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“I wonder what it’s like being a ghost,” Shi Qingxuan says to Ming Yi at some point. She’s half-drunk out of her mind, wine threatening spill out of the jug she holds. The Earth Master palace is empty enough that her giggles have been echoing for the better part of two hours now. It’s better than being in the Palace of Wind and Water, anyway.
“Looking to go working for Crimson Rain, now?” Ming Yi grumbles, reaching out to grab her by the wrist and forcibly lowering it onto the table. The bottom of the jug hits the table with a loud noise. Her hand is cold on Shi Qingxuan’s skin.
“Of course not!” she laughs, bringing the jug right back up to drink a big mouthful.
“Hey!” Ming Yi snaps. She snatches the jug out of Shi Qingxuan’s hand and sets it far out of reach. “That’s enough. I’m not dragging you back to your palace drunk enough that you can’t stand up straight.”
Shi Qingxuan whines and reaches for it. “Noooo, Ming-jie,” she pleads. She could exert some force and send a blast of spiritual energy looping around to bring it closer, but doesn’t, for some reason. “I’m not that out of it!”
“You’re asking me what it’s like to be a ghost,” Ming Yi deadpans.
“I’ve been thinking about it anyway!”
“Right,” Ming Yi snorts. “Because there’s so much you lack up here in the Heavenly Court that you would yearn to be an undead thing tethered to the earth by some nasty purpose, is that it?”
Shi Qingxuan blinks, taken aback by the venom seeping into her tone. “Ming-jie?”
“Forget it,” Ming Yi says, sliding the jug back towards Shi Qingxuan. “And what’s with the Ming-jie?”
“You don’t like it, Ming-xiong?” she asks, immediately shrinking back in guilt. She can’t understand why, but lately, it’s been as if Ming Yi has been even more on edge lately. In fact, ever since the nasty business with Banyue, she’s been…. moody. Well—more so than usual, anyway. “You don’t have to be in that form if you don’t want to be, you know…”
“Finish the wine,” Ming Yi says, instead of answering anything. Shi Qingxuan’s shoulders immediately loosen, and she smiles brightly.
“Alright, Ming-jie,” she singsongs.
“Being a ghost, I imagine,” Ming Yi says abruptly, “is a miserable existence.”
“… well, a ghost is dead, no?” Shi Qingxuan tries. Her head is a bit muddled up and hazy. She feels like she’s missing something.
“Obviously,” Ming Yi says. Her tone is as flat and unrelenting as ever. “Ask any ghost and they’ll tell you the same thing. No physical body except what you can make spiritual power do for you. Manifest as anything below a Wrath, and you’ll be doing little else but running for your mockery of a life for the rest of eternity. Ashes to guard jealously are the biggest problem.”
“How do you… know that?” Shi Qingxuan asks. “Did Hua Cheng tell you that?”
“Ha!” Ming Yi snorts. “As if. That miserable bastard might be the only person in the world who enjoys being a ghost.”
“I mean… I can imagine some people prefer undeath to life?” Shi Qingxuan tries, tentative.
“Really.”
“I just think. Life is hard enough for some people,” she insists. Remembers nearly pitching headfirst off the mountain, fleeing from her childhood monster. “It only makes sense…”
She hadn’t really wanted to die, though. Maybe she shouldn’t—
“Shi Qingxuan,” Ming Yi says, calmer than she’d expected, “don’t talk about things you will most certainly wish you didn’t know about.”
Not for the first time, Shi Qingxuan wants to ask her about her time as a double-agent in Ghost City, but Ming Yi has very flatly refused to tell her anything. She tries to form a different question, and her tongue trips over the words, syllables refusing to take shape properly. The wine’s sweetness soured on her tongue, now.
“I know what it feels like,” she settles on. Harsher than she means to make it sound. “To think that life is a long miserable slog. To live in fear constantly.”
“Do you?” Ming Yi settles back in her chair. It’s then that Shi Qingxuan realizes they’d both been leaning so close to each other the entire time. “The Water Tyrant’s—no, more accurately: the god of wealth’s prized little—”
“I’m not his prized anything,” Shi Qingxuan snaps, “he’s my brother.”
“You let him walk all over you.”
“I—” she bites her tongue. She needs a smarter… whatever. Even if she could think more clearly than this, she’s not half as cutting as Ming Yi. “Not the point.”
“Alright, then what is the point?” Ming Yi asks. Her eyes seem to be… darker than usual.
“Ming-jie,” Shi Qingxuan clears her throat, “what do you know about the Reverend of Empty Words?”