Qingming Mountain rose in a forest of sheer peaks, wrapped in cloud and mist.
The youths from Yunmeng looked left and right, marveling at everything, curious as cats.
Ye Xingyue’s eyes went round. “The mountains here are so tall! And there’s so much fog!”
Fengxue deliberately slowed her pace to let them take in the scenery around them. She held Ye Xingyue’s hand—
For some reason the little girl had grown especially attached to her, while Ah Yao, by contrast, trailed far behind, clearly wishing he could put even more distance between them.
“Sister Fengxue,” Ye Xingyue said, tilting her small head up, “have you seen the mountains of Yunmeng?”
During her exile through the mortal world in her past life, Fengxue had traveled to many places. Yunmeng was a land of water, rivers and lakes scattered everywhere, its mountains were low and gentle, rolling softly upward, yet endless, ridge after ridge, with no visible end to the green.
Ye Xingyue said, “Our mountains look like a bunch of steamed buns!”
Ye Pengzhou laughed. “Sounds to me like you’re just hungry for buns.”
Ye Xingyue said, “I want ones with chili filling! Sister Fengxue, do they have chili-filled buns on the mountain?”
Ever since she’d watched someone smear chili paste onto a wine-lees cake, Fengxue had considered herself thoroughly desensitized to horror, hearing about chili-filled buns now, she took it in stride. She smiled and said, “No, only rather plain food up there. If you can’t get used to it, you can just tell the disciples who look after guests, and they’ll have the kitchen add extra chili to your dishes separately.”
Yunmeng was a land of rivers and marshes, damp and humid, which was why its people loved spicy food, it drove out the chill that settled in the body. And because Yunmeng was so remote, often looked down on as a backwater region lacking proper seasoning and salt, chili, which grew wild and plentiful in the mountains there, had become a beloved staple.
Every region’s cuisine, in the end, always traced back to its climate and geography.
When they reached Broken Leg Cliff, Fengxue scooped up Ye Xingyue in her arms, gathered her breath, and leapt lightly across the gap. She turned to look back, the Yunmeng group all had decent skill, even Ah Yao, who’d been left weak-kneed from all the vomiting, managed a running start and cleared the drop.
Only Ye Pengzhou remained standing on the other side, his expression strange.
Fengxue asked, “Fellow Cultivator Ye?”
Ye Pengzhou’s mouth curved into a smile as he spun his folding fan and tapped it against his own forehead. “Little Immortal Maiden, why don’t you all go on ahead. I just remembered I need to head back to Jingquan for a jug of wine…”
Ye Xingyue covered her mouth, giggling.
Fengxue looked at him, her eyes clear and unclouded.
The smile gradually faded from Ye Pengzhou’s face, replaced by a hint of defeat. “Fine. I’m a bit,” he glanced down at the clouds below and went pale, saying with visible effort, “I’m a bit afraid of heights.”
Fengxue leapt back over to his side. “Let me help you.”
Before he could react, she caught hold of his sash and, light and swift as a bird in flight, leapt them both across.
Once she let go, Ye Pengzhou swayed slightly and leaned against the rock face.
His face was as pale as the surrounding mist, though his dark brows and eyes still carried something of Yunmeng’s watery, spirited grace.
Fengxue asked, “Are you all right?”
Ye Pengzhou stared at her for a moment, then suddenly laughed. “Thank you.”
Fengxue turned and considered the road ahead.
There was a stretch coming up that was especially treacherous, a sheer cliff face where a narrow path had been carved by hand, wide enough for only one person at a time.
To cross it, one had to press their back flat against the rock wall, facing a drop with no visible bottom.
The mountain was thick with cloud and mist, pale haze rising nearly to the feet. One careless step, and a person would fall into the abyss.
Strangely enough, Broken Leg Cliff, that smaller drop-off, was where disciples often broke their legs, while this far more dangerous stretch of path had never seen a single accident.
Fengxue considered the height-fearing young “demon lord” and said, “Let me have one of my senior brothers carry you on a crane. The road ahead is even more dangerous.”
Ye Pengzhou gripped his fan tightly, smiling with a pale face. “Little Immortal Maiden, do you usually walk this yourself?”
Fengxue nodded. “We’re used to relying on our own feet.”
Ye Pengzhou said, “Then there’s no need to make special arrangements for me.”
Fengxue said, “…The mountain is very tall. Very steep.”
“How could I let a fear of heights make me miss such extraordinary scenery?” The youth strode ahead past her, fan swaying lightly, his red robe billowing in the wind, the lotus blossoms embroidered on his sleeves stirring as if alive.
Ye Xingyue made a face at his retreating back. “Pfft, useless senior brother.”
Ah Yao trudged along, dejected. “To be honest, I’m a bit afraid of heights too. These mountains are so tall and steep, if your foot slips, you’ll just fall right off, won’t you? Bet a lot of people have died falling here.”
Fengxue nodded. “Before our founding master established the sect here, plenty of scholars and wanderers used to climb these dangerous peaks just for the view, and there were always a few who fell to their deaths. Later, the elders set up formations throughout the mountain, so that spiritual energy would catch anyone falling off a cliff before they were smashed to pieces, though bruises and scrapes are unavoidable.”
Ah Yao patted his chest. “Well, that’s good then. As long as it doesn’t kill you!”
Ye Pengzhou had started off walking calmly at the front, but before long he began slowing down, drifting to the back of the group.
At least he wasn’t too far behind.
When they reached the most treacherous stretch of cliffside path, Ye Xingyue bounced along the narrow way without the slightest concern, while Lu Yuan and Ah Yao held hands, pressed close to the rock wall, moving forward step by careful step.
Fengxue glanced back at Ye Pengzhou.
He pressed his lips together.
Fengxue held out a hand to the height-fearing young demon lord. “Coming?”
Ye Pengzhou looked at her for a moment, then smiled and took her hand. “Then my thanks, Little Immortal Maiden.”
Fengxue said, “No need to stand on ceremony.”
Up close, holding his cool palm in hers, she caught a faint scent from him, like the cool, lotus-tinged mist rising off the waters of Yunmeng.
The sun began to set, casting endless streaks of glow across the sky, which deepened into a rich violet-blue, the mist around them taking on a beautiful, glowing color.
The youths stopped where they stood, pressed flat against the cliff face, and from that small foothold, watched what might have been the most extraordinary, breathtaking view in the world.
”””
By the time they reached the top of the mountain, night had fallen.
Dim stone lanterns lined the mountain steps, lighting the way, ahead, the outline of the deep-mountain Daoist palace shimmered in and out of view, bronze bells hanging from the eaves swaying and ringing with an ancient sound.
Fengxue held up a wind lantern and had climbed a few steps up the mountain stairs when a shout rang out and two youths leapt in front of her, blocking the path.
Yi Qiuyi and Yi Cun’er, now in clean clothes, bellowed, “We’ve been waiting for you!”
Fengxue looked them over, her expression somewhere between a smile and no smile at all. “All washed up now?”
The youths’ mouths twisted, nearly reduced to tears again.
Yi Cun’er choked back his tears and said angrily, “Chi Fengxue, I told you to wait and see. This morning we weren’t ready, and you caught us off guard, that’s the only reason we suffered such an outrageous humiliation. Now we’re prepared, and you’re going to pay your debt of dung, dung for dung!”
Fengxue crossed her arms. “You should go find the birds on the mountain for that. What are you looking for me for?”
Yi Qiuyi said, “Those birds were obviously acting on your orders!”
Fengxue said, “Well then, let me first see these fellow cultivators who’ve come for the Grand Rites of Heaven to their rest. It’s late, and the mountain paths are hard to walk.”
At that, the two of them looked past her, in the dim night, all they could make out were a few shadowy figures following behind Fengxue, their faces indistinct.
They exchanged a glance and lowered their wooden swords. “Guests have arrived?”
Then they saw the youths step closer out of the shadows, wearing strange red robes, straw sandals on every pair of feet.
Yi Cun’er frowned. “Dressed so oddly, where are these guests from?”
Jiang Yao said, “Have you eaten nothing but plain rice your whole life? Can’t you tell we’ve come all the way from Yunmeng?”
Ye Xingyue giggled. “Maybe he’s blind.”
Displeased, Yi Cun’er snorted coldly. “Country bumpkins from Yunmeng? Chi Fengxue, are these actually guests who’ve come a long way, or troublemakers sneaking in to take advantage of the Grand Rites of Heaven?”
Fengxue was silent for a moment, then suddenly dropped the wind lantern in her hand and drew her peachwood sword.
The lantern drifted down lightly, rolling along the ground, casting a thin line of red light.
It also lit up, in the pitch-black night, a patch of gray-white cloth.
Fengxue’s sword struck out in that instant, aimed straight at the two youths blocking the path.
Yi Qiuyi and Yi Cun’er had been brooding over their humiliating defeat that morning and had come thoroughly prepared. They knew Fengxue trained hard at swordplay and struck with blinding speed, but had no real talent for techniques, so they meant to teach her a lesson.
However fast a sword, it was still an ordinary mortal blade. How could it possibly compare to a technique?
Yi Qiuyi darted quickly to one side and flung a few talismans.
The talismans hung suspended in midair, giving off a faint glow, lighting up a small corner of the darkness.
Yi Cun’er slapped two talismans onto his own hands and feet, one a Strength of the Titan talisman, one a Divine Traveling talisman.
‘Strength to uproot mountains, spirit to overshadow the world.’ The Strength of the Titan talisman doubled the caster’s physical power, crushing all resistance, as if a titan had possessed his body.
And the Divine Traveling talisman would make his movements far swifter.
The youth watching from the sidelines laughed. “Not enough skill, so you make up for it with talismans?”
Yi Cun’er shot him a glare, and in that split second of distraction, the peachwood sword was already upon him. He didn’t dare let his guard down again and met the attack with everything he had.
The talismans hanging in the sky lit the mountain steps like stars, cutting a bright corner out of the darkness.
The scene played out like a stage, the Yunmeng group standing below, watching the girl dance with her sword.
With the Strength of the Titan and Divine Traveling talismans working together, Yi Cun’er’s strikes came fast and hard, each swing of his sword accompanied by the crack of wind and thunder, matching the skill of any renowned swordsman in the mortal world.
But the girl was faster still. She never met him head-on, her movements light and fluid, leaving nothing behind but streaks of afterimage.
Ah Yao said, “This doesn’t look good. Fellow Cultivator Chi seems weaker in raw strength than this guy.”
Ye Xingyue snorted, her voice all childish indignation. “That’s because he’s cheating! A grown man like him, fighting someone else and still cheating, I don’t even cheat, and I’m only six.”
Lu Yuan glanced instinctively at Ye Pengzhou.
Ye Pengzhou only swayed his fan lazily, his expression entirely at ease.
Yi Cun’er thrust again and again, without so much as brushing the hem of Fengxue’s robe, and his temper began to fray. After several repeated strikes, his strength started flagging.
Although the talismans let him force his speed and power higher than his body could naturally sustain, his physical stamina couldn’t keep pace, and with Fengxue refusing to clash with him head-on, circling instead, wearing down his energy bit by bit.
It felt like she was toying with him.
Another thrust met only empty air. Yi Cun’er gasped for breath, his vision swimming dark, when he suddenly felt his sword grow heavy, and heard his elder brother’s anxious warning ring out beside his ear.
Through the haze, he raised his head.
Moonlight broke through the clouds above, settling like silver frost across a thousand mountains.
The girl balanced lightly on the tip of her toes, resting on his blade, her plain robe flaring in the wind. With a flick of her wrist she thrust out with her sword, abandoning her earlier retreat, striking now like a blade parting mountains and splitting seas, straight toward him.
Just as the sword tip was about to reach his face, a mountain gale rose without warning.
Fengxue leapt lightly aside, dodging the gust head-on, and shot a glance at Yi Qiuyi.
Yi Qiuyi stood there forming a hand seal, his face flushed red, silently channeling a wind-summoning technique.
Ah Yao shouted, “Ganging up on one person, how shameless!”
Ye Xingyue chimed in, “Shameless, shameless!”
Ye Pengzhou merely closed his fan and took half a step forward, the mountain wind billowing his red robe.
This whole farce came to an abrupt halt with a single furious shout.
“What do you two think you’re doing?!”
Fengxue sheathed her sword and turned to look.
A tall young man in plain cloth robe and shoes, wearing a moon-pale sash, climbed the mountain steps toward them.
Yi Cun’er’s sword technique broke off mid-motion, his face flushed a deep red, after several heavy gasps, his body suddenly pitched forward and he came tumbling down the stone steps.
“Brother!” Yi Qiuyi cried out in alarm, rushing down after him.
The young man caught the falling, unconscious youth and said quietly, “Just exhausted, that’s all.”
He pulled out a gourd, fed the youth a pill, and after a moment Yi Cun’er stirred back to consciousness.
The young man removed the straw hat covering his head, revealing a youthful, defiant face. His gaze met Fengxue’s, turning suddenly stern. “Picking fights again?”
Fengxue pressed her lips together and said, “Fourth Senior Brother.”
Her fourth senior brother was named Xu Xiawu, and unlike her other senior brothers and sisters, he spent most of his years in solitary cultivation on the mountain, only occasionally coming down to fight demons.
Both of them being Master Lingyun’s direct disciples, cultivating together on the same mountain, they should by rights have gotten along well.
Unfortunately, their sect had a long and honored tradition of “respecting each other like ice”, polite, distant, and cold.
And for reasons she’d never quite understood, Xu Xiawu had always looked down on her a little, likely for the same reason as everyone else: that she wasn’t good enough for Shen Yujing, and wasn’t good enough to be Master Lingyun’s personal disciple either.
Before Fengxue could speak, Ah Yao couldn’t help jumping to her defense. “Are all of you at Qingming Mountain a bunch of blind fools who can’t tell right from wrong? They’re clearly the ones who provoked the little Immortal Maiden first, using both techniques and talismans, ganging up two against one, and they still couldn’t beat her!”
Ye Xingyue nodded vigorously. “That’s right, that’s right! Sister Fengxue beat them into scattered petals and fallen flowers [1]utterly defeated them jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2991343_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2991343_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });!”
Something shifted in Xu Xiawu’s eyes. “Oh?” He sounded doubtful. “How exactly did she win?”
Fengxue said, “With a sword, naturally.”
“An ordinary mortal sword technique?”
Fengxue nodded.
Xu Xiawu still seemed unconvinced, and glanced over at the Yi brothers standing off to the side.
Both youths wore expressions of guilt.
His gaze lingered a moment on the talismans stuck to Yi Cun’er’s elbow and knee, and the corner of his mouth curved up. “He was wearing talismans. How did you fight that? Did you use talismans yourself?”
Fengxue shook her head. “No need. I only had to wear him down until he ran out of strength. Talismans are precious, it would be a waste to use them for something like this.”
The two youths hung their heads, red-faced with a mix of shame and frustration.
Yi Cun’er suddenly lifted his pale face. “Senior Brother, something’s off about her! She was never this good before, but today she seemed strange, her footwork was even faster than mine with a Divine Traveling talisman on.”
Fengxue’s brow furrowed, a bad feeling crept over her. If Xu Xiawu started connecting the dots, that she’d just come back from the Demon Den, that he might guess at the demonic qi clinging to her, she clenched her hand, regretting having shown off quite so much.
“Something off?” Xu Xiawu’s expression turned cold. “It seems to me that something’s off with ‘you’. Provoking a fellow disciple, ganging up two against one, and now that you’ve lost, instead of reflecting on it, you sit here slandering her with empty words.”
He paused, then went on slowly, “Besides, Junior Sister was never weak to begin with.”
Fengxue blinked.
Xu Xiawu frowned, sighing in a tone of exasperated disappointment. “It’s only that she’s been too absorbed in matters of love, letting it derail her cultivation.”
The Yi brothers, having done wrong, could hardly escape a heavy punishment. Xu Xiawu lectured them sternly for a while, then sent them off to the Hall of Discipline to accept their punishment themselves.
They offered no argument and trudged off, heads hanging low.
Xu Xiawu exchanged polite greetings with the Yunmeng group and escorted them along the way back to their guest quarters. On the walk back, in a rare moment, he said to Fengxue, “You’ve improved.”
But he wasn’t skilled at giving compliments, and immediately followed it with, “Still, you need more practice. And don’t go picking fights with fellow disciples over petty jealousy in matters of the heart from now on, what would that look like? We are people of quiet cultivation. You’re Master’s personal disciple, and you above all should set an example, be a model for others!”
Fengxue lowered her head and said, “Understood.”
Xu Xiawu asked, “Has Junior Brother woken up?”
Fengxue nodded. “Yes. He just woke today.”
Xu Xiawu shot her a sidelong glance. “You went to see him again?”
Fengxue nodded again.
Xu Xiawu’s expression darkened once more, and after a long pause he said quietly, “Absorbed in love like this, how can you ever achieve the Great Dao?”
Fengxue said softly, “It doesn’t matter anyway. My talent was never good enough to achieve any Great Dao.”
Xu Xiawu stopped, looking at this junior sister he barely knew, his sword-straight brows drawing together slightly.
Fengxue gave a faint, rueful smile. “But Senior Brother needn’t worry. I ended my engagement with Shen Yujing today. There’s nothing between us anymore, and I won’t be disturbing his cultivation again.”
The corner of Xu Xiawu’s mouth lifted. “You’ve ended your engagement? Well, good. Then we can all cultivate together on the mountain in peace, seeking to understand the Great Dao…”
Fengxue shook her head. “Senior Brother, I don’t want to keep cultivating in seclusion on this mountain.” She lifted her face, in the moonlight, her eyes were remarkably bright. “I want to go down the mountain.”
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