I see the green mountains as lovely, and I fancy the green mountains see me just the same.
Even thinking back on it a hundred years later, You Fusang felt the verse suited Yan Rushi perfectly.
This Young Sect Master of the Yan Sect was a peacock, a phoenix—of that heaven-favored, wild-strained kind, holding rain-permits and wind-edicts, who time and again drafted chapters to borrow the clouds and the moon.
Silks and gold she never deigned to see; when had those eyes ever spared a glance for lords and princes? Loath to return to jade towers—drunk in Luoyang.
And she, You Fusang, was foul vapor. She was dust.
She would have to cultivate through every suffering there was before she could stand shoulder to shoulder with so carefree an immortal as this little peacock.
The trials of the Yan Sect were perilous upon perilous; two youths, stumbling blind into them, glimpsed at the bottom of a beast-haunted ravine the sect’s Supreme Treasure—the Empty Mountain Archives.
By all rights, the first to touch the Empty Mountain Archives would take first place in the trial, with the right to enter the Inner Sect.
Storm, thunder and lightning ringed the Archives—illusions, all knew, but they frightened Yan Rushi all the same, and she egged You Fusang into going first.
You Fusang obliged.
Thinking of the Talismans covering her body and the arrows in her hand, all of it bestowed by Yan Rushi, the moment she had the Archives she handed them over.
Of course it was safest for the Trial Champion to be the Yan Sect’s own Young Sect Master.
The You Fusang of that time had a truly well-developed sense of her place as an ornament.
But never once had she imagined that at the closing ceremony, Yan Rushi would push her forward: “Mother… ah—no, no, Sect Master! The first to take the Archives in this trial was this Daoist named You Fusang.” Yan Rushi said, earnest, “So the title of Trial Champion belongs to her.”
Disbelief on every side—You Fusang included. She stood amid the crowd, lifting her head blankly, obvious astonishment in her eyes.
Only someone with the deepest confidence, she thought, could act with such openness and candor.
Upon the high seat of the Yan Sect, Yan Qingjue rose from the Sect Master’s place, her gaze sweeping over You Fusang.
“…So it’s you.”
A flicker of loathing crossed the woman’s eyes, very faint.
But how could You Fusang—always so attuned to such things—fail to catch it? At once she felt every eye upon her back like needles, and the joy of moments ago was drenched through.
Fortunately, the traditions of the Yan Sect trials did not bend to the Sect Master’s moods. That day, You Fusang truly earned the right to enter the Inner Sect.
As Trial Champion, she chose and paid homage to a master first.
“This child I picked up in Fusang Land. When I found her, she was gasping out her last beneath the foot of an Evil Ghost,” Yan Qingjue said, taking a sip of Jiangnan Longjing Tea, brushing over it lightly. “A pity—the child has no Spiritual Aptitude, cannot cultivate. I placed her in the Outer Mountain at the time, and somewhere along the way, I simply forgot her.”
Though she spoke of You Fusang, her gaze never once landed on her. Only much later did You Fusang understand: Yan Qingjue’s attitude toward her had never been open contempt, but the quieter cruelty of disregard and diminishment.
Sect Master Yan’s indifference was plain to all—so plain the other Elders found it strange. They were silent a moment, until Elder Cheng of sword-forging and artifact-smithing smoothed things over with an obliging laugh: “Overlooked she may have been, but the child still took first in the trial. How is that not fortune?”
Yan Qingjue said mildly: “I suppose so.”
Elder Cheng chuckled, came down from the dais, and reached out to help You Fusang up.
She had probably meant to say something—take You Fusang as her disciple, or the like—but the instant they touched, she started back in shock: “Wait!” She turned to Yan Qingjue. “Sect Master, have you misremembered something? This child’s aptitude is sound—pure to the extreme, even. How could she be incapable of cultivation?”
The whole assembly was stunned—none more than You Fusang: So… I can cultivate?
Yan Qingjue was taken aback too.
After a long moment she said: “How interesting. The fouled qi of Fusang Land must have smothered the child’s aptitude. My error. My eyes failed me.” She looked at You Fusang and repeated, word by measured word: “An interesting child. Very well—as Trial Champion, and with aptitude so clean, why not… stay at my side? Fusang. What say you?”
Yan Qingjue’s tone was peculiar—but such minutiae vanish before the great matter of a Sect Master taking a disciple. This was Sect Master Yan’s first discipleship in a hundred years, and proactive besides, and two at a single stroke: the Outer Mountain Student You Fusang, and her own daughter, Yan Rushi.
The title of First Disciple of Sect Master was truly majestic. Everyone offered congratulations, yet You Fusang instinctively felt something was off.
She thought: Yan Qingjue never truly wanted to take me. Taking a disciple is only the name of it… covering up some tell.
But such a half-formed suspicion drifted through young Fusang’s mind and dissolved without a trace.
What she remembered of that day was only its ending: Yan Rushi hurtling up to her, arms full of Talismans, arrows, and treasures. “These are all for you! You Fusang, from now on we’ll eat together, live together, sit in lessons together! I do hope you’re easy to get along with”—the Little Peacock’s smile without equal in its brilliance—”after today, you’re my Senior Sister! Remember to take good care of me!”
That smile, however many years passed, could always shake You Fusang’s heart open.
It was the first light that had fallen before her eyes since the endless Hundun.
In the Pagoda Palace.
She woke to just-after-rain, sparrows chattering beyond the hall.
Yan Rushi still slept like the dead, half her face buried in the quilt. You Fusang thought: Yesterday such a pitiful, frightened creature; this morning so at ease. Should one call the little peacock thick-skinned, or not?
Thinking this, she slipped away carefully, taking care not to wake the sleeper.
Morning light through the canopy. City Lord You stood before a full-length bronze mirror and met her own reflection—already tall and straight in her snow-plum white cloak—and then, by some impulse of the moment, raised her hands and bound her hair into a brisk, high ponytail.
It was the style she had worn daily a hundred years ago in the Yan Sect—for lessons, for sword drills, for convenience. Since falling into devilhood she had lost all interest in such external things and rarely spared her appearance a thought. Perhaps the scene had stirred the memory; for no reason at all, she thought of how she used to look.
Come to think of it, the first ponytail had been Yan Rushi’s doing. But Young Sect Master Yan, pampered from birth, knew only how to be waited on, not how to care for anyone—let alone how to dress another’s hair. At the time she had declared, imperiously, that Martial Sisters ought to wear their hair the same, seized You Fusang’s hair-tie, tugged left and right, and hauled out a great deal of You Fusang’s hair in the process.
You Fusang suspected she’d done it on purpose, shoved her away, and refused to have anything more to do with the Little Peacock.
The Little Peacock had then come crawling back to fawn, one “Senior Sister,” one “Elder Sister,” one “Big Sister Fusang” at a time, her voice soft as an oriole’s, until You Fusang relented and let the matter drop.
Yet whenever the pair appeared in perfect Martial-Sister harmony, Yan Qingjue would find one excuse after another to part them—nothing more than: the bamboo-leaf water clock has gone silent, Rushi, go change the reservoir; the water lilies in the grove are about to shed, Fusang, go gather some.
Yan Qingjue had not wanted them close.
After all, who wishes to watch the daughter on whom she pinned her highest hopes grow intimate with some insignificant trifle?
Yan Qingjue could never have imagined either that a hundred years on, her daughter would come begging that very “insignificant trifle” for salvation.
And at present, what You Fusang was most curious about was Yan Qingjue’s condition. Yan Rushi said her meridians were severed through. True, or false?
If Yan Rushi were a spy sent by the righteous path—entirely possible—then staking Yan Qingjue’s Immortal Bone as the price would be a ruinously lavish investment.
Thinking this, she walked out of the Pagoda Palace—and met a shrill, laughing greeting head-on: “The Venerable Lord looks especially dashing today! Handsome enough to do me in~”
Geng Ying’s voice wove with the chime of the bells in her hair, grinning, as crisp as rain-dropped jade on a curtain after the rain.
Anyone else would not have dared breathe in You Fusang’s presence; only she dared joke like this.
You Fusang didn’t banter. She came straight to the point: “Look into Yan Qingjue’s condition.”
“Already asked! The moment that Young Sect Master showed up at the Pagoda Palace yesterday, Sister Qingluan went making inquiries.” Geng Ying angled for praise. “Venerable Lord, we can see the future before it happens, no?”
You Fusang ignored her and looked to the other woman, dressed in blue. “What did you find?”
“To report to the Venerable Lord…” Qingluan said, “the Young Sect Master Yan spoke no falsehood. As Yan Qingjue lies now, eight parts of her two hundred bones are broken; of her seventy-two inches of meridian, thirteen remain. Never mind lifting a sword—if she clings to life at all, she will spend the rest of it a death-specter propped on a sickbed. Allow this subordinate to add: as for the calamity between the Yan Sect and Solitary Mountain—the ancient banyans before the Yan Sect’s gates have been felled to the last; of the Twelve Towers and Five Cities upon the mountain, of some twenty Elders, Solitary Mountain spared only six alive…”
You Fusang’s face stiffened. “Was Elder Cheng among them?”
“You mean Elder Cheng Jianyue of the sword-forging arts?” Qingluan replied. “Only a single breath remains to her. Solitary Mountain’s methods were savage; Elder Cheng Jianyue’s condition is far from hopeful. She, like Sect Master Yan, is imprisoned in Solitary Mountain’s Sea-Viewing Pavilion.”
You Fusang still remembered: when she betrayed the Yan Sect, she had looked back only twice. One glance had fallen hastily on Yan Rushi. The other, on Cheng Jianyue.
Compared with Yan Qingjue, Cheng Jianyue had been more truly her Teacher and elder, and had given her more real instruction.
Now the Yan Sect lay in pitiful ruin, shattered and storm-tossed, with neither Yan Qingjue nor Cheng Jianyue having anything left to stand on…
The little peacock truly had no home left.
How did it come to this?
You Fusang meant to ask more, but Geng Ying was hollering again: “Venerable Lord, after what the Yan Sect did to you, every last one of them deserves death ten times over! Now we need only let Solitary Mountain grind them down, and vengeance is assured! That you remember old bonds at all and took in their Young Sect Master is already mercy past all deserving—stop troubling yourself over that sect’s business!”
You Fusang made no reply, her face gone dark—and so missed a bird flashing across the sky.
The bird was black, strange of form, seeming no living thing. It lurched across the heavens, then plunged into the Pagoda Palace and shattered the morning dream of the sleeper within.
Half-asleep, Yan Rushi heard only a tremendous boom, as if something had burst open behind her ear, flesh and blood spraying.
She woke with a start—and saw a black bird dissolve into a mist of blood, leaving before her eyes only a blood-soaked bundle of cloth.
The stench of it turned Yan Rushi’s stomach and drove every trace of sleep away.
At the coarse cloth’s edge, the Dao Seal of Solitary Mountain gleamed faintly.
With trembling hands, Yan Rushi picked it up.
Inside lay a Sect Master Ring she knew better than her own heartbeat—and—
a severed finger.
Her mother’s little finger.
