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Zhao Zhuliu used to remember well the first time he saw his younger sister. She was large for a baby, and a fair bit heavier than his parents said he was. Later he’d recall that she was loud, and that at times between the storm and the lightning her cries had drowned out the heavy sheets of rain.
He held A-Ting for the first time a little bit later, looking down at her chubby fists. She was large and healthy, a good sign for the rest of her life considering the age at which his parents had had her. In many respects this was a good sign—they’d expected much worse. In all likelihood she’d live, and live well.
“This is your younger sister. Protect her well,” His father had said, watching in case he was to accidentally drop her. There might have been love in that gaze, but in ensuing years all he would remember was duty.
With the large age gap between them, Zhuliu had ended up doing much of the childrearing himself—but all in all, she’d grown to need very little guarding. She liked to sit in the corner whilst everyone else was working, carving stone into statues or embedding tiles into courtyard floors. Sometimes she charmed customers by bringing up a tray of tea while they sat to talk business, but those times were few and far between—the Zhao family did adequately enough for a house and workspace, but not much other than that.
So when a daozhang showed interest in retaining the family for further services, they jumped at the opportunity. He said his name was Hua, which fit the scent of flowers which emanated from his pale cream robes, and had a polite smile.
As they discussed business A-Ting brought out their best tea, bringing it to the table. The daozhang seemed charmed, looking at her in distraction. “And what’s your name? Do you help with the family business, as well?”
“My name is Zhao Ting,” She said, proudly. “And yes.”
“Ah, a strong name,” Hua Daozhang looked over to Zhao Zhuliu’s father for a moment, his brow quirked in inquiry.
“She was born in a storm,” He explained, and the answer was taken with a nod before he turned back.
“I’ve started carving my own statues,” A-Ting said, bright. They weren’t much to look at, but it was important to nurture enthusiasm young—and for a child, they were really quite good. “I can show you.”
Hua Daozhang nodded his assent, and she ran to the back of the house before returning with a lumpy thing that could maybe be the shape of a lion, if one squinted. “Here it is!”
“Wonderful talent for such a young child,” He said, and it might even have been sincere.
“I’m seven!” She said, prompted, and he looked over to the table with a questioning look again.
“She is,” Her mother said. “She was a large child. And our family tends tall.”
It was true. Zhao Zhuliu had inherited his parents’ large shoulders and sturdy frame, but A-Ting already was taller than he was at her age and showed signs of growing much, much more.
“Hm,” He said, smile lingering on his features, and turned to discuss more business. It’s delicate stonework—a set of statues, to be made there. Hua Daozhang would supply the caravans to carry them.
In the end, they finished the tea. Hua Daozhang spoke after a while of comfortable silence, looking to the doorway where A-Ting had exited. “I have been looking for a disciple,” He said, and ignored the starts of half-incredulity, half-joy. “My work takes me to dangerous places, however, so it would not be fitting to bring one around. Your A-Ting seems strong, and she is in the prime age for beginning to train for a golden core.”
“Daozhang, so you’re saying-”
“I would like to teach your A-Ting cultivation, if you are willing. My skills are secretive, however, and so must not be written down.”
They nodded, stunned.
“I will teach you all the basics to mentor A-Ting in during my absence, but please do not cultivate it yourself—it is a thing best made for the young.”
True to his word, the Daozhang came back the next day at a reasonable hour. He spent two shichen tutoring A-Ting, and another telling the family what to watch for.
He left with the scent of something floral in his wake, and a promise to return.
They internalized the rules, as best they could, and mentored A-Ting in it whenever they had time. It was boring work for all involved, but the business was going as well as it could, and A-Ting tended driven.
In the time between visits, Zhuliu learned to breathe. He held A-Ting’s hand while she tried to meditate, half-paying attention to her form while he paced himself for her to match. Being older, he was more patient and learned the lessons of what she had to do faster. He learned to attune himself to her breath, the way she’d twitch before peeking an eye open, and press her hand down to keep her concentration.
In a season Hua Daozhang returned, wearing the same scent. He greeted the family with a friendly smile and was ushered in for another cup of tea and a showing of what she could do (which, at that point, was only basic meditation). They'd bought better stock this time, determined not to lose this sponsor for their daughter.
“The first months are all about learning patience,” He said, smiling as he took his tea. “Shall we see how A-Ting has been doing?”
“Of course,” she said, happily sitting down in the middle of the floor and placing her hands in the correct spots. Hua Daozhang observed for a moment, then lifted his sleeves and sat behind her with his hands placed on her back.
“Concentrate,” he said after a moment, brows furrowed. A-Ting shifted, and Zhuliu followed her down to put his hand over hers. He looked up to see the Daozhang looking steadily at him.
“This is the way your energy should be flowing. Look past your breath—feel the way it pools in your body, and force it to move.”
Zhuliu didn't feel anything. Judging by the way A-Ting began to frown, she didn't either. “Perhaps Hua Daozhang may wish to explain at a less accelerated speed,” He said, diplomatic.
“Of course. It may take some months to begin to feel this flow of energy,” Hua Daozhang smiled, and went over the lesson again.
“Practice,” He said, before leaving until the next season, “Is most important at this age.”
The children claimed by cultivation clans all had around-the-clock tutoring. With the Daozhang only returning once every several months, it was often much time before mistakes could be corrected.
“I travel often,” He said once when writing letters was suggested, shaking his head regretfully. “Mail would not readily reach me. I try to hurry back as quickly as possible.”
Three more visits later, he began showing up less often, and staying for a shorter amount of time. The Daozhang had never followed any specific schedule, usually appearing at mostly regular gaps—but it seemed almost as if his interest had begun to wane. A-Ting had advanced to stances, and some steps.
Once or twice Zhuliu could have sworn the instructions given to them changed. Yet, with nothing written down, it became apparent that perhaps a stoneworker family was not built with cultivation in mind. They simply adopted the approach, and did as well as they could.
“It has been five months since the Daozhang has last visited,” Zhao Zhuliu’s mother said at the table once, when A-Ting was off doing her nightly practice. “I think we should find a tutor for her.”
All of them knew that they could not afford to hire a rogue cultivator—if one could, there would be many more cultivators running about in the city.
“There is a soldier who lives near where I installed the stone lions,” His father suggested. “We can ask what coin he might charge for the sword.”
“Bring Zhuliu as well,” His mother nodded. “He has been good for her practice.”
It was a good thing that they asked the soldier to come by. He had experienced difficult times recently, and would often stay over the time he was paid for to teach and receive a meal for his work.
Two weeks later the Daozhang came. A-Ting had become much better at the sword, but to go from inexperienced to being able to swing the wooden stick they used as a sword was no great achievement. He looked at her in consideration, but said little that he did not already—and left some time after what had become the usual.
Still, it seemed that the skills were transferable. An even stance was an even stance in both cultivation and swordplay, though for the moment one relied more upon waiting and one upon the attack.
In the time before the next season, A-Ting trained hard. Her build had naturally made her better at carrying the wooden swords she primarily was trained in, and Zhuliu had become a decent hand at the blade as well despite mostly being there to help. Besides the sword, there was the staff, the dao, and the spear—but they largely tended irrelevant compared to the bare handed combat the siblings began practicing.
They were both large for their age. Zhuliu, who was bound to finish growing soon, was a good part taller than most. And thus, a punch or a strike or a kick to the shins took less power and moved more.
When Hua Daozhang returned, with a smile as always, he seemed almost a little impressed with the way A-Ting had cultivated. A glint in the corners of the eyes, a little more focus in the way he directed his gaze. “Has some of her training been different, recently?” He asked, a brief furrow in his brow as he sat with his hands to A-Ting’s back again.
She’d gotten much better at meditation over the years. Without a good tap, she wouldn’t come out of her mind easily—according to what Hua Daozhang said, it was a good sign for her focus and her emerging golden core.
“A-Ting has been learning combat with the four weapons,” Zhuliu said, having become more a part of the conversation wherever she was involved. “As well as bare-handed fighting.”
“Hm,” Hua Daozhang considered, looking at him properly. It happens rarely enough that he pays particular attention. “Have you been training with her?”
“I have,” Zhuliu said.
“Would you show me some of the forms?”
He nodded, and demonstrated the forms he learned of each.
“The bare-handed combat is good, but you should stop with the weapons training. It would disadvantage her, to predispose her to a way of swordplay early.”
Zhuliu nodded, and resolved to do so at the earliest opportunity. “We thank you for your helpful advice,” He said, bowing. It was polite, if not the most practiced.
Hua Daozhang smiled faintly at that.
The days when he showed up, though unpredictable, had a sort of schedule to them. With the way his parents worked, they weren’t always within the house—but they tried to be part of the conversation, as much as they could have. Occasionally it would just be the two children, though only once did Hua Daozhang come at a time when only A-Ting was in the house.
He returned the next day to check on something, which he had never done before. From then, Zhuliu resolved to always be within reach, when able.
The visits waxed and waned. It seemed that he became more or less interested unpredictably—though A-Ting’s cultivation speed, it seemed, was mostly responsible. And where Zhuliu used to thrash A-Ting in sparring (he used to do less, but she noticed and that was worse) she got better and better. The difference in their ages was large—though he noticed that she would have been outperforming anyone they knew at A-Ting’s age.
One year, those visits sped up, almost as if he was expecting something.
Zhuliu made sure to work harder, trading blows with A-Ting in the patch of dirt next to their house.
A few times she made him sit down, cross-legged with his palms facing the sky, and imitated the way Hua Daozhang sat her down and did something with his energy. He could sit for hours, but nothing ever happened for either of them.
“What do you think you will do, once you get all those powers you’ve been working so hard for?” Her mother asked, one day. Half-teasing, but also pointedly not.
“Destroy evil. Help the needy,” A-Ting said, promptly. Zhuliu laughed, because it was the most common answer he’d ever heard—but in a way, it resounded. It was perfectly suited to the way A-Ting saw the world. It was endearing—he memorized the answer, because he was sure it would be different once she was fully trained.
The family laughed, then toasted to the subject. None of them ever brought it up again.
And then, when those visits began to taper off, A-Ting woke up one day and there was something changed about her. Something just a little bit stronger—fresh and healthy.
Zhuliu expected to be told to sit down.
“Come on, gege,” A-Ting said, smiling after she wolfed down the meat baozi. She bounced on the balls of her feet, arms raised. “Let’s fight.”
Zhuliu nodded, raising his own arms and keeping his center of gravity low.
A-Ting lunged. Zhuliu dodged, almost too late, and struck her stomach with his palm.
Strange. It almost seemed like she was inviting the strike.
She laughed with her eyes as the blow landed, but it barely even pushed her backward. Instead, she grabbed Zhuliu by the arm and flipped him—despite the motion being gentle, he felt moved by something twice her size.
Zhuliu thudded into the dirt and pushed himself up, heedless of the hard soil or the imprints of red across his forearms where he had caught himself. A smile, uncommon in how unreserved it was. “You did it?”
“I did it,” A-Ting confirmed, grabbing Zhuliu’s hand and pressing it toward her chest. He imagined he felt a warmth there—golden and pure, like a pearl out of legend.
Less than a month later, Hua Daozhang arrived. He looked at A-Ting with barely concealed excitement tinged with surprise when she came out to meet him, then smiled the smile of someone who was expecting something but didn’t think it would happen anyway.
“My congratulations, A-Ting,” He said, smiling. In the hurry he hadn’t even greeted A-Ting’s parents.
Though if any time was warranted, it would have been this.
“Thank you, shifu,” She said, and bowed elegantly. Zhuliu had never remembered her doing it quite so well before—she must have been practicing, in the privacy of her own room.
Hua Daozhang offered a hand, palm curved up. A-Ting gave him her own, placing the pulse points right above that of his pointer and middle finger before he closed his eyes.
In a short span, he opened his eyes, and smiled again. Zhuliu had expected greater enthusiasm—though it was hard to read him, with his repertoire of expressions that always came down to the same two things. The corners of his lips lifting with something that could have been delight, and the corners of his eyes lengthening into the squint so often reserved for genuine smiles.
Something in it said that he expected to be blown away, and was merely impressed. “Your golden core is fully formed. You may now begin to cultivate martial arts.”
“It is all due to your valuable teaching,” A-Ting’s father said, bowing.
“Not at all. She could not have gone this far if not for the support of her family through this journey,” Hua Daozhang bowed back. Because of the difference in rank, his spine barely bent. “Though I must ask if I might take A-Ting for half a month or so, to tutor her in the finer details of my techniques.”
How could anyone say no, under those circumstances? They packed A-Ting off with changes of clothes and plenty of snacks, and promises from her to do well.
And Zhuliu settled himself for the longest two weeks of his life he’d ever experienced up to that point.
It wasn’t that he was a particularly lonely or social person, but he’d been so tied to the fate of his sibling since she was born that it was strange to be by himself for so long. Still, he quickly busied himself—it had been obvious from early on that he preferred having something to do as opposed to time to find out for himself.
He carved with his parents until she came back, and out of habit spent the mornings practicing his strikes with the old soldier who still came by sometimes but couldn’t do too much to correct A-Ting’s form anymore. They drilled bare-handed combat, which Zhuliu had always taken better to.
After all, Zhuliu was always going to take over the masonry business even before A-Ting. He was the first son, and he was very good with his hands.
When she returned in two weeks, A-Ting was still recognizable—but there was a stronger edge to it. Like she’d learned to hold herself better. And she had a sword.
It was just a metal thing, dull and untouched by the qi of a spiritual weapon—but it was a far sight better than the wooden things the two of them used to practice with before she moved purely to physical combat.
And she had a grindstone in her bag.
“Once she can sharpen the sword with the force of her strikes, she may use them—and eventually, graduate to a spiritual weapon,” Hua Daozhang said, beaming like the rays of spring sun in the morning.
Good. None of them could afford a spiritual weapon without serious sacrifices—and that was one of the poorer ones. Just looking at the hilted sword on Hua Daozhang’s hip, the metal of it glittering with power, had them knowing that whatever he offered would be beautiful.
“She should be practicing every day, as usual. I will check back in some time,” Hua Daozhang said, and smiled again.
She did. And when he came back, it became once every month. Each time his instructions became a little more detailed, but he began asking for more privacy. Each clan’s sword styles were, after all, a deeply guarded secret.
The frequency of visits waned again—once every two months. A-Ting improved considerably, and there wasn’t really any reason for Zhuliu to stand by and help anymore. Still, the both of them preferred him there when he meditated.
A few times A-Ting tried the trick with pushing qi through Zhuliu’s veins. It worked a little, in the way that a cultivator could give energy to someone who was not. With practice, he learned to feel the flows of qi into his own core—which, being undeveloped, did nothing but dissipate energy.
A-Ting seemed a bit disappointed, but it was always going to happen.
Still, she seemed to prefer it when he held her hands while she was meditating. Something about it being grounding—and eventually he began to feel what seemed like the stirring of qi. Eventually Zhuliu began bringing a book with him and holding her right hand with his left and reading with the other.
A year or so into the formation of her golden core A-Ting turned away when she was speaking and covered her mouth as she coughed. She turned it out to reveal crimson on the expanse of her palm.
The Daozhang gave her tea, and a package of incense, to strengthen her core. “They are expensive,” He said, with a smile. “And effective, but only for one growing their core. Please make sure all of it goes to A-Ting. It is a secret combination that I would appreciate you keep hidden from others.”
She used them to… decent effect, they were sure. The tea and the incense smelled again like something floral, but there was nothing recognizable about either. Though the family kept their secrets as well as anything, they were still curious—and despite that curiosity, they never recognized it with any visit to a herbalist.
Her cultivation increased. The Daozhang seemed pleased. But as she grew, she began to develop moods—unhappy bursts of pride or anger—and she began to break things. They would have been fine, if not for A-Ting’s strength and balance.
Zhuliu thought he could feel anger when she meditated.
She smashed a stone statue one day after meditation, almost as if she was trying to see if she could. It was a more expensive piece, and she took one look at it when it was near finished then shoved it over.
At the sound of the noise Zhuliu’s mother came out from where she had been working to see what had happened. The scattered parts of the destroyed statue at their feet said it all. “A-Ting!” She scolded, truly upset at her in one of the few times in her life that she was.
She was old enough to understand that this was what their income came to, now. A-Ting scowled. “It’s not to my taste,” She said, upset, and stormed off. It wasn’t walking distance for the rest of the family, but she’d learned to move fast by then.
Her father came to the door of her room much later when everyone had arrived home, and knocked. “A-Ting, you’re old enough not to throw tantrums,” He said, upset.
The door slammed open. A-Ting stood framed, her eyes blazing. From down the hall, Zhuliu stepped back, and then back again, cowed. “What are you going to do about it? How are you going to stop me?”
The next day she went for food as if nothing was wrong.
Some days later, the soldier who taught them both quit. He said that he had nothing more to teach A-Ting. There was fear in his eyes when he left.
Maybe Zhuliu should have felt more of it.
They tried half-heartedly to tell Hua Daozhang that something was wrong, but not too hard. He spent almost all of his time with her, now that she had developed a core and grown—but they were still afraid of him abandoning her.
“She’s been experiencing moods,” Zhuliu broached, in one of the rarer times he did speak. “Violent ones. It is unlike her.”
“Children of that age always end up doing so,” Hua Daozhang said. Zhuliu noticed for the first time that he was taller than the Daozhang. At least one of the two were always sitting somewhere, in their conversations. He didn’t know what to do with that information, so he looked down instead.
He curled his hand around a bruise on his wrist. She had said she’d accidentally squeezed too hard—distracted, when he’d flipped a page a little too loudly. He trusted her, because he could do nothing but. “Please be careful for her,” He said, softly, and bowed his own dismissal.
“I will,” Hua Daozhang said, affectionate. Had he looked up, Zhuliu would have noticed that he had a fox’s smile.
Zhuliu spent more of his days with A-Ting, but in time she seemed to grow less fond of him. Independence, his parents told him. It seemed almost as if she grew to resent him for his lack of cultivation, and her family for not being what she could.
The next time they sparred she pushed him over with but a twitch of her hand. “Weak,” She sneered, and walked off. It was the last time they did.
“I’m sorry we weren’t what you could have been,” Zhuliu said, one night, as he lit the sticks of incense for A-Ting.
“Don’t bother,” A-Ting snapped, as she began a set of sword strikes. A year or two ago, Zhuliu knew, she would have wept at those words.
Half a year later the moods had become more violent. It had not been a sudden storm, more a mounting tempest—something wrong one day had simply become commonplace, only to be replaced by another fresh horror. He thought he could feel resentment curdling through A-Ting’s veins.
One day, not too unlike any other, A-Ting had taken offence to the way the soup tasted at dinner, so she stood up and flipped over the stone table. It was a hefty thing, suitable for crushing people’s feet if it were not placed carefully. “The soup was too salty,” She said, after the smashing of porcelain, then looked to her mother. The disrespect was marked, and no different than anything else she’d begun to exhibit. “I want another.”
“I’m a bit tired tonight,” she said, because it had been a long day of carving and carrying. But nobody in the family could really outright tell her no, anymore. “I can make another tomorrow night.”
“I want,” A-Ting said, dangerously, “Another.”
She raised a fist dangerously. Her father stepped in, holding his hands up and his tone placating. “A-Ting-”
Without looking back, she lightly kicked the stone table sideways and backward. Behind her came the sound of bone crunching with wet meat.
He died instantly.
A-Ting looked back for a moment, face ashen. For a moment there was a moment of horror and humanity within her. Then she crossed her arms, her eyes empty and her face like steel. “Another soup. Now,” she demanded.
Zhuliu went into the kitchen with his mother.
“You should run,” she said with shaking hands, filling the pot with water.
“I will not,” Zhuliu said, chopping the green onions for her.
A-Ting stood in the doorway and loomed. She was strong and muscular and the sword was at her hip.
“If we wait for the Daozhang,” His mother said, burning herself with a hiss on the pot. She’d always had such steady hands. A-Ting tilted her head in recognition of the sound and said nothing, but her eyes did become more violent when Zhuliu stopped what he was doing to help her.
“There’s no telling when he might come,” Zhuliu said, “And I know A-Ting better. You leave. I’ll handle her.”
A-Ting had always been friendlier with him. But what sort of mother abandoned her own children?
They served it on the table again, when they couldn’t find a good place to put the soup. A-Ting righted it with a few movements, then sat with a spoon. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
She allowed them to remove his body, though she watched when Zhuliu set him aside to be buried later and his mother placed a sheet over his body as respectfully as she could. “If you run, I’ll know,” A-Ting said, ominous like thunder in a clear sky.
Maybe they could have run, then.
They slept eventually, and were not murdered.
In the morning, Zhuliu went out for work, and to retrieve a coffin. It was not without argument, with the whole thing settled by a wave of A-Ting’s hand.
“Go do what you need. I don’t need a dead body stinking up the place,” She said, and from then on Zhuliu considered her dead. “Come back later, I’ll need to meditate.”
“My father has died and my mother is experiencing… problems,” He said with flat dictation. “The carving will take more time. You may need to hire extra help.”
The lines of a poem ended up carved into her father’s tombstone. Name. Year.
A good husband, Zhuliu’s mother chiselled out.
A good father, Zhuliu wrote in stone.
A-Ting scoffed at it.
Zhuliu stopped flinching at her movements.
They worked the next week. A-Ting kept up her moods, but didn’t hurt either of them more than the occasional bruise. She focused most of her rage on inanimate objects, which they’d never thought to be thankful for.
And then, a few days later, Zhuliu returned to silence.
Silence, and the scent of tea. Not the floral blend that momentarily settled A-Ting for the moment she’d practice her rapidly growing power, the one they brought out for visits.
He entered the main dining room to find half a pot of tea cooling, then A-Ting’s room where she'd started taking her visits.
Nothing.
No note.
No blood.
Zhuliu thought for a moment, then went to the graveyard. He’d bought sticks of incense and paper money in a bag, but he wasn’t sure if they were even supposed to go, today— if A-Ting would let them. If she would join them.
Red greeted him.
His mother had fallen by the gravestone, blood leaking into the grass and over part of the stone of the marker. She lay with her face down and her arm beneath her, but there was too much lost for her to still be alive.
A-Ting was kneeling by her father’s grave, blood seeping from every orifice.
And Hua Daozhang stood with his hand on her shoulder. Blood soaked into his sleeve.
He turned as Zhuliu approached, and his face was unreadable.
Zhuliu checked first on his mother. Dead, as he’d expected. He laid her out as well as he could, blood sticking to his hands, and fixed her clothes as respectfully as he could. There were sword slashes on her body. She’d suffered, but her body was still warm enough that by pressing harder on her contorted features he could arrange them to something almost peaceful.
He blinked, hard, twice. Zhuliu couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. There was the feeling of prickling in the corners of his eyes, but they felt dry and hot. In a moment he’d closed her eyes, and then there was a corpse in front of him for the second time that month.
A-Ting was looking at him, quiet. She’d rarely been quiet, especially not in these latest years. Red veins seeped into her eyes. She looked demonic.
She looked terrifying.
Zhuliu felt nothing.
Hua Daozhang spoke, at that moment. “You may wish to pay your respects,” He said, softly. “You will not get a second chance.”
A-Ting’s hand found his, and Zhuliu squeezed reflexively. Then he took the incense from his bag mechanically, beside the stack of paper money. He arranged them so that they were facing both the grave and their mother’s body. Then he searched for something to light it with, but there was nothing.
Hua Daozhang took a piece of paper with red glyphs on it from his sleeve. A-Ting took it, then lit it with an empty gesture. They used to be so impressed when something like that happened.
A-Ting looked at her hand, unsure.
Zhao Zhuliu took her hand and guided it to the sticks of incense, and the money, then helped her let it go when the igniting glyph promised to burn her hand. She clutched at his hand and didn’t let go. Zhuliu felt loss and horror, but he wasn’t sure if it was his own feelings reflecting back at him.
He wasn’t sure if he was still capable of feeling.
“It’s time,” He said, and tugged her down for the first bow, and the second. On the third she seemed to have understood the rhythm, and he was reminded of his own warmth upon her learning again so quickly.
Zhao Zhuliu finished the set. A-Ting didn’t.
In some time, staring blankly forward at the gravestone and the corpse, he detached his hand from A-Ting’s still warm one. Then he arranged her body as well, brushing his sleeve over her face. The blood was too well-ingrained.
Hua Daozhang had left long ago, so he took his time to sit and stare. Zhao Zhuliu explored the emptiness that was his life and the inside of his head now, then stood. It was long past the time people were supposed to do any of this, but better that than nothing.
The incense stick had long since burned out.
There was a house near the graveyard. Zhuliu knocked. A woman he only saw occasionally in passing answered.
“May I have a flame stick to light my incense?”
She looked at him, then passed him a flame stick. There was judgement in her eyes, in the lateness of the hour and the lack of preparation.
Zhuliu lit incense for the other graves he always used to visit with his family, offered the paper money, then bowed to them. His mother would have brought the food.
Then he returned to the first grave and kneeled. The animals would come out, drawn by so many offerings of food. He would guard his family’s bodies until it was daylight.
Half a shichen after dawn broke he straightened and left at a walk for the same house. “Thank you for your generosity last night,” He began, bowing when the door opened. “Might I ask for your eyes on some bodies in the cemetery? My mother and sister have just passed, and I worry about animals while I arrange for coffins.”
He wanted to risk nothing, so when she opened her mouth to perhaps object Zhuliu pressed all of the money he had on him inside her hands.
“Please,” Zhao Zhuliu bowed, deep and desperate.
She looked at the blood on his hand, then returned the bag of silver as well as a flame stick. “I will watch them for you,” She promised. “Use the money to purchase coffins.”
Zhuliu led her to the bodies, and began walking.
He arrived first at his house, and removed the blood from his skin. Then he changed his clothing. Then, gathering some pouches of silver and a large bag of necessities for his next actions, he went to the coffin-maker’s shop and set them down. “Two coffins,” He said, clearly. “At the graveyard. I also need two temporary markers until I can carve them.”
The coffin-maker looked up, frowning as if he intended to ask why they weren’t being delivered to his house. Then, recognizing Zhuliu, his expression sobered. Two losses, so soon after the first.
He looked at the silver, then gestured to the interior of the shop. “Take your pick,” The shopowner said.
Zhuliu chose carefully. “I will also need to borrow a shovel,” he said.
The woman was still sitting at the corpses when he showed up carrying both, though she had a cup of tea with her now and the bodies were covered. Maybe she had experience with this after all— he imagined a flood unearthing bodies, and did not shudder.
He cleaned the bodies with what he had, and dressed them well before tucking each into its respective coffin. A-Ting’s sword he placed between her hands. Then, having finished, Zhuliu dug out the two places next to his father.
The grave markers were embedded in, but they were to be replaced soon enough anyway. Better rock, gentler strokes. They deserved a good burial.
They got as good as Zhuliu could give them.
He dug.
He carved.
He mourned.
And when all was said and done he went back to work. In the years his parents had aged, anyway, and he'd done most of the things that required excessive strength because A-Ting needed to train.
The family had always been so strong. It had brought them… this.
It had to be worth it.
He carved, and he trained. The money he saved, keeping the bare necessities for himself.
And, one day, a travelling cultivator showed up in town. Zhao Zhuliu met him at a bar and placed down a bag of silver—they tended less wealthy, but still more than most could afford. “Teach me cultivation,” He said, half-desperate. He wondered if it was palpable in the air between them.
“With this much, I can attempt to teach you the basics—though you are much too old now to get too far,” the cultivator warned. At least he wasn't honorable enough to refuse based on age. “You may grow a core with years of practice, but this is not enough for a sword.”
He tried. To his credit, he tried— for about a week. Zhuliu could feel his own qi by the end, but only just. In the end he gave up. “Your qi flow tends unnatural,” the cultivator said, eventually. “You grasp the basics easily, but I cannot teach you like this. I doubt any could.”
Zhao Zhuliu took the news with typical emptiness, and gave the cultivator the silver anyway. It looked like he might have offered to give Zhuliu some of it back, but he hesitated and glanced down at the bag of silver, then left. The life of a wandering cultivator tended difficult.
But Zhuliu had a qi flow. Which meant that he could cultivate, however difficult it was.
Once the cultivator’s robes were dust in the distance, Zhuliu walked outside and struck a tree with his palm.
It hurt, so he did it again.
In time, his palms were bleeding. But the bone did not give way, and he had healed well enough by the next day to do it again.
He felt the strike shock him to the bones, and pushed more into it this time. More the next, and still more until it felt like he was pouring his entire soul within.
Everyone had some sort of qi, but he started sensing his own better. It felt like it wanted to gather, but never quite settled in the way the cultivator had described.
It took years. His family’s gravestones grew moss, and every few months he would visit to clear the graves. He grew accustomed to the looks of pity, and eventually stopped wearing white.
The trunk grew smooth, then dented. And one day, it fell.
At that moment, he felt the pooling in his chest. A strength and a pull, threaded with the qi in his body like a second heart. Weak— much lesser than the one A-Ting had formed, but undeniably still there.
Zhao Zhuliu went to search for the old soldier, but he had died months ago. He nodded at the information he had been given, and went to find another tree.
When tales of a nearby night hunt reached him, he packed food and hurried over. There was no distinguishing factor from him and the many who hurried over in the hope of making a name for themselves, all alike in weakness and in not knowing their enemy.
The cultivators watched the monsters. He watched the cultivators. In the end, the ghosts had been defeated— and Zhuliu had learned something. He went home to its empty rooms and slept where his parents did. They were too dead to care.
It repeated. There was work to be had if he sought it out, but cultivation became an obsession in a way that it had not for A-Ting. Zhuliu wanted for nothing save for strength, save for that one bit of honor he could regain for his family. A last wish.
His family had been well enough off to fund some things, and the rest he could sell or occasionally take on a short job— usually something small and menial. Carrying, the most of it.
One day, he closed up his family’s home (they had always been a small family, but with only him there the house was too large) and left. The house at the edge of the graveyard he paid to care for his family’s graves, and the only expenditure he made was a set of black clothing that should last a little while through combat.
The cultivators had swords that flew. He walked, and practiced on the roads. It was good that he had at least achieved the point where food was less of an issue— it was the largest drain on his resources.
At a city, a man wronged another under Zhao Zhuliu’s eyes. He took one by the wrist and demanded an apology. When the wronged man offered him money for his services he refused, but in time and much disagreement he shoved some coins into Zhuliu’s hand and left with alacrity. He was fast enough to chase, but it would have been undignified.
With it he bought food, which lasted him until he could replace some roof tiles and purchase more.
He moved with the rumors of spirits, and grew better at his skills. The first people he fought were not cultivators. The second were not people.
One day, Zhuliu showed up the third arrival to a night hunt. The people were struggling— a man and a woman, both slashing at a silhouette which seemed half-solid.
“We need light!” The woman called out, tossing him a stack of papers. Zhao Zhuliu looked down at the ones he had caught, knowing how others activated the things but not knowing how himself. Then he joined them in the fight and passed the papers to the woman again, positioning his shoulder to block her off from attacks for a few moments.
She busied herself with lighting the talismans, while the man looked at him oddly at not bearing a sword. But the three of them were quite engaged with the struggle already.
They defeated the thing soundly enough, three of them sitting down tired on the cliff. The woman looked at him oddly for a moment.
“Can you not activate talismans?”
“No. I never learned,” Zhao Zhuliu said. The woman frowned, then took one of the remaining ones and showed him how she did it. And then drew a few, and taught him the patterns.
It worked well enough even with the odd way his qi circulated.
A few times, he goes back home when there are no hunts to find. The house he tries to maintain, but he is not home long enough to do so. Still, it stays in suitable condition.
One day he’s practicing in the grass when someone stops by. A young man, with flames on his robes. Zhao Zhuliu has learned enough about qi to sense something of strength in the man as he dismisses his retinue and walks to meet him. He bows. The man lets him, and does not give his name.
“I was interested,” His voice is light, “In the way you fight. Might you demonstrate it for me?”
It does not sound like a suggestion, but Zhao Zhuliu would have done it for him anyway. He spends a length of time watching him, and then puts a hand on a wrist as Zhao Zhuliu switches between positions. Lifts it up slightly, adjusts the posture, and sends a surge of contained spiritual energy through him.
“How interesting,” The young man murmurs.
It does not make him suddenly competent, but certain paths are illuminated for him in the length it would take to burn a stick of incense. Paths which would have taken him longer.
He stays for tea, after. “You would have been a genius had you been born in a large clan,” The man says softly, in the lamplight. “I would quite like to see where you will go.”
During a lonely night hunt quite like all the others, Zhao Zhuliu meets a woman up a mountain. She is beautiful and deadly, and offers no room for him to strike as she presses into the horde of vengeful spirits. Her look is challenging when she casts her eyes toward him. He recognizes it; Something halfway between having something to prove, and picking a fight for the sheer sake of doing violence.
He slips next to her, and spends the first half hour defending himself. It takes time. She gentles somewhat when she saves him first, a swish of lightning curling around the arm of one of the spirits—and allows him to return the favor later. They fight well together, after that.
When they finish, the two of them stand opposite each other. The adrenaline begins to wear off and the woman’s expression begins to sour again. Somehow it reminds him of a girl smashing a statue a long time ago.
He bows. It sours her expression further, but he continues. “Purple Spider,” He greets. “Well met.”
Her brows furrow. It seems she was waiting for another name, and her face gentles again. “Indeed,” She says, careful. “What are you addressed as?”
“Zhao Zhuliu,” Zhuliu says, bowing again. She raises his arms and breaks his bow instead of bowing back in return. Proud.
“Well met,” She echoes, striking Zhuliu as someone who would always rather make the first move.
He stays in Jiang territory for as long as appropriate, meeting up with her once in a while whilst staying at inns across the towns. Occasionally he meets her again, and the exchanges are always half-pleasant. She is someone he can trust at his back.
In the end, it all comes down to propriety.
“You have stayed longer than most,” She says, one night.
“Indeed. I shall take my leave by the end of the week,” Zhuliu nods, looking at her. There is potential there, for both of them. If he asked to stay, he does not think she would refuse him.
If she asked, he would not.
“This was our last hunt together, then.” There is no regret in either of their voices, just shards of icy indifference from the first moment they met.
He thinks about asking her to call him Zhuliu. Considers calling her Ziyuan, just once. Contemplates asking to see her again.
When they leave each other, it is in different directions. Zhuliu does not look back; He does not think Ziyuan would, either.
He notices the scent of a familiar herb in an apothecary shop one day. When Zhuliu inquires after it the apothecary clams up, stammers. He can’t identify it, he says. There are many scents in the shop and if Zhuliu could pick it up out of the pile he would be happy to identify it for him.
But he is busy, and a night hunt is gathering. It has been too long before he last ate.
Zhao Zhuliu fights. He gets better. And he starts noticing, when he touches others, that he can feel flows of qi that others can’t.
Starts noticing that he can manipulate it in ways others can’t.
The next time he tastes the herb that A-Ting had so frequently is in a tea at a banquet. It feels fine to him, running alongside the paths of his qi. A little like the bittersweetness of home. He wonders if perhaps he cultivated along it too well, limiting the ways it could benefit him.
Then a man leaps up out of his seat, smashes the cup on the ground. “Poison!” He screams, as a brawl breaks out.
Oh, Zhuliu thinks.
There are no Daozhangs named Hua.
But eventually, he sees a pattern carved in a wall. A familiar thing that he’d seen a few times, light threads stitching out the shape of a curve.
He’d thought it to be the edge of a flower when it peeked out from under Hua Daozhang’s sleeve.
It is the raise of a scorpion’s tail. A minor sect of poisoners.
But still, a sect too large for him. Zhao Zhuliu is only one man.
“Your killing intent,” Comes a voice, light and steady, “Is too strong.”
Zhao Zhuliu hadn’t heard the man approach. It is the same one with flames stitched on his robes. As expected, he has not aged.
“See,” the man fixes his eyes on Zhuliu’s, and suddenly he knows for certain that he intends to destroy him utterly. He thinks this is maybe what fear feels like, the feeling that he might never achieve what he needs to do now.
The force recedes a moment after the flame-robed man smiles. “Restrain your energy.”
Zhuliu does as he is told. He is very good at that. “There is little point,” He says, motioning to the clan doors. “They will not open for me, either way.”
“They will for a retinue,” Says the man, smiling. “You may be in it.”
“For what?” Zhuliu asks. There is always a price.
“We shall see,” The smile, youthful and with too much power behind the eyes. It does not feel like signing away his fate—he’d done so too long ago.
Zhuliu bows. He knows who the man is, at this point. “Thank you, Wen gongzi.”
It is likely no coincidence Wen gongzi had shown up.
It matters little, as Zhao Zhuliu dresses in finer black than he usually wears. As he enters through the gates and stays near the front, near the young man. Wen Ruohan, he said his name was. Warm like frost. An apt moniker.
Zhuliu would have preferred the back, but he had little complaint.
Things are explained to him. Instructions and explanations, reasonings and methodologies for blending in. He remembers them, but it makes no difference.
Hua Daozhang does not seem to recognize him, smiling his fox’s smile with friendliness and a bit of caution at the unexpected visit. Apparently, his name is Xia. Zhuliu considers explaining himself since Wen Ruohan seems to be expecting a speech, but his sister had never gotten one for herself.
He is present in his own body.
He feels the qi vibrating in the air, and all in one moment he understands.
He rises in the banquet, steps forward without a change in expression. Stops restraining his killing impulse.
The man with a fox’s smile rises with puzzled expression and frightened eyes. Zhao Zhuliu does not stop, striking forward with his palm. Fear behind the skin, thrashing for a chance to escape.
At the end of the day it was simple. An application of qi, destroying the roots of one’s cultivation. No core, no spiritual energy. Useless and common.
He turns back, sits down, keeps eating. The man he struck rises, frowns, and slowly realizes the damage. Grasps at himself and begins screaming about his core.
At his side Zhao Zhuliu feels more than he sees Wen Ruohan’s smile. It sharpens his features, like a feline or bird of prey. He motions, signalling movement from the rest of the clan.
The Wen clan takes over. They kill some, imprison others, leave the majority to serve. Wen Ruohan insists he not rise until they have both finished their meal, and then with another strike he brings to dust and ashes the fruits of another’s cultivation.
They stop in flames and ashes and blood. Zhuliu finds he does not care to know the fate of the man who had destroyed so much of his life. “What do I owe?” Zhao Zhuliu asks, again. He doesn’t remember the sound of his sister’s laugh anymore.
“How would you like to be addressed as Wen?” Wen Ruohan offers, smiling. The expression, he finds, is familiar on another’s face.
It is an honor, and he is the last of his family. Wen Zhuliu kneels.