Rumble, rumble...
Half-conscious, Wang Yu heard the sound he knew from every period drama: the rolling wheels of an ancient horse-drawn carriage. Then came the jolting beneath him. His hand rested on a thick wool blanket, but the ride still rattled him about uncomfortably.
He opened his eyes to wooden beams overhead, curtains hanging at both sides, tassels stirring in a light breeze, sunlight through a latticed window, green tree-shadows flickering past outside...
And a pair of bright eyes, smiling and not quite smiling.
"Awake?" The owner of those eyes curled the corner of her mouth, her gentle voice carrying a thread of teasing so faint it might not have been there at all.
"And here you look exactly like the young Prince Zhao — my lady even started teaching you martial arts early on. Who would have thought that with the dagger still a foot away, you'd faint from fright!" a crisp voice chimed in from his other side.
"Ziling. Mind your manners." The bright-eyed woman shot her maid a glance. Ziling shrank her neck, pulled a face at Wang Yu, and said no more.
Wang Yu looked back at the bright-eyed woman and heard her say, "I took your pulse just now. You only fainted from shock. Nothing is wrong with you."
Wang Yu stared at her blankly. She wore an understated gown of silver-threaded, cloud-patterned brocade, a green jade hairpin slanted through her hair — serene, lovely, effortlessly graceful. Seeing him dazed, she waved a hand before his eyes; the twisted silver bracelet at her wrist set off skin as white as snow.
"You will need to start training in earnest, though. If this is how you carry yourself back at the Westguard Manor, you'll never hold down those proud troops and unruly officers — and you'll give yourself away besides." Her tone carried an unspoken point. "Don't forget: the one you care about is still in the capital."
Meeting that gaze — still at its depths, with a flicker of quickness — Wang Yu's mind supplied her name at once. Li Yunxiu.
And with it, the original owner's memories came flooding in like a tide.
The original owner had also been named Wang Yu — a native of Pingjin Prefecture in the Capital Circuit, from a household once comfortable enough that he had studied books and lettering, though after his parents died a few years back, the family had slowly fallen on hard times.
He had still been working out how to feed himself when a band of mysterious men came knocking — and carried him off to the capital.
As it turned out, the original owner was the spitting image of Zhao Yu, heir of the Westguard Prince!
Not long before, the Westguard Prince, Zhao Zheng, had died. He left only the one son — Zhao Yu, sent to the capital ten years ago as a hostage. The reigning emperor had no intention of letting Zhao Yu leave the capital to take up the title, but neither was he confident he could absorb the Westguard faction — a power with its own men, its own money, its own land, answering summonses but never orders, long since a state within the state. So when he learned that somewhere in his realm lived one Wang Yu with Zhao Yu's exact face, he had the man seized and brought to the capital at once — to pose as Zhao Yu, travel to the fief in his place, and take the Westguard Prince's faction in hand!
And to keep Wang Yu from slipping his leash, the emperor had bestowed a marriage on him: the celebrated woman Top Scholar, Li Yunxiu, made his princess consort, returning with him to the fief to control the Westguard Manor.
Beyond that...
A smiling face, bright-eyed and white-toothed, flashed through Wang Yu's mind. She had been brought into the capital along with him and settled inside the palace precincts — not free, but at least wanting for nothing.
The memories kept coming. After entering the capital, he had been drilled in carriage and etiquette, expression and bearing, to counterfeit Zhao Yu down to the smallest detail — a second-generation wastrel of princely blood: lecherous, wayward, arrogant, and overbearing.
Li Yunxiu, meanwhile, had taught him the relevant meridian theory and the foundations of the martial arts. The Westguard Prince Zhao Zheng had been one of the most famous martial grandmasters alive; however dissolute Zhao Yu might be, he still carried the family inheritance, and neither his internal arts nor his swordsmanship were weak. Wang Yu had to learn at least a passable imitation. He could avoid ever trading blows — but his daily bearing could not be allowed to falter.
The trouble was that the original owner had poured most of his effort into mimicking Zhao Yu and never taken the martial arts to heart. So when assassins struck on the road and he faced the great terror of death for the first time, he was quite literally frightened to death.
Whereupon a Wang Yu from another world moved into the vacant nest, inheriting his body and merging with his memories.
This Wang Yu was that Wang Yu.
"An ancient world? A wuxia world?" Having absorbed the original owner's memories, Wang Yu had a working grasp of this place — no deeper than the original's station allowed, but at least he was not completely ignorant.
He knew, for instance, the woman in front of him. Li Yunxiu — born to a minor gentry family of the Capital Circuit, first-rate in letters and martial arts alike. When her clan moved to marry her off as a bargaining chip, she had disguised herself as a man and sat the imperial examinations — and swept straight into the top three of the palace exam, exposed only upon taking first place.
Being a woman, she could not be ranked among the top three. But the emperor, moved by her circumstances, issued a special edict voiding the Li family's marriage arrangement and appointing her to serve in the Hanlin Academy. So the name of Li Yunxiu, the woman Top Scholar, rang through the realm — her literary fame standing even above her martial.
Not that her martial arts were weak. The original owner had watched palace guards fail to last two moves against her, and the things she taught him had sounded profound indeed.
And now this woman — peerless with brush and blade both — was his wife?
Wang Yu's hand moved on its own, reaching for the hand Li Yunxiu had extended in front of him.
Her eyes flickered, but she took his hand anyway and pulled him upright — then gave the gentlest twist, and Wang Yu's grip fell open whether he willed it or not.
Beside them, Ziling fought down a laugh and stuck her tongue out at Wang Yu, mouthing one silent word: "Toad."
Only then did Wang Yu remember — he was a counterfeit heir. The emperor had granted this marriage chiefly so that Li Yunxiu could put her hands into the Westguard Manor's affairs. It did not mean he actually got to share her bed.
Then he heard Li Yunxiu speak. "The late emperor's northern campaign went poorly, and last year the southwest rose in unrest. These are troubled times. The Westguard Prince holds fifty thousand troops and sits over the western marches, overawing the kingdoms of the Western Regions and the Qiang tribes of the northern desert. You must take that power in hand for His Majesty's use. Do not fail his trust."
Wang Yu turned over what the memories told him of this world's state of affairs. Brocade and blossoms on the surface — oil poured over a roaring fire beneath.
He searched the memories further. The current emperor had taken the throne two years ago — reputedly a man of grand talent and bold vision, tireless in governance. He had even granted Wang Yu an audience some days earlier, instructing him to cooperate well with Li Yunxiu, take over the Westguard Manor, and serve the court.
The original owner hadn't dared look up at him; by voice alone, the man had seemed at once stern and kindly. Now that Wang Yu had crossed over, he found it a little regrettable — he had missed his one chance to see what a real, live ancient emperor looked like.
Speaking of looks: what pleased Wang Yu most was that the original owner and Zhao Yu were both strikingly handsome men. The confidence he'd had in his own face before transmigrating had not been betrayed!
Watching Wang Yu drift off into who-knew-what thoughts wearing a faintly foolish smile, Li Yunxiu shook her head, speechless — she had, evidently, been casting pearls before swine — and turned to business.
"The Westguard line's martial inheritance is called the Flowing Flame Afterglow. Mastered, it opens a straight road into the Innate realm. But Zhao Yu entered the capital ten years ago with only the art's first three layers, and I have already taught you those. There is nothing better to do on the road — begin cultivating."
"You have never trained, and your meridians are narrow and clogged. But you haven't yet come of age. Put in the work, and you can still make something of yourself."
She sighed, and from a small rosewood case at her side she took out a pill. "This is a Lesser Returning Pill from the Prajna Chan Temple — they refine one furnace a year. It can add three years of cultivation to your base. I meant to wait until you had at least entered the gate of the art before giving it to you; taking it now squanders much of its potency — pulling on the sprout to make it grow. But necessity knows no niceties. We can't afford to be particular."
Wang Yu's eyes lit up. So this was it — the legendary wuxia-world pill that boosted your cultivation?
The pacing here was this fast?
True, Li Yunxiu had just pronounced him a late starter with clogged meridians and a low ceiling. Wang Yu resolutely ignored that part.
He had just lived through an assassination attempt!
First things first: get some martial arts into this body. He needed at least a fighting chance against the next dagger. The future could worry about itself.
He wasn't worried the pill might be poison. Li Yunxiu still needed him to control the Westguard Manor — and if she had wanted to poison him, she would hardly have waited until now.
"Take it. I will help you dissolve the potency." Li Yunxiu handed him the pill.
Wang Yu looked at the thumb-sized brown pellet breathing out waves of medicinal fragrance, and the corner of his mouth twitched. He peered left, then right, searching for something.
"What are you looking for?" Li Yunxiu asked.
"Water." It was the first thing Wang Yu had said since crossing over. He held up the Lesser Returning Pill. "It's this big. Do I chew it up, or wash it down? You can't expect me to swallow it whole."
He didn't know martial arts yet. Choking down a pill that size was beyond him.
Li Yunxiu: "..."
She suddenly felt that the Wang Yu in front of her was not quite the Wang Yu from before. The cramped stiffness that used to hide beneath his forced arrogance was gone, and his every word and movement seemed easier, more natural.
Ziling, quick on the uptake, poured a cup of tea and handed it over. "Wash it down!"
Wang Yu looked to Li Yunxiu. "Right now?"
She nodded. "Right now."
So Wang Yu popped the Lesser Returning Pill into his mouth and washed it down with tea.
Li Yunxiu's form flickered, and she was behind him, one jade hand pressed to the center of his back. Wang Yu felt warmth pour in from behind and sink straight into his lower abdomen.
"Guard your mind and feel for my internal energy. I will carry the pill's potency through your meridians along the circuits of the Flowing Flame Afterglow, and help you complete its first layer," Li Yunxiu said.
A moment later, Wang Yu felt a second current of warmth rise in his abdomen and merge with the true qi she had fed into him.
The blended current began at the dantian's sea of qi, ran the foot-shaoyang and foot-jueyin channels up and down his body, then flowed into the hand-shaoyin and hand-taiyang channels through chest and belly — precisely the first-layer circuit of the Flowing Flame Afterglow.
But perhaps because Wang Yu had not truly entered the gate of the art and could not guide it himself, he felt the current's heat steadily cooling. A few more full circuits and it might be spent entirely.
And then his head swam. An ancient, weathered turtle shell seemed to surface in his mind's eye — and the already-cooling medicinal force went cold all the faster.
At the same time, the shell gave off a hazy glow. Nine patterns, as if formed by nature itself, flickered once across its face — and then all fell still again.
"Isn't that the turtle-shell trinket I picked up at the antique market two days ago?"
"What kind of cheat code sells for eighty yuan?"