Archive of Our Own ^beta

One day, the Heavens shook as a bright light that made gods whisper excitedly to each other.

Someone had ascended.

A woman, Ling Wen noted as she stared at the new god, and she couldn’t help the feeling of satisfaction. Women ascending were rarer than men, even though this had started to change in the last decade, and it was always nice to see one reaching the Heavens.

The young woman stared. Her black hair was tied in a messy braid, and the clothes she was wearing were plain, more fit for a young male traveller than for the young woman standing before them.

There was something familiar about her, about the way her green eyes shone a little too bright when they caught the light, but Ling Wen couldn’t put the name on what it was.

She introduced herself, bowing in front of the newcomer, before asking for her name. The woman spoke, smile soft and eyes cold as ice.

“My name is Shi Xinyi.” she said, and Ling Wen froze as she realized that for all the colouring was off, the face staring at her was strikingly similar to Shi Qingxuan’s.

Oh, she thought, this is not going to go well.

(At least it couldn’t be as terrible as when Xie Lian ascended for the third time.)

Shi Xinyi grew up in a small village, with so few inhabitants that it could hardly be called a village.

Shi Qingxuan had fled the city after learning she was pregnant, avoiding the sea and lakes and staying close to mountains and forests. She begged and worked to survive, relying on people who took pity on the pregnant woman until eventually reaching the small shack that would see Shi Xinyi come to the world.

The old man who had saved them both that day, keeping the newborn warm while giving the new mother food, kept them sheltered until Shi Qingxuan was able to find some work to gain money, and so they settled in the small village.

It was in this small village that the former Wind Master raised her child, away from gods and calamities, carefully avoiding temples and water in equal measures.

Shi Xinyi had never seen her mother healthy. Shi Qingxuan was always hiding a cough behind her hand, always leaning on a cane even as she pretended to chase her child with a laugh, hiding her pain behind her smile.

One evening, when Shi Xinyi was still five, she had combed her daughter’s hair and told her the truth.

“Your mother is weak.” she had said, voice soft yet firm, “A-Yi, I will leave sooner than most.”

Shi Xinyi remembered that her eyes had burnt, but she had not cried. Even this young, she knew her tears saddened her mother, and saddening Shi Qingxuan was a crime in her eyes.

“Mama is the strongest.” Shi Xinyi had said, “So I’m going to be strong too.”

She had felt Shi Qingxuan’s hands shake in her hair, but her mother had only laughed.

“You’re already strong, my A-Yi.” Shi Qingxuan had whispered, combing Shi Xinyi’s black hair, “I am truly blessed to have a child like you.”

It would take a long time for Shi Xinyi to truly understand why her mother had seemed so sad while saying something like that.

Fate, as it turned out, had never been kind to Shi Qingxuan.

Shi Xinyi had always done her best to help other people, trying to gain a little money and support her mother as much as she could.

“Mama’s going to leave me one day,” she had told the ones who asked why she was so determined to help, “so I have to stay by her side as long as possible and help as much as I can.”

Some had shared their worries to Shi Qingxuan, telling her that a child shouldn’t be told such things when she was so young, that it wasn’t wise, but her mother only shook her head.

“Everyone I cared about lied to me during my whole life.” Shi Qingxuan had said, “I will never lie to my child.”

Back then, Shi Xinyi knew nothing of her uncle or father, but as she watched the villagers soften at those words and her mother’s hard eyes, her hands shook with a feeling she had never felt before. It burned like anger, but colder. Stronger.

It would take a few years before learning that this feeling was called hatred.

Shi Xinyi knew of her mother’s past. Shi Qingxuan had never lied to her daughter about it.

At first, the truth had been disguised as fairy tales. The siblings who ascended as Wind Master and Water Master, one kind and the other cruel. The Young Master Who Poured Wine who was both man and woman, controlling the wind and laughing while doing so.

"Were the Wind Master and Water Master married?" Shi Xinyi had once asked after hearing some people talk about it.

Her mother had grimaced and assured her the two weren’t married but were siblings. Shi Xinyi had been six years old and didn’t understand her mother’s disgust at the question then – thinking back now, it was indeed awkward yet somewhat funny.

Shi Xinyi didn’t remember when she had realised who her mother truly was. She had been young, yet the truth had come to her easily. After all, how could her amazing mother, who seemed to know everything, be anything but a god?

And so she had asked one evening while they ate.

“Were you a god?”

Her mother had looked shocked, then panicked, until calm took over her features.

“My daughter is so smart,” she had whispered, “to understand the truth so quickly.”

Her voice had hidden a bitter note, but Shi Xinyi had been too young and too awed by the revelation to notice.

This was how Shi Xinyi first learned of the one called He Xuan. It was a name that would haunt the rest of her life.

“We are hurt and so we hurt others.” Shi Qingxuan taught her daughter, smile sad and eyes wet, “We must be better than what is done to us, my heart.”

Be better, Shi Xinyi thought, and for all her blood would boil in the years to come once Heaven welcomed her, she would always remember those words.

Be better.

Shi Qingxuan died when Shi Xinyi was sixteen.

It was not a surprise, not really.

A poor woman, a beggar crippled who had given birth alone in a shack, who probably wouldn’t have survived if an oldman hadn’t heard her screams and came to help.

Shi Qingxuan passed away with a smile on her face, Shi Xinyi holding her hand and whispering softly to her mother, assuring her that she was loved even though only her child stood at her side.

Shi Xinyi had always been a good actor. She kept her face calm, doing her best to smile so that her mother’s last vision wouldn’t be her crying daughter.

Then, sometimes in the night, Shi Qingxuan stopped breathing.

Shi Xinyi held her mother’s hand a little tighter when she noticed. It was still warm.

Her smile fell. She rested her forehead against the cool sheet, breathing Shi Qingxuan’s scent and swallowing a sob.

In the end, Shi Xinyi couldn’t stop the tears. That night, she held her mother’s hand as the warmth left her, weeping until dawn.

Sometimes, Shi Xinyi wondered if she had killed her mother, if Shi Qingxuan could have lived longer and healthier if it hadn’t been for the baby growing inside her, that parasite given by the one who had torn Shi Qingxuan’s life apart.

Shi Xinyi had never dared to voice those thoughts aloud – she didn’t think she could stomach her mother’s sadness.

A few days after her ascension, someone came looking for Shi Xinyi.

The god was dressed in white Taoist robes, something that immediately caught her attention – she hadn’t been in Heaven for long, but she had already noticed the amount of gold and jewellery that adorned most gods. To see someone dressed so simply would have been surprising, but Shi Xinyi remembered her mother’s stories. She had a good guess on who was standing before her.

“Your Highness.” Shi Xinyi said, examining the god carefully. Xie Lian laughed, waving his hand as if to push her words away.

“Please, call me Xie Lian.” he said, and the way he stared at her, examining her face as though looking for something, made her want to bristle. “I was wondering if you would like to drink tea with my friends and I? I know that being alone in Heaven can be hard.”

Shi Xinyi didn’t answer immediately, musing over his words.

Stories, stories – it was so strange to see the characters of her mother’s past come to life. Xie Lian’s smile was kind as he examined her with something close to wonder in his eyes, but all Shi Xinyi could think of was how alone Shi Qingxuan had looked on her deathbed.

Her mother had called the one standing before her friend, and it left a bad taste in Shi Xinyi’s mouth.

She smiled politely, bowing slightly while avoiding Xie Lian’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, but I have work to do.” she said, and walked away.

Shi Qingxuan’s life had been destroyed by lies and secrets – her brother’s, her best friend’s. It made anger boil inside Shi Xinyi, it made her want to destroy lives too. The life of her father, that lying Calamity, the lives of the gods who left her mother fend for herself in the mortal realm.

“Gods can’t interfere in mortal matters.” Shi Qingxuan had said, and every time the words repeated inside Shi Xinyi’s mind, she wanted to scream, to bite and tear someone's throat out. Her mother had been left a beggar, pregnant and fighting for survival. It would have cost them nothing to ask some of their believers to help the former god.

Shi Xinyi hated them.

It would have been so easy for her to pretend otherwise, though. She could have smiled at Xie Lian, could have swallowed her anger and hid her teeth while listening to him speak of Shi Qingxuan as if he had any right to call himself her friend. She could have bid her time, she could have pretended to be ignorant of her lineage until Black Water was in her reach, until she could make him pay for what he did to her mother.

It would have been so easy.

But Shi Qinxuan’s words repeated in her mind.

Be better.

Lies, secrets and revenge had destroyed her mother’s life. Shi Xinyi would never lower herself to act this way.

They would not have her hate, but that didn’t mean she would offer them love.

Shi Xinyi wanted nothing to do with this legacy of blood and hatred, and so when her mother’s friends approached her with a smile, she bowed and stepped away. Even as they kept pestering her, even as they offered help on the various missions she went on, Shi Xinyi only smiled politely before walking away.

She would not let this past become her shackle.