Chapter Text
What is a beginning? Where does a story start?
Where does this story start?
Does it start when a young woman, recently descended from her master’s mountain, saves the heir of the Jiang sect and his best friend from certain death?
Or does it start when a woman, apathetic and disinterested, ignored lumps in her chest and died because of it?
Or does it start when a shu daughter is given to a young sect leader as a concubine, only to birth a daughter?
Or does it start when a little brother pushed his big sister into the koi pond in the early spring, causing some dead woman’s memories to flood her reeling mind?
All of them at once, I suppose.
But the important part of this story starts with a declaration of deaths.
Ꙭ
Wēn Xiachen paused in her calligraphy practice when A-Lin, one of her personal maids, entered with the weekly report of Jianghu’s recent gossip.
A-Lin gave a brief salute. “It has happened, xiao guniang. Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren have been reported dead,” she said and handed the scroll to her mistress. She didn’t acknowledge A-Shao embroidering in the corner. A-Shao was lucky, being able to cultivate and therefore being xiao guniang’s personal aid rather than just a maid, and able to spend more time basking their Mistress’ presence. “There is conflicting information as to where it happened.”
It was known that the ghosts had been particularly violent during the last Zhongyuan. Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren were just the latest rouge cultivators among dozens to be reported dead during the past lunar cycle. The Wēn sect had lost a dozen cultivators themselves, so it was reasonable to assume other sects had lost disciples too.
“What about their son?” xiao guniang asked, setting her brush aside. She took the scroll A-Lin presented her.
A-Lin shivered under her mistress’ gaze. It wasn’t fear, xiao guniang was a good and kind mistress who’d kept A-Lin even when it was revealed she didn’t have cultivation potential rather than return her to the gutter she’d been found in. Jin Fengmi, xiao guniang’s senior maid, had trained her to the pinnacle of her abilities and taught her to utilize her meager spiritual energy in ways that made her useful to xiao guniang, even if she’d never be able to wield a sword or create a talisman.
“Disappeared into thin air. No credible sightings of Wei Ying have been made since Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren were seen in Jingzhou with him for Duanwu*.” And now it seemed xiao guniang was going to pick up another child from the gutter and give their life meaning. Just one more added to the twenty or so children xiao guniang had personally saved, rather than the few hundred the Wen sect as a whole had saved since A-Lin’s arrival six years earlier.
A-Shao had stopped embroidering and was instead packing everything in her qiankun sleeves, sword clutched, ready to follow xiao guniang.
Wēn Xiachen stood up. “A-Lin, clean up here.”
A-Lin bowed and stayed that way until xiao guniang and A-Shao were out of the room. Then she got to work on cleaning xiao guniang’s brushes. And drank the tea kept warm by a talisman. Xiao guniang always deserved fresh tea, but it’d be a pity to just toss the old tea. And washing one more cup wasn’t that much more work anyway.
Ꙭ
Wēn Ruohan didn’t look up from the expense report when his oldest daughter entered his public study and saluted.
“What is it, Chen’er?”
“The disciple of the Immortal Baoshan Sanren, Cangse Sanren, and her husband Wei Changze, are the latest rouge cultivators to be confirmed dead. Their son Wei Ying is missing.”
Chen’er always went to the point. He could see Chen’er was preparing to ask for the boy to be added to her personal retinue.
“Cangse Sanren has died, eh? She was exceptionally powerful, wasn’t she? And her husband must’ve had some power in him to get her pregnant at all, I suppose. If they managed to procreate a child with no immediately detectable defects, his potential would be immense indeed.”
For all that Chen’er tried to remain expressionless, he could see the slight tensing of her body. He had hit the nail on the head. Chen’er was ambitious in a way Xu’er and Chao’er just weren’t. He’d been able to tell it from a young age, seeing a similarity to himself, a hunger for more. More what, he wasn’t quite sure, but power and recognition weren’t what Chen’re hungered for. Maybe freedom. Or just… being remembered. Chen’er’s mother had been a shu daughter of the previous Jin Zongzhu foisted on him before he was strong enough to decline. Jin Laniao hadn’t been shrewd enough to survive his backyard politics. He knew from Wēn Xilei that she had complained to Chen’er often about how it was a pity Chen’er wasn’t a boy, because Chen’er could have been Wēn Ruohan’s oldest son. Jin Laniao had never understood that while most of the Wēn Sect leaders had been eldest sons following their father, there had been a few exceptions where a daughter or a younger son had eclipsed the heir presumptive in talent and charisma needed by a sect leader. Chen’er had a vision for the Wēn sect, and her time would come. After Wēn Ruohan had molded the Cultivation world in his image.
“The son of Cangse Sanren would make a good Wēn,” Wēn Ruohan allowed. If Chen’er managed to hone the boy’s talent and to win his loyalty like she seemed to win the loyalty of her other little pets, he’d make her a good asset. And it would keep him away from the other sects. Jiang Fengmian would probably take the boy if given the chance, but Yu Ziyuan would resent his presence. Wēn Ruohan had seen what kind of devotion that kind of treatment could create in person. It was better to keep the boy away from them. Lan Qiren, for all his huffing and denials, would also take the boy, but the Lan sect would stifle any brilliance the boy had inherited from his mother in the name of their ridiculous rules. The boy would be a dime-a-dozen Lan disciple. The Jin wouldn’t take the boy, of that Wēn Ruohan was certain. The Nie might take the boy, make him incredibly dangerous, but burn him out in short order. A Jiang or Nie grown Wei Ying would be dangerous, a Jin or Lan grown Wei Ying would be a waste. No, only in the Wēn sect would he flourish.
“Do you plan to get him now?” he asked.
Chen’er shook her head. “It would make him feel too special. And a winter on the streets will be a good contrast for whatever we give him. Every trial will be preferable to being back on the streets.”
“You always were ruthless,” Wēn Ruohan nodded approvingly. That had been made abundantly clear when she’d arranged for the death of one of his concubines who’d tried to poison her, and then framed his wife for it. The only reason he even knew it was her, was Wēn Xilei’s report. There had been no evidence to implicate Chen’er in any of it. And her little project on loyalty conditioning that had produced her little pets. He’d never thought to use isolation at the beginning. It wasn’t suitable for large scale use, and he would die rather than initiate the bond in the way Chen’er did, but the results spoke for themselves. He hadn’t been able to break the loyalty of the one that went “missing” two years ago, and it hadn’t even been a cultivator. He’d had to dispose it off rather than make a use of it for his own plans. It was the first time he’d thought about making Chen’er his heir.
Ꙭ
A-Ying had lost his parents a little while back. It had been days and days and days since they’d left him at the inn, and when they hadn’t returned, the innkeeper had shooed him out. That had been days and days ago, but A-Ying still hoped mama and baba would return so he tried to spend as much time around the inn as he could while begging for food. The first few days he hadn’t known how lucky he was, being relatively clean, because the stall owners would look at him with pity, imagining their own children in his place, but then he couldn’t wash properly, and their pity turned to indifference and eventually disgust.
One of the other street children explained it to A-Ying. But when A-Ying had washed in the river, someone had stolen his clothes. A-Ying still had his winter robes hidden in a hole-in-a-wall behind the inn, but it hadn’t been a fun trip back there, waiting for night when everyone would be asleep and no one would shout at him for being naked. He’d been shivering badly when he’d eventually gotten into his thick winter robes, but he hadn’t dared to wash after that.
Living on the streets was dangerous. A-Ying listened to the older street kids tell about other kids that had vanished, because a group of slavers had passed through Yiling. Sometimes there would be pretty jiejies trying to trick them into working for the brothel, tempting them with food and then telling the street kids they owed them money for the food, that paying it back with work was easy. There was a story of a girl who had accepted, and the following morning one of the other street kids had found her beaten to death and dumped outside the city limits.
But one of the better things A-Ying learned, was that every year in spring the Wēn sect cultivators came to Yiling and took one or two of the kids away to become cultivators. Like mama and baba.
Resolution burned in A-Ying, and he didn’t feel as cold as the autumn wind blew. He would survive the winter and, in the spring, the cultivators might choose him.
A bark sounded in the distance and A-Ying shivered. The dogs had been getting more vicious as the temperature dropped.