Li Liuruo’s son grew well despite his tumultuous birth. The only reminder of the difficult birth was the right side of his face, which was slow to move and often a mask of serenity even while the left side cried.

Chen Di fevered for a week after he was found collapsed in the garden. It was clear he was dying.

While his grandson was not yet one hundred days and thus nameless still, Prince Wenrong saddled his old mare and brought Chen Di back to Clear Water Mountain.

Their journey was slow due to Chen Di’s fading health. The road to the ruined Qiao village had long since become overgrown with weeds and brambles. The fires that burnt the night the Qiao fell enriched the soil, and now new undergrowth covered the ground while young trees greedily turned their leaves towards the sun.

Prince Wenrong laid Chen Di against the trunk of an old tree, new growth growing from places spared by the scorched scars. It was unclear if this was the old tree reclaiming life, or a new tree growing within the body of the old.

He regarded the still lake that gave Clear Water Mountain its eponymous name. Though the village had been razed, the base of the lakeside pavilion remained, the remnants of the bare frame reaching towards the heavens like incense upon a grave.

Prince Wenrong held out the Phoenix-Feather Sword and admired its bronze pommel, an ornate phoenix that resembled Tangyou’s true form. Its slender neck twisted in on itself, the head resting against its back. Its two wings were spread out in flight, and its long tailfeathers converged onto a bladed point. The blade was sealed beneath azure scales that glistened like Ao Luming’s hide, or the underhues of his hair.

Despite being a Tang prince, Li Wenrong knew he was the least among the Qiao founders. On sleepless nights as he laid beside the cool bodies of his wife and daughter, he knew his friends would outlive him. How wrong he was.

“How is it possible that you and I are the last?” he murmured. “Us two mortal men still alive, where beings with far more power than we have perished?”

Chen Di sputtered for a bit before he answered: “It was a cruel hand you were dealt. I’m sorry I cannot live to serve you longer.”

“Don’t talk of servitude as you are dying, my friend.” Wenrong let go of the sword in order to clasp Chen Di’s hands in his own. “Here, we are equals. In life we grew up as brothers. May we be brothers again in death.”

The Phoenix-Feather sword lay on the grass between them, refracting the sunlight into a spectrum of blues and oranges.

“You speak as if you have no future, my prince,” Chen Di said, and reached for the sword before Li Wenrong could take it for himself. The loyal steward held the filigree pommel with his rough, calloused hands, the blade, still incased in its dragonscale sheath, pointed at his prince’s heart. For a moment he imagined freeing the blade from its scabbard and striking the other man down, as he had dreamed in his darkest moments, enacting vengeance against the bloodline that killed his family, though the wrong would not right the past. The impulse lasted only a moment; the two hearts beating within his chest were not made for hating.

Instead, he spun the sword around and presented the phoenix pommel out to Li Wenrong. “Your daughter is still young. Your grandson is not yet named. Your mother is aging but not yet frail. Do not throw your life away on my behalf.”

With shaking hand, Prince Wenrong took the sword once more. “If providence is kind, your soul will move onto my grandson, and I will dote on you to repay tenfold the loyalty you have shown me.”

“Do not worry yourself with who your grandson was. Focus on who he will be. We mortals cannot peer into our past lives as easily as gods and spirits. I trust we will meet again.” Chen Di let out a sigh that turned into a wheeze, leaning back and surveying the landscape. The endless shades of green erasing any memory of fire and bloodshed the earth had seen. “But first, I think I’d like to be a hart. Gallop beneath the trees’ dappled shade and munch upon the tender shoots of spring.”

“May you outrun every wolf and hunter’s arrow, my friend.”

“All but one,” Chen Di turned to Prince Wenrong and smiled. “I wouldn’t mind dying by you or your grandson’s hand.”

“Then I will teach him to hunt, so that we may meet again.”

Li Wenrong held out the Phoenix-Feather sword against Chen Di’s chest, in a mirror of a prior gesture.

“You were not allowed glory or recognition in this life for the sins of your bloodline, but I can give you a soldier’s death. Quick and painless, as this sword promises to be.”

Chen Di shook his head and brushed the blade away with his palm. “There are many chances for me to die by violence, either as an animal or a man. I choose to die slowly. A peaceful drifting off to sleep.” Growing weary of sitting up, he lowered his body to rest against the trunk of the tree.

“Then I will stay with you,” Prince Wenrong said. “Till you have passed.”

Chen Di closed his eyes, and did not open them again.

Prince Wenrong held his friend’s hand as it grew cold and tightened its grip. He did not know if Chen Di did it out of fear, as his closed eyes were seeing the Black and White Guardians of Death, or if his soul had already gone and this was the first sign of rigor mortis.

All around him, the earth mocked him with its splendor. The fresh green of the grass he sat upon, the wildflowers and their subtle scents, stirred up an unknown jealousy within his chest. He had seen taller trees; the gardens within the Imperial City had peonies so large the stems bent downward with their weight. Here he was, however, filled with anger at common poplar trees and how their leaves made dappled shadows in the afternoon.

How dare the world go on living, when all his friends were dead. How dare there still be beauty allowed to exist, when the most beautiful thing in his life is gone.

For a moment he wished the Tudigong of this land to appear, even though the two of them had rarely shared two words together. He wanted something to break through the silence of the vigil, so he would stop being the lone mourner of the Qiao.

He felt something stir against the hand that was holding Chen Di’s, and he looked hopefully to his friend for a few moments, that they may share a few more minutes together. Instead, to his disgust, there was a pale grey worm crawling on his hand.

The prince was about to brush the worm off when it reared up and regarded him with two antenna that stood in the place of eyes. “Hello, good sir!” it said in a small voice, soft like the rustle of silk in the wind. “I have been traveling far, and afterwards traveling in circles, and I wonder if you may be of assistance. I tried asking your friend but he seems to be resting.”

Prince Wenrong should have been angry at the worm’s informal tone, but his cup of grief overflowed and he was suddenly filled with a strange sense of warmth and compassion towards the little worm.

“Let my friend rest, little worm, and may this humble mortal be of aid to you.”

Prince Wenrong brought the worm up to examine it more closely. What he assumed were antennae seemed on second inspection to be the worm’s first pair of legs. The worm had six pairs in total, four at the front of its body and two at the back. Each leg had a small hook at the end, tugging at his skin as the worm walked along his palm. He was a young boy again, marveling at a caterpillar he found among the flowers of his mother’s garden.

With a semblance of a bow, the worm addressed the prince:

“I am searching for the crane Bixian, to whom I owe a debt.”

The name turned his blood to ice. If he were a violent man, he would have closed his hand into a fist and crushed the worm inside of it. But Prince Wenrong was almost fifty, and he knew that despite the sword that hung at his hip, he was not a killer.

“She is no friend of the Qiao,” Prince Wenrong said bitterly. “It was she who destroyed it.”

The worm looked as crestfallen as its face allowed, the dimple of its mouth turning downwards into a frown. “I don’t understand. She spoke so highly of the clan when we were imprisoned within the Heavenly Pagoda.”

“She brought Heaven’s Army to this place, and they razed it to the ground. She took a golden knife and skinned each and every one of our children. And when she was done here, she came to the palace to skin my daughter as well, and banished my wife.”

“I don’t understand,” the worm repeated.

Prince Wenrong looked sadly to where his archives once stood. In his youth he had believed so strongly in the power of records and the written word. Especially among gods and demons, for whom human lifetimes were just a blink of an eye. He clung to the census as a means of preserving the human members of the Qiao, in anticipation of the future where their feeble souls would be flung back into the cycle of reincarnation. The archives would have been proof that there were humans among the Qiao, a tomb and memorium for those swallowed by mortal time.

All this preparation was for naught. The Qiao had ended within his lifetime. He could cling to so little now, save the body of his friend, and the memories unlocked with the death of his wife.

Compared to his other losses, the archives seemed such a small, paltry thing to mourn. But now Prince Wenrong wished the archives still stood, so he could pull out the records and show the worm how each name was written. He wished this little worm could write, so something tangible would remain of the Qiao aside from the burnt rotting wood.

“Let me tell you then, little worm, of the rise and fall of the Glorious Qiao.”

ten years of mourning