Fengxue didn’t expect that skinning one dog would be enough to make a future infamous demon lord throw up.
At first she’d thought Ah Yao was feeling unwell and stepped closer to check on him.
Ah Yao shrieked in terror, “Don’t come near me—!”
Fengxue’s steps stopped short. Only belatedly did it dawn on her, this demon, who would one day be known for his killings, was afraid of ‘her’? She looked down at the blood on her hands, ran a finger across the yellow dog hide, wiping away the blood to reveal a smear of deep red beneath.
A thick, rusty smell spread through the air.
She lowered her eyes, thinking to herself that it was only because she knew the future that she’d been treating these youths in front of her as monsters. Looking at them now, in their youth they didn’t seem nearly as terrifying or bloodthirsty as they would become.
The world was full of heretical arts, skinning and gutting were nothing unusual.
Even for a Qingming Mountain cultivator, killing a monster, flaying it, and refining it into a pill was no great feat.
And yet Ah Yao had thrown up so hard the world had gone dark for him.
Lu Yuan silently set down her bun.
Ye Pengzhou’s expression shifted through several changes, the lazy smile faded from his face, and something probing entered the look he gave the girl. He tightened his grip on the Ghost-Wailing Blade’s hilt and asked, “Little Immortal Maiden, I’ve long heard that Qingming Mountain’s immortal masters save the world and help the people, so why are your methods so ruthless?”
Fengxue let out a short laugh. “Save the world and help the people,” she repeated. She lifted her foot to kick the corpse aside, then, worried about dirtying her shoes, pulled her leg back and instead tossed a fire talisman at it. “But can someone who uses techniques like beast-making even be counted as a person?”
The youths from Yunmeng shuddered in unison.
They too had used the beast-making technique…
The fire talisman burst into white sparks, and the corpse, dry as kindling, caught in a bright red blaze.
The smell of roasting flesh spread through the air.
Ah Yao threw up even harder.
Noticing their reaction, Fengxue said, “You all fought evil with evil, gave him a taste of his own methods. Good. That counts as a person.”
Ye Pengzhou studied her for a long while, his eyes bright as obsidian, an odd light flickering in them, and then he laughed, delighted. “Little Immortal Maiden, you really are interesting!”
He cupped his hands together and bowed with a smile, like a scholar in a stage play. “My thanks for the compliment, Immortal Maiden.”
Not quite used to that, Fengxue simply murmured, “Mm.”
After a while, the corpse on the ground burned down to ash, and Ah Yao finished emptying his stomach, propping himself weakly against the flowering tree.
Feeling rather sorry for having interrupted their meal, Fengxue offered to take them to eat in the city.
Ye Xingyue bounded over happily and grabbed Fengxue’s bloodstained hand. “Yes, yes! Big sister, I want candied hawthorn!”
Fengxue smiled and gave her name. “I’m Chi Fengxue.”
The youths gave their own names in turn.
Just as Fengxue had suspected from the start, these were exactly the names of the future demon lords fearsome enough to stop a crying child at night.
Many thoughts flickered through Fengxue’s mind. In the end she simply took Ye Xingyue’s hand gently and led them all to a tavern. Her robe was soaked in blood, dyed a deep dark red, thankfully the people of Jingquan were used to the sight of Qingming Mountain disciples coming back from demon-hunting covered in blood, so no one ran to report her to the authorities.
Still, walking around in a blood-soaked robe was hardly comfortable, and it tended to frighten children along the way.
Fengxue counted the silver in her pouch, wondering whether, after treating everyone, she’d have enough left to buy herself a new set of clothes.
Most Qingming Mountain disciples had no money to speak of. Washing clothes, drawing water, cooking meals, every chore on the mountain had to be done with their own hands. Three plain meals a day, a robe washed until it faded pale, patches they couldn’t bear to throw away.
Fengxue’s family were merchants, reasonably well-off, and she’d brought quite a bit of silver up the mountain with her, her parents still sent her money every year, which by rights should have made her comfortably wealthy.
But just as Feng Fuliu had said, she was stubborn and competitive by nature, and despite her own meager skill in the arts, she was always the one taking on the hardest demon-slaying commissions.
Talismans cost money, healing salves cost money, and replacing a robe torn to shreds by some monster cost money too.
She spent so much that her hands were never quite as full as they should have been.
Halfway there, they were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of people.
Ah Yao pinched his nose, saying worriedly, “They’re not here to arrest us, are they?”
The smell of blood drifted over on the wind, and he retched a few more times, though his stomach had long since emptied itself and only sour bile came up now.
Lu Yuan, holding him steady, shook her head. “Doesn’t look like it. They’re carrying a lot of things.”
The people approaching were the parents and relatives of the children who had been turned into sheep.
Lately, news had spread of children going missing in nearby towns, vanishing in broad daylight in front of everyone, with no trace of any trafficker no matter how hard the adults searched.
Rumors had sprung up. Some said the children cried too much at night and angered the Night Hag, who dragged them up the mountain to feed to the great beasts. Others said the immortal lord in the heavens was getting married and had summoned the children up to serve as flower attendants leading his dragon-and-phoenix wedding carriage.
Whichever rumor people believed, it left the local adults badly shaken.
The people of Jingquan lived in constant unease, watching their children closely, and even so, several more had gone missing.
Grandma Song, who sold fried tofu in the city, had lost her husband to conscription two years back, he’d never returned. She and her six-year-old daughter Kou’er depended on each other to get by.
Kou’er was a sensible child, and every morning she used to walk the streets selling freshly picked pear blossoms.
With things so unsettled lately, Grandma Song wouldn’t let her go out, so the girl stood dutifully at the shop entrance instead, helping her mother call out to customers.
At sunrise, customers began trickling down the street.
Grandma Song turned to fry the tofu, dropping the small cubes into the bubbling oil, and once they turned golden and crisp, soaked them in her family’s special dipping sauce, a truly excellent little dish to go with a cup of wine.
“Song family’s specialty fried tofu, ten coppers a bowl, delicious and cheap, come and try some, everybody!”
The girl’s clear voice cut through the thin morning mist and reached Grandma Song’s ears.
She stirred the tofu cubes bobbing up in the oil with her long chopsticks, watching them puff up plump as little chubby dumplings as they tumbled in the pan, the oil hissing away beside her daughter’s young voice.
A drop of hot oil splashed onto her callused hand.
Still, the corner of her mouth lifted in a happy smile. “Kou’er, that’s enough shouting for now, try this fresh batch first, tell me if the taste is right.”
Her daughter was a sensible child, if she hadn’t said it that way, Kou’er would never have agreed to eat tofu that could be sold for money instead.
Kou’er didn’t answer her.
Startled, she turned around, the long street was bathed in pale gold morning light, a few scattered figures moving here and there, but the little stool where her daughter should have been sitting was empty.
Only the old shepherd was there, driving a flock of sheep out of the city.
‘Crack.’
The whip landed on a lamb’s rump.
It stared stubbornly at the woman and refused to take a single step forward.
…
“Big sister,” the little girl said, holding up a bowl of golden, crispy tofu cubes, “my mother just fried this. It’s really good.”
Grandma Song’s eyes were red and swollen, she kept wiping away tears, unable to say a single word.
Fengxue patted the girl’s head and took the bowl. “Thank you.”
More villagers came bringing new robes, a basket of eggs, freshly steamed wine-lees cakes, aged wine dug up from home.
Fengxue picked out a few useful items and thanked them as she took them, but when it came to the coppers people had scraped together, saved up for who knew how long, she just waved a hand and declined.
Watching the girl standing at the center of the crowd, Ah Yao’s opinion of her had already begun to shift.
“The little Immortal Maiden’s covered in blood, and they’re not even scared,” he murmured.
Lu Yuan raised an eyebrow. “Scared of what? All that blood belongs to bad people. Trust me, if a child trafficker were caught by this crowd, he’d end up far worse off than that skinning.”
Jiang Yao shuddered, knowing in his heart that Lu Yuan wasn’t exaggerating.
The countryside despised traffickers with a passion, and mob justice against them was common practice.
Once caught, before the authorities even arrived, traffickers were tortured to death by furious crowds of adults, and the deaths were gruesome. In some places they used “stoning”, one stone from each person, until he was beaten to death. In others, “water torture”, wet paper laid sheet by sheet over the trafficker’s face, until he suffocated in slow, mounting terror.
By the time the officers arrived, they could never tell exactly who had killed the trafficker, and with more than a little willful blindness on their part, most such cases simply died without resolution.
“But her…” Ah Yao’s feelings were rather complicated.
Lu Yuan raised her brows. “Miss Chi doesn’t seem like a mountain-dwelling Daoist cultivator so much as some blade-licking wandering warrior [1]someone who lives dangerously by the sword jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2991339_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2991339_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.”
Jiang Yao nodded quickly. “That’s exactly what I was thinking!”
Lu Yuan added, “Senior Brother’s definitely thinking about making friends with her now.”
Jiang Yao nodded again. “I think so too!”
He turned his head to look, Ye Pengzhou had folded the Ghost-Wailing Blade into the shape of a fan, his eyes smiling as he stared intently at the girl in the crowd.
As if sensing his gaze, the girl turned to look his way.
She stood there in her green robe soaked in blood, an air of fierce, chilling intensity clinging to her, her brows and eyes carrying the same severity, hard to approach. After holding his gaze for a moment, she smiled faintly, and like a spring breeze passing through, the ice in her eyes melted entirely into clear spring water.
She had a pair of remarkably clean eyes, black and white sharply distinct.
…
Fengxue changed into a clean set of plain clothes, folded up her bloodied Daoist robe, and tucked it into her cloth bundle to take back for washing.
The others were already seated at a table by the window. On the polished bamboo table, alongside the few home-style dishes they’d ordered, sat the fried tofu, homemade pickled vegetables, soy milk, and snow-white wine-lees cakes that had just been sent over, the whole table was crowded with food.
Ye Xingyue, licking at her candied hawthorn skewer, called out, “Sister Fengxue, hurry and eat, or greedy Ah Yao here’s going to finish everything!”
Ah Yao said indignantly, “You little brat—”
Fengxue set her cloth bundle aside, picked up a wine cup, and took a sip of Jingquan’s fine wine. It slid smoothly down her throat, the sweet fragrance of wine-lees cake heady and intoxicating.
Everything was exactly as she’d expected it would be.
The only difference was the handful of unexpected people now sitting beside her.
Fengxue closed her eyes and took small, unhurried sips of the wine, her skin glowing fair as snow, pale gold lashes trembling faintly in the sunlight.
Ye Pengzhou asked with a smile, “Miss Chi, do you often come down the mountain?”
Fengxue made a small sound of agreement. “If the local people run into some unsettling business with monsters or ghosts, they come up the mountain for help, and we go down to slay demons and clear out ghosts. Sometimes we also handle matters of feng shui, burial sites, house placements, that sort of thing.”
Ye Pengzhou swirled his wine cup. “These days, nine times out of ten, whatever’s causing trouble in this world isn’t monsters or ghosts at all.”
Fengxue made another small sound of agreement. “The world’s in bad shape.”
Ye Pengzhou’s gaze drifted, landing on the long sword propped against the table leg. “Miss Chi, why didn’t you just use your sword back there for the skinning? Wouldn’t a blade have been faster?”
Fengxue lifted her eyes and looked over at him.
To be fair, her features weren’t fierce at all, and her gaze was perfectly calm.
Even so, Ah Yao shivered, trembling like some pitiful little creature.
Fengxue said, “I didn’t want his blood dirtying my sword.”
She ran a hand along the blade. “This sword is beautiful. The person who gave it to me,” she paused, the corner of her mouth curving faintly, “is also a beauty. Wouldn’t it be a shame to stain it with the blood of livestock?”
Ye Pengzhou looked thoughtful. “Oh, you cherish it that much? I take it, then, that whoever gave you this sword is someone you have feelings for?”
“No,” Fengxue corrected, quite seriously. “She’s the woman my former fiancé has feelings for.”
The moment she said it, she realized she’d misspoken, and quietly took another sip of wine.
Ah Yao whispered to Lu Yuan, “That’s complicated. I didn’t know Qingming Mountain people had such tangled love lives.”
Lu Yuan nodded silently.
Ye Pengzhou, however, found this immensely entertaining and burst out laughing. “Hahaha, then your former fiancé really doesn’t know a good thing when he sees it, blind as a bat [2]utterly failing to appreciate what’s right in front of him jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2991339_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2991339_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. Is the man actually blind?” He raised his cup to Fengxue. “Miss Chi, I have an idea.”
Ye Xingyue said, “Senior Brother, keep your terrible ideas to yourself.”
Ye Pengzhou spun his folding fan and rapped it against her head, laughing. “Since the woman your former fiancé loves is the one who gave you this sword, maybe she has some regard for you too. Why not win her over yourself, and give him a taste of having his love stolen right out from under him [3]having someone else take away the one you love jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2991339_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2991339_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });?”
Fengxue: …
Ah Yao pressed a hand to his forehead. “Senior Brother, that’s an awfully vicious idea. Is that really something you go around suggesting?”
Ye Pengzhou laughed softly, about to say something more, but Fengxue set her cup down gently and said, “No need for that. I misspoke a moment ago, I only just ended my engagement with him today. Whatever happens to him now has nothing to do with me anymore.”
Fengxue turned her head to look out the window. The spring sunlight was warm, the little city steeped in the fragrance of good wine and pale golden light, the scholar was still raising his cup, reciting poetry, the drinkers still chasing their next round of drunkenness, the cats asleep on the rooftops curled into little round balls, bellies spread open under the sun.
Grandma Song wasn’t busy frying tofu today, she was walking slowly down the street hand in hand with Kou’er, mother and daughter together.
It felt almost like a beautiful dream.
Fengxue smiled, her eyes catching flecks of scattered light, loose strands of hair drifting at her ears. “Life is short. One ought to do something more interesting with it.”
Such as, for instance, giving these future great demon lords a good scare.
References[+]