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Of all the things Yunli had heard about the possessed tyrant Yanqing, it wasn’t that he was a good sport.
In fact, every other piece of intel seemed to point to anything but. In only three days after Apyra’s sudden possession of the Lieutenant, following his month-long sealing under the Ten-Lords, Yanqing successfully took the Divine Foresight and sought to establish control over the rest of the Luofu. With a surprise offensive of heliobi mass-possessing Cloud Knights, General Jing Yuan and his court had no choice but to retreat and call upon foreign aid from the Yaoqing and Zhuming, including General Huaiyan and herself. Different stories are told in the streets: a helpless victim violated by a heliobus and waiting for a savior, a failed knight unable to even defend his honor, or a power-hungry disciple who vied for the Seat himself.
In the scrolls she was given, Yanqing was characterized as cunning, fleeting, passionate– infamous for his vicious interest in both indulging personal pleasures and establishing his dominion over the Luofu. A far cry from the Lieutenant she had heard of in passing before, a disciplined prodigy favored by General Jing Yuan for his swordsmanship and grace.
It was said then that nothing could sway Lieutenant Yanqing from the sword, but it seems as though those records are outdated.
“Yunli. Slip into the crowd and see what you can find out from the citizens. Jing Yuan and I will move to the front and stir up enough trouble for that prince to show his face.” Feixiao had told her intently, blistering blue like the skies, and Yunli had protested. Why should she have to sit on the sidelines and miss out on all the action?
If he was there, Huaiyan would tell her she still had a lot to learn, because she had misjudged her role entirely. When Yunli would think back to it, she would remember that this was the day she put herself at the center of their legend.
Yunli grumbled as she shoved past the possessed citizens of the Luofu, the scent of peach blossoms floating in from the Divine Foresight gardens– the heliobi had mutated their forms like stories about the underworld, where yaoguai kings would claw their way out of the earth with boar tusks and frostbit hooves, haunted swords reaching for the surface. They’re illusions, but it’s still uncanny to feel scales instead of skin as she shoves her way to a seat at the banquet tables.
If a poor disciple, Yanqing at least knows how to throw a party– rosy lanterns are strung across the ceiling like the sky at dusk, shedding the entrancing scent of royal jasmine and osmanthus, as dancers draped in lotus silks fly across the stage to the weeping notes of a guqin. Mouthwatering steamers of bao and dumplings are snatched up by the cages of thick claws, carrying the smells of sesame and red bean, the fluffy white cake split open to reveal sumptuous duck egg like gold ingots and sweet char siu glazed garnet with barbecue. Magnolias stamp the bouncy tops in red, and Yunli thinks the ink itself is probably sweet. For the first time in her life, it feels almost a loss to eat them.
Servants slipped their way through the crowds with smoking carts, barking out orders for more fresh lychee cake cut into jeweled facets, or tropical mango rice arranged in peonies using only the creamiest slices. Yunli couldn’t help but reach for a bowl– she’d heard the warnings about eating food from a heliobi, but she’s worked and fought with enough to know it’s perfectly harmless. If anything, Yanqing just has good taste.
“IF I MAY BORROW YOUR ATTENTION,” Jing Yuan’s voice roars through the hall, but the party doesn’t stop. Yunli gapes as they just ignore him, babbling on and roughhousing over the last mooncake or gossiping about whose human pet just bit a court lord. Yunli chokes on her mango rice, the grains half-slipping out of her mouth as the title of General seems to mean nothing here. No better than a war, the party keeps raging.
A napkin appears in her peripheral vision, and Yunli mumbles a grateful thanks as she reaches for it, only to look up and realize it is no other than former Lieutenant Yanqing holding it out to her.
She’s immediately on edge, hand reaching for the unfamiliar handle of her sword. Old Mettle was too conspicuous for tonight, and she misses it more than ever.
“Having fun?” The child conqueror smiles, capturing her gaze in a heartbeat, and she’s enraptured. Wine red silk spills down his figure and drips down his sleeves in a priceless ceremonial hanfu, petaled scales and looping ginkgo embroidered with gold thread about his waist. Feixiao wasn’t kidding when she called him a prince: two embossed hairpins pierce twin peonies dipped in lacquer, immaculately positioned atop silken blonde like a crown. He’s nothing like she expected– he carries a swan-like sweetness, from the slope of his shoulders to the butterfly’s fall of his sleeves, the kind that makes Yunli wonder if he just asked for the Luofu and it was dropped at his feet. “I’ve been waiting all night for a fourth player.”
Yunli chokes as Yanqing shoves out a little space for them at the banquet table they’re at. Yanqing snaps his finger to warp the shape of the table, folding reality into a square for…
“Mahjong?” Yunli tentatively sits down, warily keeping an eye on Yanqing the entire time. “My grandpa plays this.” And from what she sees, they only have two players. The jade tiles fly across the table, arranging themselves like cranes landing at sea. “You like this kind of game?”
Yanqing sighs. “Not particularly. But it passes the time.”
The clang of a waraxe cracks through the hall, General Feixiao’s attempt to get their attention, but the heliobi are only incensed, and a woman with a rotting face along with a man with a snake tail throw themselves at her, howling at her to shut up with ten tongues.
“Aw. Bad pull.” Yanqing looks dissatisfied, discarding a three of bamboo. “I assume you’re here to kill me?”
“Your plan is foolhardy.” Yunli lets the tile go, and suddenly a whisper of verdant flame sweeps the tile to their side, hissing ‘pong’ faintly. “You’re arrogant to stand against the Luofu. Against Jing Yuan? Do you really think one heliobus uprising can break his winning streak?” Tiles change hands.
His expression sours. “I can be proven wrong when I’m dead.” Yanqing passes on the next tile to be discarded, and he only claims the tile before his turn. “Then he can tell me how much of a failure this was. Kong.”
“Are you in control? Or Apyra?”
“Depends on the day. He’s listening,” Yanqing says absently, rubbing a tile between his fingers. “He doesn’t care right now.” He pauses, then, and then asks, “Do you?”
Yunli looks at the tile he just discarded– a white dragon, and she thinks of home. Why is Yanqing sharing so much with her? “I was told to kill you. I want to know why.” It’s so strange. Yanqing, known across ships as the perfect heir and renowned by parents as examples to their children, turned to this final resort and social pariah. She’s her age. This isn’t their war yet. “Chow.”
“Oh. Then yes, I confess to everything. I’m guilty,” Yanqing says easily, and Yunli almost forgets to check the discarded tile in her shock. “It’s not worth as much as people may think.” Something in his eyes darkens, a wrathful twist in that white, and radioactive flame blooms like hunger there. Yunli remembers then that this is the child who toppled the Commissions overnight. “The world already knows why.” It clicks like the tiles– his first possession by Apyra. “Everything stayed the same. I was demanded to grovel, to make amends, told they understood my shallowness and why I was wrong… I never asked for their empathy.” He pauses, uncharacteristic for a tyrant. “A heliobus understands every corner of a heart so intimately. There is no misconstruing a soul. … I coveted that.”
Yanqing keeps discarding tiles, even useful ones to him, if Yunli read his moves right. He never forms sequences, only perfect matches every time. His hand is so much smaller than hers, but he holds it with twice the pride.
“So you conquered the Luofu,” Yunli says, voice shaking with an unspoken fury, an upbringing of loyalty so ancient and familiar that it stirs in her very marrow. “Sacrificed yourself. Destroyed everything, ruined countless lives, made everybody suffer, just to be— seen? Why are you telling me this? Do you know what this will do to you, what heliobi do to a host?”
His edge of his jaw tenses, so much that Yunli can almost hear his canines crack. “If you refer to being burnt alive, I am well aware of the final stages. If this isn’t enough, what else could I do? I don’t care if I’m being exploited. I don’t need to win this.” His gaze turns distant, embittered with resentment as he leers at Jing Yuan standing atop that stage. “If they won’t give me humanity, if there is a next life, I’m never returning to this place.” A defiant grief crosses his face. “I can be sincere now that I’m not going home.”
“... You want to be with him.”
Yunli tips over her hand, the jade tiles crashing to the table to reveal her winning hand. Yanqing’s eyes widen, the first time she’s caught him by surprise, and Yunli takes victory in that. “You barely have two sets of tiles— even here, you aren’t seeking blind victory. I don’t get it. Winning this war will only leave you alone, and that’s the point, I know, but you miss him, anybody can see it!” Isn’t that the last thing anybody wants? “It’s not about victory for you. The sword can be enough.”
There’s a thrum of qi at Yanqing’s hip— that infamous sword, Yanzhuo, a trophy having betrayed its purpose, spurs to life once more, loneliness and pain pulsing through the blade.
“I made an oath to dispatch all cursed swords and save their victims,” Yunli gets to her feet, her shadow falling over the tiles, “It’s my reason to keep living. If you have a reason to die, I ask you to meet me with that— you complain of loneliness! If you stand alone, uncontested at the top, mark my words that I will meet you there!” She looks down on him, face rippling and unreadable, but ignited with an interest that wasn’t there before.
“I will hunt you to the very end! You are not allowed to die in this place, Lieutenant Yanqing, traitor to the Xianzhou; I will never set you free!”
Yunli finally lets her breath escape her, the heat of the moment over, and for a second she’s almost scared Yanqing will just laugh and glance at his fellow heliobi to confirm she’s crazy.
But instead, his smile relaxes, a new fondness in his face, and she wonders if this is the Yanqing the world let slip through their fingers. “I concede. Congratulations on winning, Yunli.” Did she ever tell him her name? “It would be improper of me as a host to leave you without a prize.”
He passes a small bag to her, and Yunli opens it to reveal a strange metal she has never seen before, iridescent in the light like translucent pearl. “This is xiangyusha steel,” Yanqing explains, his voice melodic around the syllables of the name, “Glass silk steel. At first glance, it’s like white steel, but the edges go transparent under fire.” His expression sharpens, encouraging her to understand. “It only has one special property– to rend heliobus illusions to nothing.”
Before Yunli even has the chance to misinterpret him, Yanqing continues, “Forge a sword with this steel, dispel the illusion, and kill me with its blade— show me the beautiful creation you make to meet me once more. If your smithing abilities are as unparalleled as your ship claims, then I have faith this will be the weapon to restore the Luofu. My final battle on this ship will be yours.”
“You know I’m a sword smith?” Yunli asks, and to that Yanqing just laughs hollowly, turned away from her to the stage.
“You’re not the only one who hears legends, Flamewheel.” Then, Yanqing finally directs his full attention to Jing Yuan and the obviously failed plan, which has escalated into a full-blown fight between the generals and devoted heliobi viciously defending Apyra’s honor. “Let us hope they are not so misconstrued. Now, I think it’s about time to retake my banquet.”
Grabbing a cup of wine from a servant, Yanqing throws back the burn of alcohol, the clear liquid spilling past his lips. As Yanqing’s sleeve swipes at his mouth, unearthly heliobus fire pours out as if it were gasoline, a monstrous smile from the stories flickering through the unstable heat.
As Yanqing finally escapes the crowd to the stage, a colossus bull demon with alien blue skin ensnares his hoof into Yanqing’s collar, yanking him high enough to meet beady eyes.
“Lord Apyra is being dishonored at this very moment, you puny half-pint! You must be new here! When the generals threaten us, where is your courage?”
Demons and humans alike freeze in the hall at once, the music dying out and skittish dancers rushing behind the curtains. Jing Yuan seems as if his heart is shedding flesh, expression frozen and unable to take a step. Feixiao readies her axe.
Yanqing just looks up at the beast, feet dangling helplessly under him. Then, he turns his gaze to the Generals, his once-serene expression now deeply irritated.
“If you want to get a yaoguai’s attention, you don’t get it by being intrusive,” Yanqing complains, dwarfed by the hulking ripple of engorged flesh that dominates the space. “You’ve made my party very unpleasant, so take some notes.”
Then, Yanqing grabs the bull’s jaw, flashing a sadistic grin, and it’s the happiest he’s looked all night as he shatters the bull’s lower face. It’s as disgusting as it sounds. The bull howls, tongue through his chin, and Yanqing leaps up to roundhouse him into the wall, the young man’s whole body practically bent in half as his foot snaps out and the demon flies back, crushing countless plates and wine jars in the impact as he hurtles through tables and dim sum carts. Monster blood slurries into Yanqing’s sleeves, the shade matching perfectly, and Yunli is suddenly scared to ask how much red his clothes are soaked with.
With the spin complete, Yanqing drops back to the floor and scoffs, “Now do I have your attention?” Fire is still spilling from his lips in measured breaths, hinting at a long history of martial training. Yunli gets the idea he isn’t the type to start fights, but makes a point to finish them.
General Feixiao lifts her sword. “General, if we have a chance, now is the—“
“No,” Jing Yuan says cautiously, his slow gaze flickering about the room as if already calculating the casualties of Yanqing’s unbothered brutality. “Stand down.”
“An eye for an eye, General Jing Yuan!” Yanqing declares triumphantly, and the cruel sheen of malachite in his eye makes it clear that Apyra has seamlessly taken charge. “Leave my property or I will defend it!”
Then, Yanqing looks back at Yunli, and gives her a small smile she knows is reserved only for her. “… Thank you for tonight. I hope our fates cross paths again.”
With that, a world-consuming burst of hellfire swallows her vision in a roaring sea, and the windows all shatter as they’re thrown from the highest floor of the Divine Foresight to the broken depths below.
—
When Yunli wakes up, her face is covered in bitter ash.
All she can think is, she wants to learn how to do that too. She doesn’t register it when Feixiao helps her up, the mission declared a failure and retreat. She wants to kick like that, so hard that abominations three times her size can go flying— Yanqing is all the possibilities she has potential for.
Yunli wants to learn everything about him.
This is the story of how Yunli defeats Yanqing and how he will die by her hand, how the silken steel will shine in the legend he’d always wanted.
Because Yanqing may be a good sport, but Yunli isn’t. Yunli laughs to herself, smearing ash down her cheek like Yanqing is there with her.
She won’t be satisfied until she tears him down herself.
—
“Why did you spend so much time with that girl?” Apyra’s ghost claws at his shoulder, a nian-like beast in his revitalized form, as Yanqing forges through the endless halls, the banquet long concluded. “You don’t even know her.”
Apyra’s voice scratches at his senses, the edges of his mind scorching for just a shred more control to be stolen away. It’s a shriek for more destruction, more death, maddening in its pursuit of retaliation, of justice, and Yanqing isn’t strong enough to keep it silent.
But she’s there, in a different world. Yunli, from the Zhuming. Yanqing doesn’t dignify his master with a response yet. Is she there, at the end of the tunnel? At the end of this story, when he’s drowning in his own tragedy, will it be her? Yanqing doesn’t know yet.
“… She makes it so that I don’t have to be alone in this world,” Yanqing says wistfully, “I guess that’s all there is to it.”
And maybe it’s as simple as that.