As Lady Liuying instructed, Xingxi flew east, until land gave way to the ever-expanding sea.
Along the way, she swooped down to a farm and stole the largest ox she could find. Her newfound powers radiated through her veins, and she was able to grow to the size of a building, each of her talons as large as a human man. They easily lifted the bovine up from its pen and snapped its neck.
Xingxi flew a ways out beyond the coast before dropping the oxen body into the water as an offering. Wasn’t there already a story about a bird throwing things into the ocean? Did the Jingwei Bird mean to leave offerings as well, or was she trying to fill the entire sea, one rock at a time?
She descended upon the waves, the giant beats of her wings making large ripples that met with the wind’s waves in a crash of white foam. She transformed back to her human form, standing atop the water as easily as if it were steady land.
Taking the Phoenix-Feather Sword from her belt, Xingxi knelt and held the sword out before her. The Dragonscale Scabbard still refused to budge, locking the blade within it.
“Lord Sheng of the Eastern Sea,” she said, the formality foreign on her tongue. “I, Luo Xingxi of the Qiao, beseech you to aid me in avenging the death of your son.”
For a few moments the sea did not change, waves continuing their journeys until they crashed on the shore. Then the ground itself shifted, and the waves became more tempestuous, as out of the depths a dragon rose, its mane a stark white against scales of slate. Xingxi stood at attention as the dragon swam towards her, its spine undulating like tall rolling waves, its mouth large enough to swallow her whole. She gazed in awe as a dragon twice Uncle Luming’s size reared up before her. Every muscle in her body tensed; every instinct in her body, her own and that of the three elder demons, was telling her to flee, that this was not a battle that she could win.
But she was not raised to be a mere demon. She was a child of the Qiao, raised with love from the celestial, mortal, and demon realms. She lowered her head once more, touching the azure scales of the scabbard to her forehead before raising it up in offering towards the dragon.
The air around her swirled and before her stood the still imposing figure of Ao Sheng, transformed to human form, though he kept the visage of a dragon. He was still imposing, holding a severed cow head in one hand which he tossed at Xingxi’s feet.
“I have received your offering. It is, however, vastly insufficient to save you from the news you bring me.” He drew back a hand; Xingxi quickly recognized the gesture as that of a parent about to strike a child, and brought the scabbard up to protect herself. Ao Sheng’s clawed hand met the scabbard with the force of a flooding river. Xingxi channeled all the magic granted to her by the Qiao elders and held her ground, digging her heels so firmly that the earth cracked beneath her. Even after the impact, the scabbard hummed with energy, a faint blue glow surrounding its entirety.
The dragon prince stumbled backwards and looked down at his hand, then back at Xingxi. “So you speak the truth. My son is dead.” “He made a village in the mountains with people that he loved. I called him Uncle. And then Heaven came and burned the village to the ground.”
“My foolish son. I never thought him capable of disobedience.”
“But he didn’t do anything wrong.”
Ao Sheng let out a brief laugh at the child’s naivete. “He left his post in Heaven. From the way you reek, he consorted with demons. That is enough to justify Heaven’s wrath.”
“So you’ll allow it, then? You’re just going to accept your son’s death?”
Ao Sheng turned his back on Xingxi. “It has been a long time since dragons fought against Heaven. We may be lords of the sea, but they control legions of the endless sky. Half of their exalted are dragon slayers. I stand no chance.”
“Your son always talked about your skill in swordsmanship. He said you could carve trenches in the sea floor and skewer a single fish without harming its school.”
“And how do you suppose that would fare against Heaven’s army, child? How could I carve clouds?”
Xingxi hugged the sword to her chest. “I’m sorry, Uncle Luming, Your father won’t listen.” Then with one swift movement she brought the sword up to the dragon prince’s neck, a hair’s breadth away from striking him. “I’m not asking for you to stand against Heaven. I’m asking you to train me. My father hunted with his talons and my mother with a bow. I don’t know how to wield a sword.”
An obsidian sword had materialized in Ao Sheng’s hand, and its tip lightly grazed Xingxi’s chest. If she were to strike, she would be dead first. “Of all the swordsmiths, you ask me?”
“You’re Uncle Luming’s father.”
Without relaxing his blade hand, Ao Sheng reached up and grasped the scabbard. At once his eyes glowed blue, and he stood there having a conversation Xingxi could not hear. After a few seconds, Ao Sheng sighed and lowered his blade, his grip on the Phoenix-Feather Sword still firm.
Xingxi let go at his silent request. Ao Sheng raised the sword and let it descend until he was holding it near the hilt. “I will not stand with you when you avenge their deaths,” he said.
“I never asked you to.”
The dragon prince turned to scrutinize Xingxi. A young woman barely past childhood, whose strong arms and firm stance knew labor but not war. There was sadness and determination in her eyes, but she seemed unaccustomed to scowling. Her face was made for joy; it was only recently that tragedy etched its mark on her face.
Could this child do it? There was an immense amount of cultivated energy emanating from her, but it was wild and uncontrolled. Heaven’s army would cut her down without a second thought.
But she had brought his son to him. If Heaven had kept the sword they would have destroyed it in divine fire, or locked it up in some hidden fault. Instead this girl was able to wrest it from their grasp and bring the remains of Ao Luming to his father. For that, Ao Sheng was grateful.
He would train her, he decided. If not to allow her to succeed, then to spend more time with a son he didn’t know he would lose.
-
The Phoenix-Feather Sword was taken away and replaced with a wooden training sword.
“You cannot simply rely on the quality of your blade,” Ao Sheng said when Xingxi protested. “Once you fell me with that wooden sword, you may have the Phoenix-Feather Sword back.”
Weeks were spent on drills, practicing how to draw and sheath a sword from her hip; the correct way to grip the hilt. Her palms grew calloused in places she never thought possible.
“Teach me to spar,” she kept asking Lord Sheng. “I need to know how to fight.”
“What you need to know,” he would answer, “is how to correctly hold a sword. Your wrist is too stiff. I can disarm you in a second.”
“How? I’m holding it with all my might.”
Lord Sheng drew his own sword, the thin obsidian blade, and quickly knocked the wooden sword from Xingxi’s hands. “A sword is an extension of your body. If you are not flexible, your weak points will easily be exploited. Rope is easier to cut when pulled taut.” “Drill one hundred more times,” Lord Sheng said, turning his back to Xingxi. He was pleased when Xingxi picked up her sword and lunged at him. Lord Sheng turned so Xingxi’s blade glanced at his hip; a position he knew Xingxi was unfamiliar with. A quick parry, and she was disarmed again.
“Two hundred more times,” Lord Sheng amended.
“Again,” Xingxi said through clenched teeth. “Next time–” she yelped as the dragon raised his sword and, rather than stab as was his blade’s forte, swung it in an arc as if it were a much heavier weapon. Acting on instinct, Xingxi raised her wooden sword above her head to shield her face; Lord Sheng took this opportunity to redirect his aim and land two flat blows on each side of Xingxi’s waist. “It’s not just the technique that we have to work on. Your mental fortitude is weak.”
“I was unprepared that time,” she grumbled once she regained her composure.
“You will be unprepared when battle comes,” he answered. He glanced at the eagle’s expression and paused; she was making the same expression Luming did in his youth after he received a scolding. It was an expression Ao Sheng had only seen a couple of times, before his son learned proprietary and masked his emotions.
Was that when he lost connection to Ao Luming, when the unruly child became the obedient son?
“This is something that can be amended,” he said in a kinder voice, walking towards Xingxi as she stood up once more. “You clearly have held a weapon before. What was it?”
“I was a hunter,” Xingxi answered. “Both my father and mother were skilled archers.”
That explained the incongruities of the young eagle’s form. What Ao Sheng thought was hesitation, he realized, was an archer’s patience for the target, the arrow, and the wind to align. Perhaps the young eagle was skilled with a bow, but the lessons taught to her actively hindered her swordsmanship.
“You’ve been afforded too much time, drawing back a bowstring,” he said, gesturing for Xingxi to follow him. They walked a short distance to a flat rock beneath a willow tree, and as Ao Sheng traced his hand on the rock’s surface a chessboard emerged. “We need to train your reflexes to be faster. You must learn strategy; formulate in one second and then execute the next without pause. To pause is to die at the edge of a sword.”
He reached down and grabbed a handful of pebbles, and as he tossed them onto the chessboard they each became inscribed with a corresponding piece. “You have one second to make a move after me,” he said, taking his cannon and placing it at the center, threatening the general’s pawn.
Xingxi was used to playing with children younger than her, or adults who relaxed their skills to let the younger player win. Acting on instinct, she advanced her leftmost pawn.
“Wrong move,” Ao Sheng said, slamming the table with his palm. The pieces resettled in their starting position. “Again.”
-
Xingxi improved at chess out of necessity. Ao Sheng would not allow her to touch her wooden sword unless she took a piece; only after the first check would he pick up his sword in turn.
It eventually became a dance, blades flying atop the chessboard as pieces moved beneath. Xingxi had thought fighting would be like flight, where her mind could wander as her body moved on its own.
Instead, she was always thinking. Eyes darting from the chessboard to her mentor. Feet in the right position; her horse prepared to take Ao Sheng’s chariot at the next check.
Lord Sheng taught her that she could not rely on instinct alone. Not when her opponent was also a thinking being. Instinct operated on previous experience; it always chose the path of least resistance. A valuable tool for survival, but easily exploited by someone who could think, as her eventual opponent would be.
Ao Sheng did not inquire more about her vendetta, whether due to kindness or plausible deniability. He did not comment when Xingxi would fly away every so often. If she wanted to learn, he would be there to teach. It mattered not that the way her eyes would burn in frustration reminded him of his son, not the gentle child Ao Luming was but the child Ao Sheng expected him to be, to be a son of the Princess of Liang who struck every suitor down except the warm spring breeze.
Despite himself, he wondered if Ao Luming had kept the scroll beside him as he died. It was some comfort, to think his son had at least his mother to look after him. All Ao Sheng could do as a father now was tend to the youngling who might avenge his son’s death.
Ao Sheng's name is spelled 敖升