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☾
He watches her pick her blindfold off the ground in one swift motion. She holds it in her hands for just a moment, the groans of her defeated opponent coming back to life going ignored.
Perhaps even unheard. Because in that brief moment before she covers her red eyes once more (they’re clear, he thinks, this time), she seems to be deep in thought, pondering something he knows she will not share with any member of the Xianzhou Alliance when he eventually sends her off to be interrogated.
He pushes down the knowledge of what’s to come just as swiftly as the thoughts about what once was as he approaches her.
He thought he might at least have to remind her of their deal but she turns to his men without another word.
☾
When Yanqing seeks him out a few days later, Jing Yuan already knows what’s on his mind. The boy had been unusually quiet, and even though the Luofu general wishes he could erase his memories of the gruesome scene, he knows that this, too, is something his disciple would have had to face eventually.
Just not this soon.
(Jing Yuan waits anyway, calm and patiently. The act of caring for one’s student, after all, is part of being a teacher all the same.)
Hazel eyes do their best to avoid his gaze even when his young retainer finally speaks up. “General, I… I would like to talk to you about something.”
He smiles, well aware that it won’t be noticed. “Of course, Yanqing. What is it?”
The boy all but fidgets with his hands. “Well… it’s… I’ve been thinking. About all kinds of things.”
“I thought I had mastered a lot of what’s important, knew many of the things that make a good Cloud Knight and a good swordfighter. But now, after what happened… I’m just…”
His disciple trails off and Jing Yuan watches, closely. Looks for whatever there may be to observe. He knows better than anyone how strong the boy is – for his age especially. How competent, how hardworking, how determined to become someone extraordinary. But he is also still a child, and the events of the recent past must have left him… confused at best.
At worst, he could be scared. Scared of his own future; the future that Jing Yuan will protect at all costs.
Not every long-life species’ fate is inherently doomed to resemble his own, after all.
Yanqing lifts his gaze, hesitation reflecting in his eyes. “Jingliu, she… she said something to the High Elder of the Vidyadhara when she tried to heal her. She said that… that all she had were the sword in her hand and her hatred of the past – and that if she was without either of them, she would fall into an empty void.”
The general’s gentle smile doesn’t waver. His thoughts, however, start swirling in an unorderly fashion, utterly unbecoming of the diplomat and strategist he knows himself to be. Mixed emotions, fragmentary memories of the past… and most of all, a sense of uncertainty, of helplessness, that ought to have disappeared long ago.
Into an empty void… He wishes he wasn’t familiar with the feeling. But if nothing else, her return reminded him just how close he’s been walking the fine line beside that very same void himself.
The void that appeared on that fateful day 700 years ago and that has been with him every single new day since.
Now is not the time for that, though. Right now, he needs to reassure his disciple – that is his duty and one that he wholeheartedly chose to take on at that.
“While I can only reiterate that this is not an issue you should concern yourself with,” he begins, pretending to overlook the glimmer of guilt in the boy’s eyes, “I cannot, and will not, condemn your curiosity. After all, making an effort to understand your place in the world is also part of the oath you swore to protect the Luofu from harm… so do relax, Yanqing.”
His retainer obeys immediately, the tension leaving both his posture and his features at the general’s words. Yet, the eagerness to know remains, and Jing Yuan would not have it any other way.
“I assume you are still grappling with your recent ‘defeats,’” he says, remembering vividly Yanqing’s concerns about his own strength after his first encounter with his master, “but you ought to keep in mind that you faced formidable opponents both times. The former Imbibitor Lunae, a Stellaron Hunter… and the previous Sword Champion of the Luofu. Not many Cloud Knights could have held their own against any of them, least of all those with less than centuries of experience.”
Yanqing nods in somewhat grim acknowledgement. The wounds on his body may have healed but Jing Yuan is well aware of how deeply those ‘losses’ cut his pride. He will not coddle the boy, there has never been a need for that. What he will do, however, is wait in anticipation for him to realise how lucky he was to have survived those encounters at all.
(The earlier of the two, he supposes, even more so than the later. He will never not be painfully aware of how little his mentor cared for… disturbances.)
“But as for Jingliu,” he goes on, her image much too present in his mind, “the most important thing to remember when sparring with her, in combat and in colloquy, is to keep your guard up at all times. It’s something I, too, had to learn… long ago.”
Her scolding voice still echoes in his ears, a memory just shy of a millennium old. “Did I not tell you just last week to pay attention to your surroundings?” she barks as the feeling of blood on his face and the realisation of pain hit him simultaneously, their lesson interrupted. It would not be the last time that he’d feel the kiss of her blade but it was, if he recalls correctly, the last time she ever had to repeat this particular instruction.
He shakes off the thought. “Before she became a criminal,” he continues slowly, refocusing on the present, “her cruelty was reserved for the wielding of her sword against her enemies. Now, however…”
He pauses. There is no poetic way of wording the harsh truths that govern their fates.
“…now, she seems to believe the entire world to be her enemy.”
The boy looks up at him, puzzled. “Is that why she said that?”
The general nods. “Yes. I don’t doubt that she is convinced that she is no more than the crimes she committed. But none of us who have seen war are free of sin, and yet we do not succumb to the weight of those sins. That is your lesson for today, Yanqing.”
☾
Even after his disciple is long gone, Jing Yuan still finds himself standing behind his desk, his gaze fixed on the clouds outside his window.
“Yet dreams… will eventually fade – like clouds from the sky.”
The events of that day refuse to leave his mind. Yingxing’s body hitting the ground, impaled by her icy sword, bones audibly shattering while Jing Yuan could do little more but watch from the shadows. The man had asked their former master to do just this – attempt to take his life one last time before hers would be forever sealed away. But the cruelty of it all stuck with the Luofu general nonetheless.
Had his friends not suffered enough?
And if it was truly only Yingxing whose heart was pierced… how come he, too, felt the sharp sting of cold metal in his chest?
This was, it seemed, what they had become. Old friends with unfulfilled promises, overtaken by the curse of the Abundance in one way or another. Enemies by chance, mere shadows of their former selves.
(But her eyes had been clear… this time.)
There was something else that she had said, he remembers, pushing away the thoughts of what he cannot amend with all his might. She hid something in her words when she addressed him right before her duel with Yingxing, the one and only time she had spoken to him at all.
“Jing Yuan… You haven’t changed at all – always trying to destroy the plans of others… but in the end, whether it be you, me, the Cloud Knights, or the generals of the Reignbow Arbiter… We are all just pawns in a game of the gods.”
His master had always had an aptitude for being right. About which swords would be worth picking up, about her disciples’ prowess, about where the next abomination of Abundance might strike… and about the bigger picture, both in warfare and in life.
Perhaps this was something he ought to consider.
☾
It’s almost like old times again, he thinks with a mixture of bitterness and detached amusement when he finally admits to himself that everything around him, every message delivered to him by the Luofu diviners or other petitioners, reminds him of her. The timing of her return and what it would eventually mean… his concern is only natural, in a way, because he knows better than to assume she would just reappear at random.
Especially not when that man was also involved.
“General, my power does indeed stem from the Abundance. But I’m the same as you. We’re all enemies of Yaoshi.”
The lost traveller, allied with none other than his former master. He was as much of an enigma as the mystery she shrouded her own plans in, and his initial questioning had proved to Jing Yuan that the Xianzhou Alliance would do well not to underestimate him. A smooth talker who showed remarkable intelligence and foresight – and whose ties to the Abundance ran deep, even if he truly considered himself an opponent of Yaoshi rather than their loyal servant.
And yet, even his appearance paled in his mind compared to the ultimatum his master gave him mere minutes after he and his men had cornered her new confederate.
(She called it a request, he reminds himself, but they both knew it was an ultimatum.)
“I’m not asking much,” she says, her voice dripping with barely concealed disdain for the surrounding Cloud Knights whose postures betray their fear of her. “A mere day to take care of some things left unfinished. You may choose whoever you see fit to supervise me. I heard Imbibitor Lunae broke free from his shackles and rose from his tomb – feel free to deploy him if you hold that kind of power over him, still.”
His eyes narrow ever so slightly. Not because (not just because) she’s mocking him but because he can never be sure how much she knows.
When he remains silent, she steps closer. “One day,” she repeats, the hollow echo of her heels all too loud in his ears as she begins circling him slowly. The braver of the Knights grip their weapons tighter as she passes them; the smarter ones move out of her way, just slightly. Jing Yuan can tell without looking that she’s taking mental notes of each soldier’s footing and gauges their command of their weapons even while her main focus is elsewhere.
She could strike all of them down in one fell swoop, and they know it just as well as she does.
He’s well aware that it’s futile to even ask. The moment she mentioned unfinished business, he knew painfully well what she was talking about, and even as they were now, this was not something he could begrudge her for. But it is still his duty as a general not to yield to an… intruder’s demands lightly.
And so he inquires about her motives anyway.
She comes to a halt in front of him. There is about an arm’s length of distance between them – enough for him to extend his spear if need be.
(She won’t attack him. Not now.)
Her eyes are covered by the blindfold and yet it feels like they’re piercing him. She remains silent for a heartbeat or two before her response hits him like an icy dagger to the skin, cutting all the way down to his bones.
“…one would think you of all people would remember.”
(The words, he would realise later, struck deeper than he had imagined. It was truly like she had always taught him: if you give your opponent an opening, you should be well-prepared for their attack.)
☾
When Dan Heng enters the Seat of Divine Foresight, Jing Yuan expects an account of his most recent trailblazing efforts. A story about how his grey-haired companion dug up an artefact from a trashcan that ended up being so dangerous that the Astral Express crew now had to seek out their allies to dispose of it properly, perhaps. Or maybe even news on the immortal fugitive they both still hold ties to, if fate was ever kind enough to give him something important to put his mind to.
What he doesn’t see coming, however, is what follows Dan Heng’s unintentionally dubious-sounding “There’s something you should know.”
Jing Yuan listens, attentively, as the man he considers both his old friend and his new companion retells his own encounter with the former Sword Champion. Learns and immediately memorises the new information he trusts to be reliable considering its source. Takes note specifically of the fact that his master was… considerate, if that’s what it was she was aiming to be, enough to send Yanqing out of earshot when she targeted whom she surely saw as nothing more than Dan Feng, the traitor who put the downfall of the High-Cloud Quintet in motion.
(Tries his best not to think about how he, too, still struggles, sometimes, to reconcile the intimately familiar face with the still unfamiliar name.
Refuses to let the thought that to her, memories must be less blurry than her current reality, consume him.)
“I understand,” Dan Heng concludes, pensively, “why she would want me to remember, and I don’t think she is entirely wrong. But I thought about what you said, too: that only I get to choose who I am.”
Jing Yuan nods, glad that the other managed to carve out his own path in this new life of his. Though the shadow of Dan Feng will never fully leave him, Dan Heng found a new life among the Nameless; found new companions, a family that he cared for as much as they cared for him. And the Luofu general could not be more thankful that at least one of his friends managed to save himself, if nothing else.
But then Dan Heng looks at him, his expression even more serious than usual, and hits him with a question he did not expect.
“How about you, General? Are you, the only one she claimed does not have to pay a price, able to tread a path that you picked?”
Of five people, three must pay a price.
Jing Yuan blinks, taken aback. It’s not just the question itself that’s startling – it’s also, perhaps even more so, who’s asking it.
He’d rather even Jingliu herself had inquired.
Dan Heng watches him, unmoving. Jing Yuan weighs his words well before he answers. “I have been… and I still am,” he says slowly, the gravity of everything that happened heavy on his tongue. “But no war has ever been fought without sacrifice and tough decisions.”
The other nods in unspoken understanding, so Jing Yuan adds, “Being a general is not so different from trailblazing. Often, it’s about finding paths where there were none… but always at the risk of reaching destinations that should have been left untouched.”
Only unlike a Nameless, he’d always be tied to the place he called home; a connection that, at times, feels equal parts comforting and bittersweet. For the home he once knew has never been quite the same for the past seven centuries. But at the same time, he’s well aware that it’s still the home he chose, again and again.
Even without them in it.
☾
“Then I shall see his gamble through.”
His own promise to her haunts him more than he cares to admit. In a way, he could not help but think, he might not be so different from her. He was the only one who kept both his sanity and his memories… and therefore, perhaps, the one who understood her longing for their past bond the best.
It’s an uncomfortable realisation. He has never minded the similarities their combat styles shared; it was only natural that a student would take after his master, and despite everything, he wore the fruits of her teachings proudly. But to recognise himself to be close to her in unfulfilled desires… that was something he could never admit to anyone, least of all her.
Although he figured she already knew – though if she did, it was strange that she had not deemed it necessary to remind him of his own sin.
Or maybe she’d realised, even before he did, that despite not having partaken in the betrayal of everything sacred to the Xianzhou Alliance, he had found himself atoning all the same. Old wounds reopened still bled as painfully as fresh cuts, a painful reminder that they never fully healed.
That was, he supposed, the fate of every student who had to watch his master pass. Only others got to see theirs off in a starskiff while he had to pretend to be unaffected by the knowledge that she was very much alive, in a prison he himself sent her to but would never be granted entry to for a foolish reason such as—
He stops himself. If nothing else, he knew that she would not spare him more than a few scornful words, even if he risked his reputation, his credibility, and, most of all, his own sanity to pay her a visit.
Dreams will eventually fade, like clouds in the sky… and mara will eventually take over the mind, any mind, of a long-life species. His master was well beyond saving.
(He does not allow himself to ponder why the thought stings the way it does. Nostalgia, he has learnt, has always been a double-edged sword.)
☾
He keeps his eyes on her while they escort her to the starskiff. She never turns around, just walks alongside the soldiers, one step at a time. And he finds himself aching with a sadness so desperate and profound that it might as well be the first trace of mara in his own heart.
Even as he registers the wanted criminal she had just impaled vanish from the premises, both Yanqing and Dan Heng turning to him as he does, there is something incredibly empty in his chest – but he knows, in that very second, that it is time for him to be General Jing Yuan again, not Jing Yuan of the High-Cloud Quintet.
Though he wishes he could have at least bid her farewell. She might have said her goodbyes, but he never got a chance to.
Loss will always be loss. But there are few things more painful than the ghost of what you once knew following you like a shadow.
He catches himself reaching for his spear instinctively, his hand resting on the handle as he looks down at his weapon. The beams of the evening sun illuminate the almost invisible battle scars as it shines through the glass window that separates him from a world he’s sworn over and over again to guard and defend.
“As clouds that cover the heavens will the Cloud Knights protect the Xianzhou,” he repeats the ancient oath, his voice barely above a whisper. It’s the same oath he swore under her and the same oath he made sure Yanqing learnt before he even laid hands on his first real sword.
The safety of the Luofu was and will always be his highest priority. Keeping that safety is, after all, his most important duty as a general. The Luofu is home to so many people: to his disciple, to the Cloud Knights, even to refugees from all over the galaxy who count on him to protect it. The Xianzhou Alliance needs to be strong so every single person under its guard may live and prosper – and pass when their time has come, in spite of Yaoshi’s curse.
If his master poses a danger to the Luofu, then he will have to fulfil his promise to his people. That is all.
And yet…
And yet.
A lone cloud dissolves before his very eyes, as though cut through by a blade.
☾