Once Lady Liuying was outside of the city walls, she began to dig a hole in the frozen ground and, once it was big enough for her snake form to fit, crawled in and went to sleep.
She wanted to sleep forever, but the warmth of spring and the movement of earthworms within the soil woke her. Lady Liuying sat up and swept the dirt off of her robes. The grief, dulled by time, was no longer all-consuming. She could move on, Liuying decided. She could keep on living.
As if shedding an old skin, Lady Liuying left her old life behind and began anew once more.
She settled in a small cottage between Chang’an and Luoyang, off the beaten path enough to live quietly but close enough to keep an eye on convoys between the current and past capitals. For the first few months she kept to herself, renovating the cottage and gathering herbs from the nearby woods.
Liuying fixed the leaky roof and the crumpled second story with her own hands. She was no stranger to carpentry. Off to the side she extended the building into a storeroom where she hung herbs out to dry, and dug up a smooth river stone to act as a mortar.
She soon had enough medicine to treat all the common ailments. She packed a wooden box that she slung on her back, and made her way towards the main road in search of travelers in need of cures. As her name spread through the nearby villages, soon the customers came to her instead, and she could rest easy within her little hut, enclosed in the smell of herbs and smoke.
-
It was only a matter of time before figures from her past found her.
Surprisingly, Chen Di found her first without the aid of any magic, demonic or divine. Liuying nearly wept when she saw his face, a cruel reminder of the family she’d left behind.
“Did your prince send you?” she could not bear to call Li Wenrong her husband anymore. Distance gave her a semblance of control.
Chen Di shook his head. “I heard talk of a skilled healer nearby and thought it might be you. I’m glad you are doing well for yourself, Madame.”
Liuying waved her hand. “No need for formalities now. I’m just a rural healer.”
Chen Di looked at her with pity. “Are you in need of any money?” he asked, reaching into his robes and bringing out some silver taels. “Consort Si has supplied me with money to help the Qiao.”
“What a silly woman. You know she once promised her dying son to a woman she’d never met.”
“I have heard that it was a fine woman to whom my prince was promised. A skilled apothecary.”
“A simple garden snake,” Liuying said ruefully. “Who thought too highly of herself and dreamed too dangerously. A demon who had forgotten her place.”
“You don’t mean that, Lady Liuying. I have always admired you for your pride.”
The two exchanged a few more words, and Chen Di took his leave. He took some steps towards the door and stopped, leaning against the counter and heaving harshly, though no liquid left his mouth. Liuying quickly crossed the counter and made her way towards him.
“You are sick.”
“I’m fine,” Chen Di rasped.
“Come sit down. I can help.”
“I cannot burden you with my weakness.”
“Xiao Chen, I am no longer your liege’s wife. We are equals here.”
Chen Di capitulated and let himself be seated. “It’s just a cough,” he said. “I have been traveling far.”
“It sounds like more than ‘just a cough,’” Liuying chided, tearing her left hand free of its human skin and letting it turn to fog. With her incorporeal hand she reached down Chen Di’s throat and examined his internal organs, examining along the meridians by energy alone. There she felt it: a lump growing between his lungs, nestled just beneath his aortic arch. Parasitic vessels extended from the ball of flesh, feeding from the blood delivered by every heartbeat.
“Something is wrong with your heart,” she said softly.
“Is there?”
“It’s almost as if it’s beating for two.”
“Before they died, Shuangtou asked me to eat their heart.”
Liuying looked at him in shock. “And you did?”
“It was the only way to bring them down the mountain.”
Liuying twisted her hand and felt the pulsations of the lump of flesh. “You foolish mortal,” she hissed, “you are carrying their soul inside you. It’s been growing so long, removal will be a painful process.” She could not bring herself to glare or look down on the last connection to her former life. “I can do it still, but it will be painful.”
Chen Di leaned back, causing Liuying’s ghostly hand to lose its grasp inside of him. “No,” he said, remnants of smoke escaping from between his lips.
“No?” Liuying asked, gathering her arm back to corporeality. “Perhaps you do not understand. Your body is not suited for two souls. Their soul will eat you from the inside out.”
“I know,” Chen Di said. “This is all I have left of Shuangtou. This was my only way to bring them with me from Clear Water Mountain.” “Xiao Chen,” Liuying said gently. “You do not have to live in pain.”
“No,” Chen Di replied, “but I choose it.”
“All my daughter has of me is a scale, a poem, and the scars from where I helped the crane take her snakeskin. Do you really wish to hold onto a ghost?”
“How else can I honor Clear Water Mountain?”
“By watching over my husband,” Lady Liuying said. “By being there for my daughter as she grows.”
“I will, once I have helped all the Qiao refugees settle. But I want to carry one last burden in my chest. In all my years of duty, Lady Liuying, permit me one selfish choice that is truly my own.”
“You are choosing death.”
“Perhaps it is my punishment for not choosing life those years ago.”
Chen Di left the apothecary hut with herbs to ease his pain and slow the growth of the tumor within him, though none that would abort it as needed to be done. The man was willing to cut short his already brief mortal lifespan, and she was unsure whether to admonish or admire him.
Such was the charm of humans, she supposed. Fools unaware of how ephemeral their lives truly were. Perhaps they lived better for it.
-
Chen Di must have kept his word on finding the scattered Qiao, because soon they were finding her with minor mortal ailments they never had to deal with when they had access to demonic magic. Xiongmu was heading west with her wife and sons; the boys were old enough now to work, thickset and sturdy with no trace of bear left in either of them. Yuanpo and her poet were taking Liya south to Guilin, the poor girl almost delirious with a lack of human blood. Liuying drained some of her own and fed it to the child through a cloth; then she left the family with herbs that encourage blood production. If not for Liya, then for her father so he may feed her. Those who did not come, Liuying assumed dead. She burned incense for them as she greeted the new year alone.
There was one person whom Liuying knew to be alive, and for whom she waited. Within the year, a large eagle darkened her doorstep and morphed into the bearer of the Qiao’s grief.
Luo Xingxi had grown taller and broader since she had last seen her. Her round cheeks had hollowed out, and her eyes contained none of the mirth and mischief that endeared and exasperated adults. She was fully grown now, Liuying realized. Adulthood had taken everything soft about Xingxi and whittled it away into sharp edges. Adulthood, or the fall of the Qiao.
“It’s good to see you, Xingxi.”
From the bits and pieces the scattered Qiao told her, she pieced together what had happened the night Qiao Village fell. How Bixian had returned in the guise of protecting the children, and had taken their demon pelts instead. How everyone had stood by Tangyou and Ao Luming until Tangyou begged them to leave. How she was crushed beneath the Heavenly Pagoda and emerged from it a burning sword, Ao Luming chasing after her to keep her from piercing Bixian’s chest. And then Luo Xingxi, the only child to keep their pelt, swooped in with the sword and disappeared.
Xingxi clenched her jaw so hard it trembled. “Hello, Auntie Liuying,” she said, holding onto the façade of strength as tightly as she held onto the sword at her side.
“I’m glad you are still alive,” Lady Liuying said.
“Auntie Tangyou and Uncle Luming are here,” Xingxi said, doing away with formalities. She held out the sword to Liuying. “Other aunties and uncles gave me their power, but I don’t know where to find Bixian. I don’t know how to challenge Heaven.”
“Did they tell you to challenge Heaven?”
“They called me the last of the Qiao. But I kept looking and I found you.” Xingxi knelt as if she were a much younger child. Looking up, her eyes gathered some of the youth missing from the rest of her. “You can take the sword and fight Heaven. I’ll gladly give you my powers—all of the powers from the other demons—if you show me how.”
When Liuying first learned of the burden placed on the girl, she felt anger towards the demons who let it happen, as hypocritical as it was for her to judge them. She who had also chosen her family over the good of the Qiao. She who, if one traced back the thread of blame, brought the Knife of Sublimation to Clear Water Mountain with her ambition, her fear, and her vanity.
Was this her chance to redeem herself? Was she destined to wield the sword of her dead friends, against her other friend who betrayed them all? Liuying reached out and touched the hilt.
She was hit with the full force of Tangyou’s anger. In all their years as friends, Liuying did not think the phoenix was capable of such fury. Not a celestial phoenix valued for her beauty, who believed so strongly in love and community. The woman who could settle arguments with a smile, who had held weeping children against her shoulder. Now she was a sharp and pointed thing, its dreadful purpose only tempered by gentle Luming acting as a scabbard.
But perhaps there was a logic to their forms. Tangyou, who loved the Qiao from that first night, had burned all that tenderness into rage. What was left of Tangyou within the Phoenix-Feather Sword had been refined into a weapon. And for a brief second, her sister was willing her to hold it. To avenge the village she had founded and then left.
She didn’t want to, Liuying realized. Perhaps for the first time, she understood why some elder demons grew tired of living and returned to their base forms or let themselves be captured by exorcists and demigods. She was never a fighter, and the prospect of challenging an unbeatable foe seemed like the worst form of eternity.
“I am not one who can take up the sword,” she told Xingxi. “That is not a fight I can win.”
“Why not?”
“Let me rephrase: I do not wish to take the sword.”
Xingxi pulled the sword away from Liuying and held it tightly against her chest. After a few moments of consideration, she held out an empty hand and said, “If you’re too chickenshit to face Heaven, then do me the favor of giving me the magic you’re not using.”
“You have always been impulsive, Luo Xingxi.”
Xingxi angrily held out her empty hand. “Your powers. Now.”
Liuying glanced at the eagle girl’s palm. Though she had never read the girl’s fortune, she could tell just from the brief glimpse that the girl was born under an inauspicious star. Doomed, perhaps, to bear the last burden of her people.
It was not right to trust centuries of cultivated magic to Xingxi. She was still just a girl; righteous and impulsive, her vengeance would be a destructive force. She who did not know the bounds of Heaven’s wrath and their imperial reach; she would keep fighting forever until her soul burned to ash.
“What good will my powers do in your hands?”
“It will give me a better chance at bashing the crane’s head in.”
“And what will that accomplish? Will you feel better, knowing Bixian is dead?”
Xingxi’s hand curled into a fist. “She killed my father.”
“Killing her will not bring him back.” Liuying stopped herself from moralizing more in front of the girl. This was a hunter, she reminded herself. Xingxi had dealt in death and rebirth since her hands could reliably hold a knife. Liuying recalled a fight the eagle girl had with Qiping about death, so many years ago. Something so minor and catastrophic that Xingxi’s brother had gone to her for advice on the matter.
Ah, Qiping. Liuying wondered if Bixian had given her daughter immortality yet, or if the girl had refused. Sadness clung to her and she clung to sadness; she was not someone Liuying could imagine treasuring a long life.
Xingxi was going on about how she would tear down Heaven brick by brick. Liuying had heard these aspirations from young demons before. Over the years, they would eventually grow wise enough to abandon such childish goals; or else they do not live long enough to grow wise.
Luo Xingxi was barely an adult; it would be a shame if she died so young, even for a mortal’s lifetime.
“You’ve gone from killing a crane to toppling all of Heaven,” Liuying said. “Even with your wings, can you fly all the way up there? Can you breach their walls? When the war drums sound, how will you defeat an entire army of heavenly soldiers? They will burn every part of you into ash and vapor, Xingxi. Down to your bones and soul.”
“I don’t fear death.”
Liuying studied the eagle child’s face and found no tinge of fear, no hint of bravado. Only truth. “What happened to make you pursue this path? You had a good childhood full of love and warmth. It’s not too late to find your mother and your brother. It’s not too late to live a good, long life.”
“You know exactly what happened,” Xingxi said. “You know exactly what was taken away from me. Whatever life I lead afterwards, it will never bring the Qiao back.”
“Then you must learn to fight,” Liuying said, resigning the child to her chosen fate. “Learn how to wield that sword. Ao Luming’s father was a renowned swordsman; if you travel to the eastern shore, you may be able to find him.” She reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Xingxi’s ear. “Don’t rush ahead into things. Only challenge Bixian when you are certain you will win.”
As she watched the girl fly away, Liuying turned back to her shop and began sorting herbs. She could not bring herself to seek revenge on her former friend, but there were other culpable parties. And though she had no talent with a sword, there were far subtler methods of killing, even those who had the gift of immortality. It would take time and iterations, but she too would have her vengeance. Slow and patient, as was the snake’s way.
-
When Bixian stepped through the hut’s doorway, Liuying almost wished she had taken the Phoenix-Feather Sword. It was a brief, momentary desire to strike the crane down, despite the strong divine energy emanating from her. Liuying took a breath to steady herself and greet Bixian as she would any celestial being: with cautious respect and a healthy amount of fear. She did not know if Bixian was visiting her as herself or as Heaven’s Grey Enforcer.
It was the former, from the way Bixian could not meet her gaze. Liuying had no patience for it.
“You will not find forgiveness here.”
“Why do you think I am searching for forgiveness?” Bixian asked, though the desire was written all over her face.
“Then why are you here?”
“To find some assurance that you are doing well.” She walked along the shelves of dried herbs, running her hand along the edge like a housekeeper searching for a speck of dust. Finding a suitable place to place the jug of plum wine she held in her hands.
Liuying wanted to bring the shelf crashing down on the both of them. “I know what you are doing, Bixian. You are looking for somebody, anybody, to tuck your hair behind your ears and tell you that you have done no wrong. You want to be coddled like a child and have your decision validated. I am not going to give you the peace you seek, Bixian. You have to live with the decision you made.”
Bixian did not show her emotions by nature. The fact that Liuying’s words made her flinch meant they cut deep. “That’s what Luo Feiyi said to me before he died.”
“His daughter hunts you, you know.”
“I know.”
“Will you let her strike you down.”
“I will defend myself.”
“How like you.”
Bixian looked to the side and brushed back her hair, which had been hanging down the right side of her face like a curtain. Though the wound had healed, there was still a concave divet of scar tissue where her eye once was. “I held my tongue until the last minute. If I had died in Heaven, would you have mourned me?”
“I mourn my sister now, who I lost to Heaven. Taken by their Grey Executor.” Lady Liuying reached forward and smashed the jug of wine onto the ground. As the wine soaked into the dirt floor, its aroma brought about bittersweet memories of the night they became friends. “Wallow in self-pity, if you must, or laugh and be merry as befitting your station. But no one will absolve you of your guilt. You have lost the right.”
The snake demon turned her back to her former friend, challenging her to strike her down for her impudence. When no such blow came, Liuying looked over her shoulder to find Bixian gone.
So be it, Liuying thought. Luo Xingxi burned with an anger so bright it would not rest until the Qiao are avenged, and Bixian carried with her a guilt so deep even the divine could not assuage. The two women would never know peace until Bixian was dead. And Bixian, stubbornly, continued to live.