Warnings: murder, blood, child begging, Themes: justice, revenge, found family
Memory One You're exhausted. Your limbs are past shaking, an aching hollowness in your body telling you that you've neglected it too long. You're walking in an unfamiliar town, holding a bamboo pole, knocking it against the ground and the cobbles. Your eyes flick this way and that in small movements, never making eye contact. Whenever someone approaches, either a villager or a traveller in richer robes, you reach out, “Excuse me, are there any big sects around here?”
They avoid you, moving around or ducking away from your trembling hand. You try again. “Excuse me, are there any really powerful people around the area? Powerful people who cultivate.”
Someone who can help you seek revenge. Seek justice.
Nobody is taking your questions seriously. They often walk away after just a few half-hearted sentences. You aren't discouraged, though. You tirelessly ask, even if you've been shooed away countless times. People who would have offered you food steer away instead, and your stomach growls. You ignore it, of course. What else can you do?
Eventually, seeing that you can’t get any answers here, you leave, and find a smaller path. Your walk changes, no longer tapping the cane, you just lean against it as you walk, legs too heavy to move more nimbly any more. Eyes fixed on the road ahead, you keep going.
Memory Two The building you're sat in is rickety, wooden boards and screens and plaster and old reeds. The cold is biting, bitter, and wind howls outside. The room you're in is small, cramped; you're wrapped in a thin cotton quilt like a dumpling in a wrapper, tucked against the shoulder of a taller man in white robes and a blindfold. He's mending a basket, unweaving a broken strip of bamboo. It's slow going, he's clumsy with cold, even as his fingers move with deftness. Bamboo rasps against calluses. You watch him sidelong, from beneath your lashes, for a good five minutes as he tugs and tucks the new strip. His arm is warm against your cheek when you lean against it and stifle a yawn.
Another man sighs, and pokes the decrepit furnace the three of you are sitting around. His chin is propped up in one of his hands. He's not bothering to hide his staring at your companion, eyes intent and almost red in the light of the fire. Still, he looks... bored. Calm, even.
You don't trust him. Whenever he moves, you fight against tensing; your hands clench against the inner lining of the quilt. But it's warm, and you're comfortable, and the noise of the wind lulls you to a state halfway to sleep. Your stomach is full, the little bit of meat you scavenged is greasy on your tongue along with the lingering, crisp taste of greens, and you're looking forward to the sweet he'll leave you tonight.
If you had to put a name to the feeling seeping through your bones, it would be contentment.
Memory Three Dusk has fallen on a familiar room. Outside, A-Qing is kneeling against the wall, watching through a crack in the slats. Her hands are clasped over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks. She's been there for a long time; her legs are numb and pale, her collar soaked with crying, her hands red where she's bitten them rather than cry out. Inside, Xue Yang is half-kneeled in front of a clean corpse, familiar white robes and blindfold, a line of red across its throat. He's checking over an array and incantations painted on the rickety floor. After frowning for a moment, he wipes away all of them and redraws the entire thing.
This time, he sits directly on the ground, staring patiently at the corpse. A-Qing’s legs, already beyond numb, begin to tremble and twitch. Her eyes are swollen from crying.
Time passes in a blur, until Xue Yang moves again. On his smiling face, an emptiness appears.
Without thinking, he presses his hands against the wound on the body's neck. Its face is whiter than paper. Large areas of dark-red blood are dried up on its neck. In an instant, Xue Yang’s eyes are bloodshot. Hands clenched into fists, he stands and begins to rampage around the coffin home. He kicks and thrashes, noisily destroying the house, expression wild and uncontrolled.
Once everything is destroyed, he calms down again. He squats where he had been and calls out in a small voice, “Xiao XingChen.”
He continues, “If you don’t get up, I’ll make your dear friend Song Lan murder people.
“I’ll kill off everyone in the entire Yi City and make them into living corpses. You’ve been living here for such a long time. Is it really okay for you not to care?
“I’ll strangle that little blind A-Qing and leave her corpse in the fields for wild dogs to gobble her up.”
A-Qing shivers soundlessly. Blood seeps out of her fingers, her incisor has pierced the skin of her hand.
Xue Yang suddenly shouts out, enraged, “Xiao XingChen!”
He yanks at his collar, and shakes it a couple of times... and then yanks the body onto his back. Muttering, he leaves the house.
Only after he was far away does A-Qing dare to move slightly.
Unable to balance herself, she tumbles to the ground, and only crawls up again after writhing and beating her legs for a while. She manages to walk a few more steps forward. A few more... As her muscles stretch, she walks faster and faster and faster, and breaks into a run.
After she runs so far that the city is far behind her, she finally lets out the cries that she buried within herself, “Daozhang! Daozhang! Aaah, Daozhang…!”
A-Qing | Elle
Themes: justice, revenge, found family
Memory One You're exhausted. Your limbs are past shaking, an aching hollowness in your body telling you that you've neglected it too long. You're walking in an unfamiliar town, holding a bamboo pole, knocking it against the ground and the cobbles. Your eyes flick this way and that in small movements, never making eye contact. Whenever someone approaches, either a villager or a traveller in richer robes, you reach out, “Excuse me, are there any big sects around here?”
They avoid you, moving around or ducking away from your trembling hand. You try again. “Excuse me, are there any really powerful people around the area? Powerful people who cultivate.”
Someone who can help you seek revenge. Seek justice.
Nobody is taking your questions seriously. They often walk away after just a few half-hearted sentences. You aren't discouraged, though. You tirelessly ask, even if you've been shooed away countless times. People who would have offered you food steer away instead, and your stomach growls. You ignore it, of course. What else can you do?
Eventually, seeing that you can’t get any answers here, you leave, and find a smaller path. Your walk changes, no longer tapping the cane, you just lean against it as you walk, legs too heavy to move more nimbly any more. Eyes fixed on the road ahead, you keep going.
Memory Two The building you're sat in is rickety, wooden boards and screens and plaster and old reeds. The cold is biting, bitter, and wind howls outside. The room you're in is small, cramped; you're wrapped in a thin cotton quilt like a dumpling in a wrapper, tucked against the shoulder of a taller man in white robes and a blindfold. He's mending a basket, unweaving a broken strip of bamboo. It's slow going, he's clumsy with cold, even as his fingers move with deftness. Bamboo rasps against calluses. You watch him sidelong, from beneath your lashes, for a good five minutes as he tugs and tucks the new strip. His arm is warm against your cheek when you lean against it and stifle a yawn.
Another man sighs, and pokes the decrepit furnace the three of you are sitting around. His chin is propped up in one of his hands. He's not bothering to hide his staring at your companion, eyes intent and almost red in the light of the fire. Still, he looks... bored. Calm, even.
You don't trust him. Whenever he moves, you fight against tensing; your hands clench against the inner lining of the quilt. But it's warm, and you're comfortable, and the noise of the wind lulls you to a state halfway to sleep. Your stomach is full, the little bit of meat you scavenged is greasy on your tongue along with the lingering, crisp taste of greens, and you're looking forward to the sweet he'll leave you tonight.
If you had to put a name to the feeling seeping through your bones, it would be contentment.
Memory Three Dusk has fallen on a familiar room. Outside, A-Qing is kneeling against the wall, watching through a crack in the slats. Her hands are clasped over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks. She's been there for a long time; her legs are numb and pale, her collar soaked with crying, her hands red where she's bitten them rather than cry out. Inside, Xue Yang is half-kneeled in front of a clean corpse, familiar white robes and blindfold, a line of red across its throat. He's checking over an array and incantations painted on the rickety floor. After frowning for a moment, he wipes away all of them and redraws the entire thing.
This time, he sits directly on the ground, staring patiently at the corpse. A-Qing’s legs, already beyond numb, begin to tremble and twitch. Her eyes are swollen from crying.
Time passes in a blur, until Xue Yang moves again. On his smiling face, an emptiness appears.
Without thinking, he presses his hands against the wound on the body's neck. Its face is whiter than paper. Large areas of dark-red blood are dried up on its neck. In an instant, Xue Yang’s eyes are bloodshot. Hands clenched into fists, he stands and begins to rampage around the coffin home. He kicks and thrashes, noisily destroying the house, expression wild and uncontrolled.
Once everything is destroyed, he calms down again. He squats where he had been and calls out in a small voice, “Xiao XingChen.”
He continues, “If you don’t get up, I’ll make your dear friend Song Lan murder people.
“I’ll kill off everyone in the entire Yi City and make them into living corpses. You’ve been living here for such a long time. Is it really okay for you not to care?
“I’ll strangle that little blind A-Qing and leave her corpse in the fields for wild dogs to gobble her up.”
A-Qing shivers soundlessly. Blood seeps out of her fingers, her incisor has pierced the skin of her hand.
Xue Yang suddenly shouts out, enraged, “Xiao XingChen!”
He yanks at his collar, and shakes it a couple of times... and then yanks the body onto his back. Muttering, he leaves the house.
Only after he was far away does A-Qing dare to move slightly.
Unable to balance herself, she tumbles to the ground, and only crawls up again after writhing and beating her legs for a while. She manages to walk a few more steps forward. A few more... As her muscles stretch, she walks faster and faster and faster, and breaks into a run.
After she runs so far that the city is far behind her, she finally lets out the cries that she buried within herself, “Daozhang! Daozhang! Aaah, Daozhang…!”