What do you mean?
Ji Youyou asked him.
Fan Moxi’s ghostly flame flickered behind him.
The light drew away leaving his face in shadow.
He looked mysterious and unreadable.
I cannot leave.
Not yet.
But I can help you escape.
Why can you not go?
And why help me?
Fan Moxi sounded displeased.
You are so young yet so distrustful.
Can I afford not to be?
She had been kind to Yu Xuanhe when he lost his memory.
She had saved him.
And he had betrayed her and locked her away.
She had learned to keep her guard up.
She did not explain.
Better safe than sorry.
Suit yourself.
Fan Moxi spoke calmly and steadily.
He set the little dragon upon his shoulder.
It looked dazed and gentle.
It curled there quietly.
He settled himself cross-legged on the floor.
Ji Youyou watched him confused.
What are you doing?
Standing tires my back.
You have so many questions.
I intend to answer them all.
He sounded oddly petulant.
Ji Youyou crouched down too.
May I hear them now?
You may.
He brightened again.
Ji Youyou thought he would fit right in her own time.
He was intense yet never brooding.
I will start with why I cannot leave.
Ji Youyou nodded.
I am listening.
A thousand years ago I was mortal.
There were few who cultivated immortality then.
The land was divided into nineteen warring kingdoms.
Bloodshed everywhere.
No one had enough to eat.
No one could seek the path of immortality.
Ji Youyou had lived deep in the mountains with Yu Xuanhe.
She knew nothing of the outside world.
She listened as if to a story.
I was a speaker.
A strategist.
I moved between courts offering counsel.
Fan Moxi spoke slowly as if tasting old memories.
I served no single lord.
Where the coin was there was I.
Ji Youyou laughed softly.
Where the coin is there is the master.
That is sensible.
In such times staying neutral is wisest.
Fan Moxi looked faintly pleased.
Then I turned twenty.
Everything changed.
How so?
The heavens turned against us.
Stones fell from the sky.
Fire broke from the earth.
Hail and flood.
All perished.
All but you?
I died.
In the first flood.
He spoke without bitterness.
The centuries had smoothed the memory.
I drifted in the dark.
I was not fully gone.
I felt nothing but stillness.
Then light found me.
Power filled me.
I woke.
Ji Youyou listened enchanted.
Like something from a drama.
You were brought back?
Fan Moxi nodded.
The world was laid waste.
Carrion and scavengers everywhere.
Then the sky gathered into a shape.
A face of cloud.
It was the will of heaven.
It had raised me from death.
And then?
It told me all others were gone.
Only I and one other were restored.
Who else?
A man.
Fan Moxi’s expression softened into something complex.
Love.
Hate.
Longing.
Regret.
Ji Youyou shifted away nervously.
She did not want him to suddenly turn violent.
He sighed.
A man of rare beauty.
His name was Ji Xueqiao.
Ji Youyou caught something in his tone.
There was a tenderness there that did not suit him.
You loved him.
Did you not?
Fan Moxi turned sharp.
I hated him.
I wish him dead.
Yet you speak so highly of him.
Never you mind.
He continued.
Heaven chose us both.
We were to contend.
Whoever persuaded heaven would rule all the land.
The other would die.
So you lost?
Fan Moxi scowled.
Do not look down on me.
We were evenly matched.
Heaven could not choose.
So it set us each to build a kingdom.
We were given equal power.
People were divided between us.
Mine fell.
I lost.
To him.
Ji Youyou thought heaven’s judgment sounded strangely childish.
Fan Moxi’s eyes grew hard.
He imprisoned me here.
To watch his triumph.
And my ruin.
He burned with resentment.
I was never as celebrated as he.
Never as powerful.
Men do not only wish to defeat you.
They wish to subdue you completely.
Yet I have kept some measure of power.
I hear things.
My followers sent word.
What news?
Ji Xueqiao.
The immortal.
He is dead.
Ji Youyou shook her head.
Heaven’s ways are strange indeed.
I do not believe it.
I have no way to know.
I have waited all these years.
I would haunt him.
I would find him.
Help me leave.
Find him for me.