Tao Mian did nothing superfluous. He simply pressed a talisman to the center of Li Li’s forehead.
An ordinary-looking slip of talisman paper…
Lu Yuandi stopped her tears. She was never one for crying, and the outburst left her a little embarrassed. She wiped the last traces from the corners of her eyes with her sleeve, then came to her master’s side, eyes still rimmed with red.
“Xiao Tao, what happened to him?”
“Lost all five senses. Not dead.” He turned to glance at his disciple’s face. “Want him dead? Master can take care of it.”
Lu Yuandi wore a clean outer robe draped over her shoulders, far too large-Tao Mian had handed it to her. She clutched the front of the garment and wrapped herself tighter, then shook her head.
“Do you want to let him go?”
“No.” Lu Yuandi stepped forward, lowered her gaze, and looked coldly down at her enemy. “Xiao Tao, don’t get involved. Leave the rest to me.”
She would not dirty Tao Mian’s hands. The Peach Blossom Immortal had no need to stain himself with blood. He did not belong to the mortal world and should never have been dragged into its affairs.
It was her presence that had tainted him with the dust of the mundane.
From that day forward, Lu Yuandi made a silent vow. She would be independent. She would be strong. She would not spend her life hiding behind her master, a little girl who only knew how to cry.
Tao Mian gazed at his second disciple for a long while. At last, he patted the top of her head.
“Yuandi. Be safe, and be happy.”
A simple, unadorned wish. Lu Yuandi’s tears nearly spilled again.
She hurriedly lowered her head.
“I will. Don’t worry, Xiao Tao.”
Tao Mian said he would stay a few more days. He didn’t feel right leaving Lu Yuandi on her own.
But Lu Yuandi was firm. She refused to let Tao Mian be drawn into the trouble.
She told him: Xiao Tao, go back to Peach Blossom Mountain. The mountain flowers are about to bloom, and Attendant Wu is still waiting for you.
Tao Mian understood what she meant. He nodded, turned, and walked out of the tent.
He came and went without a trace. Of all the soldiers in the camp, not one noticed his arrival-save for the guide he had knocked unconscious.
It should have been a clean departure. Unfortunately, a young man cut across his path.
The youth looked anxious, as though searching for someone. He seized Tao Mian by the wrist and asked if he had seen Wang Er.
Tao Mian blinked, mildly surprised. He had deliberately suppressed his presence; ordinary people should not have been able to detect him at all.
He hadn’t expected this young man to be so sharp.
Also-who was Wang Er?
He had no idea who this “Wang Er” was, but Tao Mian was a seasoned master of bluffing. He casually pointed in a direction.
“Should’ve gone that way.”
The young man didn’t doubt him for a second. He clasped Tao Mian’s hand in gratitude and hurried off.
Seemed a bit simple, that one.
Lu Yuandi was young, and the young were easy to take advantage of. But she had always been clever. She never made the same mistake twice, and she drew lessons from every experience. Her growth was astonishing.
The second disciple did not disappoint his master’s hopes.
When Tao Mian returned to Peach Blossom Temple, he found-predictably-that Attendant Wu had fattened itself up again.
Tao Mian hauled it out of the coop and conducted a face-to-face interrogation.
“How can you have gotten this fat?”
“Look at other people’s chickens-do any of them have a figure like yours?”
“I’m warning you, if this keeps up, nobody will want you but me. You’ll have no choice but to stay here and keep me company in my old age.”
Attendant Wu puffed up with supreme arrogance, clucked twice, and swished its tail feathers as it strutted away.
It paid absolutely no attention to whatever nonsense Tao Mian was spouting.
Beyond the mountain, the world churned with unrest. Within the mountain, the days drifted by-slow, unhurried, neither rushed nor delayed.
While Tao Mian sunbathed, dozed, lazed about, and chased his chicken, the world outside was quietly changing.
At first, Lu Yuandi did not kill Li Li. Instead, she planted a Gu poison in him and brought him under her control.
She intended to use Li Li to carve out a position for herself within the army and build a power base of her own.
During this time, she reached out to those who had once served under her father’s banner, enlisting their aid to reclaim the throne. This realm still belonged to the Lu family.
Heaven does not forsake those who persevere. Lu Yuandi hacked her way through brambles and thorns until at last she had the strength and the standing she needed.
She declared that she would avenge her clan. She would see the throne change hands.
Everything Tao Mian knew of Lu Yuandi’s circumstances came from her letters. His disciple only ever reported good news, never bad. Those few seemingly offhand lines on the page concealed untold effort-how many filthy dealings she had endured, how much she had swallowed-to win the power she sought.
Lu Yuandi never spoke of these things to him, but Tao Mian understood.
So every time he wrote back, he urged her not to push herself too hard. If she was tired, if she was weary, she should come find her master.
Master didn’t understand court intrigue, but Master could make the opposing voices disappear.
Lu Yuandi was grateful to Tao Mian in her heart, yet she refused to betray the vow she had sworn in that military camp. No matter how much foul blood stained her hands, no matter how many lives weighed upon her back, Tao Mian must never be dragged into it.
He would remain his Peach Blossom Immortal-sweeping fallen blossoms at dawn, listening to fruit drop in the forest at night-carefree, unbound.
And she needed only to think of him, so free, and it was as though all the filth and turmoil of the world fell away, leaving nothing but a single pool of clarity.
…
Once she had obtained what she wanted, Li Li lost all value.
The last time Lu Yuandi saw him was in the hidden chamber behind her study.
Hidden chamber was a generous name. She had long since converted it into a dungeon. The space was dark and cold, its walls hung with instruments of every description.
Droplets of blood spattered the walls.
The floor had accumulated a thick layer of stains that would never scrub clean.
General Li Li was a far cry from his former glory. Heavy chains bound both arms and hoisted him high.
Lu Yuandi brought no attendants. She came alone and stood before Li Li.
The contrast between her clean, snow-white boots and the blood-soaked ground was almost blinding.
Facing her, Li Li showed no fear. Only a cold sneer.
“I have nothing left for you to use. You killed my two sons, my three brothers-you didn’t even spare a child who bore a different surname. Lu Yuandi, what more do you want?”
Lu Yuandi regarded her former adversary. Old. Broken. The illustrious General Li was nowhere to be found.
All at once, she lost every shred of interest. She was tired of it.
“I don’t hate you.”
She said.
Li Li heard those words and thought he must be dreaming.
“Lu Yuandi-you say you don’t hate? Ha! How could you possibly not hate? Out there you play the pitiful princess of a fallen dynasty, while in secret you’ve torn through every last member of my Li family-guilty and innocent alike, not one spared. And you say you don’t hate?!”
Li Li threw back his head and laughed, as though he had heard the most absurd joke under heaven. Beneath the laughter ran a current of deep, bitter grief.
Lu Yuandi’s tone remained still as water.
“I don’t hate you. If I hated you, I would never have let you live back in that camp.
Hatred is an emotion that robs a person of reason. I don’t hate.”
Li Li’s laughter died. Something seemed to dawn on him.
A smile twisted his lips-bitter and mocking at once.
“You and I are the same kind of person.”
Lu Yuandi did not deny it. Between the two fingers of her right hand, a dark red bell appeared, and inside it, a tiny insect could be seen faintly crawling.
Li Li recognized it. The mother Gu.
One gentle squeeze, and the mother worm would die-and Li Li with it.
The great general did not die in glory, surrounded by the devotion and admiration of the masses. His lifetime of military achievements was real; his hunger for power was real, and so was his defense of the realm.
This time, Li Li was laughing at himself.
The victor writes history. The vanquished is called a thief.
“Lu Yuandi, you chose the wrong path. This road only grows narrower, and the journey will be cold and lonely. Whatever you do-don’t look back.”
Because if you look back, there will be nothing but desolation.
Many years later, Lu Yuandi would remember Li Li’s words. That sentence hung over her like a venomous prophecy, caging her for a lifetime.
But the Lu Yuandi of that moment spared it little thought. She had only one goal left.
She would become emperor.