao had slipped back into the fragile image of that young boy who couldn’t speak enough to ask for a meal. From his seat at the reins, Mu Qing was just as silent, though his mind whirled with every admonishment he felt he rightly deserved.

How could he think, for even a moment, that he could leave his people again? How could he think that he was ever enough to fully protect them from the horrors they’d escaped, from the dangers that still threatened their quiet and peaceful home?

He wasn’t enough as a god, with all the merits and privilege and power he could ever hope for. Why did he think, as a mortal, he would ever be enough?

The familiar countryside passed in a teary blur. As their little wagon whipped through trees and across worn, beaten paths, Mu Qing called on the dregs of his spiritual energy to send out the fiercest cries for help. He called on Feng Xin, on the Heavens, on every god he’d watched fall and every god who’d stood by to please, please, please, answer this fallen immortal just one time.

The stars and the feathery clouds between them only answered in cold silence. When that rickety wagon finally reached the village, it was under the dead stillness of night. Houses at the village’s edge were empty, their doors wide open or snapped at the hinges. Mu Qing rode past them all with a silent scream searing his vision.

For all the darkness that should have cloaked their little wagon, the skies were bright and roaring.

At the village center, Mu Qing leapt down and ran toward the sound of screams, the sound of horses braying with alarm and anger. The sound of wood crackling and breaking at hand-hewn seams.

All around him, the village burned. His lungs filled with smoke, and he nearly dropped to his knees.

“Help! Help us! Stop—”

“Spare us, please!”

“Spare the children! Please! We don’t—”

Bodies swarmed the village center, thrashing about in blind fear as men on horses rounded up the stragglers, as men in armor with blades in hand shoved women and children into larger and larger groups. At their backs, buildings and empty stables shuddered with flame, all left to burn as the villagers struggling to tame the worst of the fires were pulled from their work to join the growing crowd of captives.

How? How could it all come to this so quickly?

Why?

WHY?!

A shout from behind Mu Qing pulled him from his daze and he whirled to see A-Qiao being wrestled by a man in armor.

“Yao-ge, haghk!” The man held his neck in a fierce grip with his elbow. With a sneer he turned to Mu Qing and brought up a hand to yell some order at a nearby comrade.

But his own shout never made it past a whisper of breath. Mu Qing’s fist had already met his jaw with a powerful throw and the man fell into a heap, unmoving.

“A-Qiao,” Mu Qing tried to lift the boy with an arm at his back, but he fell short. A-Qiao sagged against him and the clean hem of his pants grew dirty with soot and mud. Mu Qing seethed, “Damn it. Damn. Fuck!”

With a throw, Mu Qing slung A-Qiao over his shoulders. He was still breathing, but they were too exposed. Already, Mu Qing could hear other soldiers running in their direction. With one more call on the spiritual energy laying within him, Mu Qing bounded on practiced feet to leap silently into the shadows of an empty building and ran through the darkness toward the worst of the fires.

The storerooms, the stables, the houses. The orphanage. It had all been set alight. He couldn’t check each one for survivors, not with the time he had left before each building fell beneath its own weight.

And the screams. All he could hear were their screams.

“Help! Gods above, help!”

“AHHHHHH!”

Mu Qing slumped against the backwall of an empty house and settled A-Qiao in the brush. The boy was still breathing, but he didn’t respond to words and blood seeped from a gash at his temple.

The tidy hem of Mu Qing’s fine, embroidered robe went dark and sticky. He smelled the iron and fear weeping into it from the close press of his face buried in his sleeves, trembling and crouching there in the poisoned dirt.

“Fuck, f-f-fuck. Fuck!” Mu Qing felt his ribs shake, his muscles tensing and coiling with adrenaline and terror and the resounding throttle of the screams at his back.

How far away was that lonely place where he had once thought to wait out his immortality and leave behind the dust of the mortal world? Mu Qing had sought it once, though those memories seemed as old as his first life. That place seemed about as real as the dreaming landscape where he sparred with a powerful, familiar god. The aching reminder of it ran him through like a blade to the chest, pinning him in place with the knowledge that none of this might have happened if he'd done the smart thing and ascended again.

If he’d never lost that battle with the ghost king, if he’d been better, then none of this would be happening.

“Yao-ge…” A small voice called from the dust and Mu Qing wiped the remainder of his shameful tears from his face. He looked down at A-Qiao and caught his hand in the hazy wind.

“Hey, didi.” Mu Qing sniffled. “Don’t move, okay? I have to—”

“I’ll be fine.” A-Qiao groaned and held his hand. But, miraculously, the boy sat up. He pushed Mu Qing with shaking hands and dusted the dirt from the hem of his dark robe. “They need you. You have to go.”

“But, I-I-I’m just… I can’t—”

“You can.” The boy smiled up at him, and Mu Qing remembered the very first time A-Qiao had spoken to him. That same smile shining beneath the shade of a tree, glad and full of pride. “Our Yao-gege can do anything.”

Mu Qing didn’t know if he believed that or not, but bravery and trust filled the fault lines left behind by shame.

The fallen god smiled and spoke simply.

“Stay here.”

That first step, that quiet footfall that brought Mu Qing to his feet, was empowered not by his own will, not even by the waking spiritual energy he thought he’d lost. It was born from the surety of that boy’s smile and the gleam in his eye that spoke to the trust A-Qiao and the entire village had lain to rest in Mu Qing alone.

Mu Qing left A-Qiao with the simple sword he’d carried all these years and took off in a sprint to save his people.

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

The village center was still bright with flame by the time Mu Qing returned, but houses on the outskirts of the village had only been ransacked and vandalized. For now, he stayed close to the shadows, bringing down what soldiers he could as quietly as possible. Mu Qing hadn’t brought his zhanmadao on his journey into town, and he was greatly regretting that decision now.

But regrets and shame wouldn’t save lives; so, he focused on finding a tool that would.

As a fallen god, it would have been wise to spare some mortal lives in the name of his own eventual second ascension, but that thought was far from his mind. His only concern when pulling violent men into the crook of his arm—wresting their breath for a quick end—was how many lives would be saved by the sacrifice of the one in his hands.

Still, Mu Qing knew he couldn’t take down the entire army one-by-one.

With the war having gone quiet for a few years now, it was clear that this was a rogue division of intruding forces looking to pillage and gather their strength before moving on. And if these were soldiers, then they had to be acting under someone’s command. If Mu Qing could just find his weapon—and quickly—then he stood a much better chance of facing their leader and negotiating the people’s safety.

But plans for the battlefield were easy to craft; the problems lay in the unexpected. As Mu Qing carved his way around the village’s perimeter, he found children hidden in the brush and the remnants of their homes. Each one jumped at the sight of their Yao-gege who had finally come to save them and sobbed into the swirling patterns of his robe as he checked them for injuries.

He couldn’t make it to the home he shared with Auntie Qin like this, stealth traded for the clumsy footsteps of terrified kids. So, his carefully crafted plan was amended without a shred of regret or a second thought.

After directing the first group of children toward A-Qiao’s hiding spot, Mu Qing pulled free a few strings from the embroidery of his robe. Glittering silver threads were nourished with feeble drops of spiritual energy and tucked into fenceposts, tree branches; anywhere their gleam would be visible in the dark; any place the children would see them and follow the trail knowing their Yao-gege would lead them to safety.

There was no other way. Mu Qing couldn’t lead every child by hand while the rest of the village burned. By the time he arrived at his small shack, the fine robe he’d cherished for centuries was coming apart at the seams—the elegant landscape stitched with a loving hand fallen into dull shadows of what once was.

But the children had a way to safety. And as Mu Qing finally arrived home, he was glad to see there were no more little ones hiding in the darkness.

“Where the fuck? Where is it?!” Mu Qing muttered harshly to himself as he searched the hollow shack. Even Auntie Qin’s bedroom was left bare, her few treasures either destroyed or scattered on the floor.

But his zhanmadao was nowhere to be seen. If it wasn’t here at home, then that could only mean—

Mu Qing beat the sides of his head as he recalled the last time he’d seen the weapon before taking his trip. If he knew Auntie Qin—and he did—then the blade would still be at the Nan Yang shrine in the center of the village. Anyone with an eye for weapons would know its worth. There was no way it had escaped notice.

His zhanmadao was gone. It was over.

Enraged, beaten down, Mu Qing launched one blast from his fist toward the open door behind him. When he turned, the light from his strike flew out into the wind and illuminated a column of handprints staining the splintered wood of the doorframe. Dusty red had seeped into the wood grain, dragged into each fiber by feeble hands.

Auntie Qin wouldn’t have been far from home this time of night. But she wasn’t here. The only signs of life were those handprints and the drops of blood leading outside.

Someone had laid their hands on her. Someone had made her bleed. Someone had dragged a defenseless old woman from her home with enough force that her brittle nails split and left marks across the porch.

Rage simmered and bubbled beneath Mu Qing’s mortal skin. Everything was red, red, red. Hatred pulsed violently in his temple, his eyes, before cooling just enough that calm certainty could replace it. With no weapon to busy his hands, the fallen god’s palms welled with crackling energy, tingling in each knuckle with power almost reminiscent of what he wielded in Heaven.

Almost reminiscent. But not quite. As viciously protective as he was of this village, Mu Qing didn’t have his weapon, and he wasn’t a god anymore.

Mu Qing had spent hundreds of years in the Heavens. He’d spent decades before and after here in the Mortal Realm. Back then, as a soldier of Xianle and then the Southwest, his greatest weapon was that dependable sabre—cleaving his enemies from the safety of a long distance, shielding him from emotion as easily as his heart.

His zhanmadao was gone now. But this wasn’t over. It couldn’t be. His people deserved someone who could stand in the way of danger and protect them, no matter the outcome or that person’s certainty that they would fail.

Mu Qing had come this far as a mortal to protect them. He’d done this much without his godhood. If he fell to another sword, then it would be in the name of saving his people. He didn’t need to be a god to protect them. He only needed to last long enough that someone stronger might step in.

And Feng Xin… Feng Xin had promised he would be keeping an eye out for his village. With all the prayers Mu Qing had sent up, he guessed that oaf had to be gathering his forces now. All that was left was the patience of trust.

With another silent prayer, Mu Qing steeled himself and dashed out toward the brightest flame.

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

The village was like a scene from hell. While most of the smaller buildings had already been burned to dark smolders, larger ones were still engulfed in flames on every side. Screams were traded for sobs and weak shouts as the village members sat in a tight circle at the village’s center; most were cowering in fear or pleading to their captors. There were no signs of a distinct leader within the soldiers, but Mu Qing had plans to amend that later.

From his vantage point in the shadows, Mu Qing could see that most of his people were injured. Blood-soaked sleeves and muddy pant legs dragged through the dirt; arms clutched close to the chest were misshapen and still, faces beaten into anonymity.

In that sea of flame-lit faces, a brave little voice piped up from the crowd and raged against the nearest soldier.

A child screamed as he made to escape from the circle of captured villagers. “Stay back! Go away! Or our Yao-ge will—”

“XIAOBO!” Xue Zhenzhen screeched as she pulled her son back to the ground, pressing him against Auntie Hao to shield him from view. She turned to the soldier and clapped her hands to the ground in a frantic bow. “Please, have mercy! Please! He’s a child. Please, please have mercy!”

From this distance Mu Qing could see the scattered rips and soot stains in Xue Zhenzhen’s robes. But blood pouring from some hidden injury to her head streamed down her face. Though the agony of her pleas and the sight of her wound carved a tear in Mu Qing’s chest, he pulled himself out of that initial instinct to jump in and kick the soldier down. His blood boiled, but rushing in without a plan would solve nothing.

Just as that soldier moved on, Mu Qing caught a distant flicker of movement at the edge of his vision. Terror threatened to seize him, but the fallen god moved too quickly for it to catch.

Soundlessly, Mu Qing weaved himself across the narrow, empty road until he was hidden again beneath the eaves of their Nan Yang shrine. It was empty save for the single person he’d caught struggling to move beneath his rival’s statue. Mu Qing approached, keeping out of the light and diving to his knees as he pulled the crumpled body into his arms.

A wrinkled face blinked up at him, smeared with blood and dirt, smiling, even now. A trembling hand rose slowly and Mu Qing caught it with his own, bringing it to rest on his brow.

Mu Qing’s smile felt hollow, but the lightness it brought to that treasured face made the strain worthwhile.

Tears streamed from Mu Qing’s face as he choked out, “Hey Auntie. Fu Yao is here. I’m s-sorry I’m so late.”

Auntie Qin’s toothless smile shone brighter than anything, and she turned her wrist until Mu Qing’s cheek filled her palm. Though she couldn’t see very well these days, the old hen seemed to take in every inch of her gongzi’s face as she studied it with her final breaths.

Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear a word.

“What are you doing out here, Auntie? How did you…” Mu Qing sputtered. He didn’t have the words to tell her how sorry he was, how useless he felt, how badly he wanted to save her.

Mu Qing had said goodbye to so many kind, weathered faces since they all settled in this valley, and that grief had burdened him more and more as the years went by. But still, he was happy to see them put to rest and set off into a new stage of life where they might find their loved ones again.

But Auntie Qin was different. No, she wasn’t allowed to go. Losing her… That was too much, wasn’t it? How much more could fate take from him that Mu Qing hadn’t given already? His titles, his territory. His home. He’d lost his mother once, and now he was crying pathetically over another dying woman that didn’t deserve this, that had only ever shown him kindness.

Auntie Qin’s lips still moved, and though Mu Qing fought tears to see them clearly, he finally understood the mute syllables for the prayer that they were.

General.

General Xuan Zhen.

“Auntie?” Mu Qing blinked. “You kn—How?”

The old woman coughed weakly and motioned toward the shrine’s altar with her eyes. There, on the floor, hidden behind the mess the soldiers had made, Mu Qing’s zhanmadao was hidden beneath the statue of Nan Yang.

Mu Qing shook his head as tears formed anew. He saw Auntie Qin’s gaze dim further, he saw a trail of blood leading from the chaos into the shrine, he saw the belt of the old woman’s robe where it lay dark and slick with blood. By her side, he saw the small, framed portrait of himself lying on the ground where Auntie Qin was too weak to lift it and hold it close.

Mu Qing was running out of time, they both were. He knew he had to leave and face the soldiers; Auntie Qin’s last kindness for him was hiding his blade for this purpose alone.

But his legs, his heart, didn’t obey.

“I’m not a god anymore, Auntie. I don’t think this is a fight I can w-w-win. I’m not a god anymore, I’m n-not. I’m n-not a god.” Mu Qing held Auntie Qin’s hand to his face and sobbed into the soft, wrinkled skin of her palm. There was only one wound between them, but it was like their hurt was equal in measure.

As that lingering brightness and warmth in her eyes faded, Mu Qing felt like the burden in his arms had taken on the weight of two. Sobbing, he felt time go liquid around him and paint the infernal hell at his back in the bright, breezy colors of old Xianle. The woman in his arms was Auntie Qin, then it was his mother. It was Auntie Peng, then Xue Zhenzhen. Every auntie and mother and grandmother that he’d ever known was in his arms—and he couldn’t protect them all.

Mu Qing was stuttering through tears, reeling with excuses and apologies until that cold hand in his went slack. He gasped as Auntie Qin took her final breath, her hazy eyes fixed on him like he was the moon that commanded the tide, the protector and keeper of the sky itself. Mu Qing fought to keep her eyes locked just a moment longer to his own, but his Auntie slipped away with a peaceful flutter of her lashes.

Her lips moved without sound until her very last moment.

My god, my Xuan Zhen is strong.

I still believe.

Mu Qing shivered over Auntie Qin’s body until his breath was steady again. When he was ready to leave, he pressed a soft kiss to her hand and laid her peacefully beneath the feet of Feng Xin’s statue, tucking the bloodstained portrait into her arms. He would memorialize her properly later. For now, he had one last prayer to answer. This final believer of his had uttered it with such devotion; he was determined to honor her wish accordingly.

“HEY.” Mu Qing shouted into the wind as he walked briskly into the center of the village. Immediately, every head turned to meet him, and the soldiers directly in his path brandished their weapons.

The nearest soldier snarled, “You—You! Stop right there! Don’t come any—khagk!”

Before he could let out another word, Mu Qing ran forward and snapped his zhanmadao across the distance between them to cut cleanly through the man’s neck. In a blink, his head rolled to the side as blood spouted from his throat like spring mist dancing across the tips of a pinwheel. When a second soldier dashed forward in retaliation, Mu Qing met him just as viciously, slicing the man through the gut as he spun to avoid the crimson spray.

For a moment, that familiar young gongzi struck fear into the hearts of his own people. That bright and well-mannered young man was traded for a disciplined soldier of the finest make. They watched him cut down no less than half the present soldiers with little more expression than placid, bridled rage. His dark, elegant robe billowed delicately on the wind, like it clung to a body made of celestial dust and the cold wind of midnight. But that robe—once a precious tapestry, a treasured piece of the mysterious, handsome gongzi’s past—was now tattered and dull with pinholes that grew wider as Fu Yao moved.

But even with every tear and absent stitch that drifted through the misted blood spray, each villager thanked the Heavens for its blessing. Fu Yao was terrifying, but he was careful to keep the fight from reaching them. Soon enough, their sobs and pleas turned into cheers for Fu Yao, the selfless guardian who protected them so fiercely. As he spun death into the crowd of intruders, the villagers sang out in praise like the devoted believers of some rising god, sobbing with relief as more and more soldiers stepped back in fear.

“Fu Yao! Give ‘em hell!”

“Go, Yao-gege, go!”

Mu Qing grinned as he flew through the air. With every enemy he cut down, he saw only the promise of safety at the end of his swings, he felt only the rush of power as he steadily burned through his spiritual energy almost completely.

“Fu Yao! Thank you!”

“Bless you—”

“Fu Yao—”

“Didi!” Another familiar voice called out, but gladness had been traded for sheer terror. “DIDI!! BEHIND YOU!”

Mu Qing had been mid-swing with his blade when he met Xue Zhenzhen’s face in the crowd. He could only guess what she was feeling as she watched him carve through the enemy lines, her eyes wide and clouded by blood as she rose on shaky legs and stared past him.

His nerves ignited at the feeling of a looming force at his back. Mu Qing spun around with impossible speed and brought his weapon to an immediate stop right at the newcomer’s throat.

On the other end of his blade, a tall man dressed in the trappings of a seasoned warrior sneered down his nose. The hard lines of his face and the weathered scars of his armor spoke more than enough before the man himself ever said a word. Mu Qing’s hands creaked as they wrung the handle of his weapon.

The enemy leader had shown at last.

“Well, well,” the man smiled wickedly. “You must be the young soldier I’ve heard so much about.”

Mu Qing met his expression with a glare. “I might be.”

“You might be? You kill more than half my men in a matter of seconds, and you might be?”

The man looked around the village center, sweeping his arms to lead Mu Qing’s gaze toward the soldiers who were already clearing their dead from the ground. But when the young gongzi refused to look away or lower his weapon even an inch, the stranger’s easy smile went wider and he erupted in a fit of laughter, nearly doubling over when the zhanmadao followed his movements.

“Ha! You, young man. You’re quite confident in your skill, aren’t you?”

At last, Mu Qing lost his patience and touched his blade to the man’s throat. “Leave now. Before I show you how confident I can be.”

Embers and eaves crackled on the hollow wind that swept through the village. The victims left kneeling in the dirt had all quieted, each child hushed and hidden beneath blood-soiled sleeves. The remaining soldiers gave Mu Qing a wide berth, but obeyed their commander’s wordless order to surround the young man and his people on all sides nonetheless.

That roiling wave of enraged spiritual power burned what tears were left in Mu Qing’s eyes. As he stared down the enemy leader, he refused to give a single step in concession.

The man stared back until amusement broke through his hardened study of the anonymous fighter before him.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The young man grit his teeth and spat out, “Fu Yao.”

The man smiled almost kindly, “Captain Duan, at your service. I have a proposition for you, Fu Yao.” The commander motioned toward the sword at his back and motioned toward his men to widen their perimeter of the village center, ringing the clearing with the bright light of their torches. “I admire your skill. I won’t lie about that. So, what if I offer you the chance to duel for the safety of this dusty little village?” He drew his blade and ran one finger along its edge, savoring the soft line of blood that coated the steel. “You win, and this is the last drop of blood we spill tonight.”

Pain lanced through Mu Qing’s chest like the touch of a familiar, silver blade. “You’re looking for a duel? You mean you came looking for a fight in a village full of women and children?” Grimacing, he spat. “Pathetic.”

Though Captain Duan’s expression didn’t flicker, his men hissed at the implication of their leader’s weakness.

“How dare you!”

“Cut him to pieces, Captain!”

“Enough.” The commander hushed his men with one calm word. He blinked, and that arrogant playfulness in his eyes turned sharp and sinister. With one look, Mu Qing recognized the steady gaze of a man who would kill indiscriminately, a monster of a thousand battlefields.

A man who would absolutely make good on his promise.

Captain Duan smiled, “What will it be, Fu Yao? Your life, or theirs?”

It’s a common saying that a lifetime of memories flash before one’s eyes in the moments preceding death. Mu Qing had plenty of memories to recall, and with his immortality out of the picture, this was certainly the occasion to dreg them up.

But it wasn’t memories of Xianle or godhood or even banishment by proxy that flitted across his vision. Instead, it was a kind girl with a baby strapped to her hips, guiding him through a market and crying into his shoulder beneath a canopy of stars. It was two old women pestering him as he cooked their dinner, insisting their recipes were flawless and pinching his cheeks when he gave into their meddling. It was children watching him move through sword forms, uncles thanking him for his visit. It was Auntie Qin feeding him soup and wiping tears from his chin.

The tattered robe that had once fit so perfectly across Mu Qing’s shoulders felt heavy now, soaked through as it was with blood and duty and fear. Every one of the lives he had guarded for over a decade bore down on him so immensely; his disciplined arms wavered at the thought of falling, again, to the blade of a much stronger enemy.

In another life, Mu Qing had failed his believers just like this. He’d lost the right to call himself their god twice over when the Crimson Rain Sought Flower struck him down on a stage built from the arrogant soil of celestial palaces.

And what lesson had Mu Qing learned after the fall? What grand moment of transcendence had he come to after walking the Mortal Realm and eschewing his immortality for the broken confidence of a fallen, battered god?

There had been no change or growth. In fact, Mu Qing was weaker than ever before with the last of his spiritual energy being drained into the blade of his zhanmadao. Now, he was nothing, no one, more than Fu Yao, a cynical and overworked young man with the weight of people’s lives on his shoulders.

His people deserved so much more than him. They deserved a god who could protect their simple way of life. They deserved—

“DIDI!” A bright voice yelled out from behind. When Mu Qing turned—eyes wide and seeking, fingers burning where they clutched his weapon tight—Xue Zhenzhen was staring back with that same exuberant smile from all those years ago. With hands clasped tight against her chest, she cried out, “You can do it! I know you can, didi!”

Mu Qing almost heard a distant sound of laughter from the soldiers, but the sight of his oldest friend, that brave young girl speaking through tears, arrested him fully from the depths of his spiral.

He muttered, “I—I’m not—”

“You can, Fu Yao! You can! Remember? I can feel these things!”

The soldiers and Captain Duan were losing their patience. Mu Qing heard the crunch of dirt underfoot as the enemy leader stepped closer and raised his sword.

“Choose, young man.”

Xue Zhenzhen smiled and nodded her head frantically, never once letting Mu Qing’s gaze slip as she whispered her prayer.

“My brother is never coming back, gongzi. But he sent you. You’ll win.” She laughed, pained and terrified. Human. “I know these things, didi. I just know them.”

The rest of the villagers clamored on in a repeat of this phrase, filling the air with voices, beating back flames and terror with the stubborn pride they held for their Fu Yao-gongzi.

As they called out, somehow the air became lighter and the smoke became easier to bear. Mu Qing breathed it in and felt his limbs surge with the faintest trail of spiritual energy. Whatever had disturbed this final store of power, he couldn’t guess at, he wouldn’t.

At this moment, all that mattered was the trust billowing his dull, worn sleeves. The only earthly concern that disturbed his focus was the aftermath of bloodshed that would be left behind for his people when this battle was done.

Mu Qing was no fool. There was no way to know for sure when Feng Xin would step in—if he could step in. And there was a strong chance Mu Qing would not win out over this final enemy. Captain Duan was wreathed in death and had carved his way across multiple territories fighting battles exactly like this one. But the mysterious, fearless gongzi had already made up his mind.

“Our Yao-gege can do anything.”

"He sent you. You’ll win.”

"My god, my Xuan Zhen is strong.

I still believe. "

Mu Qing had made it this far without his godhood. If these people still trusted and believed in him, then dying in a bid for their safety was the only thing left to do.

With one decisive swing, Mu Qing faced Captain Duan straight on and took a readied stance.

“You and your soldiers.” The fallen god sneered, “Yours will be the last lives I take.”

Captain Duan grinned and fell into his own stance. “Excellent choice.”

They met in a clash of singing metal and vicious wind. Captain Duan had years of experience with the sword and cleaved his way through Mu Qing’s defenses with brutal precision, savoring every faint touch of his blade to the dark silk of the young man’s robe. He was quick and intelligent in his movements. Mu Qing had never faced someone so formidable in the Mortal Realm; not in all his years as a soldier of Xianle or his time as a rogue protector leading travelers through the South.

But still, Captain Duan was a only one man. One mortal with all the limitations of a mortal

For every strike of the zhanmadao that Captain Duan blocked, Mu Qing moved with long-absent speed and delivered ten more. The surge of energy that had been sparked by Auntie Qin’s death flared brighter with every cry from the villagers at his back. Mu Qing, the once fallen god, soared through the air on feet light as the wind and struck down soldiers who lingered too close, all the while pressing his own offense to the captain’s steel.

It was like a song that had been forgotten for so many years was remembered now in the way Mu Qing’s weapon obeyed his every command—inhuman in its quickness, in its ferocity, in the brilliant lightning that illuminated its edge. He wasn’t an immortal—he was a mortal cultivator at best—but Mu Qing would know this feeling anywhere.

Godhood.

“My god…Xuan Zhen…”

But it didn’t make sense for this power to be truly his. It had been so long since Mu Qing had felt power this great, he could only assume it was the favor of his rival, this region’s protector, come to save his people at last.

The power of a god answering fervent prayer roiled through him in silver waves. From the corners of his vision—as he tore through armor and bone with a flick of his fingers—Mu Qing almost thought he saw the hem of his robe return to its vivid silver, the sleeves on his arms flowing again with the landscape of Xianle in springtime, the delicate ends of his hair glowing just the same. But he had no mind to pay it much thought; Captain Duan’s defenses had just been broken.

The battle was decided.

All it took was one final push. With a single, deft strike of his zhanmadao, Mu Qing ripped through blood-soaked armor until his blade had pierced the heart of the enemy leader and severed it from stubborn rhythm.

“Khagk!” Captain Duan choked and looked up from the wound at his chest. The last of his men lay dead across the wide perimeter of the battleground, but he ignored them to search the young man’s face for an explanation. “What are you?”

The fallen god glowered down from his place above and twisted his blade.

“Fu Yao. The end of monsters like you.”

Captain Duan’s expression twisted in pain with the final twitch of the zhanmadao. Slowly, life was wrested from his lungs and he sunk to the ground in a bloody heap.

Mu Qing dragged in breath and cleaned his blade with the edge of his inner robes. As he looked around the village center, he saw no signs of life from the bodies thrown around it. At last, his eyes fell on the cowering group across the clearing. Every set of eyes was trained on him, stricken not with fear, but something like awe.

“Um, I’m s-sorry for the mess.” Mu Qing mumbled. “I couldn’t let them get away. W-we should start—”

“DIDI!” Xue Zhenzhen called out from the crowd and leapt up to race toward him. When she met him with open arms, the rest of the village followed.

“GONGZI! You rascal!”

“You did it! We’re saved!”

“A blessing! You’re such a blessing to us!”

“Yao-gege!”

“You did it! We knew you could!”

Mu Qing was dragged nearly to his knees from the onslaught of hugs and hands reaching to tug at his robe and ruffle his hair and pinch his cheeks. He wanted to resist, but the warmth brought on by those smiles made his eyes burn and his chest ache.

Dawn was setting in. In the soft light of a pink and silver sunrise, those smiling faces gleamed and gazed up at their protector with nothing but fervent pride.

They were all safe. They were all finally safe.

“Zhenzhen.” Mu Qing felt tears well up in his eyes and he hugged the girl close. “Where are you hurt? How many children are missing? I ran into some on my way here. A-Qiao is hidden down the road, he should have them—”

“A-Qiao?” Auntie Hao piped up. “Where is he? Where’s my—There! There he is!”

Indeed, the young boy was leading a small group of children back to the village center. Though they were all nervous and frightened to be walking across so many unmoving bodies, each one beamed when they caught sight of their Yao-gege and raced ahead to join their families in the crowd surrounding him.

“Yao-gege looks so pretty!”

“We have all your strings Yao-ge! We kept them for you!”

“Yao-gege, your hair!”

Mu Qing blinked and skirted past the pinching fingers at his cheek. “My what?”

“Your hair.” Xue Zhenzhen answered, looking him over with wide eyes. “And your robe. It didn’t look like that before. Did it?”

“It didn’t! It changed when—”

“During all the fighting! Didn’t you see!”

“Our Yao-gege is beautiful!”

“My… My robe.” Mu Qing gently removed himself from the crowd and stepped back to give his clothes a proper look. Every precious, glimmering string that he’d pulled from the silk had returned ten times over, filling the expanse of his robe with the familiar landscape of old Xianle. But between those familiar stitches, even more scenery was painted into the silk. The flowing fields of this small valley, the tidy roofs and stables of the village were all embroidered across his shoulders. Mu Qing quickly shucked off his robe and saw miniscule portraits of familiar faces across the back—each one smiling upward in praise at a vivid silver star stitched into the nape.

“What the hell…” Mu Qing’s hands trembled as he inspected the silk. It was only with Xue Zhenzhen’s calm touch that he was able to step back into the robe and properly secure it.

The rest of the villagers had calmed as they looked over the children, but Xue Zhenzhen stayed by Mu Qing’s side and met his tears with her own. She tilted his head up and combed her fingers through smooth length of hair over his shoulder, bringing it close for Mu Qing to see.

“This is quite a new look for you, gongzi. Very fetching. I’m even a bit jealous.”

Mu Qing let tears roll down his cheeks and watched sparkling, silver hair fall from her fingers. “I don’t… I don’t know what this means. I…”

Xue Zhenzhen smiled warmly, “I do. I have a pretty good sense of these things, didi.”

In the midst of that final calm, a loud crack of thunder tore through the sky and shook the earth beneath their feet. Far down the road, far into the wilderness of the valley, a bright beam of light shot up from the treeline, aiming straight for the sky. Mu Qing knew he was the only one who could see it, but the melancholy of Xue Zhenzhen’s gaze told him that they’d come to the same conclusion.

“Not so helpless anymore, huh?” Xue Zhenzhen laughed, clapping Mu Qing on his cheek. “My didi, our very own Fu-gongzi. I'm afraid you just look much too pretty and much too rich to stay down here with us.”

Mu Qing shook his head and looked back toward the village. The older women were already herding the children away from the bloody scene, leaving the rest to clean up. It would be a long and arduous day for them all. “I can’t. I still have things to do here. Auntie Qin is… She’s in the shrine. She needs to be buried.”

“Don’t you worry about that. We’ll take it from here.”

“But I promised to lead you. I promised to protect you. I can’t do that from all the way up—”

“Fu Yao.” Xue Zhenzhen snapped delicately and took Mu Qing’s shoulders in hand. She looked up at him with a hard expression, like an older sister chastising him for his foolishness, but her eyes were still warm. “You already have. We know you always will.”

Mu Qing looked back toward the light, then he looked back at the village. He saw children smiling as their faces were cleaned with torn robes, holding long strands of silver thread tightly in their chubby palms. Mothers kissing their children’s faces; grandmothers and grandfathers finding a seat on ransacked porches. Crumbling walls and littered belongings were already being tidied; like this was just a bad dream, like their home was still as safe as it ever was.

Even after all this, they still had the utmost faith in a fallen god like him.

Mu Qing sniffled and pulled Xue Zhenzhen into a final embrace.

“I’m going to miss you all.”

“I know, didi,” Xue Zhenzhen hiccuped. “We’re going to miss you so much.”

“Can I ask you for a favor?”

“Anything.”

Mu Qing pulled back and grinned at the Nan Yang shrine. “If you give me a statue, make mine taller than his.”

Xue Zhenzhen giggled brightly, rubbing her face in Mu Qing’s shoulder as she shook. With one last, kiss to his cheek, she pushed him toward the road and waved happily as he set off for the forest.

Mu Qing stole one last look at his dusty little village and all the familiar faces he had protected all these years. Each one had given him such kindness and enough memories to treasure for centuries after. With the dawning sun on his back, he stepped into the shade of the wilderness and walked steadily into that beam of light.

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

“There you are.”

Mu Qing opened his eyes and found himself in the grassy clearing he’d come to know so well after all these years. But instead of untethered and empty wind, there was only warmth and solid ground beneath his feet. He wasn’t visiting the realm of a god; he was part of it.

Mu Qing turned and met Feng Xin’s eyes across the meadow. His rival was leaning against a cherry tree in full bloom, arms crossed in that proud and immovable way of his, face bright with something just as fierce.

“Hey.”

Feng Xin smiled and stepped forward. When he opened his arms, Mu Qing had already landed within them.

Mu Qing had never kissed anyone before, but he imagined it could never be sweeter than this. It was like slipping the sun past his lips and drawing life from bronzed rays of dappled light, basking in their glow and blooming beneath them.

Feng Xin pulled back just enough to breathe and smiled against Mu Qing’s cheek, laughing into his skin as he rocked the once-fallen god in his arms. “You did so good. You did so, so good Qing-er.”

“Shut up,” Mu Qing rolled his eyes, smiling just the same.

“I mean it. You were amazing.” Feng Xin ran his fingers through silver strands and pressed them to his face. “Nice hair. Did you make it match on purpose?”

“Ugh, you! You stupid—” Even though Mu Qing tried his very best to pour all his frustration into pinching his rival’s ears, the man only laughed harder and swung him from side to side, burying his hand further until they had no choice but kiss again and again and again.

At last, Mu Qing resurfaced and pouted against Feng Xin’s chest. “So I’m guessing I owe you my thanks for the help down there. Took you long enough.”

“Nope. I didn’t help at all.”

Mu Qing balked. “You! You mean you—"

“I couldn’t help.” Feng Xin calmed his rival with a peck to his cheek. “I asked, but I wasn’t allowed to interfere with the final test of a new god. That was all you.”

The new god scoffed. “You mean that guy was a Heavenly Tribulation?”

“I don’t think so. The Emperor just told me to hang back.”

“Mmn. Well, whatever.” Mu Qing huffed and buried his head in Feng Xin’s neck, breathing in the scent as quietly as he could. “Looks like you’re stuck with me again, you big idiot.”

Feng Xin chuckled and held him even tighter. “Just promise you won’t…”

Mu Qing’s heart ached at the broken sound of that absent request. He pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against Feng Xin’s bringing the tips of their noses together in the lightest touch.

“Do you doubt me that much?” The new god scoffed. “I’m not going anywhere. Never again.”

Feng Xin looked up and met his eyes through the dark fan of his lashes. “You swear?”

“Yeah,” Mu Qing sighed contentedly and spoke against his rival’s parted lips. “I swear.”

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Of all the Martial Gods in the Heavens, those ruling the South are the most unique. The North has General Ming Guang; the East, General Tai Hua; and the West, General Qi Ying. In the South, General Nan Yang rules over the territory near absolutely, but he does not rule alone. Side by side with General Fu Yao, Martial God of Women and Children, Protector of the Feeble and Hungry, the two guard the Southern territories with kind hands and protect those who worship from the even humblest of shrines.

When worshipping the two and offering prayers, it is recommended to honor them as one. According to legend, their close relationship offers the most protection and is reflected best in sculptures and art depicting the pair as an inseparable duo, back-to-back in battle, defending their territory with arrows and steel.

Even more notable, believers under General Fu Yao’s purview in the South have their own well-practiced customs. Women in need stitch their robes or hair ribbons with silver thread for protection, and children are taught that following glowing threads in even the darkest night will lead them home. The valley where General Fu Yao won his great and mighty battle against a league in the hundreds is even said to be the god’s particular favorite, seeing seasons of fruitful harvest and years of peace after his ascension.

Most of those tales had gotten a bit lost in the years since, but Mu Qing only smiled privately to himself when he heard them. Here at his palace in the Heavens, he could even hear them now; prayers for food, medicine, and safety whispered from humble shrine and small temples throughout the South. His heart to think of his people’s misfortune, but he knew Feng Xin carried this weight just as seriously and would be dispatching deputies wherever they could spare them.

But even among those pleas, prayers of thanks sounded within them, bringing to memory those cries at Mu Qing’s back when he fought his last mortal battle.

Danger and threats could never be stomped out completely. But like this, as a god, Mu Qing would fight to protect each life no matter the lingering doubt in his heart.

Maybe he had been that protector, that god, all along. Mu Qing didn’t think much on it; if Xue Zhenzhen and Auntie Qin had trusted him all those years ago, then he must be enough, even now.

“Qing-er!” A voice called from behind, resonant and bright, “I heard about what happened. Are you alright?”

Mu Qing let himself be turned and inspected for injury. Though he rolled his eyes, he happily let Feng Xin’s hands linger as he checked his glimmering robe for signs of a fight.

“It was just a stupid bell. What about the palace? Was anyone hurt?”

“No, thankfully.” Feng Xin groaned, “I contacted Ling Wen, but since it’s a new god, we won’t be paid for the damages right away.”

Mu Qing rolled his eyes. “It’s fine. We can sort it out later.” He motioned with one hand as he stepped into their shared palace, pulling Feng Xin along with a hand at his wrist. “Come on. I feel like sparring.”

Feng Xin sagged but followed obediently. “I just finished training the deputies, though. How about a nap instead?”

His rival scoffed, flicking the silver length of his hair over his shoulder just to see it hit Feng Xin in the face. “It’s never just a nap with you.”

In one fluid motion, announced only with a mischievous chuckle at Mu Qing’s back, Feng Xin swept him up in both arms and carried him further into the palace, feet pointedly leading them away from the sparring field. Mu Qing complained and tugged on his rival’s ears in resistance, but his heart wasn’t in it.

In the deepest corners of his heart, this was exactly where Mu Qing wanted to be. In his palace, in Feng Xin’s arms, at the helm of his territory. From here, he could protect his people completely and look after their safety, guarding their simple way of life and repaying their kindness.

The man who fell from heaven and vowed to wander the Mortal Realm, free of secular dust, that person was a stranger to him now. Mu Qing couldn’t imagine any other life but this, any other purpose.

When his people looked to the stars at night and pleaded for help, Mu Qing was determined to answer. He wouldn’t allow the common people to lose faith in the faceless blanket of stars above. He was only one man, one god, and his past wasn’t unmarred by sin and mistakes. But he would keep them safe until his very last breath.

These people who plucked him from banishment and gave him a home. These people who fed him and nurtured his strength until he could ascend again.

Their safety was his promise. And now, at last, Mu Qing felt brave enough to take on the weight of that promise and banish his self-doubt in the name of something much greater.